The unexamined life is not worth living

[2stepboogie]

W then said that she doesn't know how to move forward (or something along these lines). She asked me how I felt about OM still being in her life as a friend while things are still in limbo with us. She explained that she doesn't want to just 'shoo' him off while we decide whether or not we are really working on M. She explained that OM is good to her and that she would still want to give him a chance if we decided not to work on things. She reiterated that once we decide to really work on things that there will be NO R bw she and OM.

How do you feel about this? Vets correct me if I am totally missing the mark here but is this not cake eating? Now I understand Denver you are in a very sticky sitch here because you have very little leverage. I also understand that the R talk is a total of 4 days old with another to follow. No firm commitments have been made. So.....How do you feel about this? Ultimately it is up to you, what are the boundaries you feel comfortable with? Her hesitation I understand this must be very scary for her but.................

W agreed and said that she hates having her life so messed up. That she is not a patient person and that she just wants to know what direction that she is going.

My W is the same way. She doesn't like to wait but this is where you come in. You need to be patient for the both of you at this point. I think it will take some time before she fully commits to anything for the meantime you will do all the work.

OM is really good to me"

"That he has treated her like she wanted me to treat her all our years together"

This is an illusion and you know it. I think that after the shine wears off she will be left with reality. Will you still be there? What is your goal? What are you willing to do?

This is hell. I hate feeling that I am competing for OM with my own W. I guess that's the reality of the sitch now though.

I will not comment on this because I will be a hypocrite if I do. I am dying to hear what Gritter, J3B and the others have to say about it.

I have no doubt who is the better man here the question is would I give that man advice that I would not take myself.

The road is long the journey hard only you know if it is worth it. Is your W worth it to you? If your M worth it you? What are you willing to do to achieve success?

[Denver_2010]

Down - Thank you so much for telling me about your story. It is nice to hear that it is possible to get through something like this. Yes, I do think that I will be able to. It will be hard and it will take some time. But I will get through it. And yes, there is no doubt in my mind that OM in my sitch has been a 'fill in' for me. I do not know him, and I'm sure that makes it somewhat easier. Not easy... just easier.

Thanks again.

I will look for your thread if you have one.

BITS
Denver

[FellOnBlackDays]

Denver,
I just got caught up on everything and wish I had some words of wisdom here. The problem is that you and I were once pretty much at the same spot on this horrible journey. But, at this point, you are miles ahead of me. So, unfortunately, anything I might tell you would be flying by the seat of my pants. I am sorry I can't do more.

I will tell you this. You have come this far and I don't think you should turn back now. Honestly, I don't know what I would do if my W told me I now had to compete for her, so to speak. You have made changes, recognized your mistakes, given her the space she needed. I would say that you should keep it up for now. I would hate to see you come this far and never get to know how the journey ends. You deserve to see how this ends. You really do.

At this point, I think you should continue to seek the advice of those that have been where you are. Unfortunately, I am not one of them. I am still sitting in the "waiting room" of marriage while you are in the "operating room" trying to save a mortally wounded patient. I will not leave you though, buddy. I will continue to monitor your posts and chime in from time to time if I can. You and I started this thing together and I would like us to see it through as BITS!

I wish you the very best of luck in this thing. Please keep posting!

BITS never walk alone!

FOBD

[Denver_2010]

You will be in my shoes soon enough FOBD... well, hopefully, not my exact same shoes. Please keep checking in on me even if you don't feel that you can give me advice on a particular issue, your support and encouragement mean the world to me. Also, I think that you, 2Step and I are pretty similar in our makeup. Your perspective on how you may or may not feel on something going on with me is important to me.

Hang in there FOBD. I know that it's been a rough few days for you pal.

BITS
Denver

[Denver_2010]

Yup, that's it in a nutshell. And, I know it hurts to hear it, but you don't compare well. Why not? Because she is comparing him today to the memory of you. The memories that are stuck in her head. I know you want to give her a new vision of you, but this is what is in her head. And she is frightened. Frightened to believe in a promise that you will be different, when she already thinks she knows how you are.

