Lost Hope (5)

[Zues126]

Maximus, just wrote Julie a long post and not ready for another book, but want to answer some of the questions.

I don't know how to define the difference between an EA and what happened with me. The lines blur. One big difference is that there was nothing done or said that would've been regarded as inappropriate. EA's are a betrayal in the outside world. Inappropriate conversations, confessions of love, romantic fantasies, sharing souls, etc. With me if you'd followed me around with a camera for 3 months you wouldn't have been able to ransom me for enough to buy a KitKat bar. So I'd say it was more of an inappropriate desire.

As far as how I handled it, well...first it took some time for me to truly understand what it was. I was in denial for a while, and confused as to how I was feeling. When I finally realized it was truly inappropriate I tried different ways of snapping myself out of it. I can't remember if this was for a week or two months. But I never acted on anything, and tried to find different ways to change my feelings. I escalated my attempts until finally I spoke up about it, determined to do whatever it took to avoid going further down that road.

Julie mentioned seeing how she could feel distrustful of me after that. Funny, I thought she'd have reason to trust me more. Considering the situation I'm not really sure how anyone could have handled it with more integrity. The only thing I could've done differently is not felt the feelings I was feeling. Hmmm. I'll tip my hat to those without temptation.

Do I consider my partnership a marriage? Yes. Because we were married. I didn't leave because I don't believe in quitting a marriage, PERIOD. Had we stayed together it's quite possible that in 2 years or 5 years we would be different people and would have worked through what we were struggling with. If not we would've been together forever either way. Look up the first post I wrote on my last thread "Black and White" and you'll get a glimpse as to how I view this.

What did I do to improve the relationship? Shoot. Not enough. I had no idea how big the disconnect was, how differently she truly saw things. I was naive, and believed we'd work through things. I went to counseling right after that and still go. I read a ton of books about things like this. I tried a lot of ways to improve the R that were probably 'my ways', and failed to really try to work on things 'her ways'. And at times I was so worn out with it that I'd take a break and just live my life for a while. When we wouldn't talk it wasn't out of anger or rage, but rather just defeat and fatigue.

I would do things differently if I could do them again, but as they say "experience is learning something you needed to know, right after you needed to know it". Unfortunately for STBX she gave up on me. That assumes that I'll always be the way I was at 34. That's just not the case. But whatever. I'm accepting that this world doesn't work the way I think it ought to, and that there's still a lot of good in it.

Talk more later, thanks M.