The Roller Coaster Keeps on Rolling

[Denver_2010]

You asked me to look at your thread. So I did. Put a helmet on b/c some 2 x 4's are coming your way.

Thanks for taking the time to read my thread 25. I appreciate the 2x4s and agree with you completely. I responded to some of your specific remarks below.

Why would you need her approval/permission to go to YOUR stepson's IEP?? Just go. Is there some issue as to your role in his life?

Hmmm... well I haven't adopted SS so I don't think that I have any legal right to be there. Haven't really thought about or researched it.

Your changes, over time, will = change she can trust is real. Do it for you, not for her or as a tactic to get her. She'll want to be with the finished product of Denver, b/c she'd hate the idea that she got you in rough draft form and the final version was the improved cool Denver/everything she's wanted in a man, etc...all for some OW?? Hmmm, not so fun for her to lose you then.


I have tried to be consistent with showing her my changes, which have sincerely been for me, but I think that these changes have also made me appear to be too available to her. I will explain more below.

You are Not coming off as a strong confident man, sorry...


Agreed.

THEN SHE'S NOT READY...OBVIOUSLY...she's being very clear.


Agreed.

You have got to be upbeat around her. Not a drag, not coming to the table with all your needs and fears...fake it til you make it if you have to. Sounds gimmicky but it can work wonders. Plus, I think where the head goes, the heart will follow.

No, this makes perfect sense. In fact, it is what got her to consider reconciling with me back in February in the first place. More on this below.

I can understand her feeling that way. Can you? All your contact with her is consumed by your needs for reassurance she doesn't yet feel. And that is a turn off.


Yep. I didn't see this in the grand scheme of things until you narrowed it all down here with this post. We've had so much contact over the past 3 months that it seemed that we only had minimal R talk and that I only presented myself as needing reassurance on a few occasions. But as I read this, I have done significant damage to my sitch.

OMG--YET MORE R TALK!!??? JUST "BE" FOR AWHILE. NO ANALYZING...I'm worn out reading this, and can't imagine living it....BACK OFF!


I'm going to 25.

That was anothor opportunity for you to get off the phone and give her some space. Delay the move in, clearly.


It is delayed. She just told the landlord of her current place, a place she can nowhere near afford, that she wants to go month to month for a while.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING??? WOW...


I recognized this as it was coming out of my mouth. Trust me.

NOT CONFUSING TO ME...BACK OFF, BACK OFF, STOP TALKING. STOP THE TALKING AND JUST CHANGE INTO WHO YOU NEED TO BE. BE A MAN ONLY A FOOL WOULD LEAVE. AND NO MORE R TALK FOR AT LEAST 90 DAYS and even then, don't you be the one to initiate it...


I will follow this as long as things don't slip further during the next 90 days. I may have to have a conversation with her before then if contact with OM increases. I'm going to post about my strategy going forward in a bit. But you are correct about backing off and stopping the R talk.

wish that were believable.


Well, I do believe that it is true. Look, I realize that what you have commented on here was not me at my DB best so to speak. More on this below. But my 180s have been for me to learn how to be a better H, how to be more attentive to my W's needs, and how to not take life so seriously. For the most part, I really feel that I am accomplishing this... My W herself has acknowledged that she has noticed this time and time again... but

clearly I have slipped in that I have not been able to apply these changes to my R with my W when things started to backslide.

IF YOU GAVE REAL DBing a chance you could find out. But you don't. You repeat the same mistakes a lot. A whole lot. Back off. Back off. Back off...


I have repeated the same mistakes quite a bit over the past month. That is true.

SHE HAS TO FEAR LOSING YOU AND YOU ARE NOT GIVING HER THAT CHANCE. YOU ARE SO AVAILABLE AND CONSTANTLY TAKING THE TEMPERATURE OF THE M/R THAT SHE HAS NO CHANCE TO SENSE WHAT SHE MIGHT LOSE...THIS IS A NO BRAINER. BACK OFF. LET HER WONDER WHAT IS GOING ON WITH YOU. LET HER FEAR THAT SHE MAY NOT HAVE FOREVER TO WAIT FOR "FEELINGS" TO RETURN...HAVE SOME MYSTERY IN YOUR LIFE. WHAT ARE YOUR GAL ACTIVITIES? WHAT ARE THE 180'S??

This is what worked for me in Dec, Jan, and Feb... why did it change? See below...

Okay 25, LOL, I deserve that. I really do. And I know that you haven't read my thread from the its beginning back in December. So I feel that I need explain why this happened. Not as justification so much as to get myself centered and focused again. To understand why I've slipped off the ledge so much over the past month.

See, I feel that I did a pretty bang up job DBing my sitch from December through February. My W was DONE when she left at the end of November. She had no intentions of ever coming back to me.

When I found DB, I really focused on finding out where I had messed up and why I had messed up. I went to IC and feel like I did lot of self reflection both there and on my own. I did GAL and my 180s have been good... they have been noticed by my W. Back in February she commented that she was being convinced that they were real not bc of my words, but bc of the 'energy' that she was getting from me.

So W develops a R with OM. But, as she has told me since, she began to see me in a new light in mid January. And this caused her to wonder if she was making the right decision. So she began to have more and more contact with me. Not with me initiating... but on her own. By the beginning of February, she was asking me why I hadn't tried to fix things or even brought up a conversation about fixing things. Well, the answer to that was because I was DBing. Hardcore DBing.

So in February we began to hang out more, and she began to distance herself from OM some (she ended their physical R in January). She invited me to go to Buffalo with her at the beginning of March for her grandmother's funeral. We had a really good time together (not the funeral, but the trip in general).

A couple of weeks after we returned, she cut off contact with OM completely and committed to going to MC with me. And not with me asking her... she knew I wanted to go when she was ready... and when she was, she told me.

So mid March came... and here is where I made a critical error. I believed that we had moved to the piecing stage.

What this meant for me was that I needed to be the H that she had always wanted me to be. I was very loving, very affectionate, I made time for her, I told her that I loved her (and she even returned that a few times)... I acted the opposite of the way that I did that caused her to leave me in the first place. This meant that I could no longer be unavailable to her... and she noticed all of it... and seemed to be impressed. At our 1st of 2 MC sessions, she even told the MC that she believed that I had really changed... and that she wanted M to work.

But... what I didn't expect, or see, was that she had moved to quickly. That emotionally she was not ready. She had cut off contact with OM, whom she has nothing bad to say about, and fully committed to a M that she had believed was dead not 6 weeks before.

And here I was basically smothering her with all of the pent up love that I had inside of me from the past 3+ months of being away from her and believing that I had lost her for good.

Where was OM? He was not contacting her and when he did, he acted very hurt by her decision. W told me at the beginning of April that she felt guilt over that.

Clearly, W was not ready to piece, had not dealt with the anger and resentment towards me that caused her to leave in the first place, and had not dealt with her feelings for OM.

BUT I was there ... and had stopped doing some of the DB things that got me there in the first place. OM was DBing in a sense without even knowing it.

Actually writing this out has helped me understand where I have messed up. But I think that it also may give you an understanding why I have been DBing so terribly over the past month. Here I was thinking that I was piecing ... and when I sensed that slipping, I panicked.

Okay... No more. It's back to some of the basics.

THANKS 25.

BITS
Denver