This past Friday I felt so close to giving up on this DB'ing, feeling like it can be so one sided and so unrewarding.
Friday night two of my sons and their girlfriends and me were watching the movie Donnie Darko and were having a good time. My W cut through the room on her way to the room she has been living in. She said she was exhausted, going to bed. She gave each person there a hug and said she loved them, completely not acknowledging me on her way upstairs. I was very hurt by this. My son's fiance gave me a look like wow that [censored], but I did not acknowledge this to anyone and the night went on happily. A minor DB victory.
Later I went upstairs to read and as I passed by her room she was talking very loudly on the phone to the OM. I quickly moved on, purposely not listening in and went to read. I really wanted to eavesdrop but did not. Another DB victory for me.
I woke up feeling like I understand perfectly well why I need to detach, and GAL and that while I have been doing it, the detaching part is very hard because of how painful it is on a moment to moment basis. It makes good sense in theory but is really awful to live the excruciating little details of it.
Anyhow, I was thinking how unfair, and one sided DB'ing can be and was contemplating that maybe a physical separation is an answer. But then I would think about my friends on this blog who are living in separate residences and would kill for an opportunity like mine (living together but separate bedrooms).
I started thinking about how maybe I need to refocus my life on what service I can be to others, and not have it be so much about what I want for me. I started thinking about whether I can enact this concept with my W. Can I take the focus off me and what I want and try to be completelty supportive of what she is going through?
With that in mind on Saturday, my W started opening up about her pschyciatrist and therapy. How he feels she never progressed beyond age eight which is when her father died. So here you have a girl who was molested horribly before that, and then the true love of her life dies. I knew this about her all along but for her to speak of this openly and know that her whole life beyond that was impacted so severly is a big deal. She pointed out one by one the areas where stagnated in her life and did not mature. The more I can leave the door open for her return to the M and family, the more I can evolve so that she feels safe with me, the more time I give her, the more chance we have of evolving to a better marriage.
That afternoon I had a chance to GAL and detach. I went to a homecoming for my friend's son home from the war. Knowing that my W may see this through her eyes as something threatening (a lifelong issue of trust for her) I went anyway. Knowing that she might misinterpet things and by her fears move further away from me is tough, when DB'ing calls for detachment and GAL, but I did it anyway and had a good time.
Later when I met up with my W to go Xmas shopping she didn't ask anything about whether or not I had a good time, didn't even mention it. I felt slighted by this because all our talk is about her and her life and she never even asks anything about my life or my day to day. It's so obscenely one-sided but I do realize she is at a place where she needs to unravel her own life, focus completely on it, face her issues and learn to live beyond them. So here is my chance for unconditional support of a fellow human, all the more harder to do because I really want to share my life with her too.
So we go shopping and she is as cold as ice, it's so awfully uncomfortable for me and all I can think is I want to dive out of the car and run for the hills. I'd see all these happy couples around me shopping together and I was so hurt. My mind would run to thoughts that my W would rather be doing this with the OM, and that her phone is constantly getting incoming text messages and I have no clue who it is. Then I think about my good friend Kelli and maybe I should just call her and tell her okay, I'm in and let's give it a shot together. I'm walking around these stores and feeling all of this. I keep hearing these bits of DB wisdom from you guys and I'm managing not to puke, not to break down, not to run, not to let the boogeyman overwhelm me, not to run to a new relationship, to be above it all, to let my W have this time, to be willing to endire all of this pain for her and for her alone should we never R. Suprisingly, as the night moved on it became better and better. We just started connecting as we bought our boys presents, have a great time buying gifts, laughing at the gag gifts, really enjoying dinner together, you name it. The night somehbow became magical for us. When we got home the usual army of teens and twenty somethings were there and one of my sones ha d made his own pizza crrations for the two of us which we shared together.
On Sunday, my W was so connected to our house which she hasnlt been for months - doing projects, cleaning, happy, etc. She is very into art and photography and especially so as she goes through her therapy. She has created this wall fixture with a wooden window blind in which she had inserted a number of postcards which she had collected over years. She told me that she realized that the content and subject matter are truly an expression of where she is as a person and through it can see that she really had stayed at an age eight emotional level.
She asked me to evaluate it all and tell her what I make of it in terms of who she is. It was really very interesting to do this. I took my time and saw so may aspects of her personality in this work of art. Doing this really opened up the discussion of her past, how it has made her what she is, how it was reflected in our M, how I responded to it, etc. A really great deep, honest, open discussion. One thing I told her was that I see that she has always been so horribly afraid of loss, going back to her dad's death, that she has never really opened up to letting in it. That doing that really does mean that you have to accept real hurt along with it because we are all going to die someday but so what, leap off the cliff and just let it in along with the risk. She's always peeped out of her emotional shell for certain things, like raising her sons, but has always ran back to her shell when fear was there. She told me that her Mom had told her the exact same thing, word for word that morning.
She expressed her concern that her boys don't love her anymore. I let her talk it all out, just listened. She asked me why when they had issue growing up she was there for them, but now that she's going through this why aren't they there for her? I told her that this issue was different than those because there were intitial circumstances in this that sent a very new message, that the M and family was going to be very different going forward, but that the boys love her and time has worked for us in this. Months ago it was a disaster for everyone, and that this was impossible for her to go through in a vacuum. It affected everyone, but nonetheless her we are still intact as a family. We could have gone down for the count but everyone has learned so much from this.
She was really asking for my input and it was a nice oppurtuinity to focus on the positives, at least as I perceived them. All in all the day was so nice and even had her talking about our family vacation next year and mybe needing our passports to go out of country.
Later that night she went food shopping and Xmas shopping. When she got home there was about 15 people at the bonfire in our back yard - sons, girlfriends and friends. When she got home however they were all in the kitchen because we were all making food. And she seemed so at ease with them, and not like as has been the case since the bomb dropped. It was very refreshing. The herd of them moved outside to the bonfire but my W felt that bacause she had arrived, they all went outside to avoid her. I listened to her concern and she seemed to be waiting for a answer so I said that really it's just a coincidence, they ate and are just heading back to the bonfire and to continue their swordfighting tournament. She seemed to accept that and nthen suprisingly hung around to watch football with me.
I've got to be so carful here because try as I might to detach, I really do have my emotions tied to her emotions which given the circumdtances are all oveer the place. I am really getting better at GAL, listening to her, learning from my mistakes and bettering myself.
Another weird thing is that she seems to want me to hug her in the morning which, given the separate rooms and bomb influenced celibate lifestyle is at least some contact. So, I hug her and she just accepts it, doesn't put her arms around me though, just accepts it from me. She just kind of stands there until I figure it out and hug her then she goes off to do her things. And it's not every day. Her mood swings are enormous. So are mine in this but I keep it bottled up so that she only see's the supportive me.
I'll just keep DB'ing, praying and dealing with my emotions throught out this.
