Some progress after 2+ months of DBing

[Wendylon]

Thank you v much, Tori, Regretful, FY and Rubytuesday. Your posts made me think (and laugh).

The finances aren't a deal-breaker for now. H always catches up in the end (though that will come to an end when he's made his way through the capital in his mother's house). He isn't malicious or calculating with how he deals with money, he is in fantasy land. I doubt that anyone could right their credit rating and get the loan organised between now and the end of the month unless it were someone with lots of clout or with amazing people skills. He has neither. He will try but his hold on reality just isn't that great. He expects it all to go smoothly and it won't. He said yesterday that the bank still hadn't responded to his email. That sort of thing will happen x100 and his loan won't be extended for a while but it will be in the end. We live above our means but it's hard to change things now. When S17 and D15 finish school, we'll be able to make some changes.

As for the feelings of love, we know they come and go, even in the best of marriages.

I agree and I'll probably sound very pragmatic and unromantic, but I'm not very worried about feelings of love. I've watched my mother who is onto her third husband and I know that I could fall in love again but it has very little appeal. Being in love is not a big deal for me. I did it enough in my first 10 years of dating and had it very strongly with H for years.

As for happiness, I'd say you need to decide to be happy now. Don't let your dolt of a H decide your happiness level for you. After you have learned to depend on yourself for your happiness, even while married to him, you can decide if you want to give up on the marriage.

I couldn't have phrased it better, FY. That is exactly how I want to proceed. I haven't been the wife that only a fool would leave. I want to put in time in changing how I am with him first. Now is definitely not the time for me to give up on our M. I've felt critical of my mother for not hanging in there with her husbands and I can't see that her later models are any better than her previous ones. Sure, she has a few years of being in love but now she has a complicated blended family which I don't envy her.

For example, I loved overhearing D15 and H discussing whether the football manager of their favourite team was going to go for another term this morning. They were in the kitchen together. H is the one who got S13 ready for school. H is picking S17 from swimming as I type. H and I are going to a meeting at S13s school tomorrow. My father (with Alzheimer's) and my step-mother are coming for supper tomorrow. H will pull his weight and is even taking my father out to lunch on Friday on his own to give us a break. I probably rarely mention the plusses. Despite everything, H is someone I'm very close to and we have a long history. We share our love of the children and I do think that he probably loves me more than he thinks and the same for me (I love him more than I think!) There is a lot more I want to do before I'm done. If H chose to leave, that would be a whole other situation.