You're always just so positive Lotus! You are right though. I get it and I understand it. And that is what I told her.

You may not agree with this, but my gut tells me that she knows that she wants to give our M another shot. But there is a part of her that is torn bc she does have this OM in her life who has given her things for the past 3 months that I didn't for much of our R/M. But I really do not believe that she believes that he is right for her. She flat out told me that she is not in love with him and that he annoys the f out of her bc he wants to be around her too much. Regardless of what she decides with me, I really don't think that this R with OM will work out in the long run. And I think that she knows that deep down.

Love is a decision. And she is undecided. She can decide to love you, but to do that she has to commit to you and trust you and forgive you. it's not just love. It's all four things all at once.

I know that she loves me, she told me that on Thursday night. It's the other three that scares her. And admittedly, rightfully so.

I still think your best chance would come from going to a Retrouvaille weekend, or another marriage strengthening program that has intensity in a short time. A strong weekend could give her the chance to see the new you, to explore the problem areas, and leave the old baggage behind. Weekly MC sessions lack the intensity; they help, but they just meander on. You need a good strong 2 day talk it all out, find your bearings again weekend. I've heard good things about a 2 day intensive with Michele.

I recommend that you ask her to go with you to a weekend and give it a chance.

I am strongly considering, but isn't one of the requirements that any OM/OW be out of the picture before you go? I think that I want to wait until that is final before I talk to her about the possibility of going. I really think that she will agree to do it.

[Denver_2010]

Denver...I think you did a great job

this is hard for her
to decide to trust you and give you a chance

it is hard for you to hear and live through as well

you did a great job validating...no pressure

this is unconditional love
for the good of her instead of for the good of you

nicely done

(even though it hurts like a beyatch)you did the right thing

Thanks Fig. I actually do think that I handled it relatively well. And I think that my W thought so to bc she thanked me for listening to her and not pressuring her.

Thanks again for keeping up with my sitch!! I really appreciate it.

[Lotus]

Well, this is the way it works. Before they take the registration, they call both of you and ask if you are willing to go to the weekend with an open mind and a willing heart. If the answer from both of you is yes, then they ask if there is a third party involved. It's a yes or no question. If you say no, they take your reservation. If you say yes, then they tell that person that he/she has to end the relationship with that person first.

I thought for sure that my H would give the wrong answers to both questions. But when the call came, we happened to both be standing in the kitchen and I heard him say yes to the first question and no to the second. So we went.

But he had not really ended it with OW before we went. I found emails later where he had told her that we were going, and he would see how it went, and would be back in touch with her. And she, being a family therapist by training, told him that sometimes you feel close for a while, but then it goes away!

Well, we went to the weekend and we had a big reconciliation. And it's 3 years later, and it hasn't worn off yet!

I confronted him with those emails sometime during the Post sessions, and he finally did tell her that she needed to find someone else. He was staying with his wife.

[Denver_2010]

W then said that she doesn't know how to move forward (or something along these lines). She asked me how I felt about OM still being in her life as a friend while things are still in limbo with us. She explained that she doesn't want to just 'shoo' him off while we decide whether or not we are really working on M. She explained that OM is good to her and that she would still want to give him a chance if we decided not to work on things. She reiterated that once we decide to really work on things that there will be NO R bw she and OM.

How do you feel about this? Vets correct me if I am totally missing the mark here but is this not cake eating? Now I understand Denver you are in a very sticky sitch here because you have very little leverage. I also understand that the R talk is a total of 4 days old with another to follow. No firm commitments have been made. So.....How do you feel about this? Ultimately it is up to you, what are the boundaries you feel comfortable with? Her hesitation I understand this must be very scary for her but.................

I agree. It is cake eating. But the other two things that you said are also true. 1) I have very little leverage as things stand right now... and 2) Her hesitation is only bc she is scared. For RIGHT NOW, I am not going to attempt any boundaries. I feel comfortable in what she has told me that she is not presently 'dating' or 'sleeping with' OM. I believe her. I think that my best bet is to be the new Denver and continue being patient and understanding with her. I know that she is hurting. I can sense it in her voice.

