ILYBINILWY

[AJM]

I had the exact same thoughts as KD. Different words though, in my defense

See, people do things for different reasons. We interpret their actions based on what we have experienced and our thoughts. Our "lense" if you will. It's our "perspective" on things and how we interpret them.

Another possibility? Maybe your grandmother wanted to do those things for your grandfather as part of her way of showing him she loved him. I dunno, I wasn't there and not in her head. But people show their love in different ways.

Would your grandfather have gone on without missing a beat? I know several men who have when their wife died even though nobody thought they would. Without missing a beat. What's their choice?

In your H's case, you sell yourself short and don't seem to understand your real value. Do you think he wouldn't go on? I'm sure he misses you. Not the actions necessarily. I don't miss my ex's actions. I can find that anywhere. I went on without missing a beat. She didn't think that was going to happen, and unless I'm totally off-base, I think she wanted me to lay down and die or move away. I don't think she ever in a million years would have thought I'd do what i did - fight for our marriage and stay in the same house and continue parenting the kids.

A relationship is not one-sided even if we don't see all sides. We get different things from a relationship at different times. Your view about what your H is getting out of the relationship is skewed. I can say that because you aren't giving it now and haven't for a while. You haven't been nurturing the relationship for time. He's still there. He's still living. He's still hanging on hoping you'll nurture the relationship. Not that either of you knows what that means or the work it takes. And not to say he has been nurturing it the way you think he should.

Like KD, I wonder if your gm would see things the same way as you regarding their marriage. I wonder if the role she took on is different in her view than it is in your view or anyone else's view (besides mine and KD's)?

I think I would describe that as the crux of the problem for the WAS. The R simply drains the life out of you. There's something that makes the R still worth it for the LBS that doesn't exist for the WAS. And the continued effort and failure at improving things is demoralizing on top of it. Eventually, it just becomes a matter of not being able to come up with a meaningful answer to, "Why am I in this M?"

I wonder why at one point it was fulfilling and at another it was "draining"? I wonder if it changed, why it changed and if would change again? Like polarization.

I think if I paraphrased what you said, it would be like this: "And my continued failed attempts to fix it the way I say it should be are demoralizing to me, frustrating to us both, and killing my relationship with my spouse. I have no room in myself to see things differently and come to a mutually beneficial way of handling the relationship. I'm too frustrated at how things are. And spouse will never change. Boy will spouse miss me when I'm gone. Doesn't spouse see how this is killing me? It's all spouses fault for not changing the way I want spouse to so I can get my needs met." Did I miss the mark?

AJ