Here again after 9 years and struggling 3

[Zues126]

Inpain, if you want to save your marriage you'd better step it up. I get that you're in pain and I'm sorry. It's now up to you. Do you want this forum to be a support forum while you mourn the loss of your marriage? Or do you want it to be a support forum to help you save your marriage? There is a difference. Right now you are destroying your marriage and looking for shoulders to cry on. I'm not interested in that. I believe in marriage, which means I believe you have a responsibility to pull it together and do your part. While WAH is responsible for the decision to leave, you are not making it easy for him to return. I'd recommend rereading your posts from the beginning, maybe by seeing the patterns play out repeatedly you could break free. For example:

H said before Christmas that he wouldn't be going to a solicitor until certain bills were paid. I do all of the banking and I paid them on Friday. I felt so scared about it, because it felt like those bills were the only thing keeping me from being a divorced person. H came round to see the kids and again acted perfectly happy with me, just like old times, like nothing is wrong. Before he left I asked to speak to him away from the children. I told him the bills were paid so he could go to a solicitor and divorce me now. He looked perplexed and confused. I asked him what was wrong, that I thought he wanted them paying off. He said he did, just didn't expect them to be paid so soon.

Believe none of what he says and half of what he does. See, WAH made a casual comment over a month ago about not seeing a solicitor until certain bills were paid. Great. That is something he said. Why did you believe this to be so factual? You literally spent over a month stewing about this comment, then when you referred back to it you surprised him and completely caught him off guard because it's so bizarre that you clung to this offhand comment as if it was written in stone. The fact that he doesn't mean everything he says isn't strange, the fact that you continue to think he does is. I have posted this to you before. There is a reason I keep bringing this up.

I cried in front of H on Friday...

If you want to save your marriage you can't allow your emotions to steer your behavior. Guys have a word for women like this: Crazy. Crazy isn't good. Crazy is unsafe and to be avoided.

I understand these are your feelings. I am not suggesting that having these feelings makes you crazy. It is acting on them in this way that is scary to men.

Consider the reverse with a man acting on his emotion of anger. Suppose you were leaving your husband because you found the relationship to be scary. When you interacted it was sometimes ok, but other times he would lose his temper. When he'd lose his temper he'd get scary, turn red, sometimes throw things around, break things. Let me ask- would that make you feel safe?

When a woman lets her emotions control her behavior it makes guys feel as unsafe as when men do it. They don't understand all of these emotions, they just know that for some reason the woman is ultra intense, and somehow it is all their fault and what they are doing is horribly wrong. This is scary and critical, and makes guys want to go away to where they are safe and good enough. But if you can keep your emotions under control and express them in safe ways, there is a place to be your entire self while still allowing H to be himself without feeling threatened.

I told him I can't carry on like this any more. That I need to know how my life is going to be because I'm going to have to claim benefits and things without his money to support me. He said, "I know." He said we'd talk about it on Sunday when he comes round.

Don't start R talks. You basically asked him to please file a divorce. "H, I want this to be over, the bills you said were in the way have been taken care of, I need the D for legal protection, please file." You are literally pressuring him to file divorce.

I told him I just didn't understand why we can't work things out as he acts perfectly happy with me when he comes round. He said that getting on when we don't live together is different to getting on living together. I told him again I'm sorry for my part in our M problems and that I don't want a D and wish we could work things out. I burst into tears and asked him if he realises how hard it is for me to have him coming round almost every day, acting OK with me and the kids and then walking out to another home.

Validate How can your H possibly feel like you've ever heard what he says when you start in with this? Let me remind you, he left because he felt he spent years of his life trying to find a way to live with you, and went through so much pain he felt destroyed, and that he had to leave for self preservation. He tried to communicate that to you, and your response is 'why can't we work this out'? He TRIED to work it out. He has done everything he could think to do. In a last ditch effort he told you that, thinking maybe, just maybe there was something more YOU could do to bridge the gap. And you dismiss what he's told you and put it back on him to man up and make it work. Not happening.


IP, this is a 2x4 because I haven't seen you get on a DB road. I haven't seen detachment. I haven't heard about GAL. I see no goals set. You haven't talked about 180s and I have seen no changes of any type as a result. You're not validating what he's telling you. And you're breaking most of the 37 rules.

I looked through your old posts and didn't find much of you working on yourself. I found this from the beginning: I know that I have caused some of the situation too - I was angry and hurt for a long time and couldn't seem to stop myself being snappy with him. I suppose I want a chance to show him that I can change that side of me, but there is no chance of doing that when he isn't living here. Clearly you were wrong, you've had many opportunities to show your behavior but haven't used them well.

Meanwhile I can tell your H loves you, he hasn't filed, he continues to spend time with you and with the family. And YOU are a good person, loving, committed, loyal, passionate, and a great mom. You ask H why he doesn't want to work on the marriage...Inpain, why don't YOU want to work on the marriage? The only catch is you don't get to work on it your way, in which you bury your problems, act out your emotions, and wait for H to make it all better...you'd have to work on the marriage the DB way in which you transcend your emotions, challenge yourself, and hold yourself accountable for bridging the gap between you and WAH.

At this point I'd really like to know if you are committed to your marriage enough and believe in the DB approach. If not I'm sure the good people on this forum will support you as you go through your divorce. I just think it would help us to understand what you want from us. DB coaching or comfort?