My greatest regret, which I have repeatedly shared with life,
is that I wasted so much time trying to understand what was NOT understandable...I had been married for almost 25 years when h left so I know what a gaping wound it makes. I felt I was missing an organ that was vital to living.
But after almost a year of this, I could endure no more
and I would do anything (other than suicide) to stop the pain....even change ME!
Focusing on external reasons for the pain I was in, under the guise of "trying to understand" and "getting closure" was NOT helpful.
Getting closure by asking WASs questions is an illusory endeavor we spin our wheels in.
Even if they answer, their answers cannot be trusted.
Usually they don't know, or they say what they feel at the moment, which changes daily
OR they say what they think you want to hear OR they say what they think will hurt you.... or you force them into a decision they feel cornered into and then you cement them into an answer you never wanted.
NONE OF WHICH MAKES IT TRUE OR HELPFUL....
Trying to comprehend the incomprehensible is a waste of time.
AND
who says our spouse has those answers,
or wants to share them with US?
Therefore-- as I told Life, the time I spent on obsessing about what h wanted/ thought/felt/planned to do or the WHY WHY WHY???? of it all
could INSTEAD
have been spent on MY LIFE and MY GROWTH and MY CHILDREN"S journey and GAL that much faster. (It also, ironically, would have attracted my h back that much sooner.)
A 10 y/o girl I met at a cancer camp once told me an important gem. She said
she used to "wonder, why me, God? Why am I sick w/cancer? Why, why, why? Then one day I said 'I just am' and I decided to be happy and have fun while I can"...and she did have a great summer. It was her last.
What a lesson that young child taught me and I'm so glad a mutual friend finally reminded me of that...
Hence all the emphasis we ALL place on
being in the present and making "this day forward" better.
Beatrice, this advice we give is not BECAUSE we are reconciled...
it's because we learned it here before we were reconciled. And it helped us reconcile...
WE CHANGED.
And when one person in a two person relationship changes, the R itself changes, by definition.
Life, how about you NOT have any more conversations like the one you pushed for with your h? If you need "Closure" for real, if you need to know what the plan is, MAKE A PLAN yourself...
OR be ready for him to say bye bye and prepare yourself for that.
Re-read the posts sent on this very thread that address this.
You have the 37 rules and the last one, I think, is to
stop backsliding from the hard earned growth you are painfully gaining.
Why suffer for nothing? At least grow from this. At least improve YOURSELF so no matter what, your life will improve from your personal work.
THAT IS A FACT.
Don't repeat the same mistakes....again & again...come on...you can do this.
Maybe Your h is just an alcoholic looking for excuses to stay drunk, and having an OW who lets him.
Assume for a minute that it is the truth,
what can YOU do to change that? (HINT: the Answer is...nothing...)
So you GAL and do some real 180s...for at least several weeks...
you are NOT doing 180s for long enough to have any idea
whether they help.
No approach of less than AT LEAST weeks, ( I'd say 90 days) can be said to have been tried.
How long has this situation been going on?
Can you come up with at least an internal timeline as to how long you will endure all this?
That may help you b/c you'll then know there is a light at the end of the tunnel the length of that tunnel is what you choose.
THAT is something you can control.
And It's easier to go longer in this course of action, if you are GAL b/c you aren't miserable then...which is another reason for GAL of course...
I found myself capable of staying married even though h was gone, for 2 years b/c I wasn't suffering as much after the first year. (I looked forward to dating though, so eventually I had an internal deadline but never shared it with h.)
I was starting to have a good time and knew that I would be happy with or without h, and that also, paradoxically, that very realization helped H wake up!! Oh the irony...
GAL, looking forward to MY future/ MY KIDS future,
building our lives with hope, AND without regard to what H might do, had the byproduct of making me mysterious & attractive to h...
go figure. I've said this many times. The approach is the same whether the m is over or has boatloads of hope.
YOU GAL and CHANGE YOURSELF...you do 180s' over time...
Solution based therapy is based on the simple but radical idea that doing what works is more important than what happened to someone when they were young, or reached puberty or their first m or their parent's...
THOSE issues have their place, but it's not here. That's all. Read the Div Remedy book again & again if you have to. But there IS a reason for why we do what we do.
Give it a real chance life/Beatrice.
I know it's hard. I know it's probably the worst thing that you've ever experienced...
We know that Bad things happen to good people.
The question isn't "why?"
but what are you going to do with your life now?
If your life were a novel, ask who is writing your novel? Is your WAS? IS HE determining how your novel goes? How do YOU want the novel to go?
Why not make this next chapter go YOUR WAY?
Be the author of your life. Start now.
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
