Do it again...

[RiverRat812]

"How did I end up here at 3am, typing this message on a blow up mattress in the spare room at my Mom's?

That's the question that keeping me awake... Now I guess I should tell my story.

If you look at my profile, you'd probably scratch your head a say "Why is someone with a 7 year old profile posting in the FN thread?" Well, let's tell that story and then I can move to why I'm on a mattress at Mom's starting my DB journey all over.

To make the backstory short, I joined the DB forum during my last separation in 2007. We had been married with no kids up til that point. Life had been alright up until a few years before that, good jobs, new home and all the other things that went along with it. But there had always been a disfunctional aspect of our M, a lot of the disfunction stemmed from FOO issue for both us. For me, it was anger issue, self-esteem issues and alcohol/substance abuse problems. For her, they were control issues, self-esteem and codependency.

At some point along the way, the grass began to look greener, as a result I ended up in a EA/PA with an OW. This, as well as all the other issues, got compounded when I lost my job and went into a downward spiral that culminated with our S just a week before Christmas of 2006.

After a couple months of feeling sorry for myself, I began to put the pieces of my life back together. With a decent IC, a good recovery program and support from some good friend, I really got into a good place. At some point during the beginning of Summer 2007, I discovered the DB forums and the books. I bought the books and read them so many time, they were worn and dog-eared. I read everything I could on the forums, but I lurked and never told my story... Until now.

The W and I did not have much contact during that Summer. Which was for the best, since I did EVERYTHING wrong possible in the months prior. But with a bit of recovery behind me and the DB techiques, I used the LTR. By August, the W informed me she wanted to move forward with the D. We had begun the discussions about the process a couple months before. August moved into September and I was working my butt off: GAL, doing 180's and really paying close attention to how I communicated and listened. I did a lot more listening than talking most times. And whay I heard wasn't pretty and didn't seem promising.

September began with a bang, she wanted to have the D papers signed and filed by the end of the month. I believe she was timing it to coincide with her birthday. I had one request, that we sit an meet with an MC, not to work on R but to work on any unresolved issues with the hope that we could both move on with a clean slate.

The D papers were signed an notarized on 9/15/2007, we met with the MC that same afternoon. That may have been the most painful session I have ever done. I left there feeling like I had given everything I had and that I had come up short. Time to move on.

But... She didn't file. She actually open up dialog between us. After a couple weeks, we went back and saw the MC again and the session was different. October came and so did her birthday, still no talk about the D. By mid-October, the discussion was R and by November, we were back together again.

... Lets fast forward through the "good" years. They were all good but they were better than any we had for a very long time. Out of that, we got pregnant and we had our daughter in January 2010. There were ups and downs, but they never ever felt like the horrorshow rollercoaster that came before, or the one that would follow.

At some point along the way, all the hard work I had done on my personal recovery was lost. Things became strained, we were seeing a new MC. The spiral began again and really got bad in March of this year and we stopped sleeping together. It's now June and we are longer living together. Until a couple hours ago, I'd felt like I'd forgotten everything I learned the first time, about my personal recovery and DB'ing.

I'm back and I'm posting this time. I get the feeling that R will not be as easy this time around. But I get the sense that the work I do this time will mean more since I know what it was like to have gotten back a love that I had lost once before.