Speaking of "losing", it does hurt more that I didn't win.
Winning to most LBS'ers would mean the WAS coming back remorseful for all the pain they caused you after emerging from their fog and then picking up the pieces and rebuilding a relationship.
But the reality for me would be reconciling or repairing a marriage to (for all intents and purposes) a CRAZY person! I would never have become a WAS myself, but she was driving me away both emotionally and mentally, and I dutifully retreated.
My biggest mistake was expecting her to be the one to take the helm, the R temperature, and take charge of MC or retrouvaille or whatever. I never dreamed I would actually "drive" her to the arms of an OM and out the door.
But after all is said and done, I don't want to "win" in the conventional sense. I don't want to win back the mess I was in. If I could reclaim the person I married 19 years ago, then yes, but we've both changed too much. The biggest change of all showed itself when I underestimated how she could be "done" so easily and so quickly.
And there's the real pain of loss. Call it bruised ego, sense of failure, a seemingly unfair distribution of anguish and cake eating, or whatever, it hurts not to win. I realize though, that a win in my situation might not be the thing I really want or need.
Guess what I am trying to say is, sure I can change, become a better man, a man only a fool would leave, but none of that has any bearing on the sitch as far as XW is concerned. I have a conditions now that we're D, and condition number one is, I'll not jump back into the frying pan with a crazy person.
Me 53 XW 50 M 18 Years +2 S14 D19 Bomb 10-24-10 Served 1-27-11 Mediate 4-21-11 Civil D Final 6-2-11 No church anullment "A man is not finished when he is defeated, he is finished when he quits."
