Looking for inspiration

[Train]

You are CLEARLY really smart, mdu, and I think you're on the brink of realizing soon (if you don't already) that who you THINK your H is - yes, even who he has SAID he is - may not be who he really is. In fact, many men will tell nagging, controlling wives what they believe the wife WANTS to hear (or what their wives have TRAINED them to feel/say).

Let me be blunt, at the risk of sounding harsh: if you knew your H the way you think you know him, you wouldn't be here right now.

I feel I may be beating a dead horse here on one simple issue, but it's one that, through what I'm gleaning from your own journaling, is really nagging at me (and I feel it may be SO fundamental to what's going on in your M), so I'll say it again: what was happening in your M before ... who you AND your H were before ....... (listen carefully to this) ....... WAS NOT WORKING.

Who YOU were before? The driver? The planner? It wasn't working. Though it wasn't AT ALL the correct, moral way to handle his unhappiness, he cheated on you, mdu. And in doing so, he was looking for something different. He was RUNNING from what you were giving him.

STOP making excuses for it. It doesn't matter if you handle project management in your career. It doesn't matter if you're so efficient that you can bake apple pies while hoola-hooping on your toes and cooking gourmet meals for your kids while watching them squirt water guns at 100 neighborhood kids while cleaning baseboards while organizing bookshelves and watering your freaking petunias. It doesn't matter if your H told you - when your M was like a dead freaking fish - that he's "not a planner." It. was. not. working. He. was. not. happy. He looked outside of your marriage for something DIFFERENT THAN WHAT YOU WERE OFFERING.

Truly, he is NOT a planner. He and I have discussed this often.

Stop convincing yourself that you know who he is or that you can believe what he told you during your crappy marriage. You DON'T know who he is. And maybe he WASN'T being honest about who he is. Should I point out the obvious here about your H's truthfulness?!?

Your H MAY have told you he wasn't "a planner" because - even to those of us on these boards, if I'm being honest - you seem to have to control *everything*. You have ALL the answers and ALL the excuses. Yet, you say your H "is NOT a planner" ... but then tell us that he has planned 4 out of 5 of your most recent "excursions," and you've been immensely happy and giddy and hopeful after them.

Am I confused?!?

The entire point of DBing, mdu, is to step outside the box and challenge our own way of thinking. It's to say: You know what? My M - most everything I thought and did - wasn't working. Maybe I don't know my H the way I think I did. Maybe I lost MYSELF along the way. Maybe the way I was doing things wasn't what I should be doing if I want to maintain my M.

I may be stepping wayyyyyyy out on a limb here with very limited information (only what I know from experience and research and what you've shared), but I think you have shown a pattern of making *a lot* of broad assumptions about who your H is and what he feels and what he's good at and what he's not good at ... ALL based on what your M was - and who you think your H was, based sometimes on who your H SAID he was - during your M and perhaps *before he cheated on you*.

You're forgetting to "think with a beginner's mind," one of the first principles of DBing.

You THINK you know your H so well, mdu. But you DON'T. Again, if you did, you wouldn't be here.

I've watched as you've rejected words of wisdom here. And I've watched as it has gotten you closer to your H. But there's *something* that keeps making him back away, right at the time you two have gotten soooooo close.

I can't help but feel it has something to do with you "driving" and assuming he's incapable of doing the same.

I think he's waiting to drive.

Why do you feel he can't take charge? Because he said he can't? When you guys were married? In that same marriage that fell apart?

Give the man some freaking rope, mdu. Give him a chance! Give him the freaking driver's seat!!! And stop making excuses.