WAS vs. LBS

[keep_going]

Crazyville,

Thanks for your response and sharing your points of view. I am appreciative of your experience and the insight it brings into my own situation.

I've always wondered about this. The "til death do we part" we commit to when we marry is supposed to give us comfort and security that our spouse is going to be there for us for the long haul. But I wonder how many people use that as a crutch and an excuse to not try as hard to please their spouse? The fact is that divorce is always an option for the other person, even when they vowed otherwise. As I said in my previous post, there's a whole lot more to the vows than that. And if one person isn't keep up their end, how can they possibly expect their spouse to do so?

I agree with you that there is the potential of using the vows not so much as an excuse, but as a dangerous road into complacency and inaction. Yet to me, there is more to the vows than just "till death do us part." It's the "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health" part that should keep people from complacency and giving up. At least for me, my vows were a promise to always keep trying no matter what. I always told my H - I cannot promise you that I will love you every day of my life and every minute of it, but I promise you to always try. And I am still holding on to that promise today.

I just don't know what "solvable" means. I think WAS's see it as hopeless. If you saw it as solvable, why didn't it get solved?

I agree there is a difference. As long as you see some potential to find a solution, there is hope.

Why didn't it get solved then? When we were at our worst times, I remember saying to myself "sh!t this suxx and I just don't know what to do anymore or how we are going to fix our problems, but we will need to find a way. Somehow, we have to get over this "hump" and find a way our the other side, because that is what we promised and what M is about. We just have to." At that point, we had tried many things, but we both lacked understanding of a lot of the unresolved and deep issues and dynamics in our R. I know my H tried every day and felt helpless and so did I. So in our frustration we ended up in a constant cycle of complaining about our individual sense of helplessness and just turned to blaming each other.

I don't think any of the above is unsolvable, yet my H thinks it's hopeless. Hence where we are today.

Do you believe you have the tools now if your H came back? And if so, how were you able to get them now but weren't during the M? If not, why perpetuate something that makes both of you unhappy?

I believe the work I have done in the past 20 months and that I continue doing is giving me the tools needed if H came back, yes.

How am I getting these tools?
Well, when someone leaves you after 6 weeks of conceiving a child and 2 weeks of closing escrow in your dream property that pretty much tells you something is terribly wrong. Sure I went through different stages:
anger - how dare he say he doesn't love me now?
denial - he will be back in a couple of days when he cools down
fear - what if he doesn't?
shock and acceptance - wow, he is not only not coming back, but he has found someone else and wants a D. It's not just him in a crisis, I really messed up here.

Yet I knew that the R we had built was real and I wanted to fight to get it back. I finally dropped my self-righteousness and ego and just got down to business. First for my M, but thanks to DBing, I am now doing it for myself because I now believe there is probably less than 1% chance that H and I will reconcile.

Having said that, even if I have the tools now, if H came back he would absolutely have to obtain his own tools to deal with his and our issues and meet me halfway. With my changes I can hope to perhaps motivate him to want to work on this, but I cannot ultimately fix this R on my own.

To his disregarding your efforts because they were unsuccessful, this strikes home with me because that is what I'm accused of. If I had a dollar for every time H said he 'was trying,' I could buy Bill Gates.

I only know how to relate to this by applying it to other relationships or other situations, like co-workers or employees or our children. In every other relationship, people are typically only paid/rewarded if they actually succeed, not because they tried. The best example of this is when someone is trying to lose weight. They say they're trying, then eat half a large pizza for lunch with a large Coke, take the elevator instead of the stairs, and spend their evenings in front of the TV. At the same time, they can't offer up anything they are doing, but we're supposed to give them credit for trying.

I used to have that same expectation of success and receiving back in my M. I now believe that in order to have a chance at a a successful M I have to approach the R pretty much as the one I have with my children. I love them, regardless of if they succeed or not. I love them for their effort and I will love them no matter what. It's not always easy and I am sure they will bring me heartache and disappointment, but I will continue loving them and trying to have a successful R with them until I die. I guess this is unconditional love to me.

I believe I need to approach my M the same way because my H is human and he will not always succeed or meet my expectations and I need to have compassion, empathy and forgiveness.

I also believe now that if we all approached our R with our parents with more empathy and without this expectation of success, many of us would grow up as healthier individuals and bring less baggage to our own M. But that is a topic for another time...

I believe in every relationship, the person that is going to change is the one that is bothered most by the circumstances. Unfortunately, it doesn't even mean that they had the bigger cross to bear, just that they were less willing to continue in the same manner. For a WAS, if they can't get it corrected within the M, then they leave.

I agree with this.
In my case I wonder if perhaps I am the one that is changing the most NOW, while my H is probably bringing a lot of unresolved issues to his R with OW. IDK, I guess time will tell, but I do now see the silver lining in my situation. Without this bomb, I probably would have never looked at myself. Unfortunately it looks like it's just too late for my M.

Again, I'm so glad you said this. What does that mean? That you thought your love would be enough? Enough for what? And what is that belief based on? This idea is foreign to me.

I think what I mean is that I took the R for granted. I felt that our sense of commitment and belief in marriage would keep us equally strong and motivated to always try to work things out. I of course realize this is not the case. Each person has his/her limit and it looks like my H reached his before I did.
I also was extremely naive and believed that we could keep the feelings of the honeymoon period alive indefinitely without any hard work. I really don't know where I got this notion because I have never seen any couple that has modeled this for me. It will sound corny, but I thought our chemistry was so strong, we have A LOT in common, we make each other laugh, we challenge each other intellectually and that we were true soul mates and a couple like few others and that we would survive anything. Boy, was I wrong...

On the other hand, I am not completely pesimistic. I do believe that love is a choice and that we can bring back loving feelings when they have subsided. Unfortunately my H doesn't believe this at all. He thinks love just happens to you and you are powerless to change your feelings, hence why he will not give up his R with OW even if he saw the changes he wanted in me.

I'm curious, do you feel like your R changed greatly when you had children? You had a lot of years together just the two of you before you had kids. I can't help but think that played into it.

It absolutely did. Neither of us was prepared for the reality of three kids in five years, two very demanding and stressful careers and many significant financial obligations living in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the country.

We are both overachievers and we thought we could just do it all.