Walking the path to my own happiness

[Wendylon]

As always, your H reminds me so much of mine. It is a very weird experience reading about yours (the low self-esteem, the unrealistic financial perspective, his absent-mindedness around S9's chocolates...)

I love your goal for next year--being happy. I would try to stick to that goal while trying not to bring the R into it. Once you're happier independently of H, then I think you'll be in a much better frame of mind to make decisions about your M. I still have an uneasy sense of your M and all his failings being a convenient hook for your own issues. I think I'm vulnerable to doing the same thing with my H so maybe that's why I think you might be too. I think Breakdown and FloydMan make some excellent points (hard as they may be to digest).

How are you feeling without your ring now? Has your H noticed? I do feel nervous about that move though I recognise that you feel empowered. I just think that your H can use it as proof that you are not really committed to working on the R despite your words.

If he mentions again how difficult he finds it to witness your boys being upset about your R, you could just say that you feel the same way. One of the times that we were about to announce our S to our kids, we backed down because we couldn't bring ourselves to break it to the kids. If nothing else, we were in agreement about that. It just bought us more time.

I hope you're doing nice things for yourself today. I'm pleased that you bought some nice clothes.