Letting go, finally

[JGuy]

Warning: Uncensored JGuy responding.

Wow, Azzork and Zeus... you guys sure are tough on me and it hurts. I feel like I'm getting somewhere but whether you realize it or not, your words are having the effect of pushing me down, telling me that it's not enough, undermining any small amount of confidence that I have started to build. It is very discouraging. You are losing me here and I really don't feel supported when you take this hard approach on me. It feels like you don't understand me and it reinforces my impression that this world is a cold, prickly place where I am not emotionally safe.

You are suggesting that I do and say things which would require acting and being untrue to myself. At times I did experiment with this approach, but it felt very wrong to put on a distant, composed front toward my W as though I was strong and had it all together. I don't. This whole experience has made me more raw and vulnerable than I have felt in as long as I can remember. I am not a baby, but there is a baby in me that is seriously hurting from birth trauma which I never healed from and which my W's betrayal has re-triggered big time. It is like being abandoned all over again by the one person whom I trusted the most to be a safe haven in this scary world. I get the impression that you have no idea what I'm going through in this regard. It is like a double whammy. The betrayal of being cheated on plus on top of that, being thrown face first back into the extremely vulnerable feelings of abandonment that were my first moments in this world.

I couldn't care less about being attractive right now. All I have is a hope that my attractiveness will come back in time, with healing myself. To heal, I need to care for that part of myself that is the baby who never received the nurturing I needed from my mother at birth. That part of me was bonded to my W inappropriately and that was my codependent coping mechanism. I am working on this with the help of IC but it is really, really difficult. Please understand that you have absolutely no idea... My journey is not one of "manning up" but of becoming very sensitive and loving to my own "inner baby" and learning how to nurture that part of myself so that he can finally heal and won't need to seek it from a woman anymore. Being ashamed of that part of myself and denying it by trying to man up is exactly what got me into this mess. This stupid culture that we live in does not value men who cry, who are sensitive. This culture can go screw itself. I am what I am.

I am celebrating my small steps, with or without you guys. I am snapping out of any illusion I was in before that my W is remotely capable of being an emotionally safe person for me to bond with. So what I can do, and which I have been doing, finally, is containing myself around her and taking back the responsibility of nurturing myself. This is my form of letting go and detaching, and for me, it is good enough.

For the record, I was already crying at the time my W walked in and surprised me. I stopped within 10 seconds. I didn't cuddle her... she came close to me, but I just laid there and didn't say anything other than "this is really hard for me". That was a big improvement for me over how I would have responded only a couple of days earlier... previously I would have gone on crying, cuddling her back, and talking endlessly, seeking nurturing from her. So although it may not look that way to you, it was a big improvement for me.