help please

[Carole1213]

Hi Carole: I'm bringing stuff over from your other thread. I agree that sometimes a specific question like that will draw answers from people based on the subject line who don't typically come read all your posts in your thread. But since your question led me to think a lot more about what and how YOU are it's good for here too:

Advina...I agree that is a very selfish kind of love. To think that he can't give me his whole heart ( like he did before this all happened) is heartbreaking. I realize I became lazy and complacent...as he did to now we are in the mess we are in. It is not good enough for me anymore.

Is it good enough for your kids? They are learning what a marriage is, and how to act in one. They are learning a husband doesn’t put his wife first before other people. They are learning a wife accepts a straying husband and accepts rationalizations that it's not really straying and she shouldn't have a right to feel neglected...but she does. They may not see everything, but they are aware at some level and are learning. When a husband and wife disagree the wife gives in, accepts, tolerates for the sake of the family, and continues unhappy, that is what marriage is.

I do have a question...why did she try and make him choose..that he always chose me..yet they always seemed to get back together? Maybe he loves her more then me? Am I too stupid to realize that? Why would he choose me...or make me and his family a priority..then get back together with her?

That’s just today’s question. You’ll have a million questions and replay everything and look for answers and guess at them. You can’t help that, but DB is concrete specific and solution based for a reason. You may never get answers. Or you may get them and they do absolutely nothing toward either healing you, fixing your marriage, or anything. You may hate those answers. They may be lies anyway. Focus on real, present, specific, you.

What do you think you'll get out of the "does he love her more than me" approach? A) yes he does but he said he chooses you so he can maintain the status quo. are you ok with that? or B) no he doesn't, he loves you more but he is not going to give her up and he is going to make you think you are the crazy one for not being happy with that solution. are you ok with that? Is there any possible answer to this question that you are ok with? Or is this question distracting you from a more useful activity and detracting from the self esteem and confidence you need to be building now?

I am gettign councelling from a DB coach...but I fail at times.

What? You’re human? lol. Of course you fail at times. How else do you learn and grow? I tell my S12 he failed at walking. He was extremely bad at it. He kept falling onto his diaper. It was ridiculous and he should have given it up right away. But no one told him to give up, and the idea didn’t occur to him, and now he can’t even remember not being able to walk! (by the way there was nothing wrong with him, I’m talking about when he was 10-12 months old; he really STUNK at walking. lol)

I have given up on trying to convince him that staying in contact with her is wrong.

Why? I'm curious if you're saying that for the right reason. I would say that you should give up on it because it being wrong has not and is not preventing him from doing it and justifying it. Why would his seeming convinced that it is wrong change anything he is doing? Even IF he came to agree with you?

Instead, you should be [not trying to convince but] respectfully stating that him staying in contact with her is [not wrong inherently but] UNACCEPTABLE to you. Some people agree to have open marriages; I take it you do not. He is having one. What will you do about that? What will you do differently if he never agrees that he is having an open marriage but continues acting the way he has been acting that is causing you to suffer?

What you would LIKE to do about it is talk to him until he understands he’s wrong and chooses to give OW up and decides to focus all his love on you. But you don’t get to make that happen, it is 100% not in your control. What you do get to do is decide what YOU will do if you’re not satisfied with the commitment, respect, love, connection, and emotion he is bringing to your marriage. Fear will hold you back until one day you can’t take it anymore. But look fear in the eyes… are you holding a happy healthy family together or clinging to something that is not healthy or good for your family? Is fear your friend or your enemy?

I am not sure if he is afraid to tell me he is done with me...or if he truly doesn't not want to give her up..in any capacity. I have told him what I want...emotional stability, to be treated like a man who truly loves his wife should treat his wife, with respect, love, and honestly.

or else…what? Your request has no teeth yet. Does he want to give YOU up? He chose you, or said he chose you, but you’re still not getting what you needed. Ball’s in your court.

I am going to start living my life...have decided that...again. I know when I start to pull away...he comes forward. But it is actions that prove to me not words.

You can live your life while he’s doing this, in fact you should have been all along. What are you waiting for before living? You don't know how long you have. Don't waste it. Live, and be happy, and exciting and fulfilled in every way except a relationship, until you decide to move on in that area too. But living NOW for you will help you get over your fear of what will happen if your crummy H never ever becomes a good H to you again.

I wish, and have suggested councelling..he refuses..saying they don't know me..my life...doesn't think he needs it...farce as far as I am concerned.

He’s quite a know it all isn’t he? It sounds like he must have spent a lot of time with counselors to have such a thorough understanding of how useless it would be. Sorry. This, again, just like OW, is more about what you will ACCEPT than it is about what he will AGREE to. When you are done unless he works with you in counseling, then you’ll find out how really opposed to it he is. When you are done unless he’s fully invested in you and has NO pet project women supposedly platonic but sucking his attention away, at that point you’ll find out how really unwilling to give them up he is.

Counseling is often a check box a wah will attend to give lip service to the fact that he tried all he could. My H agreed that he would go but only because I insisted and he didn’t expect it to change his mind. And he was RIGHT. Because he didn’t bring his mind to the sessions. He didn’t attend with any interest or enthusiasm. He stood me up for more appointments than he attended and he told me point blank that the appointments were “a very low priority” for him. But he did go, so he gets to say he tried counseling and it didn’t work. I think once H knows and really believes you are done and gone, he may have the inner strength to come to counseling and explore why you both thought a good marriage was one where you didn’t have to put any effort in, pay any special attention to, or even give all (any of?) your emotion to.

