waiting for the tides to change

[labug]

Wow, what a wonderful friend! What I like best is she didn't try to "fix" you, just highlighted your strengths.

Keep this and read it on those down days.

bf, if you can take the emotion out of this and look into the future at who YOU want to be, not the W, not the mom but YOU, and then set your path to get there, you will come out ahead.

I know it's easy to say act without emotion, but difficult to do. But we do it all the time at work, we compartmentalize our emotions for those in our care who we know are going through a tough time, facing a difficult dx or even death. We may cry in the car on the way home but we hold it together to get the job done. Hopefully you have healthy ways to process those emotions.

I'm not saying ignore or bury your emotions, just don't let them rule your head. Think of this a code situation, and you're the first on the scene...

You can do this.

Try to look at this the same way

[labug]

strike that last sentence, sure wish we could edit.

[BFloat]

wow labug! you gave me a lot to think about. yes, at work i often have to detach otherwise it would consume me making it difficult to continue working.

H came and picked up the kids. they were so excited!! they heard him outside and rushed to open the door!! he was shoveling the walk (it snowed briefly this morning). S wanted to show him his new lego.. then i also heard S saying to H, "i want you to stay here. i miss you!" then later "i want you to stop being naughty to mommy" to which H said something like he was trying his very best to be a nice person. whatever.

H asked if i wanted to come with them and i declined. as they were leaving, he asked if we could talk a little when they got back.. i answered sure.. but i think it will really depend on what he wants to talk about.

as soon as the door closed.. i burst into tears. this is the first time i have been at home alone since before the bomb. i had thought about going out but at the same time, i wanted to take the time to get some cleaning and organizing done. i just need to get over this emotional blip first.

at least i got dressed before H got here. i put on makeup.. superficial but.. at least i'm not looking defeated.

[BklynMom]

Whatever fake it till you make it.

It proves you dont need to tell your H how much this is hurting the kids they will do it for you. Let your H keep on dealing with S5 asking him why he's not at home and you act as sweet as pie and dress cute. There is no way he is not gonna question, why am I doing this??

The letter was so wonderful

[purgatory]

You have a great friend!! You should make copies and keep them in your wallet, car, on the fridge, the bathroom....anywhere that you might have a crying session- so you can pull it out and remind yourself what a wonderful person/mom you are!!

So glad you put on some makeup and looked cute when H came over... the old saying: "put your *face* on" (in regards to putting on makeup), is really applicable to our sitchs! If we let ourselves look on the outside as we feel on the inside.... we would probably scare small children! Good job faking it!!!

Your H won't like hearing S ask him/say to him things about why he's not home... as much as he can ignore the hurt he's doing to you- he can't ignore the kids. Those comments will really stat to wear on him.

BTW, you really need to find a trader joes!! They have awesome food, and they make their own unique ice cream flavors (as you read on my post from Jenna)... I'm sure there are some in Canada.... or maybe you'll have to make a trip to the sates!! Talk about the ultimate GAL trip: traveling to another country just for some ice cream- LOL!!

[BFloat]

I can't even look at H when he's around. He came back w/ the kids about 230 and then was here for another hour looking for paperwork (for the bank). I didn't help him look for anything. I overheard him saying to S that he wanted him to call more often. I think to myself.. The telephone works 2 ways! H told me to call him if I needed any help w/ the kids during the week. I said ok and then went to hide in the kitchen as he was leaving.

I've had my little cry and now.. Back to GAL. Sleepover tonight at gf's place (kids are so excited) then tomorrow will be breakfast and parade.

This roller coaster of emotions is exhausting.

[25yearsmlc]

Oh BF I feel for you...

if I had not had to take my girls to school in the morning I'm sure I'd have stayed in jammies all day and burrowed in.

You already know the GAL stuff is important and that's why we hammer it so much here. Overcoming the inertia ends up being the hard part b/c every time I went out or reached out, I was glad afterwards. But often I withdrew...isolating seemed to be best so I could heal like a wounded animal in the bushes...BUT I also think I was usually wrong to do that.

