Oh sweetie, no you are not alone. And I am so sorry.
You are an amazing man, T.
You had a wonderful romance. That cannot be taken away.
These were questions you needed answered. And I think she is doing the best she can with the tools she has right now. Maybe one day she'll have better tools. Who knows?
And you are right, you are not prepared. You think you are, but, not really.
Please know you did all you could. She is just broken. But you know that.
True, you will get through this. I am not going to lie and tell you it will be easy. But, you will get through.
Put yourself in His capable hands for a little while.
Remember all that you are. All that you can be.
You are a man of courage, True and one that is resepcted and loved.
I know man…I know. You are not alone buddy. You need to Feel it man… let it all out dude.
Then remember
D papers or not…YOU buddy not her say when this chit is over!
Originally Posted By: lord of the rings
I hope this gives you peace in moving forward with your life and to enjoy it and make the most of it everyday.
Personally, I recently came to realize that I needed something…something to help give me the peace I needed to move forward. It recently happened and I am grateful for it. Maybe Grit, just maybe the answer you received in her email…..is what you needed to set YOURSELF completely free from this. What you needed to let you know, that YOU did EVERYTHING you could have.
My comments above were based on your quote…..
Originally Posted By: Rib man
My first reaction?
Relief.
Your tired Bro, tired of a lot of things…..IMO, you needed the answer – totally understandable. You may begin to feel like you should not have, you may begin to look back and your last few interactions, you may question yourself. If you must do it, look at everything, search yourself, have a little regret about how you may have dealt with the last few interactions and then……let it go.
Quote:
And I am burned.
OR CLEANSED…..depends on how you look at it. Yes you have walked through the fire but what did the fire do….burn you beyond recognition or cleans you from the crap you needed burned out of your life. Bring you to a better place knowledge of self?
Quote:
I just speak of two of people who held such promise and innocence as they embarked on a wonderful romance. That will never go away.
No it shouldn’t go away either. It was not all bad – never was – never disrespect what you had (not saying you are or did)…just never disrespect it.
Love Grit…..
Love….
What does it mean to YOU?
Remember some of the old posts man….
“I love you” IF
I love you BUT True, you love her and this hurts, hurts like a mofo. Yes I know that you can take it, you can handle it. Step back for a day or two….DO NOT respond to her email. Come here and post.
I suspect that you may want to respond to her email….hell you are in pain…please don’t.
Why do I say this?
Cause the man I know…the man that inspires many…the man the leads by EXAMPLE….
Well he wouldn’t. He would wait, he would know better than to react when he is emotional..
It is TIME Brother….
It is TIME….
For Grit ….
To show her…who HE IS.
Know this brother…..You the mother fu*king man! Now show her….
Consider this….
Is she testing? Does she need to see something from you? She knows the OLD Grit..does she know the new one?
Maybe she could….
If you want to show her that new Man. The man I know. Maybe you may show her that for a while and that’s okay.
Friends…..
Sometime the way to get to know someone is to be their friend.
Can you be her friend? The man I know could (wouldn’t be easy)….cause he was just that…a MAN full of compassion and LOVE.
Time my brother for the rubber to meet the road!
I’m hear…walking with ya…watching ya…and always….always….Impressed!
"The difficulties of Life are intended to make us BETTER,not bitter". "Fear is a prison, where you are the jailer. FREE YOURSELF!" "Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B." - Jack3Beans
The part Eric saya about being cleansed, not burned, above, is exactly what I went through a few days ago. It was excruciating, the point I came to just this week, and that point was that I finally let go of the idealization of my marriage and the idealization of my XH. I had been living with this idea for so long that if he just would come out of his MLC and return to "who he was before he snapped", that he and I could rebuild something. But it finally hit me this week that I have already changed so much from who I was and my needs or ideas about relationships are SO different, and he and I are on much more divergent paths now than ever.
When you said you are not going on this path again and that your W has the residual issues from childhood, that struck a chord in me, because this week I realized that my XH's problems to some extent have ALWAYS been with him and are very much a part of who he is. And I knew about them and I married him anyway. Just as he knew about mine and married me anyway. And we had an amazing love for a long time even with that codependency floating around on the periphery, until the codependency became the marriage. And he abandoned our marriage because he was dying inside, and until I lost everything I had, I didn't realize I was dying inside too. I am reborn as this very different person now, and for all that pain, I am a better person and broke so many of my old patterns.
But he and I are fundamentally different. He lacks the open-mindedness I have always had to treatment types or to opening up to others. He lacks my optimism. This is in his core. I'm not saying he can't get his head right; I did. I WANT him to get his head right, for him. I want him to be happy. But I guess I know that even if he were to come back some day, that I'd be coaching him through recovery and putting in far more than 50% to try to fix him, because he won't trust anyone else enough to let them in to help.
My reading of what you've said here is that you are finally allowing yourself the space to grasp that you are a better man without her and that you don't want to keep holding on to her because she is still so far from recovery. That you've perhaps let her go physically through distance/detachment, but that now you're letting go EMOTIONALLY. And yes, that is AS bad if not more so than the day you learned of the affair. I said the same thing in my thread the other day. It's very bad because it's you choosing to "walk away" from her.
The night that I came to my epiphany about severing my emotional tie (in my own mind of course) to my XH, I wrote this poem, and I sobbed and sobbed through it. I felt like I was tearing my own heart out. But this is what came out:
Phantom Heart By Susan Redington Bobby 8/31/11
A phantom limb tingles after it is gone Defined by its presence, not its emptiness An occupied void A paradox.
You are my phantom heart. You no longer beat in time with me. You are a second off. Sometimes you are behind me Other times ahead No longer in harmony.
Your signal is dying. You grow dimmer. I could resuscitate you.
“Daisy….daisy…” “Give…….me……your…..answer…………do”
It hurts. It really hurts. It rends my soul.
I pull your plug.
___________________________________.
Yes, that is sad beyond recognition.
But isn't that the meaning of GAL? Just because you choose to emotionally detach, with love in your heart, are you really walking away from the possibility, however remote, down the line, that you may reconcile? NO.
You don't know what the future holds for either of you.
You don't know if she will come to a point where she slays her dragons or not. You have gone through an amazing transformation. She might as well. But maybe her only chance is for you to walk away. Totally, utterly, completely.
You can remain cordial; you can remain connected. You can remain friends on some level. But YOUR emotional tie to her is now severed. But it's to the woman she is now and WAS. You don't know if you may be tied to her in the future because she, like you, can change.
What I see you doing is truly embracing the idea that YOU have moved on and that YOU must take care of yourself. I see you having broken any tendencies to codependency and not wanting to allow yourself to let them creep up again out of love for her, because you love her so unconditionally you are willing to fully let her go.
I know this is so hard, and I don't mean to bring my story so much into my post above, but it's the only way I can think of to say that I feel like you and I went through something very similar this week and I think it's a good thing in terms of YOUR development as a person.
And YOU were reborn this week, while you recognize that she has not been...yet...if ever. And that's ok.
You are giving her the space she needs to find that path. This is the greatest gift that you could ever give her AND yourself.
Something always has to die for new life to sprout.
M45 Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11 Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy "Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
