Help Please: Chapter 2

[labug]

OK, this separation thing is a gift of time, right?

It is a period I can use to grow and improve myself. It is space from a situation that requires effort to detach from.

It is a gift I'm giving to H to grow and find himself too.

It's an opportunity for us to learn to communicate with one another in a more positive way, and the side bonus of that could potentially be reconciliation.

So why am I so upset at the distance between us if this is such a positive time? He has been friendly to me. He has been courteous and respectful of my time.

Why on earth would I want my old life back and be frustrated at this day???

You're upset at the distance because you're wishing for something else. That's the sticky part and the key to everything. No matter how much is great in our lives, it's that one thing that we feel we can't have that we focus on and allow to grow, to color our perceptions.

He's gone but he's not gone far.
You have many things to be grateful for in your life.
Choose to focus on the positives.

I should expect nothing, and proceed as though I am going to get nothing, and wait until he offers something real. Which could very possibly be never.

This has always been the case, we just don't know it until, well, until we know it.

Our Rs are so full of expectations. You know that expectations are resentments waiting to happen, right? When things we EXPECT to happen don't, then all of our fear kicks in and we react and then BAM! We're in the middle of it, wondering 'how the he!! did that happen?

Or we allow it to surface in the form of "you never blah, blah, blah" or "you always yadda, yadda, yadda" or "I always have to ..."

Stumps wrote this on his thread last week: ... then I guess the goal is to accept people as they are, where they are... Accept what they have to give when they give it...but give them space and freedom to not give it when that isn't where they are.

So true. Another point is, when we feel less expectation/resentment/shame (at not meeting those expectations) we can be more vulnerable and loving.

You know why people have affairs, or at least a big factor? It's shiny and new and exciting is one, but on a deeper level, it's making a connection with someone who at that point has nothing to hold against you, no built up history scarred with little failures and resentments.

Like soap scum in the shower.

I don't want this to turn into another novel but this jumped out at me:

I'm also not sure about dropping the reins with him. Part of our financial difficulty was that he was responsible for taking care of our finances. I assumed he was watching the budget too. But when I went to look it over it turned out he hadn't been and we were running ourselves seriously into the ground. I lost a lot of respect for him when I discovered that.

He felt that I'm sure. The day my H told me he was done was the culmination of an argument over a circumstance exactly as you describe.

How to Improve Your Marriage(book).....helped bring this dynamic in to focus for me. In general, women/mothers need (not a want, a need) to feel our nest is protected and safe. Men need to feel that they are providing appropriately and that they can keep their family safe.

That incident stirred the deepest fear and shame in my H and me, and neither of us could understand that and empathize with the other. We couldn't be that vulnerable. Our own egos, saving face, being right, got in the way of the R.

We couldn't look at the other with love and ask "Oh, danm honey, what happened here?" I knew full well he didn't want us to be going down the financial tube, he wasn't doing it TO me.

Instead he said, "I'm done!" and I said "Good, get out!"

We stuff and we stuff and we stuff because we don't want to feel the bad stuff but it all eventually comes out, in one way or another.

So I'll wrap this up by saying really think about your values and goals. I know you're not the only one to blame for this marital b/u but you're the only one here.

And the naked truth is, we can only fix ourselves.