Isolation was simply easier, it was falling into and wallowing in the inertia. Make no social effort and just get through the day.

Well, after my older sister reminded me of the debacle our younger sister experienced in her divorce, I began to snap out of it by forcing myself to.

**I posted to purg about it but essentially both sisters are divorced and handled it with completely different approaches. My older sister with 3 kids, kept herself together. She took the high road and behaved with as much grace and dignity as she could, and though the kids had some troubles with her ex, they survived. Plus his temper was lousy so s they aged, I'm not sure they'd have been super happy WITH him there anyhow...I mean, don't assume if your h snaps out of it, that all will be well and there are only upsides, you know?
My older sister met a man who "gets" her. She remarried in 2000 and said though she's "sorry about the divorce for the kids, she'd never go back" to what she had with her ex now that she has a good marriage...SHE now knows she is her h's priority in life and it shows.


My younger sister wallowed and floundered and never looked inside herself for her role in the affair her h had, or the demise of the m. It was all about how HE had hurt her and she "loved him so much" etc...she seemed to think that the more she wallowed, and the longer, the more it proved her love. He had remarried already so it definitely did not matter to HIM...

Worse, she did NOT attract much good in her life then, b/c all she put "out there" was negative, gloomy and cynical...Not fun...and it was, frankly, hard to be around her after months -eventually 3 years--of her circling the drain.

She did not see the connection between what we radiate and what we attract. (Another reason "fake it til you make it" is a good idea).

I'm telling you, she was STUCK until she GAL.


As for your own personal sitch, since your h is so vague about all your flaws and he isn't storming off raging with blame - then I'd say it's even more important that you back off and let him go to his task.

Laura Munson writes about her h wanting out of the marriage and all the commitments/responsibilities and how she coped. She didn't buy it. I will post it to you later if I can figure out how.

I am NOT saying it's an approach that will work for you or your sitch.

But your h sounds a lot like he's motivated to see all about the greener grass on the other side of the fence. He wants out, or so he believes.


IF you divorce & don't reconcile, and I had a crystal ball -my guess is that in 5 years--

he'll either be single and depressed, or remarried - but in the same situation he's in now..wondering about what else there is OUTSIDE of himself that could "make him happy"...though he may never admit it again.

Give him a lot of lead here. Back off. Assume he's done, and you are moving on and let him see that. But let him see that you realize YOU are a great catch and that you KNOW other men will get that b/c it's true. Your h takes you for granted in a gigantic way.

The kids? They will suffer- I won't deny that. But as your wonderful articulate friend points out, they'll also survive and more, b/c of YOU.

And you don't have a lot of choice for this part of your journey. He's off...and the kids lack their dad.

But given the growth I see and hear in your words, here's my crystal ball for YOU...
IF you divorce,

I see you finding yourself first, and fully realizing how empowered you are as a woman on her own. THEN I see another man in your life...a man whom you come to love, and who loves you back fully.

Don't discount the strong possibility that as a result of a divorce--with growth--
your children could have a much more positive, expressive example of a healthy marriage - than your present h may be able to achieve, ever, with anyone...b/c he doesn't know the problem is within him & b/c maybe he's just not up to it...you did marry young (me too).

Oh sure, you two have fallen into some negative dynamics that need work

and you have your "Issues" to work on and fix in your sandbox...we get that. We're all just flawed folks here.

But essentially, I see your h as a weak man who wishes he were not selfish, but caves into it...he wants to be better, which is good.

But he may not want it enough to do the work it takes--or get the tools for it....we don't know yet.

Whereas- I see you as the type of woman who can swallow her pride and look in the mirror to bravely face what's ailing her inside,

and to make changes she needs and to put her children first.

That's called character. And it's a tad heroic these days.

You sound articulate and intelligent here, and you have the kind of friends who speak so well of you that you simply MUST be fun, loyal, witty and generous or you would not have those friends...

