Dynamic of a family revised

[BrightFuture]

Mighty, so sorry you are to deal with all that. You are right, they should be the once to be hiding from people. It is just so wrong for them to be so selfish and inconsiderate of your and the kids’ feelings. But, why I’m surprised? My H tried to start a r with our mutual friend’s cousin. I suppose he had plans to bring her to live in our vacation home, while my clothes and stuff was still there. Did he think about my feelings? NO.

I know what you mean about regressing back after so much progress has been done. I believe it is good to keep talking about your feelings until you don’t have a need anymore. This board is the perfect place to do it. I don’t know how many times I expressed the same feelings and thought over and over. And every time there is someone who would gently remind you to stay focuses on you, but at the same time listen to what you have to say without judgment.

I don’t really know what to tell you in terms of the “response training”. I would try to tell myself that I got the best years with xh, and what she’s got now is a broken man who did terrible things to his family. Here is the quote I saved from some relationship article: “if you want to marry someone who honors the commitment of marriage, why would you date someone who is married? What does that say about your own commitment to marriage?”

Then this one:
“Surely the craziest and most destructive form of infidelity is the temporary insanity of falling in love. You do this, not when you meet somebody wonderful (wonderful people don't screw around with married people) but when you are going through a crisis in your own life, can't continue living your life, and aren't quite ready for suicide yet. An affair with someone grossly inappropriate—someone decades younger or older, someone dependent or dominating, someone with problems even bigger than your own—is so crazily stimulating that it's like a drug that can lift you out of your depression and enable you to feel things again. Of course, between moments of ecstasy, you are more depressed, increasingly alone and alienated in your life, and increasingly hooked on the affair partner. Ideal romance partners are damsels or "dumsels" in distress, people without a life but with a lot of problems, people with bad reality testing and little concern with understanding reality better.”

And this:
“Romantic affairs lead to a great many divorces, suicides, homicides, heart attacks, and strokes, but not to very many successful remarriages. No matter how many sacrifices you make to keep the love alive, no matter how many sacrifices your family and children make for this crazy relationship, it will gradually burn itself out when there is nothing more to sacrifice to it. Then you must face not only the wreckage of several lives, but the original depression from which the affair was an insane flight into escape.”

I just could not say it better. Keep this in mind, Mighty, that their r built on lies and betrayal, it is not going to last. I have an idea. Why don’t you start bringing some popcorn at your kid’s games. As soon as you see xh, you start eating popcorn and smiling, like you are watching some crazy movie, but you know that you can always get up and leave. Just a thought.