Finally asking for help:

[Solo15]

Sandi2

Can't thank you enough for wading through my mess. I totally get it. Having read through many of your posts I have come to understand the mentality. Not just as a man, but as a human being, I've fallen out of love with someone before in another relationship. The chasing, loving, "i'll do anything", just pushes you away more. It's your feelings that matter. Once you are checked out, you're checked out. At most you just feel a little pity for them. I guess the weight of all the years is just so heavy it clouds your understanding. It's denial. When I was younger, my W was insanely in-love with me. Like, soul-blisteringly, madly in-love with me. I wanted it back. Could not believe something that potent could be lost. Saying that love was a choice was true. Love is, but attraction is not. Big difference when it comes to romance, the eros component.

Like you always say, she was attracted to the kind of man I was. But I changed and became codependent, rolled over, and lost her respect. Attraction is were it all begins. She is sexually and physically attracted to me(in abstract), but she has marked me as weak in her heart, and can't feel anything for me other than friendship, which I could care less about at this point. We all have our own code of honor, but friends do not do what she did.

At this point, I finally can see it. I have quite the well of manliness to draw from, and have foolishly allowed it to go untapped for a long time. I gave too much of myself, and I lost her respect. Big lesson learned. But more importantly, I lost myself, my happiness, and my hope for a future. That is not the person I want to be. It's not the father I want to be for my 3 daughters. I've been so focused on her, that I didn't realize that I lost my soul in it. It is intoxicating to think that I could be myself, to open my arms and take in the world without shame, restriction, judgement, or blame. I can be myself. And so far, everyone in my life loves that guy. So I'm just gonna work on sorting out the bad bits, and embrace who I am.

This is where the detachment comes in. In all my communications with her, I speak of my feelings for her in the past tense. "I loved you". "I was in-love with you". She has picked up on that, and she should. Those things were true of the man that I was. I am not that man anymore. I am moving on with my life. At some point, I have to have enough integrity in this to stand my ground and not be affected by her. My attraction to her is an echo. It was, and is not. I can still hear it, feel it, but the attraction happened a long time ago, and it's falling away. I am taking back my life. She keeps saying that she loves me, but I call BS. That is not love. It's selfishness. My soul loves her. Powerfully. But it shouldn't.

When I was with my IC last week, as I was leaving, I told her that I was excited. Not to feel happiness, but just to not feel this way. I told her I didn't know what to do with my life now, that she was supposed to be my future. She stopped me, and said something awesome: "Every time you think that, I want you to replace what you said with 'it was supposed to be my sh*tty future". I laughed, but what a gift that was. My STBX's fog might not be lifted, but mine has.

I'm not moving forward, GAL, working on myself for her anymore. I'm doing it for me. She made her choice, and I made mine. D*mn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. My next relationship is going to be amazing beyond anything I've ever had, and next time, I'm going to keep myself. If my STBX decides that she wants back in, then she's going to have to be the one to fight for me. This sounds a little ridiculous and hyper-arrogant, and it is. I am over-compensating, but I need to in order to break free.

So Sandi2, again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping me. Your wisdom presses on a nerve, and words cannot express how fundamentally you have helped me through this, not just in your last post, but in sharing with so many wounded souls. Keep going, please. This is a huge labor of love, but it helps so many, even silently. I read your posts for many months before I signed up, and they added this clarity to my situation, this ringing bell that pushed me back to reality. I didn't want to listen to you, but truth shines bright, and eventually it all made sense.

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. -Rainer Maria Rilke