PatientMan - 6th Edition - Acting Divorced

[melissag]

Glad you had a great weekend and things are going well with your girls.

I think you are just going round and round in circles in your head, and trying to find some way to do the impossible, which is hang on to whatever it is you have with your XW in the hopes of it becoming more some day, without risking getting hurt again.

If you can figure out how to make this happen, please let me know. I will do it too.

The bottom line is, are you willing to risk repeated heartbreak for the possibility that your XW's tide will eventually come all the way to the shore where you are, and stay there? And the problem, of course, is that you have no idea what will happen, so it's kind of a crap shoot.

You are correct, you cannot force her to grow. However, you can tell her that she must address these issues if she wants to have a relationship with you. Or you can just accept that she may well never tackle her issues, and decide whether the person she is now, and the R you have now, is enough for you.

And then you need to think about whether it's even possible for her to address these issues when you are around all the time. But it seems to me to figure that out requires you to find out exactly what she means when she says she needs to make sure she is okay on her own. And no, you don't need to make and enforce boundaries for her, but you can make the boundary for you, if you want - that you won't have an R with her unless and until she makes an effort to "fix" herself.

I feel like, for all of us, our decisions on how to behave with respect to our WASs are dependent upon how we feel about ourselves and how much we can take. A few weeks ago, it seemed like you were just done. Maybe you are not quite done yet. Not ready to give up. Fair enough. You could always just keep this up until the point where you really are done. But I don't think there is any way to insulate yourself from hurt in the process.