Totally Confused

[Accuray]

loualea,

If you read other stories on this forum I think you'll see a very consistent pattern between your situation and others you'll read here. It goes like this:

You and H at some point stopped meeting each other's needs or meeting each other's expectations and resentments started to build. Usually these get smashed down or rationalized away and generally not dealt with.

At some point, for one party or the other, the resentment and disappointment becomes too much, and it is no longer worth it to stay in the relationship. At the same time, the thought of leaving it is very painful, so lots of confusion results.

At the time one of the parties decides to pull away, there is usually another person involved -- an emotional affair, a friendship that has gone over the line, or even just a one-sided infatuation that suddenly provides motivation for the wayward spouse to step away.

Until that point, it's normal that the wayward spouse hasn't voiced any complaints, which is why we refer to it as "dropping a bomb". Monday everything is fine and on Tuesday, your marriage was "never good" and is over.

Once that happens, the things the wayward spouse will say to you and what they will do tend to follow a very predictable script. They will tell you that they were never happy, that the marriage was never good, etc. They will not apologize for anything, they will tend to show no sadness, remorse or doubt. They tend to just completely close themselves off emotionally.

What this tends to do to the "left behind spouse" is to initially confuse and terrify you, and then make you feel like it must be your fault, and send you running to the therapist and the self-help section of the library. At the same time, your spouse's withdrawal makes you want them more than you ever did, and sends you on a cycle of begging, pleading, and/or other pursuing behaviors.

That pursuit drives the wayward spouse even further away, and their lack of engagement in response to your overtures exacerbates how you're feeling and just starts an emotional death spiral.

That's kind of what happens in virtually every case.

The prescription for what to do about it is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to do.

You basically have to accept that you can't overtly do anything to "get them back". You just have to accept that, and that takes time.

You have to accept that the only thing you can control and change is yourself.

You can then decide if there are things about you that you would like to change, and can pursue doing so for your own benefit, but not as a strategy to get your spouse back.

That's not to say that "all help is lost", many people do reconcile, but they do so by following the rules of DB: Do a 180 on your negative behaviors, act-as-if everything is fine, and "get a life" outside of your spouse.

The longer you hold onto pursuing behaviors, the deeper you dig the hole.

The soonest that you just "let go of the rope" and let the wayward spouse do whatever it is they feel they need to do, the best served you will be.

It's a bitter pill to swallow, and will often lead to shock and PTSD for the left behind spouse. Therefore you need to focus on self-care, and getting through the initial shock as best you can, and will then need to be patient, as recovering from these situations can take a very long time -- months or years, not days or weeks.

Take care of yourself -- with time everything will be okay.

Acc