Not Counting Chickens Yet...

[hope2011]

I wish to God, I could get you to talk to my mom. Your story and hers are so very similar it is frightening.

Tell me she found a great guy and is blissfully happy now? Give Hope some hope here, LIS!

Hope, you wouldn't last a second in a convent, so I would hold off on those vows. You have goals and dreams that do not involve the convent.

True. Yeah, they probably frown upon wanting kids and that whole celibacy thing would be a problem. I'm 37, in my prime.

Has your past beaten you down so much that you've gotten to the point that you don't trust yourself anymore?

My past, men, myself. I have a big problem with beating myself up a lot. I go from trying to appear strong so others don't think I'm weak and I'm not a target to wearing my heart on my sleeve and then blasting myself for doing it. Yes, I've been in C. I can analyze myself very well! I just can't trust myself.

Did your first H and you begin having problems when you lost your son?

No, it was just the last straw. He was sick a long time, we were apart a lot because of that (me at the hospital, him working) for years. We were young. Completely different in so many ways. We never really talked, ever. There were no deep discussions, sharing our souls, etc. Not to sound condescending at all but I'm very smart, have a high IQ, took college courses in HS and had a 4.0 GPA, an over-achiever. XH took woodshop, basic classes, etc and made B's and C's. I didn't care, neither did he, when were dating, etc. But as you grow older you realize that you need someone who you can talk to, share things with, be on the same level with. I wanted to talk a lot about deep stuff, I wanted a big career, etc - XH wanted a simple life, a wife who didn't talk 24/7, etc. Both are good lives but they didn't mesh. I felt held back (I missed out on pre-med when our son was born sick). XH felt I pushed him too hard, wanted too much out of life. I was wanting middle-class, he was wanting whatever life threw at us as good enough. Funny how my H now says we want different lifestyles... karma biting me in the @$$. XH cheated on me when we were engaged, I didn't find out until 2 weeks before he left, when he confessed all his sins to "work on the marriage". He left me for an OW during the marriage and we separated for 6 months. She didn't want him, told him to go home (they never met, it was an on-line EA) and I thought he was faithful physically, but didn't know he had another OW in that period. We separated a few times during the 10 yr marriage, I was no angel either during the separations. There were many times I wanted out too, times I said we were done. At 22, I was so immature that I had a PA to get back at XH for leaving me. I excused it because we were "separated". Even though we were dealing with life and death daily and very, very mature when it came to taking care of our son... emotionally, in our marriage, we were such immature children. I was 17, he was 18 when we got married. We were each other's first everything. We hadn't dated other people before, we hadn't emotionally matured through dating and having our hearts broken, etc that most do before they settle down. We tried to play house and did a very bad job of it.

So to sum it up... no, it wasn't just our son. He was probably the glue that held us together for so long. We both messed up. By the time I woke up and grew up a bit and wanted to save it, he was gone. I grew up a whole hell of a lot in those 2 years of DB. I needed to.

So confession day on the old DB board today, huh? I have one of my own, which probably isn't much of one to some of you. I was very, very active here for those 2 years I DB'd 10 years ago. I know some of you old-timers and you've probably recognized me because of my posts about my XH and my son. But I was such an immature basket case then and made so many DB mistakes (including dating a fellow DB'er, who when we broke up was so vengeful that he contact my XH and the OW and gave them the URL to all my posts here so Michele had to delete everything I had ever posted to protect me). I didn't want all that to cloud who I am now and this marriage and trying to DB my H that I didn't want to post who I am. It's embarrassing. And I would have to admit that in my last marriage, I had PA's. I was that woman, the WAS who woke up too late and tried to DB after her H cheated on her. I'm ashamed of who I was then, of all the mistakes I made. I would never, in a million years now, even think about a PA or EA and am even so judgmental as to condemn silently those who do. And I'm ashamed of what a hypocrite I am too.

But I know that DB won't ever work and I'll never really change me if I'm not honest about who I am, who I was.

String me up but please don't give me DB advice based on the little girl I was 10 years ago in my 20's, but based on the woman I've tried to become now. Because they are 2 completely different people and it took me a long time, a lot of tears and losing everything to change. I don't want to revisit who I was before, I can't.