glad i have all you wonderful friends - and brit - i'll take a cuppa anytime in your kitchen!! maybe we'll all do it in real time some day (grin)
DEFFO!
I love "growing" with you guys. I honestly feel like since finding this community I have grown because of it. Sure I journalled before, but having people challenge your thinking or just saying they've been there is priceless. You feel so isolated in all of this. You can't talk to mutual friends, to family members, and you think they're proabably sick of hearing about it anyway! And you certainly can't be as open and honest as you can here.
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It is a scary place but also liberating.
YES! I figured out why it is for me...because I'm not waiting for him to say it anymore. I think for awhile I was waiting for him to want to get back together, and wondering when it would be, and when he would move forward with the GF it would freak me out because I would think he's not going to say it or he might not ever say it.
Somewhere I have moved away from thinking about him. Going out with friends, having strangers attempt to flirt with me, getting into a routine of my home, my son, my life, getting back involved at work instead of going through the motions. I think of him less and less And where once the idea of R being a matter of life and death, or happiness and misery isn't anymore.
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but now i realize that i was doing just about EVERYTHING he needed and wanted during the marriage and that was a major problem.
what's scary is, will he see that giving more and taking less is BETTER for our M? he's had things his way so long.
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I think we maybe scared because we are NOT used to expressing what we truly feel - remember we are the ones who used anger, resentment, control and all these other dysfunctional behaviors which were actually a front for being too petrified on a very deep level, to be able to say to our S's - i don't like what you are doing, i'm not happy, this is hurting me.
yes and no...he was the one who gave up a lot in our relationship and I was the one who usually got my way. However I did use anger, resentment, control, and being selfish getting my own way because I was too scared to be vulnerable, too scared that giving up myself meant that I would lose myself, that if I wasn't in control I was being taken advantage of.
I feel as though he's given up parts of himself again too quickly in a new relationship. Which is why some of Cheryl's advice didn't set well with me. If I seduce him, then I'm just pursuing him, taking away his choice. And I think in terms of core values I don't want our story to be that I seduced him away from someone else. I want him to make a choice, stand on his own two feet, etc.
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It also means we wouldn't just agree to quickly jump back into an R without making sure it's healthier on both sides. There's no harm in pausing and saying - what do I need, and can I get it here? Because again DB'ing helps us figure ourselves out to become better partners in an R and better at recognizing what we need in an R.
This is such good insight. It's unfamiliar territory to be strong enough to say I'm not going to take a relationship on any level. And not just the basics ie no OW/OM but actually deciding how you want to communicate with someone and work together in a partnership.