The kids have pain NOW and I'd let them tell HIM about it, let them ask HIM the questions they ask you...let them share their pain with him galore.

And I'd let him have alone time with them galore too. Forget always being there for him. He needs to form one on one r's with them anyhow, even if you were still married. I didn't see the value of that before h's crisis. But it is true.

And in your case, your h needs to stand on his own 2 feet and man up. Part of that will be facing fatherhood as a single man (part time for God's sake...)

and dealing with the financial poop that divorce creates.

As a married man envisioning the single life, most men come to see that they were delusional in their fantasies...even if they have OWs in mind...b/c you see, OWs are human too--flawed...and they are not the mothers of his children.

My oldest brother is funny, smart and has no temper. But he's also a lousy h and a benignly neglectful dad.

He left his first w -a wonderful womant. Idiot...but eventually they both remarried.

As a dad, He Loves his 1st d, but he moved away from her for a job he later lost and didn't move back to be near her, his only child at the time... See I don't get that. My other brothers would never dream of being away from their kids...He'd see his d every 4-6 weeks...called her weekly I think, but he's more like a kindly uncle than a dad. I thought my niece would suffer a lot. She didn't.

First, my brother was never the uber involved dad he should have been in the first place, so she didn't even notice his absence for a few weeks, and 2nd, her mom remarried a great guy who has been a real father figure to my niece, so she got her "daddy" fixes...

My sil is much happier now in a r that is the priority in her life AND in her 2nd h's life (over 11 years now)...my brother just is not capable of sustaining that.

When he began dating (Which he'd imagined he'd do with super models who earn 6 figures but, um, not so much...or ever....)

he soon came to see that most women DO have certain expectations of their significant other. Like calling, asking them how THEY are, giving a crap. And he's not mature in that sense. A part of him knows he effed up but it's too late now. My x sil moved on and she simply did not "get" that there was better out there until my brother forced her to find out. He remarried a kind gentle heavy set woman who has almost no expectations of him..and they have a d now, she's raising on her own b/c now that he got his 2nd chance with another child and could actually be there for her (he's 57)..instead he's in Afghanistan, again...has volunteered FIVE times to go over there. He's civilian and isn't crucial to the mission. He bores easily and likes the excitement and stories from being there, AND having to give almost no emotional efforts to others... it's all about HIM and what he's doing/seeing...


Do I believe someday he'll regret all that he missed? Yes I do. When he sees his 2nd d making a step (IF he does) he'll know he missed the first...every thing he witnesses this child do, he'll know he missed his first one doing.

If he doesn't show up for this child too, it may not be til his death bed that he gets it if then.

My father told me his regrets when he had weeks to live. I'd hate to die with so much remorse for things left unsaid or undone or unshared...

So realize that your h is losing so much more than you are...let that sink in.

As he comes to sense your belief of that, he may awaken to the reality of it too.

Your life will be partly defined by the rich loving relationships you have in it.

What will HIS be made up of?

((( )))

[25yearsmlc]

BF,

here's the article/interview of Laura Munson's experience... some of it may apply.

Some not...but it is very interesting.

Note what SHE learned about the power of letting go.


"One fine June day, in the mountains of Montana, Laura Munson's husband said to her, "I don't love you any more. I'm not sure I ever did. I'm moving out. The kids will understand. They'll want me to be happy."
What is the normal reaction to this kind of announcement? You can sob and wail and get down on your knees and beg. Alternatively, you can pick up the meat cleaver and, when the car skids off down the driveway, cut the crotch out of all his suits. But Munson did none of these things. She wasn't going to let him get away with this. She said, "I don't buy it."


He apparently looked most surprised. Then he probably narrowed his eyes – for the next thing he said was, "I don't like what you've become."
At this point, Munson says, "a shroud of calm enveloped me". She thought, "It's just words." Sticks and stones. Again she said, "I don't buy it."
Then she added, "It's not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents' happiness… There are times in every relationship when the parties involved need a break. What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?"
He said, "Huh?"