For me, and I feel like I sound like you sometimes, I was emotionally challenged when I met H. I was comfortable with his lack of connection, it felt right to me. We bragged about how far we were above the needy couples who have to *date* each other all the time and have to spend *guality time*. We were fine because we both knew we were great for each other and would always be there, and frankly were too lazy to go seek love elsewhere, and had too many annoying habits that only we were used to in each other. We were safe. We were STUPID. I really resented, unknowingly, the loveless emotionless passionless life I signed up for willingly and dedicated all the rest of my life to being in. I was sad, and mad, and didn’t feel I had a right to expect more because we knew who we were when we married. But it is OK to learn now, that you have needed more than what seemed ok before, and once you know that you’re doing yourself a real disservice not to try to get it into your marriage. Think about this: I was willing to be saddled with my H forever even though he was kind of a jerk, and way nicer to other people than to me, and really emotionally lazy, and I felt really unhappy with him and felt too resentful to try to make him happy with me. And how loving was that of ME toward HIM? That was rotten of ME to offer him so little as if the rest of my life was a gift I was giving him even if I was miserable and making him miserable. That idea of marriage being forever is a destructive idea. Because people think then that a bad marriage should be forever too. What right do you have to saddle the “love of your life” with a forever marriage and then stop making any effort to make that a good thing? That is outrageous, but it’s what most people do, and I think it’s why most people are now reluctantly heading toward divorce. It got broken beyond repair because they thought FOREVER was more important than GOOD.

I don't want to break up my family, why I am fighting so hard...but am starting to give up hope to be honest. he is acting like a spoiled, teenager...throwing a temper tantrum when he doesn't get what he wants. He seems to think it is all about what I want...and not what he wants...I said it is about our marriage, what it means, our love, our committment. Maybe I am the biggest fool out there.

HE is breaking up your family, and blaming it on you. If you walked into divorce court right now and signed the papers yourself, HE is breaking up your family. He is making the choices he's making and you sound like you've been pretty clear about how his choices NOW are making you feel. When you take the next step and act on his refusal to meet your needs or even allow that you are entitled to have your own opinion about what is OK to you in your marriage, it will be in response to HIS actions and choices.

It will look like you're breaking up the marriage, to someone on the outside, maybe, but this is between you and him, not you and him and family and friends and the rest of the world. I'm struggling with that now, but what things look like to others is a big distraction from the very hard work and decisions you need to focus on.

But I am going to live my life...with or without him. Hate that thought...living without him...but then again, with his work...I am been living without him already for extended periods of time already.

I think the long distance relationship created or allowed a wedge to grow between you. It was, if not a total mistake, at least a life event that you should have paid closer attention to the ramifications of and worked harder or gotten more help to counteract. You thought you were fine with it, but it created the space for your marriage to become a low priority. You took your marriage for granted (both of you). You accepted that it was ok to not be together physically, and then that you didn’t really need a lot of emotional connection, and then that it was even ok for him to be emotionally connected with OW outside the marriage, and then even ok to give family time and emotional energy away to that OW, and eventually there is no longer anything left that can be described as a marriage. At some point along that trajectory, you were worth more and deserved more. And needed more and wanted more. He can't tell you you don't because you do. And you can't tell him he doesn't need or want OW that come between you because he does, right now he does, and he doesn't believe you aren't going to get fine with it so he can continue on his way.

I think the sooner you start to say, “you know what? Your opinions about what is and should be acceptable in a marriage are yours and you’re entitled to them. You can go on acting according to those beliefs as much as you want. You just can’t in a marriage to ME, because I don’t want to be in a marriage like that ANYMORE. It seemed ok once, but it’s not ok TO ME, and I can’t live with that anymore.” the sooner you own that, you shift the playing field from what he thinks you used to accept or you should accept... to what you WILL accept and ARE GOING to accept. Which is simply your opinion that you are entitled to. He doesn’t even have to agree. The trouble with owning that is it feels like you're acting to end your marriage. But you're not. You're acting to possibly make your marriage something good for you, and if it can't be good, well, you can say that's his fault but it won't really matter then whose fault it is.

And if you read that and think that state of clarity (admission that you may not want to be married to HIM anymore) would drive you farther apart, think about where you are right now. Not saying it doesn’t make it not true.

(((((Carole)))))

Carole I have a lot to say to you because I feel like 10 years ago I was in your position and for the sake of keeping my family together I went along with what I thought was an agreement I was committed to, and I allowed us both to take our marriage for granted, and I hated and feared divorce, and I was married FOREVER. I think back then if I had just realized it wasn't about what he was doing it was about what I was accepting, and I had gone on ahead to counseling without him (he refused to go), I'd have had 10 more years of either a better marriage that we were both working on and knew we'd never take for granted again or I'd have been divorced, but no more divorced than I'm about to be now anyway. Showing courage, stating where you stand and what you will accept, and asking for more won't end your marriage unless it was already dead.