Living with groundlessness

[AntoniaB]

Kimmerz...spot on!

you said this:

"I too am the " go to " person in my friendships, and even at work with co workers about many things. They appreciate my point of view and my perspective of things. I've been this way all my life, even as a kid. I've always looked at " the big picture" of things when considering what ever issues lie ahead of me. yet I apply this to my own marriage and all I get is rejectcion, projection, resistance and refusal to listen.... basically a train wreck."

See, ME TOO. If being the "go to" person works exceedingly well with everyone else in my life (and there are different levels of being the go to person, of course) and this is what other people expect or like me to be like and I'm "good" at it, but my ex now despises it after 23 years of seeming to WANT me to be that way (because of course it absolved him of so many responsibilities), then how do I know whether I'm supposed to "change" this about me or not?

Here's the only clue I have to this: the people in my life who have always been closest to me have said that I was a control freak when I was with XH and I was very intolerant and pushy and cynical. Those same people say I am not like that at all anymore, and if I am, I catch it and stop it asap, and that I am the best person I've ever been now that we are divorced.

I guess if I have to hedge my bets I'm siding with the non-MLC crowd?

I do think to give XH some benefit of the doubt that he does not know how to process me being so different. First he called me "mystical" and made a joke out of my GAL type changes, and then he reverted to old behavior and accused me of things I might have done in the past but not done this time. I think he just doesn't believe I'm really different and thinks it's an act, and considering that we have only seen each other maybe 7 times in the past 17 months and had very limited email interaction, it makes sense why he wouldn't believe me. He isn't around me enough to see it's real.

But in the end, the only people that my GALing matters to are ME, of course, and the people who are actively in my life, and he's just not one of them, so I'm not losing any more sleep over him.