Cautiously Optimistic

[Queen_of_Swords]

I believe if I started to see and sleep with someone else he'd just shrug and say " good for you".

If you are doing this for what he will see, do, or react to you.
You will fail.

Why are you doing this?

I'm not doing this to see him react. If that was my purpose I wouldn't just be thinking it, I'd have done it already and had our relationship end with a bang.
Nor would I have reduced my contact to as little as I can get by with and to my counselor's instructions.

I'd still be chasing him, or he'd be dead to me.

I came here to try to save our marriage as we all did.

I'm not doing anything but venting and expressing what I feel and think.

Fact is unless he addresses his own wounding and damage I don't believe we have a chance for reconciliation.

Absaf@ckinglutely!

That is the truth so what do you do with the truth?

H has shown so far he's not interested in looking at his own hurts or doing anything about it. So what would you do with this information? You can't help the unwilling. You can't save someone that doesn't want to be saved. Can you even have the remote hope of saving a marriage then? My logical self says, no you can't, walk away, there is no hope here.

H's perspective of the past will remain, no matter the changes I've made in or to myself.

Who did you make the changes for? For Him? Expecting some change or reaction?

THAT is a dead end road.

Like you, I came here to save our marriage so yes initially I did do it with an expectation that change in me, and thus in the way we deal with each other, and road to a better future together was indeed more than just a mere sliver of possibility.

Do for you.

Have done and am doing. Every effing day and every effing week, and it's been painful, difficult and depressing. I'm a better person for it but at a very high cost.

Because doing that will only leave you feeling like this:

I feel defeated and hopeless, I believe any chance I may have had to turn things around is long gone.

How does that feel?
In one way... it's freeing. I then have a direction to go and tasks to complete with it. Get a lawyer get the divorce. Find a new companion/partner and forget this guy that doesn't value me beyond that as a mother for his children.

In another I just want to cry in rage and frustration for being a fool to believe ...in fairytales. I feel mislead by my sense of optimism and hope in saving our marriage and for a future with H. still in it.


To place your success or failure in the hands of someone who doesn't understand the meaning of YOU...

Or what you have endeavered here...is a lost cause.

Yes, it is isn't it. H. is a lost cause. Lost to me, lost to our kids, lost to himself. I can't help him, no one can.

Scylla I know well these feelings.

I also know that you have this in you.

Only thing I have in me is dogged persistance and fight. I no longer think my ability to struggle against that which I do not want is enough anymore.

What?

To understand what this thing that has happened can bring to you.

You will not merely walk on in the naive shoes you have walked all your life.

What does this mean? What will it mean to you in the next relationship?

I see you're talking about the 'gift' this has brought to others...10,000 spoons when all you need is knife.

Honestly? It's probably mean eff - all to any future partner. They won't care what I've lived through to get where I am, it will be irrelevant to them. They get the payoff without seeing the work.

This.

Is the time to figure it out and you have to endure to find the answer.

I feel I've endured enough. Endured enough pain, abuse, lonliness, disappoinment and deprivation, and lack of love.

I don't mean sacrifice.

I mean beyond your pain is the answer.


Beyond what you feel today you will be free of this from him and of anyone in your life.


Figure out what this means to YOU and YOU only.

Truegritter, honestly tonight you're too cryptic for me to parse.

Beyond my pain. WTF? Beyond my pain is only numbness.

Unless, what you're referring to is people pleasing and seeking approval? That's is already coming to halt. I have just realised in the last couple weeks I was really a people pleaser, and not the controller I was made out to be.
At last I understand how to set boundaries and not sell myself to be "acceptable." This will take time and practice.
If that was what you were referring to.

Then do it.