She said, "Go trekking in Nepal. Build a yurt in the back meadow. Turn the garage studio into a man-cave. Get that drum set you've always wanted. Anything but hurting the children and me with a reckless move like the one you're talking about."
Then she said again, "How can we have a responsible distance?"
He said, "I don't want distance. I want to move out."


She Googled "responsible separation" on the computer, and printed off a list of FAQs about the sharing of keys, credit card access, pets, etcetera.
Appalled, he snarled, "I see what you're doing. You're going to make me go into therapy!"
She said, "I just asked: what can we do to give you the distance you need?"

Do you want to know what happened next? Are you gripped? America certainly is. Munson's book, "This Is Not The Story You Think It Is… A Season Of Unlikely Happiness", is now a publishing phenomenon in the US.

She has been interviewed by ABC News on Good Morning America and you can see her on YouTube: a picture of all-American wholesomeness – pretty, round face, perfectly aligned teeth, long, glossy brown hair. She claims to be handy with a chainsaw and is used to hauling 1,500lb horses into trailers. You don't doubt it.
When we talk, it's 9am in Montana and Munson is sitting with a cup of tea and a view of pines and firs and mountains in the distance. She has got the kids off to school and needs the rest: she is just back from a three-week book tour. The offers are pouring in – China and Taiwan have bought the rights, the German contract is being negotiated.

Things haven't always been so professionally rosy. Before this book, Munson wrote 14 novels that have never been published. Lesser mortals would have given up, but Munson just developed armadillo hide for skin. "Yeah," she says.
"As a writer, you spill out your guts and care so much about it and you send it off and you get back [the letter saying], 'This does not meet our needs at this time.' So when your husband says, 'You do not meet my needs at this time', you say, 'OK, those are just words. I know how to deal with that.'"

We return to that fateful morning. It seems pretty simple. She said, "No, you can't go, but I can give you a long lead" and eventually he said, "Oh, all right then."
"It's not like I handcuffed him to a chair," Munson says. "I just didn't take it personally. People in crisis say all sorts of things."

Surely it must have been incredibly annoying, having someone staying completely calm and saying, "Do you need a bit of distance?"

Munson replies, "Well, then he can't play victim. He has to be responsible for his own wellbeing. When you don't engage in the drama, it bounces back to the person who flung it in the first place."

In her writing, Munson uses the analogy of a child having a tantrum. The child shouts that they hate you. Do you join in? Do you answer back? Of course you don't. It's their problem, not yours. You ignore the tantrum and walk away, even if the toddler's teeth are still clamped around your arm.

She says carefully, "I'm not saying my husband was being a child." His spiritual malaise was profound – a personal crisis triggered by the failure of his business – and he wasn't merely throwing a tantrum. Of course, nobody would dream of saying thwarted middle-aged men behave like toddlers – perish the thought – but when a toddler is out of sorts, you give them "time out". And that is precisely what Munson offered her husband.

So that summer, instead of moving out – the credit card list seemed to have frightened him – Munson's husband did what he was told and took "time out". Effectively he went awol. He came home late, if at all. He wouldn't call. When he was at home, he was distant, making zero eye contact except for occasional, discombobulating moments when he desired intimacy. He forgot her birthday and went to someone else's 4th of July party. And he went walkabout. Like an old bear, he retreated into the forest. "He spent a lot of time at a friend's fishing lodge. He'd take three or four days away."
And what did she do?

"We live in such a beautiful part of the world and it was summertime, so the kids were out of school [Munson's daughter was then 12 and her son eight] and there was a lot of being with them in nature. There was more writing, more getting on my horse. I did grounded stuff: cooking, gardening. I was incredibly calm. That was a summer of unlikely happiness. I don't mean 'blissed-out' happiness, but sometimes happiness is just one little step outside of suffering. For me, that summer was a very calm, grounded time full of deep breathing."
But here there is a little pause, and she adds: "And inner tantrums. Believe me. When I was out alone in the woods, I was screaming at trees and crying and galloping my horse as fast as I could and diving into freezing mountain lakes.
"Of course you think, 'Is there another woman?', 'What sort of role model am I being?', 'How much longer can I put up with this?' This is a man I love and is a great father… and suddenly he is being a completely different person. We all have these destructive thoughts in our head. In the book I name them 'my evil twin sister Sheila'. I have no idea where I came up with that – probably a soap opera from the 80s." Yet in front of her husband and children, Munson remained composed.

