LBS needing advice...

[AntoniaB]

What I'm hearing from your post above is that you're recognizing that you're still blaming yourself and you're wondering if it's ok to stop doing so. It's almost like you're rationalizing the self-blame as a way to say "I need to find out what I did to be a better person in the future/own my contribution, therefore it's ok for me to keep beating myself up, in fact, it's necessary." I do the same thing.

If you had never put much stock into your own contributions in the past, I'd say yeah, keep digging at this stuff. But you have. And you still are. If you need to keep digging at anything, it's that you need to dig at why you feel the need to find an "out" for him, an excuse for him. Again, I am doing the same thing. IMHO, the reason we try to find an excuse for their behavior is so we can avoid getting angry at them.

A friend of mine said to me she thought the reason I was hitting this same wall as you was because she said "I think you're afraid to really process what he did to you and your marriage, I mean REALLY acknowledge it, because you're afraid that if you do, you'll realize that you should NOT be with him, even if he came back begging once the affair ends, and your'e afraid that at that point, your window to be with him will have shut and you'll have shut it yourself." I think she is SO right.

Now why would this all scare me? Because I'm afraid that if I can't have him, I can't have anyone. I either "fix" him or I "fix" the broken marriage or I'm "doomed" to being single forever.

What does this come back to? Lack of confidence in myself, lack of self-esteem, the feeling that I must have him even if he's destroying me to be "happy." This is a load of crap!

So for me, this is why I hit that wall you're hitting. And some days I cycle back and hit it AGAIN.

I think you want to feel anger but that anger makes you scared that you'll REALLY detach from him, and so you cycle back to "what did I do wrong" to avoid hitting anger. You don't want to STAY angry, of course, but you need to go through it. It is essential.

Simplify it: when you start to think "what did I do wrong" and "do I still need to go back to what I might have contributed to the problems 3 years ago, or one year ago", say to yourself "this is madness. It's the past. It does no good to rehash it anymore. STOP."

If you want to be introspective and try to keep working on yourself, instead, ask yourself why in the PRESENT you are feeling what you're feeling. Ask yourself if you're angry, and why you won't let yourself feel that. Or whatever else you're feeling.

You know, I want very much to believe that my XH is in MLC and therefore not fully aware of his decisions, but I also need to stop giving him a "pass." You know, this isn't something like schizophrenia or a severe brain disorder. It's a type of depression in many ways. But you know I've gone through depression, and I don't hurt others when I am there. I don't betray people's trust when I'm there. I don't lie or cheat. I don't destroy a marriage. These people have choices, and they've chosen badly, and it's almost like they have done it out of defiance. We have to stop saying this is ok. We are better than that. And that's why we have to stop blaming ourselves.