Adventures in GALing

[AntoniaB]

PEI you made me laugh with how succintly you said "you're not ready"..."this is why nothing fits." You're right ;-) I also agree with not trying to make someone else's representation fit me. There are just too many variables. I know what does NOT fit with me and my GF's mom, and that's that her mom is extremely dependent on her daughter for emotional support for the divorce fallout 10 years later, and my GF just keeps playing the "poor you" card and this just isn't helping her mom at this point. Her mom has never become independent in 10 years. My GF moved across the street from her and her brother moved in with her so she "never has to be alone". Well, maybe this is part of the problem.

Anyway, on the blocking...I had him blocked from March through August. Then we started to speak again and I unblocked on the grounds that I was trying to accept his choice...up till August I was in NC, had someone being a liason, never speaking directly to him, didn't even know his address. In that time frame I became very good at pretending that he was every minute about to break up with OW, esp. because one mutual FB friend would say cryptic things like "he's not happy. I can tell." My head would then create this whole scenario (much like I did when he seemed to "stall" on the divorce when later by his own admission he just is lazy on "adult" responsibilities) that he was always on the verge of returning. I'd come home with this hope his car would be here. EVERY DAY.

The longer I didn't see his life, the more I created this image that wasn't true, and the more I clung to it.

The unblocking was done for 2 reasons: to get me to see that he is with OW and consistently proclaiming it to the world (his last 4 profile pics were of him and her together, something he never did with me), and this shows me his life with her is "real", tough as it is to take. It was also to show him (and me!) that I was GALing and not sitting home waiting for him and allowing myself to be his backup plan, but that I'd moved on enough that seeing a pic of them wasn't going to affect me.

The weak part of me wants him in my life. The strong part of me does not. In keeping him unblocked (but not friends) I'm trying to push forward the strong part of me that isn't affected by his life and accepts it.

I feel like if I block, I let the weak part take over again, the part that will start telling herself stories when he's "out of sight, out of mind" that really he's just in Siberia or something and he's sad about not having me with him ;-)

What I have to do is work on NOT saying things like I did on Tad's post about that pic...not saying I should bottle stuff up, but typing out a reaction just reinforces it. What I should do is if I have the reaction on seeing his pic, I say "Knock it off, Antonia, that's your inner little girl whining that he picked her over you, don't listen to her."

Like, I wasn't even that bothered by seeing the pic till I read Tad's post, and then I went into this commiserating victim mode...and I have to stop cultivating "that girl."

Make sense?