Going around in circles

[angel61]

Good morning everyone! Its my 4th morning of being on vacation ALONE, and I have been giving a lot of thought to everything that you have all written to me, and some. I have read through some of the wonderful stories of reconciliation on this site, looking at what worked, what were the common threads.

Talking about boundaries: Yes, I do see where they come in, how it works. So I am opening my mind, and I do see that I have a problem there, so I am trying to explore them and go back. I think you will also see from my story why my H has trouble as well with them, and how we are both reacting as we are to the situation we are in.

Walking, you mentioned about it being almost an impossibility that I don't have boundaries or how about my statement about tem being arbitrary and moveable does not belong to my status and religion. I think not .... religion and culture does play a part, deeply ingrained into my psyche (and H's), even after all the education and years spent here in the USA (not much though, 10 years?)

Being a Catholic established my boundaries externally since I was young. We learn that we follow the 10 commandments, and everything else, or we suffer eternal damnation. Growing up in a country with a homogenous population of Catholics, religion was a way of life.

Divorce is not lawful in our country (I guess you will find out where I come from then, if you google it). Annullment is the only way out of a marriage. People do get separated, but it is a HUGE stigma. As I said, there is no one yet so far in the entire huge family of my H who has undergone divorce (think of how huge:my H has a total of 80 FIRST cousins from both sides). I know many people who have extramarital affairs in my country but many accept it as a fact of life and still stay together as a family. Some mothers, for example, teach their daughters that if their H have affairs, to just ignore it. My mom never taught me that though, in case you are curious. When I did hear that, i was dumbfounded, and swore to myself at that time that if my H ever did cheat, it would be a dealbreaker....but we all know how that turns oout sometimes.

Add to that parents who were quite rigid, for example... they did not want me to date, period. If I did not follow rules at home, I get thrown out, disowned, according to my mother. Once I went out with my girl friends when I was about 15 without her permisssion, when I got home, my clothes were outside the house.

So you can see that I did seem to have a lot of external boundaries.

As for internal boundaries, their development? I was quite the rebel, when I was young, and so I just did what I wanted to do and hoped not to get caught. I started having boyfriends at 13. etc. I went to a liberal school, grew up a feminist, moving to the other end of the spectrum. For a while I was even an activist. My internal beliefs clashed a lot with my external boundaries.

Then after I finished medicine, I indulged in my "altrusim" and for 10 years, helped the poor by doing a lot of charity work, going to remote places in my country, doing free surgery (along with H actually). H on the other hand was traditional, idealistic, non-rebellious, very Catholic.

That was my start of going back to my traditional roots.

OK, thats a long enough post, I will continue later.