I am sorry things are this bad. It's very hard to face all the lies and even worse to try to understand why someone would choose to go that path. You invested a lot of patient and care for a person that stabbed you in the back.
I get to the conclusion that is just very impossible to understand sick people, and our Hs are sick at the moment. There is a time in life that all our lives crumble and we look at ourselves and try to make some sense of all it is.
For some sane people it goes more smooth, looking for options to get better and succeed in a decent way, but for others they get mixed up in old hurts, patterns of disillusion and pain.
Your H has a pair of unfortunately parents, they are not helping him, they are destroying him instead. All what they are doing is to add to his low self esteem, his insecurities. Maybe one day your H will be able to cut the umbilical cord and decide his own life, but we have no idea when he will be ready to do so.
You are a very decent and smart person, but it's very hard to just let go. I myself have been going to similar feelings right now. I am simply very hurt. All the lies, all the cover ups, the nice words, the "I care about you", I don't what to hurt you further, all the BS keeps boiling inside us.
The bottom line at all this comes to that road of decisions, we have our morals, we know what we want, we have been working on ourselves because we know we are not angels, we become better and believe that all people can go through such time of developing themselves. But then we need to face that our partner is no longer walking that path. They get lost, they want to walk some other road, that we don't even see how they will benefit from it.
I have been getting many advice and support from this board and I believe I can be happier if I listen to it. Our partners have to walk whatever it is by themselves, and we need to keep improving our own lives so we can be whole with or without them.
Now, it comes to the crossroads of decisions. Do I file for D? do I file Legal Separation? Do I wait and assume the financial risks? Or do I file to protect myself? Now the emotional side gets crumbled into the practical side. If you wait you feel stupid and have the constant fear of losing even further. If you think to file then the pain of seeing it so final starting eating your life away.
For me I have another take on the Kids issue. I feel that because I have kids it is somewhat easier to decide to serve papers to my H. I feel the obligation to ignore all my feelings and to think very practical of how to protect my children against my sick H. All his actions are all over the place, I do not know who this man is anymore, so I feel justified to file the legal separation and take care after the ones that can't protect themselves.
You see, it's all so complicated because of our hearts. Selena Gomez has a song where she says that there is all the reasons to get away but "The heart wants what it wants". If we could just off the heart, it would all be so much easier.
So, what to do. I guess there is no easy way out here. We need to grief, cry, feel sad and we need to force ourselves to go out, dress better, eat better, surround ourselves with good listening friends, we need to ask for help and let other people help us. We need to get in touch with our inside, our deepest values and them make some sense of why we need to stand tall.
We need to look at all the scenarios and take the decision of a practical point of view. The real deal is that there are the ones before us that are in a better place even with a bad outcome. I guess if you have yourself, then you can always find peace and happiness somewhere else, or go back to your H in the future in a different R.
I say this to you and to myself as well... give yourself time, practice every day to enjoy yourself, think about what exactly is hurting you. Think if it all boils to a point of what you have as an impression of a M/R and what is real about your partner. Go dark, NC for your own sake. It's the hardest part of the DBing, is to really understand to respect ourselves and live our lives. Is to lose control of all what is related to our partners, is to let go and take good care after what we want and who we are.
I am, for the first time in my entire life, learning this. It's awkward at first, but slowly it start making more and more sense. And it's somewhat possible we will be more attractive if we get stronger and stand by ourselves. Read 25 and get some ideas there. That lady did it, she is a tough baby.
My heart goes out to you, I know exactly how hard it is to be lied to, betrayed, hurt... but C still have herself, her high values, her charm and a lot of life to live. It's time to take care after yourself and let H walk his path. Maybe it's the only way to get him back, it to let him go.
