All - Sorry I was away again. Jack asked a good question - Do I need something or do I want to be an example. I left some things out of my post as it was getting long and I get distracted at times. I thought I could elaborate more on Jack's question, but then Punkin had more great insight - Am I in emotional lockdown? I'll have to look into that.
Basicly, I don't have an answer for Jack. As an introvert I could tell you that my life is filled with a large assortment of aquantences both in and out of work, but I have no "friends" so-to-speak. I have grown up with trust issues so I don't have bonds with people that you might see in the movies or just normal people. I've always had females as friends because I feel like I can talk to them whereas with dudes I can't get past feeling judged because I don't like golf, baseball, playing poker and ogling women as they walk by. Those aren't the only guys out there, just the many that are in my area.
I can see where I come across as a bit cold. For the better part of a year I was trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. I felt the hurt, frustration, anger and pain. In my efforts to "fix" myself I learned, 38 years late, that I have ADD - not ADHD. I don't want to muddy the waters here so please take my word for it that I'm on the mild end of ADD symptoms - I lack focus. I'm not a big drinker, I don't gamble or seek affections from the opposite sex, but I do have some self esteem issues - don't we all?
My "coldness" most likely comes from my perspective that it was me, who found an out. Am I on lockdown? I like what you're seeing, but I disagree in some respects. I hit a low point some two months back. I kept questioning myself about how much more I could take and then I just stopped. I looked at who I was and who that person was that's sleeping in my living room. Did I like either of us? - No. I was so full of the hurt and feeling like a failure I was scared. I guess I stopped wanting that to define me, the person that I know I am. That's all I've been since my wife shut me out. I disagree about the lockdown because I've replaced hurt, anger, frustration and pain with happiness, kindness, optimism and just being thankful.
I looked at the woman, who at the time stopped coming home some nights, and she reminded me of my sister around the early teenage years. That's when it all kind of came out for me. I saw my wife as rebelling like a teenager - and my sister wasn't just rebelling, she was a movement .
I admit it took a few days to really dig into my thought process on this and I was slowed up by my kids asking me difficult questions of which I had no answers. Our kids are 11 and 6 and it was getting hard on them. The oldest posted on his facebook page asking if anyone had seen his mom. Needless to say she's come home every night since then, because I think in her desperate attempts to get away from me she saw what she was doing to our kids.
Since I've started looking at my wife as a teenager, I've found I can be happy again. Kids are perceptive and when I look at it they only started to ask questions about us when I was at my low point and as of late, with the exception of us not doing things as a family, everything seems..... well better than they were.
There's so many people here that have battled MLC for years and still haven't found their move-on point. Please understand, I do love my wife and she is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. Do any of us deserve this? No, but I have no interest in that. My interest comes in the form of supporting her by giving her time and space, sprinkled with patience.
One or two more years is where I see her mood/attitude, but not full recovery. When my wife and I talked two weeks back it looks to me she's not happy with the results of her actions. She still will go out with friends, but not even close to regularity that she had been. She translates my silence as tension, but she doesn't see me smiling as often as I am so perhaps that's her own guilty conscience about how she's been acting? She did aplogize to me for the first time in over a year - for anything. She told me she was sorry she wasn't the person I deserve. I would argue that I'm the person she needs, she just doesn't see it. She had taken a big step in opening up to me about being unhappy ( with me ) and depressed ( cuz of me ) and things around the house have been cooler coming from her, but that's this week, I don't know who will show up next week. She's made steps to open up, but this mood of hers will not change for the better for some time, but that's on my side. 2-5 years in a marriage that could last for 50-60 is just a blip. If she chooses to come around I'm in a place where I have grown up a bit and believe I can be more than just a "buddy". I can give her what I should have been for the last decade.
The issue of counseling - No. I'm not against it, but she's nixed that idea and I agree.... for now. I had been going to couples therapy alone, but leading into my mood change I noticed that when I left the session I no longer left relieved or happy. If I found no joy in going to therapy I knew I needed to find joy from within. It helps I was very active over the summer with team sports that I partake in - I'm not obsessively introverted. But I stopped my therapy because I wasn't being torn up inside anymore. I'll visit with her againdown the road, but for now I'm content.
Oh- and my wife will not do anti-depressants. I never even hinted at a medical solution, but she brought it up to me saying that she didn't want to have to take meds for the rest of her life in order to be happy. I did find a "knowing" amusement about that comment having read about MLC and the war people are waging inside themselves.
So with that I wish to leave you with something I learned that I shared with others. It is only my opinon, but that's why we're here....
I learned about how I see hope. Since my wife started this ride of hers I hoped and hoped. For me, hope is what helped me to sleep at night when I tossed and turned. Hope is like saying "I hope it doesn't rain today". It didn't rain, but it's 100 degrees and you wore a sweater and jeans. You either 'hope' it cools off faster than it will because of your current discomfort, or you take stock in the fact that it didn't rain after all. The trick for me was learning to be thankful. I no long hope and then build on that hope with another hope and so on - unrealisticly. I'm thankful strangely for this experience because I've reidentified with myself and I've learned to trust more and be a partner. I learned how to make "my" small miracles into big ones and that with all I have to be thankful for - it could always be worse than it is, but that's my choice. I've not given up on hope because it makes us warm on cold nights, but I've also learned that if that fuzzy blanket isn't working, I'm the one that has to get up and get the fireplace working.......
.
