Becoming Patient Man

[PatientMan]

PM - Don't take this the wrong way and I hope you don't take offense but I was half expecting your answers to say that when I asked you the question. You know why, it's exactly the way I answered it when it was first asked of me several months ago.

Question you need to ask yourself is:
Do you love your W?
Forget obligations and duty and all that. Would you run through hell with gasoline drenched shorts on for her today?

Yes.

Hold on one second...I don't think you can answer that question until YOU answer the next question:

What does loving another person really mean to you? No quoting anyone else, in your own words. You don't even have to write it here, just make sure you can answer it.

It depends on what kind of love you are talking about in what kind of relationship, but I believe "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." (John 15:13)

Love (the noun) also means putting someone else's wants and needs before my own. It means protecting, leading, caring for, helping, respecting, sometimes admonishing...it is manifested in a combination of so many actions of love (the verb).

Through my journey I realized that I did in fact love my W unconditionally.

Me too. In fact, in a letter I wrote her about a year ago, I told her that I loved her unconditionally, and that meant, by definition, that I love her without condition. She didn't need to love me back. That was back when I was pursuing still, and I meant (and still mean) what I wrote.

At first I had never thought about what love meant to me or what it even was. I came to this site reeling because I feared being alone, I was completely codependent on my W, I had vowed to never be D'd (dad left us when I was 3 and I promised myself I would never allow that to happen to my family), and I wanted to "win" and save my M like the guys in the movies do.

That sounds all too familiar.

I realized very quickly..the day of my first BD, in fact, that *I* needed to fix *me*. I knew I had problems and had been looking for a reason to do it, I just always put it off. "I'll get help tomorrow. I'll fix this tomorrow." I went through periods where I worked on being better, on ACTING better, but I never fixed me and I would always relapse into depression and its grip on me.

Wife dropped the bomb...THERE'S my reason. Most influential day of my life. Everything has been different since.

I didn't realize until much later on that she needs to work on herself too. I've been trying to help her with that in a very passive way. After all, I love her, which means I want to help her, but I also have to respect that she's divorcing me.

Thanks for your thoughts. Keep 'em coming.

-PM