Ian, That has got to be one of the best posts I have read on this forum. You couldn't be more right. I rarely come here anymore because it pains me to see LBS let their so called spouses walk all over them. (YR, that was not directed at you)
I stopped wanting my ex back a long time ago because I finally came to a point in my life where I knew I deserved better. I deserved to live my life full of peace and happiness and I wasn't going to get it by waiting for my ex to snap out of it.
One must love themselves before they can truly love another.
Ian, thank you for this post to YR. It is exactly what I needed to hear right now.
I have also been through this before, 29 years ago. It was in the form of ONSs while and after I was pg with D#2. I thought at the time that we had dealt with it in all of the right ways, and things seemed fine for quite some time. But here I am now, dealing with it again, and it is so much worse. I will not do this again.
M 65 H 64 T 39 & M 36 @ S 12/08 Two Ds
Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy. ~ The Weather Man
This time I am not pleading, crying or anything. I am stronger than I have ever been. I am comfortable in my own skin.
My H is lost right now and I will give it some time and am preparing for the worst. It does hurt that he is acting like this again because I thought we had finished with MLC. Your right he does need to put his big boy pants on and realize what he has before it's gone.
A wise older lady told me once that men go thru the change in their forties and again in their sixties.....give or take a few yrs. She has seen it and prb. lived it.
Hang in there YR! You are a GOOD WOMAN and worthy of ALOT of LOVE!
YR Ian's post was excellent, one of the best. There is only one thing I would add - are we doing all of this for us, or for them?
If it was for us, purely, then obviously, as people with self respect, we would have kicked them to the kerb long ago. Can we help another person by standing still and being there until they get it? Truly I don't know.
I suspect it is the latter that is motivating you: and only you will know when to say 'enough already'. And all of us have earned the right to say that! Hugs sista
Ian's post was excellent. My question is, does it fly in the face of what we know or think we know about MLC?
From reading the posts on this forum I don't think I'm just speaking for myself when I say that there is a marked difference in how my H behaves and thinks compared to pre-MLC.
My once sensible, rational H now does and says things that are bizarre. Seriously, who in their right mind re-meets a woman that he dated 40 years ago in HS and moves in with her 2 weeks later?
IDK, maybe I am just making excuses for him, but before my H up and left, he hadn't given any kind of indication that he would do something like this. It was as if something just snapped inside of him. This was not the real and steady H that family and friends all knew.
H is still on the track to self destruction. He is smoking heavily again after having quit for years. (His entire family on his mother's side all died early deaths due to complications from smoking.) He is running himself ragged between work and on the go with ow. Previously on his time off from work he laid low and rested, especially after his stroke. Now, it has been witnessed that he will down up to 3 of those little energy drinks at one time, and mega cups of coffee so he can keep on going. (His truck is littered with the bottles.)
I believe he is still trying to outrun his inner demons. The brain's chemical changes between depression and MLC are the only things that make any sense to me in trying to explain why a good solid, loving family man turned his back and ran, and in fact, is still running.
Remembering the good in my H and our M and hopes that H would recover from MLC would have made outlasting his MLC worth it to me. (H has taken the steps to officially end our M.)That's me though, and I understand that no one else walks quite the same path.
You'll figure out what is worth it to you, YR. We'll be here to support whatever you decide.
They like the size to be around 100 posts around here something about board mechanics.
Ian's post is as usual very good. The deserve part? Deserve, to me its like 'fair' and all you really need to do is watch a fly caught in a spider's web to realize the universe doesn't work on 'fair'.
Deserve, I believe you deserve what you work for, and you have worked for this, sooo I see the ball in your court, can you do more work?
Myself? MLC... I did this once, I'm pretty sure I won't do this again. But I see you and know your journey and path, and it makes me wonder, if you can do again, why couldn't I?
I have never regretted this, what would I learn and how would I improve myself with the time if I went through this again?
If I didn't regret the first time, why would I regret a potential second time?
Anyway...instead of a mod, think of me like a crossing guard, suggesting you start a new thread. : )
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
well a new thread hasn't started yet so I am going to post here!!!
Ian...I love you and I think your advice was spot on however YR knows it is all about choices
we all deserve better than what we get at sometimes in a relationship there has to be an understanding of an ebb and flow
I am not saying that walking over boundaries is ok and the difference here is that YR made boundaries whereas before maybe they weren't really there
I think we all lost sight of some boundaries and we all put up with things we would have never imagined ourselves putting up with then we come out of it and we say NEVER AGAIN and we make all these boundaries that are super close around us and we tell ourselves we deserve so much better than we got (which we do) but in order to be in a healthy relationship, we have to loosen some of those boundaries
those boundaries that we threw up to protect all the open wounds
those should be healed... not saying there aren't scars but they shouldn't be raw anymore
so we loosen those boundaries and we allow some to be nudged a bit and our boundaries become healthier
we shouldn't be in crisis boundary mode (make sense)
so...the boundaries YR now has are not crisis, fresh, raw meat ones....they are ones that are personal
does she deserve better
hells ya do we always get what we deserve 100% of the time...nope (if we did, I would be a millionaire, lounging by my beach house with birds chirping in the background...just like lots of us here)
so he is an ass now but YR has to decide if his assholicness is bad enough to chuck it in or if it dealable
the panic isn't there because that crisis already passed...that big one we thought we would never survive...YR knows she can survive
