Also, I would strongly suggest that no email communication between the two of you go through your children. They need to be kept out of this. You will likely need to unblock your H so you have a way to communicate other than talking.
I'm being kept awake with feelings of loneliness, anger, sadness, jealousy. It's so hard to process and accept where I am. I'm trying so hard to remember that my needs were not being met in my M and how empty that felt. I was dissatisfied and could easily have been the one that left, but I didn't. I believed in my M, and still do, but I wanted things to change. How could I want someone back who seemingly hasn't changed and has no desire to change? Is this all part of processing abandonment?
Golf Mom, You are grieving the loss of your marriage. You feel abandoned and are wondering why, the ifs, buts, etc. I want to take a moment and point out that there was absolutely nothing you could have done to turn this around. It wouldn't have mattered if you were capable of laying golden eggs and could do a hundred things at one time, it was going to happen. His issues were created when he was a child and because he may have been passive-aggressive and a conflict avoider, it was bound to happen.
When you love someone, you tend to turn a blind eye to their faults and accept them, thus the rose-colored glasses. Once they have left the relationship, that is when you begin to question yourself and the glasses come off and you begin to see the faults for what they are. Why do you still want him back? Because you love him and you want the family unit back intact.
Be kind to yourself during the grieving process. You are going to experience feelings that you never have before and yes, you are going to question yourself about your relationship w/your h many times over. However, you need to remember one thing...he loved you in his own way and it may not have been the deeper, compassionate love that you experienced. You had a good marriage and you did the best that you could. Never doubt that.
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
Oh yes, the sleep deprived nights drive our need to process and think on things. I too woke up and thought about a few things, got a tad irritated, but then realized I couldn't sleep because I slept 9 hours the night before last.
Yes GM this is part of processing the abandonment. It just is. And it's a roller coaster ride. All you can do is buckle your seat belt on and just ride it out. That's all you can do. And it will NOT be fun. It will be miserable.
Your question, why do you want someone back that has no desire to change? Well I asked my self a million times over the last year. All I can say is that our hearts and heads are not in the same place when we go through that. Our hearts are full of hope, but our heads think logically. Logically, that's the right question to ask. But in a heartfelt manner...its completely opposite. We can't feel it because in our hearts and souls, this is not what we want and it hurts tremendously.
I've come to realize many things this past week in regards to my M, and I felt exactly the way you have felt. My needs were not being met for years. I felt empty, alone, frustrated and angry at times. But I too believed in my M and knew that it could be different if some changes were to be made. I tried doing my part in making changes, always hearing that one person's behavior can turn a marriage around. Well not in this case. It was impossible.
It did nothing. And it did nothing because Im now seeing clearly exactly what I was up against with XH. Im now seeing my marriage in a whole new ray of light now that I've had several interactions with XH, time and distance. And what I've had to admit to myself is hard.
My husband left under the parameters that scream MLC. And maybe a little MLC is what finally pushed him out the door. But realistically I have finally accepted and now understand that I was living with an addict. I was living with abuse. It was emotional and mental, never physical. It would wax and wane through the years, but there is no doubt about it, I've been in an abusive marriage and living with an addict. But because he never screamed and yelled, physically abused me, or was drunk or doing drugs all the time, I didn't consider it abuse. I've now learned that Abuse can be covert, sneaky, underhanded, and leave a person consistently questioning their sanity. And that's been my life for years now.
My Xh is a narcissist. He displayed this behavior ever since we were together, but did it in a way that was not overt and dramatic, but very subtle. I now understand why the good times that were good, were only because he was getting his fill of admiration through his job. In his last job he had celebrity status....he was a bartender. When he lost that job, he lost his celebrity status after the drama cooled down of him being in the spotlight of getting shot. And that is when he truly became unhinged, and then it all got turned to me.
My point is GM, no matter what the truth and psychology is behind this MLC, their actions and behaviors are NOT OK when they do this to us. It's just not.
