I am the devil....

[AntoniaB]

Tad I haven't posted in awhile because I'm out getting a life ;-) but I read your giant list of her accusations in that 3 hour conversation and it reminded me of when I had a 3 hour convo. with my ex--it happened about 2 months after the bomb--in a time when I was about 2 weeks "dark" and then for some reason I ended up on the phone with him for 3 hours, during which I heard about 70% of exactly the same things, verbatim, that you did. I mean the similarities are just uncanny.

What I can tell you is that that was the very last time I had a conversation like that with him. Sure I backslid, here and there, but never again. One of the things I did wrong, that I hope you do not do, is to hang on to the tiny shred of confusion I heard in his voice and took that to mean he was STILL on the fence about me, so I hung on, for dear life, until at least 3 months or more longer assuming that at the last minute before the divorce was final, he would come crawling back and beg me to take him back. It didn't happen. The divorce came and went. Still he didn't come back. Now I'm in month 14 post-bomb, and the last contact I got from him is a check in the mail for a refund that should have gone to me and a note from him that says "Hope you are well, I'll wait to see what the forms say before I contact my lawyer (the last financial separation piece). Hope you are (sorry, redundant). Take care." That's it.

And I'm still alive, and I'm still ok. In fact, I'm pretty darn good.

I do think it helps to get stuff out here--believe me, I did my share of it. But there comes a point where YOU are in what might be called a form of replay. Every time you write down her accusations, you internalize them. You might think on some level that you are writing them down to scoff at them or say "look isn't this nuts?" and perhaps you are. But I think that that stuff takes its toll on the inside.

I guess what I'm saying is that she already has damaged your self-esteem so much. Don't make it worse by reliving this stuff any longer than you have to.

For months, I had a habit of going a month or so with XH blocked on fb, then I'd crack and unblock him to see his profile pic or any of the stuff he has up there publicly. This is a form of self-mutilation. What good does it do? One of my friends said before, "yes. He hurt you very badly. But he isn't STILL hurting you. You're hurting yourself." I'm not saying some exes don't come around and deliberately hurt us. But if we AGREE to engage with them in any conversation, ANY conversation that opens the door to them saying something that hurts us, or if we look at fb or anything else to see what is going on with them, as a way to validate in our minds just how crazy they've become, who's doing the hurting now? It's not them. It's US. We're hurting ourselves. We have to look away. YOU have to look away. It's like a horrible accident, and you're rubbernecking. You have to train yourself to look away.

Honestly even when they are NICE it hurts us, because then we think, well how can you be so NICE and CAREFREE at a time like this? How can you just PRETEND that you havent' destroyed my very soul?

I think this is what everyone has been telling you and it's painful for us to see you seeming so stuck in your own form of replay. I'm not saying you're not progressing, but you need to cultivate hope, and maybe your hope is misplaced. This is just my opinion, and others can disagree, but maybe you should stop thinking of hope as "I hope that some day she comes out of this and takes me back."

Maybe you should be saying "I hope I develop the tools to overcome the most difficult trial of my life." "I hope I am a stronger more resilient person as a result of what has happened." "I hope that I can care for myself in a way that puts me first and my needs first and in so doing, release her to live her life."

Change your pronouns. Get "she" and "her" out of your vocabularly as much as possible. This isn't selfish, Tad. You are trying to save yourself. It's necessary. You are doing more to hurt yourself now than she is doing because you are so easily triggered to relive her accusations, and you are slowly but surely internalizing them. You don't want to BELIEVE the accusations, but the more you relive them, the more they will become a part of you, and when you're stuck in self-blame, you're stuck.

Look I just want to tell you that your life will get better and your pain will subside if you make that happen. Any time you feel like a victim you have got to come out fighting and tell yourself to knock it off. SURE, we all have days like that. Yesterday I had a few hours of weepiness and anger and sadness all rolled into one due to that note coming in the mail from my xh, because I again went into "how? How can he be so different? What happened? Why? Its' not fair!! Why me? I don't deserve this!" And that depression reared its ugly head for the hundredth time. And then I walked outside and mowed my ditch. I got all dirty and sweaty and guess what. I forgot about it. I have about a million strategies now that are depression loop fighters, and I employ a different one every time.

Make a list. Write down 10 things you can do to shut off the switch when you start reliving the hurt. Be consistent in practicing what you plan to do.

Your goal right now needs to be rest, as someone above said, REST. You have to give your mind a rest from beating you up. She already did enough damage. Don't add to it. Come out fighting.

If I wasn't in a really good place about 90% of the time right now--better than I was the last few years of my marriage--I wouldn't say all this, but I feel like no one was a bigger skeptic about my recovery than me and I was wrong. I am more powerful than I ever would have been as a result of what my XH did and you can be too. You have got to believe in yourself and your own power to heal.