PLEASE!!! Need help quick! Calling all vets!

[25yearsmlc]

Tad,

QOS and Antonia have said it all so well.. They are lost to us, for now. And my biggest regret, as I have told you before, was how long I took to wake up and live MY life. I went skydivinng for my birthday, took a trip to Italy for our 25th anniversary and brought my kids with me. Best trip of my life (til a recent trip with my h)

b/c I could not stand the idea of wondering about h on our anniversary. He had sent me roses the year before BUT MOVED OUT so yeah, a few mixed signals???

I finally faced the fact that although h never said he wanted a divorce, he DID leave and he did say he was "willing to take the chance" of losing us when he moved to the "Last Frontier"....(he has no recall of saying that but I can tell you where I was and what I was doing when those words came out of his mouth)

HE DID MOVE OUT....first to go back to school 300 miles "up the road" (his words) and then 3000 miles away "Just to check out a job"....

He left us all for a job, which to him was an adventure.

Regardless of why, he left me and our kids and home. That's what matters. Not what he SAID or Planned...but that he was gone.

He blamed me for "holding him back all these years"

...This is a man whom I supported through 2 medical degrees and a residency AND a fellowship at an Ivy League school. Geez, if only I hadn't held him back - he'd have cured cancer.

Sorry everyone!)

Tad,

25 is a very wise woman and has much experience with MLC and mental health issues. It may be overwhelming for you to think about changing your mindset totally, but can you think about making your changes one day at a time, like someone recovering from substance abuse? We ARE recovering, so this approach makes sense.

Thanks for the compliments.

Tad, I DO think incremental changes, over time, get us to a very different place than we'd otherwise be. You don't have to overhaul yourself...

I saw this clearly on my d14's geometry homework the other day. Draw an angle of say, 30', and then extend it out 12 in. Call that Point A. Now change it by 5' and then draw out the line it makes, 12 inches away. ( I wish I had graph paper here!!)

Anyhow, can you see how far away you end up, from your original path's destination, just by making a small course correction, over time? THAT is what we mean...Point "A" is where you were headed, but point "B" is where you could go instead....and even though you only moved your original angle by 5', or merely altered your behaviors a bit, it ends up a good distance from where you were headed....over time...

I hope this makes as much sense to you guys as it does to me with graph paper in front of me.



25,

Your posts always speak to me but the one above ESPECIALLY spoke to me. My XH has a BMF who really interfered in our R as well. I have been very puzzled how the wonderful H I knew then could be so deceived and so loyal to his "sick" BMF. How did you reconcile that aspect of your H's behavior with the H that you know and love?


TAD-sorry for the hijack---

I can't say I "reconciled" it, ever, but I did accept it.

And I accept that there are things I will NEVER understand, so I no longer spend time asking why, or how, about something in the past.

If I can't figure it out with some good objective introspection or a t, then I let it go. Some things remain mysteries to me.

H and I are both adult children of alcoholics and though a lot of that labelling can lead to wallowing in victimhood, there are some traits that stand out to me, as valid, in both of us.

We are both very loyal, even to the point of it being blind loyalty. We both "show up" for people we loved as kids even if it's been decades since we last spoke.

My h needed a hero, and when h was young, his own father was too angry and flawed for h to see as a hero. (Interestingly, today he sees his father in a much better light).

H had a hero as a young man-the big brother hero guy who helped him with girls and life and having an alcoholic father, before big bro got drafted.

Years later they reconnected. My h had passed his hero long before, when he finished college with honors, went to vet school and then med school and when h had the military pay for school he had to repay with time in. That meant h was IN the military and naturally he outranked the big brother who only served briefly as an enlisted man. (I have both officers and enlisted in my family and it's no biggie to us, but to big bro, it mattered. At first big bro seemed proud of h...but then that morphed into something like teasing, and then something ugly....I should write about it).

Unfortunately h's hero let him down. But h still believed deep down, that the flawed human contained his orignial hero. And the big bro friend DID have his moments. It was not all a nightmare for me. But in time, it became extremely difficult for me to talk to big bro.

He became so damaged long before I met him, that I had to simply stand back and let it unfold.


When H left for the tundra, leaving you and his family behind, I would imagine he kept strong ties with BF. How did you reconcile that?

well, "Strong ties?" I don't think so....but I know they spoke.

Thing is, the contrast between how my kids and I were living and how big bro and h were living, (we went to Italy for our 25th anniversary-"we" meaning me and the kids) probably struck h in a way that helped me.

Meaning, if h were to follow in his friend's footsteps for very long, what would h get? How "fun" would his life really become?

Lots of beer and bitter rants & "companionship."

I know when they spoke, that big bro bashed ME big time...but guess what he also did?

big bro actually asked ME to join HIM...as in, "leave" h, file for divorce and live with big bro, so that big bro "would sure show h"...

WTF? As if....OMG....

That was the last time I answered the phone b/c we finally got Caller ID.

No, I never told h that his "bf" asked me to file for divorce and join him. Now that he's dead, what's the point?

But I think h saw his friend through clearer eyes when he got up to the tundra. At some point my h must have lifted his head from the goals he had set, removed the blinders and said "where is everyone?"

And we were here, in our sunny environment with a warm loving home, with laughter and growing children and friends and joy...

if h wanted what big bro had, he could choose that but I would not be joining him in what I saw as self imposed hell. (I don't mean Alaska is hell, but living that far away from your family and hurting them to go there, simply cannot lead one to happiness, imo).

And finally, when H and I began to piece together and then reconcile, big bro took his own life. We didn't even know for some time...

I held h and told him how sorry I was for his loss. His hero would never come back. In a way, he died in Vietnam when h was a senior in high school.

What else is there to say?



Sorry for the hijack (my question to 25) Tad...........Keep moving forward, Tad.

GAG

Gag, I think your h's bf, if he is sick, then his pathology will be revealed.

Last h heard from his big bro (before the suicide obviously) the big bro sounded so angry and depressed and miserable

I suspect, but do not "know", that h was afraid of ending up like him.

Maybe your h has to see the end result of his bmf's choices to wake up.

Or worse, maybe he'll have to experience them? I'll find your thread if I can.

Tad, hope some of this helps and again, sorry for the hijack.