Some MLCers go twist in the wind and by the grace of God see the eerror of their ways, come back to planet earth and at the very least try and make ammends for their actions. But alot of them don't seem to do it either.
As your process the grief of this loss, you will decide for yourself what you want to do. Stand or not. I think it's only through the process of the grief can we really come to that choice.
Snodderly and kimmerz, thank you so much for your responses. Your words really comforted me this morning. I don't know why it's so hard for me to accept that there is nothing I could have done to avoid this. My self-esteem took such a hit when my H left and blamed this all on me. Why am I accepting the blame and judgement of someone who is not well? When I look back I know that I could have done some things differently, but I'm not this horrible person that my H needed to run from. I was frustrated with my marriage. I felt emotionally abandoned. I felt like a single parent. I was being dragged down by my depressed H who wasn't taking responsibility for his own happiness. I know all of this, so why do I continue to feel responsible? If only I had been more compassionate, loving, interested in sex, etc. I do know why I wasn't. I didn't feel truly loved and after awhile I developed a lot of resentment. Maybe I'm mad at myself for not communicating my needs and for allowing myself to suffer for as long as I did. And then he has the nerve to leave me! I don't know what to do with all that I'm feeling. I'm afraid that I won't recover from this until I have another man tell me all that I need to hear. I know I need to love myself first. I'm working on that, but I'm really struggling with the lack of affection and security. In the mean time, it's killing me that my H is dating and showing other women what I am craving. How is it that the person who is wrong is getting their needs met? He's not struggling with abandonment and emotional devastation. I swear to God I just want to beat him at his own game. I know that sounds really unhealthy, but I just want the satisfaction of vindication. This is so not me. Yikes!
Golf mom - I've recently come to understand, there are some men who are just emotionally unavailable. They are not able to connect emotionally with another person. Something happened to them. Their development was stunted in some way, perhaps their parents were emotionally unavailable/narcissistic ... who knows ... but for some reason, they don't even know that the type of connection we take for granted in relationships is even available to them.
When they are attracted to you, they feel the feelings and they say the words that go with them, and they make you feel like the most desirable woman in the world. But they constantly ebb and flow with their feelings ... and they forget to let you know when they change. They will say anything - and they have no filter through which they consider how their behaviour will affect you. It's all about them.
You are feeling like you do because you feel rejected. Rejection is a horrible feeling - and it's particularly difficult for those of us who already have some abandonment issues.
The irony as you've identified, is that deep down we know we are higher value than them and they are bloody lucky to have us, for some reason we think we don't deserve someone of high value ... but I digress. They don't seem to value all our qualities, all the amazing thigns we bring to the relationship. When they leave ... we are like .... "What? YOU left ME?????"
Why don't you take your power back and turn it around. Why don't you make the decision to do the rejecting. You've already articulated all the reasons why you should have rejected him. He treated you very badly. You deserved better than that. Write down a list of all the ways he has hurt you and the ways he's disrespected you (and with this type of bloke, I can guarantee there are going to be a few of those things that you've tolerated).
As you get real, and get out of the fog, about what was going on in you're relationship it will allow you to detach sufficiently to really DB. To focus in on yourself, to fill your life up with things you love to do, to become the woman you are destined to be.
He'll notice .... and when he comes sniffing around, you'll get to decide if he's good enough for you or if he's even capable of being good enough for you.
V
Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
GM, it is very easy to look back in hindsight and see things clearly now.
But, I feel that we all did the best we could with the tools and knowledge we had at the time. Had we known better, we would have done better.
The feelings you are having are all normal considering you just got kicked in the gut.
Here's the thing. I can promise you that acting on your feelings of vindication will not make you feel better. It might for a second, but, not long term.
There have been people on here who have acted on those feelings. I believe if you ask any one of them, they would tell you they wish they hadn't. People got hurt and it didnt make them feel any better because it is just a bandaid.
You are getting an amazing opportunity here. And unfortunately you have to get through all the really tough stuff to come out the other side.