Indeed, it is her unusual composure in the face of marital crisis that seems to have caught the public imagination, provoking a flurry of debate. Some see her as a Gandhi-like figure, others as a doormat, still others as "passive aggressive". Time ran a story on How To Save Your Marriage By Not Doing Anything, while the Newsweek headline read When Divorce Isn't The Only Choice.

Munson is being held up as a role model for a radical new relationship dynamic, but can anyone else learn from her experience? Marriage gurus point out that there are different kinds of relationship breakdown – long, corrosive ones – that might be beyond repair, and sudden crises that could benefit from a Munson-style stonewalling.

For all her slightly new age references and talk of deep breathing and eternal wisdom, Munson is, in fact, advocating rather old-fashioned values: stoicism, loyalty, self-control, reticence, discretion. To her credit, her children remained more or less unaware of what was happening that summer (though they can't be now). She was also careful in whom she confided: "I didn't share it with many people. I chose friends who loved my husband and believed in us, not friends who'd say, 'Kick him out!' People love a drama, and a drama doesn't necessarily serve anyone or anything."

What Munson believes helped her cope and see what was happening to her husband was the fact that, two years earlier, she had undergone her own personal crisis. In a short space of time, her first big publishing deal had folded, her father died suddenly and her dog was shot. "I was miserable. Suffering had become my norm. And that's when I hired a good therapist." The therapist helped her revaluate her priorities, learn to embrace the present and not judge herself by worldly success. Armed with this wider perspective – and the 14 novel-thick armadillo skin – she was prepared for anything. In fact, she says, the marital crisis was grist to the mill: "I like to say I had the map and he gave me the territory." It was, for all the suffering, an oddly exhilarating experience.

Munson had set herself a six-month limit for her husband's "time out". But a family tragedy made him start to sort himself out a little sooner. "His sister got cancer and her husband had just left her and she had five children and she actually died last 4 July. Midway through that summer, he went to live with her and help her, and I think it was that experience of seeing somebody he loved so dearly lose their life at such a young age. He began to understand what was really important wasn't his job. It was his relationships."

The day he came home from that visit to his sister, "I was in the hot tub, and he came out and got in and he said, 'I just have to apologise for everything I have put you through this summer, and I can never repay you. I am a 40-year-old trying to be a 20-year-old, and I realise my career is done with and I have to find something else."

Other encouraging signs followed: he started fixing broken doorknobs, and murmuring about repainting the porch, and getting logs in for the winter. Then came the clincher: "One day I came home and there was a satellite truck in our driveway. I thought, 'Huh! This guy is getting the satellite upgraded. He might mow the lawn and not come back. But a guy that has ordered more sports channels – he is not going anywhere!"
And he stayed. By Thanksgiving 2008, the crisis was over. Now they are back together and he has found a job. "Of course," she adds, a little tartly, "at the end it is not all tied up in a perfect pink bow."

And the moral of it all? Her book is not, she insists, a guide on How To Keep Your Man. On the contrary: "It's all about letting go. Suddenly, the minute I let go of ever getting published, and of my marital outcome, that is when everything turns round. I find that incredibly interesting.""

[25yearsmlc]

uh oh, did I overwhelm you w/ way too much info?

Sorry! It was a long article but it seemed worth it.

((( )))

[purgatory]

Not to hijack, but I really liked that article too (I've copied it and put into my DB reminders folder), thanks 25 for posting!

BF- enjoy your parade today! Hopefully its not too cold!!