I spent all night with XW..........on the phone

[AntoniaB]

I think Eric and Mach made some terrific points in their posts. There are many times that I've wanted to say a lot of what's been said above and I erred on the side of caution because I'm not big on direct 2 x 4's...I try to reason with people and avoid saying anything I think might be too harsh.

However, I've posted more help to Tad than any single person on this entire board in the past year, and spent more time coming up with ways to say "this is why you go dark" and "this is how" and "this is a way you begin to GAL" or whatever, and no matter how I present advice or alternatives, the fact remains, that nothing changes in Tad's approach to his XW, and I know an awful lot about Tad's XW whom I will never meet, but I know nothing about Tad himself, his goals for himself, his dreams, his plans for how he's going to GAL and how he's going to protect himself from his XW's onlsaught of manipulative behavior.

It's almost kind of insulting, really, to have all these people's true life experience discounted, time and again. The thing that I respect about so many people here is that when they have been challenged with questions, they have done "the work" to look inside and answer those questions.

To me, if someone is going to take the time to give me a 2 x 4, some constructive criticism, as has been done to me from time to time, then I owe it to them to TRY to answer and TRY to work on myself and stop being comfortable in the victim role.

I feel like I have tried "nearly everything" in order to help Tad. I feel like nothing gets through.

I have wondered if the only thing I personally haven't tried is going dark MYSELF with Tad.

Obviously I haven't yet or I wouldn't be posting this. But it has crossed my mind.

I feel badly for what Tad has gone through, because I know what it's like, just as all of you do. But there comes a time you have to pull yourself out of the muck or life will never, ever change.