If we own the story then we can write the ending

[RosaLinda]

I like your new thread title too Andy! Very positive So, did your wife move out, and did you get any fall out from your call to your lawyer? How are your daughters handling it all? It's so nice to read you're going out with your friends. Yum, a little sushi with old friends makes any day a little brighter right?

Hey, I had some interesting news today. My ex has decided he does not want to be alone, and since I won't take him back, he has decided to marry his Russian girlfriend whom he deserted just three weeks ago! Now how is that for an excellent reason to get married? Their plan is for her to come here to New York on a regular tourist visa, get married, and then apply for a spouse visa. It boggles my mind.

To make sure I am staying strong, and am fighting my innate urge to rescue and fix everyone (my ex in this case ) I like to read over my old notes from the past 6 years, and found some on detachment that I hope may help you. So here is still another list which I copied from someone's thread on the forum here. Maybe URWorthy, maybe Job. I'm sorry I cannot remember and therefore give credit.

Detachment is the:

• Ability to allow people, places or things the freedom to be themselves
• Holding back from the need to rescue, save or fix another person from being sick, dysfunctional or irrational
• Giving another person the space to be himself
• Disengaging from an over-enmeshed or dependent relationship with people
• Willingness to accept that you cannot change or control a person
• Developing and maintaining a safe, emotional distance from someone whom you have previously given a lot of power to affect your emotional outlook on life
• Establishing emotional boundaries between you and those people you have become overly enmeshed or dependent with in order that all of you might be able to develop your own sense of autonomy and independence
• Process by which you are free to feel your own feelings when you see another person falter and fail and not be led by guilt to feel responsible for their failure or faltering
• Ability to maintain an emotional bond of love, concern and caring without the negative results of rescuing, enabling, fixing or controlling
• Placing all things in life into a healthy, rational perspective and recognizing that there is a need to back away from the uncontrollable and unchangeable realities of life
• Ability to exercise emotional self-protection and prevention so as not to experience greater emotional devastation from having hung on beyond a reasonable and rational point
• Ability to let people you love and care for accept personal responsibility for their own actions and to practice tough love and not give in when they come to you to bail them out when their actions lead to failure or trouble for them
• Ability to allow people to be who they "really are" rather than who you "want them to be"
• Ability to avoid being hurt, abused, taken advantage of by people who in the past have been overly dependent or enmeshed with you

My biggest problems were with accepting that I could not change my ex, with not feeling guilty when I saw him floundering and did not rush to help him, and in letting him accept responsibility for and suffer the consequences of his own actions. Do you have any problems with any of these?