Adventures in GALing

[AntoniaB]

Kimmerz I'm really happy if my posts help you in any way :-)

I think your idea about the ring for yourself is really good. If you are doing it for you, every time you look at it you will see it as symbolic and meaningful.

I had a rough time adjusting to the aloneness for a long time--because I kept seeing XH as "my world." What I eventually realized is that I was doing certain things during the marriage that were more "me" and I had just sort of downplayed them all along, certain hobbies or activities or interests outside my job, and when I started to feel more normal again I started doing them again but with more intensity, if that makes sense.

Ex: I was always an avid reader--for work/writing/research but more so for pleasure. I realized that in the context of the marriage I'd all but given up reading. I bought lots of books and just put them on shelves. I think part of it was that XH hated when I'd want to read in bed at night, even if I had just a book light. He was on a different schedule from me and claimed he could never sleep if I had even the merest hint of a light on. Plus he never wanted to talk about fiction--he didn't like to read much other than occasional non-fiction, and so I realized that gradually I just let his view take me over and I stopped reading. Well in the past month I got a kindle and I've got tons of new e-books and real books, joined a book club, and joined goodreads.com, and I feel like I've got a part of myself back that I really let remain hidden.

I wonder if there are any things that you liked to do even just a little that were interesting to you that you can re-explore now in this time alone...because often those things do connect to others. I am reading new books and finding things to talk about with a lot of others as a result. No, it's not a relationship with a mate, but it fills some time in a productive way.

I didn't have the co-parenting thing to deal with, but it seems to me that you're still in too vulnerable a state to negotiate any kind of friendship with him...and need to look at it as business-like as far as your connection with your ex. Like you are new co-workers in an office...it is weird, of course, but I think so much of what happens when we try to forge a friendship in the first few years is that it encourages us to hold out hope that this or that little thing or gesture from them means they are coming back or trying to find their way back, and we really cling to false hope too much. As everyone says if they want to come back, you'll know it, you won't be having to interpret meaning in words and gestures. And I think this is why it is hurting you, when you say you want to have some sort of friendship but at what price to you...

It isn't a bad thing to forego the friendship for now and just protect your heart and stay business-like and detached. Again--don't make the all or nothing mistake...just because you decide to be more detached now doesn't mean things can't change down the line when you are less vulnerable, if you choose for them to change and you two to be more friendly.

The guy I've met that I talk about above is divorced a bit longer than me (not my long-divorced friend but the one I had drinks with the other night) and he said he, too, tried to do the friendship thing and finally they gave up. They have very little contact. It's just too painful otherwise.

I hear about couples being friends but it seems it is VERY far down the road if at all.

But I think I see that a lot of people here go through a pattern--they start the dating probably a little too early--and then they find it's really obnoxious and unfulfilling--and then they walk away from it and try to work with being alone, at which point they realize that the reason the dating didnt' work was because they were probably feeling a bit desperate to plug up the hole of loneliness and still trying to "replace" the ex...and then they "choose" to be alone and work with that, and that seems to be when they start to make really deep friendships or rediscover themselves as individuals.

I also look at people a lot and say "why can't I have what you have" as far as a mate, because it seems like more people have mates than do not...but if I am very critical, I also have to say that most people I know who have a mate seem pretty "meh" about it...everyone talks about compromise and losing themselves and not really being happy as they once were, but unable to walk away either, and you know I don't know that that is so attractive sounding to me anymore...and because of that I kind of would rather just keep on with the single life until a really good person for me comes along, and think well, at least I've got really great friends and family and lots of fulfililng relationships with those people...my XH has ONE person in his life who is close to him. I have a whole PILE of people I can call if I'm in jail (ha ha). I'd rather the many than the one--and that's what this ENTIRE experience has taught me. I sacrificed the many for the sake of the one in my marriage. I won't make that mistake again. I'll either have a marriage/relationship that can encompass all the other people in my life, or I'll not have the marriage/relationship...