I also promise you that if you do the work, you will become the person you were meant to be.
You need to begin to take the focus off of him. I know how very difficult that is. But, it is the only way you will ever be able to get through this.
Let your h blow in the wind right now. Leave him to walk his path. It's best if you just get out of his way.
And you should take this opportunity to figure out what kind of gm you want to be.
This is what I'm getting at ... this is from an e-book written by a woman who posts under her .uk blog baggagereclaim in relation to men who are emotionally unavailable. It's a guide to no-contact (highly recommended reading) ... on rejection
being 'rejected' by these guys feels like some sort of confirmation that there is something wrong with you.
[i]'If he can't see what a great woman I am, there must be something really wrong with me!', as if someone, for instance, who may be lacking in empathy and respect of you, is supposed to be someone who is a good judge of character.
Rejection like breaking up, is never going to be easy to do, but it's safe to say that when you have higher self-esteem and love yourself unconditionally, rejection has far less of an impact on you. In fact, you can minimise any rejection you may feel by having some self-love, compassion (for you), and perspective.
Whilst it seems all too easy to declare that you love these men unconditionally and without boundaries, it seems to be much harder to give yourself any love. What we don't often realise is that love does have boundaries but that you cannot know how to truly love if you don't even like, never mind love yourself.
Unconditional love is about you being able to like and love yourself, irrespective of what takes place around you.
This means that even though you will navigate bumps along the relationship road, your love of yourself remains intact and your value doesn't plummet with every relationship.
If you take 'rejection' hard it means that you allow the fact that your relationship has not worked out to reflect inward, which in turn, makes you feel bad about yourself.
So a Mr Unavailable who is unable to connect with emotions healthily anyway, that you have a relationship with that doesn't work out, becomes you thinking that it must be something about you why he couldn't engage better because you think youso there must be something wrong with you.[/i]
So
Here is the problem:
In choosing men that reflect the things you truly believe about yourself, you find yourself someone who by their very nature is incapable of giving you the relationship that you profess to want. This not only sets them up for a test that they're bound to fail, but it also sets you up for failure. Each time this happens, it sends a message to you, that what you secretly (or even openly) believe about yourself, love, and relationships is true.
However, it's 'true' because the self-fulfilling prophecy gets created in trying to extract love, care, respect, empathy and the whole kit and kaboodle from men who are incapable of giving that to you in the first place. And so, you're kinda rejecting yourself....
Letting rejection distort your sense of self kills perspective on the relationship. What is even worse, is that when these men cross boundaries and treat us 'less than' and we not only continue to accept it, but actively chase them and repeatedly engage with them, as if trying to cancel out the rejection by trying to get them to accept us and in turn validate us, it ends up eroding even further into your self- esteem, robbing us of our self respect and at times, even our dignity.
V
Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
Thank you so much Walking and Brookie. It all makes sense. In my head, I buy into all of it. It's just taking forever for my heart to catch up. I hate being so needy. What in the world is missing in me that keeps me feeling this way? I have two great kids, great friends, a beautiful home, a great job. I'm healthy, active, etc., but I am really missing love, affection and companionship. I am really missing my H, especially at the end of the day.Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary. What a painful thought. Somehow I doubt my H will reflect on the date at all. I can understand why people get in rebound relationships. As much as I crave attention, I think getting it from someone else would only make me miss my H more. No matter what, I am not calling, emailing or texting him unless it is absolutely necessary. While I do love and miss him, I'm also really disgusted by his actions. I've lost respect for him for running away and, especially, for being so cowardly that he had to blame me. I've started reading a book on boundries and I think it will help a great deal with detaching and not allowing his behavior toward me to continue. I will not give him anymore opportunities to spew at me, call me names or blame me. If we must communicate and he starts something that I don't like I will end the conversation. I'm at the point where I really can do this. The challenge will be remaining calm. I don't want to react emotionally. It will give him more ammunition. I need to learn how to stand my ground without escalating matters.
