Summer of Growth and Acceptance

[Zues126]

I wouldn't send that. I've spent literally a full hour trying to think how to explain why, and how I can explain better. But I'm not sure I can.

There's something you're missing here. If you saw what you were missing your tone would be entirely different. That's it. Tone. When I read your message it has you talking about your frustrations, your complaints of his, borderline diagnosing him, and basically saying "I don't understand why you're acting like a butt-head, can you explain that to me because I need you to get this fixed because I'm not happy with your behavior". But in your H's mind (or at least this is how I felt):

Picture buying a dog for the family. Now- lock the dog in a kennel all day. When it gets to leave the kennel it gets excited to see people and starts getting too worked up, so you beat the dog and scream at it. You feed it some days, but not daily, and it loses weight, and more to the point spends it's days in hunger pain, lonely, isolated, locked up, and when it barks out a cry for help it get's a muzzle put on it to shut it up.

THAT is my last try to explain how your H probably feels. Now you're pointing out that he's snarling, that he's not a very good lap dog. But here's the difference...he isn't a dog. He wasn't locked in that kennel. He stayed their out of love, and out of hope. He stayed there because he loved you. He stayed their because he hoped you'd let him out of the kennel, let him have run of the house, play with the family, etc. He wanted it so much that he spent years of his life locked up for you, hoping if you loved him you'd understand how that felt and would give him food and water and attention.

Now he's grieving this won't be the case. He's off running the open fields, hunting and eating rabbits, jumping in streams and having a grand old time. Yes, he'd prefer to be domesticated and have a loving owner take care of him, but when he looks back at the kennel he used to be locked up in he can't come back.

Unless...he still hopes that someday you'll see this, that you'll tell him to come back and everything can be different, you'll feed him and water him, he can have the life he wants there with you. But what he hears is "bad dog, you keep running away, back in your kennel, what's wrong with you?" But he's learned he's not a bad dog. He can't live like that, and he's not going to spend more years in a kennel hoping you figure that out.

I think the reason I am so passionate on this is because this is why my M is over. Even while my M is dead, I still have flashbacks to being that misunderstood and neglected, and when I read your sitch it all comes back. So part of me is trying to fulfill me many year long quest to get through on this topic to someone.

I've already given my verbiage for what I'd send. Maybe it looks the same, but the tone is really different. You need the tone to demonstrate compassion for his pain, remorse for driving him this far away, and a hint that if he risks further pain and opens his heart to you that there is a chance he'll be heard. I don't know how you can really communicate that until you FEEL that way, and you simply don't. So I don't really see whatever you send really being effective.

Personally I'd recommend just not saying anything and letting the conversation die, using the gift of time to focus on making some changes in yourself. That is a 10 mile journey that you took a few hundred steps down and have since been derailed by focusing on navigating through your own emotions and hung up on your H's bad behavior. That is a journey you will really have to walk, and if you do and your H is still in the wings maybe there's a future. I think letting this drop off will show him that you are capable of recognizing you were making a mistake in how you were handling things and aren't just charging around in a demanding and controlling way...and if you do pursue the conversation make sure you read my last few posts carefully like 10 times each...I am being serious. Maybe something will get through.

PS- I'm NOT suggesting this is all on you. I'm not suggesting his behavior is ok. I am just trying to focus on what you can control, and what would've had to happen for my M to stay together. Again, my STBX left me and has plenty of family and friends that are telling her she made the right decision, that she did everything she could do, that I'm just a bad guy. I just wish more for you and your H, and again, I think you can do it.