Maybell XXXII

[Maybell]

Claire, yep. Not sure how to implement, though, do you have a plan?

Betsey, thank you, I do appreciate your perspective and I'm going to stew on your words for a while.

This is NOT a but. This is processing. Maybe clarifying.

I don't think I'm that bitter when he's not around. I don't talk about him much unless I'm asked or if there is some past event I'm trying to put in its proper place as part of my processing process. What was real? What wasn't? Where did I go wrong? What is his?

RIGHT NOW, I still feel the same response to him that I always felt. Meaning, that I feel the same connection to him that I felt when I very first knew him. That he and I are... I don't know... sympatico? I don't know. But I feel a physical sensation of belonging together.

Now I'm trying to really let go of him. But when I SEE him, I want to say casual connecting things like "Hey, did you see Walking Dead this week?" But I DON'T want to say that -- because what's happened between us was so destructive and I don't want to gloss over it and I know that's how he'd take it. So I overstate the coldness just to keep myself from reaching out to him again and making a fool of myself some more.

He doesn't want me. OK. I HEAR that. I am living it. I'm trying to live it gracefully. It is really, really hard to let go of him when my instinct is to connect, and I can see that he's standing there waiting for it.

(is it worth saying that my instinct with people generally is to connect? and that this is part of that?)

He doesn't want the marriage back. He just wants us to be friends. Because I'm his best friend but he wants passion. I can't live with that. At least, not for a long time. Not till my life has been lived for a while without him and all the detritus of this destruction has been left behind.

I'm not contradicting what you're saying and I promise to reread your posts more carefully and really take your message to heart. For what it's worth, I am a very different person from who I was even only three years ago, and a lot of that is due to the kindess of people weighing in here. I do take a little pride in that.