Stuck On You

[Raine]

Hey everyone! I feel like I haven't a bit of a setback lately with me and moving forward. I feel like I need to get back to working on me and working through these things I know are holding me back. So, boom, here I am.

I felt like I was at the point that everything was so in the past that I never thought about it, but now it seems to be popping into my head more and more often, taking me by surprise. Why am I being sucked back into the place I had moved on from, knowing that being in such a place doesn't do anyone, especially me, any good?

New questions keep coming up in my mind, maybe old questions that I don't feel were answered or maybe I don't believe the answers are the same anymore. Not that they were answered with lies, but now feelings or retrospect are different. Or maybe it is I feel like his attitude has changed from when it was then.

I still don't feel like he is truly happy. The amount of stress we are under doesn't help, nor does it help when I feel like the bulk of responsibility is on me, yet he is the one that seems to be even more stressed out. I feel like we are in an even more stressful place than we were 3 years ago (whoa it was only 3 years ago?) and I was feeling so resentful of him.

It is different now from then. He now is there for me whenever I need or ask or however he figures he can be. He puts me first, he just wants to spend time with me, he is an amazing father. We are not the same people we were 3 years ago. And yet as much as I feel I have changed and grown and become better through all this, I still have this place in me full of anger. I still feel like I'm trying to heal from a horrible trauma. He feels horrible about how things affected me. He takes complete blame for it. He has even said that he feels guilty for coming back, and that I would have been better off without him. He feels like all he does is be a reminder of the pain.

I absolutely hate the OW. The one specific start of it all OW. The other ones don't bother me. They're over and done and in the who cares category. But this one, I can't shake her. It's not going away. I find myself scanning places we are at, expecting to run into her.

I think I am past it, forgiving or tell myself all the things we tell ourselves: that these OP are meaningless, if not her, then someone else, she truly meant nothing to him if he never got divorced, if he wasn't faithful to her, if their relationship was so volatile....but there it is again. I'm still holding onto it.

I guess what is difficult now is he doesn't really remember a lot of stuff. He doesn't have any blame for her. He feels she was an understanding person, not the person dropping ultimatums about him spending another holiday with my family and his kids. She was a great person who he treated badly. They had something special. (Yeah, I want to vomit even typing that.) He doesn't want to think he used her, because that would make him an even more horrible person than he feels he is now.

And in all this, I think, what about me? Don't I trump all that? Here is the home wrecker that did so much damage to me, yet he doesn't feel negative towards her. And I get that. He takes the blame. And the blame is on him. She never promised me anything. But I don't know how anyone could think she was a good person. He sees how much I hate this OW and just thinks that I should hate him that much, not her. And maybe that's true, but he is the one who has made amends. And that's just a lot easier to forgive.

The thing is, this is mine to deal with whether with him or not. He definitely has the mindset that it would have been easier for me to deal with, not being with him. He doesn't get that. And I can't explain it either. What he sees is who I allowed him to see back before we got together and what he gets now is the reality of a woman who went through something tough and she is letting him in and not putting up walls.

He has said too that he couldn't bare losing me as a friend and that he couldn't bare the thought of me hating him. And being womanly I think, "WTF does that mean? So are you with me because you want me as a friend, companion, confidant, but you'd much rather be sleeping with whoever you want?" Which he has assured me is no, and that he would only ever be interested in sleeping with someone that he is in a committed relationship with. And he has assured me the person he wants to be with is me.

So there you go guys. Nothing but honest reality from me. I am grateful to have what I have. I feel very lucky to be with him and where our relationship is at. I just want this to stop holding me back.