Think my XH is in Acceptance Stage - HELP

[AntoniaB]

Cadet is right, it sounds like he's just at the very beginning of depression, or contemplating finally "facing" depression with his comment about not running away anymore, but also falling back into replay with the minimizing of the havoc he wreaked.

Think about how long it took you to get yourself together and feel good with your identity and independence after he shattered your view of the world--he has to face the same thing. I have the same situation in my life as far as family or friends who might abandon me or see it as a betrayal if I started anything with my XH were he to come back. That's a whole other thing that he would have to face.

I think when they hit that stage--if they do--of finally seeing what they did and desiring deeply for people to just love and accept them again, they have to realize that it will take serious work on their part to mend those fences. You cannot simply go to your family or friends and say "well, I decided that we should welcome him back, so do it." Some people might NEVER welcome back a betrayer, no matter what he does to try to repair things, and he'd have to accept that outcome.

I like the suggestion of saying that you are uncomfortable by his intimate comments. You are simply not tied to him intimately anymore in the present. Your tie is in the past. And you don't have to have a boyfriend to say that intimate comments make you uncomfortable, either.

This sort of behavior reminds me of what I saw when my XH began his MLC...the sort of "fix it for me Antonia I don't know what's wrong with me" stage that was mixed with horrible mood swings and a quick temper any time I ever showed that I was getting exasperated with him.

If you think of this as similar to the early stages of MLC, and as most of us did, we tried to do everything in our power to help, which might have included changing our behavior with the wind every time they acted like it was our fault, well, you see where it always ends up, with their breaking down worse.

So it's almost like you have to do the opposite and just stay out of his path. You're in a much better, stronger place to do so now because if you've really changed yourself and you life for the better in the past few years and gotten rid of some issues of codependency and the desire to "save" someone who needs to help himself, then it should be easier for you to walk away from incidents where he's trying to pull you back into the vortex and lean on you instead of himself.