This might be last chance??

[zig]

hi 1702

i just read the last couple of pages of your thread. i wanted to pop in and say a few things. i hope very much they can help you, and i wish that some one (i didn't find this board until month 7) had been able to point them out to me at the 3 month point.

you're really lucky you found this board so early. and i know exactly where you are right now - i kicked and screamed and really genuinely BELIEVED every word my WAS said to me in the first months. and i was just on a WHY, WHY , WHY roller coaster of my own flapping in deep panic.

here's the deal - if i had known during those 3 months what i know now, i would have been a lot less hurt by all the things my h was saying.

DON'T BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY SAY AND HALF OF WHAT THEY DO

this is really true.

i know that it's impossible for you to see it right now, because the hurt is so overwhelming - this person that you trusted completely has just upended your life and you are floundering in this "picture" they have created of you, that you had no idea even existed.

you just need to take one little baby step for yourself right now - breathe, allow yourself to calm down and take a step back. stop the thoughts that you've had until now about YOUR perception of what your wife will do if you let go and detach a bit.

instead start to see that when people are hurting (as your wife is) they lash out and the one that they lash out to is the person they love the most.

stop listening to and HOLDING onto what your wife has said.

when i finally got to this board and began to understand what was really going on with our WAS's , my first thought was - oh my god, i took every last thing he said so personally as if it was really true and did myself so much damage by getting so hurt and affected by it - it trashed my self esteem, brought up HUGE issues of abandonment that took me months to work through - which was good, as i needed to work through them and make myself better.

start there, and then reread the posts that have been written to you - if you genuinely want to get back with your wife - think about this : if you can't start to let go of the hurt now, how are you going to let go of it later?

you're allowing the hurt to stand as a wall between you and what you really have to do - which is get focused on what you really want and find out how to get there.

as you travel on this long journey, be prepared to find out things that you never imagined - about yourself, about your wife and about your relationship as it really was.

letting go is a long and hard and very painful journey and doesn't just happen, but it is the only way to be able to have even a fighting chance at what you want - which is your family back together,

for months i told myself that my h is so stubborn: once he makes up his mind he'll never change it and it scared the heck out of me. now i'm at the point that it doesn't scare me any more - and that's where you will eventually get in your journey, if you choose to take it.

the fear you're feeling right now, is palpable - your wife can pick it up a mile away. that's what allows her to stay in the position she's in and hold onto it.

it's counter intuitive, what works here. when you lose the fear - and you're willing to lose the relationship, that's when things will change, because she will sense that from a mile away too. and only then will she be able to clearly see what she is losing. until she can really feel that what she's doing will risk losing you, she will keep her position.

But be careful, if you interpret that as you telling her you're done now, she'll take you up on it without missing a heartbeat. you can't use this as a manipulative tactic - it is only when you genuinely get there through working on yourself and finding out what your role was in the relationship to bring it to this point. and also, everytime you think you've figured it out, more stuff will come up and surprise you

but realize - this will take you a long while to do - meanwhile ACT AS IF that's how you feel to get it started and eventually, over many months you will feel that in a genuine way.

the 37 rules are here for us for a very good reason - they are a good guide to getting started and staying the course.

before you decide, take a few days to really look at your wife and situation and whether you want to take this long road for the both of you. it takes a lot of courage because there will be NO positive feedback from your spouse for waaaay longer than you can ever imagine. when it's said we need patience, it is an understatement of gigantic proportions. you will find along the way that each time you thought you knew what patience was, you need to learn it in a new way again.

so i hope you decide to take the long hard journey - because you will become a new person through it - and a really beautiful one and you will love yourself SO MUCH MORE than you can ever imagine right now.

right now, you are consumed more by the fact that your wife doesn't love you than you are about how much you may not love yourself. in time, you will find out that the latter is much more important and could possibly bring your wife and you back together one day.

so ((( ))) and i hope you listen to the vets on your thread - you are lucky that they are helping you out so much

zig