Becoming Patient Man

[PatientMan]

PM - your thread feels like déjà vu for me because I was having the exact same conversations late last week.

I had same fears holding me back from letting go and moving forward with my own life and honoring my W's wishes to D...

Fear of not loving her anymore...

No no, I'm not worried about loving her. I do no not want to become a man who is not "in love" with her. Very different. I'm protecting her from becoming "just another person" in my family.

Maybe I like her up on the pedestal.

Maybe she has made up so much of my identity that I don't know who I am without her.

Maybe it's both of those. Or neither. Maybe it's something else.

But I have felt like it was part of my job (yes, "obligation" ) as her husband to protect that piece of me that is "in love" with her in case she comes back. I told her that I wasn't going to make the same mistakes she did. I didn't tell her what all that meant at the time (or since), but the implication was that I simply wasn't going to find someone else (or be looking). What I really meant, but didn't expound on is, I would not:

• Allow myself to generate feelings for any other woman (the obvious implication I just stated). That means removing myself from potential situations where this could occur, which I had to do one time very seriously. (In hindsight I realize that her having OM helped BD happen, and who knows how long I would have gone on in my sick state had she not dropped the bomb.) Would it be nice to have some hussy telling me I look good and pumping up my ego...telling me I deserve better, and that she loves me? Maybe, but I'm not allowing it.
• Not act on what I thought was right. She says she has many regrets, many "I wish I hads" before she fell out of love with me. When it came time for a serious decision, I chose to always do what I thought was right, regardless of how I thought she would react. No regrets. 100%.
• Allow her to break me.
• Allow myself to fall out of love with her.

Those are some of the things I feel "obligated" to do as a husband, though I don't always do them out of obligation, but out of love.

My roadblock is the "in love" part. I'm figuring out how to survive without her, but stay "in love", so maybe it's becoming less of a block. Or maybe I'm fooling myself.

Fear of growing past her is a concern as well and I've read/ talked with many people living it.

It isn't the fear of growing past her, it's the fear of growing past her so far that I can't ever come back.

-PM

PM - I am looking at my sitch like this:

My marriage is over, gone, kaput!

I am on my path and my W is on hers, they are separate and may be parallel or going in opposite directions, it doesn't matter.

I need to keep on my path for me and only for me, as does she for herself.

I have hope that our paths cross in the future and that while we each remain on our own paths, that we can be together in the future.

I know that I will never stop loving my W, it isn't something that I could do if I wanted.

I am truly starting to understand that I have to become happy with me, with or w/o my wife.

This is just me though.

What I am seeing in your words is that you are not allowing yourself to move forward with you. Maybe i am wrong.

That may be the case.

As far as she knows, though, I'm moving forward and not waiting for her. And she both needed and deserved that release from me.

It may seem like I am talking out of both sides of my mouth, and maybe I'm not explaining it very well, but I am figuring out how to:

1) move forward
2) without expectations, and
3) while still being "in love."

My FOCUS is on me and my ladies.

And maybe I seem like an incoherent loon at this point. I recognize that possibility.

You see, I'm not in all that different a spot than I was fourteen years ago. There was this girl that I liked who I didn't have a chance in the world of landing - so much so that I didn't even try. So in a way I'm back to square 1.

-PM