I honestly believe that her biggest hurt right now is that she hates that she will have to "hurt" OM in the process. She has said repeatedly that she is concerned about that, feels badly about it, feels that it was selfish to bring him into it etc. Just today, she said that it is always hard to hurt someone's feelings when she was talking about having a talk with OM about us moving forward and working on M.

Now, personally, I don't give a rat's a$s about the feelings of OM. I'd offer to go tell him myself if I thought my W would agree to it!! But this is what I think that my W is really struggling with right now.

W agreed and said that she hates having her life so messed up. That she is not a patient person and that she just wants to know what direction that she is going.

My W is the same way. She doesn't like to wait but this is where you come in. You need to be patient for the both of you at this point. I think it will take some time before she fully commits to anything for the meantime you will do all the work.

Agreed. But I think that things are going to move rather quickly over the next week or two. Again, I know my W. I have been right on almost every gut feeling that I have had... even when I've tried talking myself out of the BAD gut feelings bc I was in denial.

My gut feeling here is that she has already decided that she wants to work on M. I base this on not only her words, but her tone of voice. Tone of voice is very difficult to convey when posting here. It was fairly clear to me though. One thing that didn't come out very well in my original update post about today is that she was almost pressuring me to give her an answer about whether or not I still wanted to work on M.

I think that she's just trying to figure out how to get out of mess with OM. With that being said, I also recognize that there is still doubt and fear about giving M with me another chance. And she could still change her mind...

OM is really good to me"

"That he has treated her like she wanted me to treat her all our years together"

This is an illusion and you know it. I think that after the shine wears off she will be left with reality. Will you still be there? What is your goal? What are you willing to do?

Again 2Step... I really think that the shine has already worn off. At dinner the other night, she flat out told me, "I'm not in love with OM" and that "he's a geek and annoys the f out of me bc he wants to be around TOO much". She kind of laughed when she said the latter of those two statements, but I also think that it is telling.

This is hell. I hate feeling that I am competing for OM with my own W. I guess that's the reality of the sitch now though.

I will not comment on this because I will be a hypocrite if I do. I am dying to hear what Gritter, J3B and the others have to say about it.

I have no doubt who is the better man here the question is would I give that man advice that I would not take myself.

The road is long the journey hard only you know if it is worth it. Is your W worth it to you? If your M worth it you? What are you willing to do to achieve success?

Yes to your questions. As hard as some of this stuff is going to be to overcome... yes. The way that I am starting to look at it is this... If I have 30-40 years of being happily M'd to my W after all of this, it will be WELL worth it. And this stuff will fade with time.

I'd like to know what the advice you would give that you think would make you a hypocrite.

BITS
Denver

[Denver_2010]

Thanks Lotus. I will strongly consider this. I think that my W is close to moving fully towards reconciliation. If this happens within the next week or two, then I will suggest it to her. We've already talked about the fact that we will need to go to MC. She agreed that we will have to. I have not mentioned the Retrou program, but did talk about solution based MC.

If this does NOT happen within the next week or two and we are still in limbo, I may go ahead and do what you just suggested.

One worry that I have is that Retrou is too religious based. My W is a bit more religious than I am, but neither of us have been weekly church goers in the past (I have been going weekly since W left me though).

Should I be concerned about this?

[Lotus]

I don't think so. It was created to help marriages, and they are pretty careful not to go down the religious road because they want to help everyone they can, whether they are Christian or not. The 3 couples talk most of the time, and they are secular. When the priest talks, he talks about marriage -- the family he grew up in, the families he has known, his relationship to the Church. But he doesn't preach, he just talks from his personal perspective.

My husband and I did not want the religious part of it. I let my mind wander while the priest spoke. It was a welcome respite from the emotional talks by the couples. I was glad to have the time to just get lost in my own thoughts. There was an optional Mass on Saturday morning which we did not attend. And there was a closing Mass, which we also did not attend. Saw quite a few couples sneaking out to their cars with us.

But there were people who wanted more religion. And they pulled the priest aside for private conversations, and they went to the Masses. So it has appeal to different people.