Great points, both of you. I need talk like this - I tend to lose myself in a whirlwind of thoughts until I don't know which end is up anymore.
As far as shifting blame on the OW, I have to admit that's all on me. I don't believe H has ever once even suggested that it was anyone's fault but his own. The tendency to lay any blame on her has come exclusively from me, and I don't have an delusions that she was a predator and "seduced" him, necessarily; from all I gather, it was all him, at the start anyway. I guess my need to lay blame on her is because I become outraged at his continual defending of her. I am mostly just disgusted that there are women who have no problem whatsoever getting involved with a married man. Early on he had the gall to talk about how loyal and what a "good person" she is. I suppose it just planted the seeds of my obsession to show him what an idiot he was being because she absolutely did play him for a fool and was generally a horrible person.
But whatever, as you said, she's nothing.
As for me, I need to work harder at GAL. I could write another book on that, but basically I'm not as good at it as I need to be. I'm a rather introverted person and before all this happened, I was pretty satisfied with my general GALness. I go to the gym regularly, I had lost over 30 lbs in the last couple of years (now over 50 lbs. - infidelity is unfortunately one of the best diets ever). I have good friends with whom I socialized on a semi-regular basis - part of a recipe group, regularly get together with a close-knit group of friends, etc. For me, that's all the GAL I wanted or required as I'm actually quite a homebody and it takes some effort for me to want to go socialize endlessly.
The "book" on this would be that in this way, H and I are very different. We did a personality test online (very informative!!) and it showed how important large groups of friends and acquaintances are to him, whereas I am generally happy with a smaller group of close friends. With him, though, we grew apart over the years because he liked to go out with his work friends (early on it was innocent, but still troubling that he liked to maintain a bit of a separate social life), and then as his job grew more stressful to the point of breaking him these past few years, he began a downward spiral of going to the bar after work with work friends, getting hammered, and essentially living a second partial life as a single person, since I was left in the suburbs. Thus allowing rich and fertile soil for screwing up big time and allowing affairs to develop. He played with fire.
But back to me, I reluctantly admit I know I need to do GAL much better. I have to admit, though, that I resent that I now have to jump through hoops and basically change my personality by trying to fill my life with new things in an attempt to "prove" that I'm moving on and have a full and rich life with or without him. I thought I had that. We went out with friends, we went on vacations, I went to the gym, I met my friends, etc. I actually LIKE staying home most of the time and maybe cooking, or having friends over, or taking an online class or doing a hobby. I guess that's not good enough to make him think I'm interesting enough.
Sorry. Guess I'm having a bit of a tantrum. I really have no desire to go sign up for a class or take up yoga in addition to my gym, or join random new groups so I can look like I'm doing something. But I guess that mentality helped land me here, so....
I'll keep looking for GAL things that I will hopefully enjoy.
Edit: Wanted to add that the point made about the fact he doesn't TRULY believe he would ever really lose me is spot on. That used to be true. Unfortunately, it's not anymore. Every day I think more and more about what it would be like to first be on my own for the first time in my life, and second, to maybe find someone some day who valued me, maybe even adored me, who would want to beat a guy up for looking at me funny rather than fantasizing about me having sex with other men, and who would look at my love and devotion to him as an asset instead of feeling that made me a boring "sure thing". I'm not sure at all that he won't end up losing me for good.
