How can you mend a broken heart?

[RosaLinda]

Thanks, Ellie, Magic, Sailing, Snodderly, Rose, Nero, Wonka, rH and Portia, you are all such good friends. Ellie! Both contacts in one eye! You are too funny! You too Wonka! Thanks for your good wishes Portia, we're all under a lot of stress, and you're right, it cannot be good for us.

I saw an ophthalmologist yesterday evening. He did a ton of tests, and I have to return in a week for more. The verdict is I have rosacea in my eyes, and a cataract in my left eye that somehow folded in on itself, causing the double vision. That sounds bizarre to me, as I thought a cataract was just a clouding of the lens. He says it must be removed and I will be able to see great out of my left eye without glasses when he's done, and he also gave me drops for the rosacea. Maybe I'll get a monocle for my right eye! That would look sharp

The double vision is making me feel really sick to my stomach, and my H suggested I try an eye patch. Sometimes he really seems to care about me

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rH, Mz. J, SweetRed and Magic, I love that Munson book, and feel that it holds many lessons for anyone dealing with a spouse's MLC, and for me personally. rH, how nice that Laura Munson actually replied to your email! She sounds like a really special kind of person. Very deep thinking and caring. Red I am also jealous that her H "saw the light" within one summer, and did not get an OW. What do you think of it so far J and Magic?

I feel like I really need to sit quietly and ponder some of the things she said and did on a deeper level. A much deeper level. Because on a shallower level, they tick me off.

Especially their trips. And my H's trip. Munson spent a year in Italy when she was in college, and always longed to return. She took her D12 to Italy for a month just before BD, despite the fact that her H's business was floundering, and he was deeply concerned about money. She justified the expense because she paid for the trip using "her own money" she had earned by writing. I'm not sure why the money she earned writing wasn't "our money." And within days of her return, her H delivered BD.

But she justified taking the trip because it was something she always wanted to do. She wrote that her therapist had advised "don't ever spend half your life depriving yourself of something you so purely and deeply love. What kind of imbecile would do that?" Munson wrote "If we deprive ourselves of our greatest dreams, how are we setting ourselves up to be treated by our husbands?"

Then when her H delivers BD, says he does not love her anymore and is moving to an apartment in town, she calmly realizes professing her love for him will just annoy him, and advises him that he needs an adventure for his "emotional well being." She suggests he go hiking in Australia or fishing in Alaska. He refused, said they could not afford it.

Firstly HOW did she know not to scream "but I love you" when she heard I love you but...??? How did she realize in that split second that he was only saying he did not love her because he did not love himself? How crazy is that? Are some people natural DBers? What is wrong with the rest of us?

And secondly, WTF is with wanting to send her H away, alone, without her, on a soul searching trip? Would she have felt the same if he had an OW he planned to travel with?

I feel like there is a lesson for me to learn here about my H's trip to Russia. I have already accepted that this is something he needs to do, and will lovingly let him go. But I feel that if I could get over the festering pain caused by the fact that he will be living with a woman, whom he has convinced himself that he is in love with, for that month, I could maybe learn something about his motivation from Laura Munson. About his need for adventure without me, and about how to eagerly and willingly send him away on a voyage of discovery without me.

I feel as if this trip is going to change him forever, and am afraid because I will never know what the changes are and what caused them. He won't share any of that with me. And the fact of RT being there, helping him discover a whole new world and way of life, is a big thorn in my side, almost too much to bear at times. I feel as if I already lost most of my H, the best of my H, and am living with a hollow shell. And now he will be gone forever.

I guess I need to read it again, like you did rH.