He loves me he loves me not

[Zues126]

Long winding post warning.

And I keep, trying and trying to make sense of it and come up with all the ways that I am selfish and wrong and to blame myself because I just want to be able to forgive his actions and not become a divorce statistic. I question if I myself have unfair expectations (yes I watched the videos) and I have too much if a sense of entitlement.

Good.

I'm not for a moment saying you're wrong to feel angry, or that something is wrong with you for feeling this way. I do believe it is your job to control your behavior and grow where you need so you can start to feel differently. The above quote is spot on.

The last few pages of posts is obviously raw anger. I get that the DB forum is an outlet to release emotion beyond your ability to cope. Before I continue I want to quote something I posted the other day:

Venting is when external stresses exceed your coping mechanisms and you find yourself boiling over in the red zone, so you do two things...first you blow off some steam to a friend, but then you look in the mirror and ask yourself what you could do differently to either prevent the situation or handle it better in the future. In this case venting is a useful technique to get out of the red zone so you can get back in control, and it is centered around accountability.

Negativity starts the same, boiling over in the red zone and blowing off steam to a friend...but then it ends with the person pointing to the world as being the problem, and concluding they can't possibly be ok given that the world is the way it is.

Venting leads to regaining control, accepting reality, and growing. Negativity leads to cheeseless tunnels.

This is all my conjecture by the way, but by this example, the difference really comes down to what you do with the anger after you spew it out. Do you decide that you were right to feel angry, it was the only possible reaction to your environment, that you are the victim, and that the only way to feel differently is to change your environment? Or do you look inward at the expectations and entitlements you mentioned earlier? I love that you're trying to do the latter, and if you need to spew to get to the point you can look at that then please do so.

I think my red hot anger comes from the fact that I am not following my beliefs. If I were, I would have filed the divorce papers long ago...

...He shirked his responsibility. I never in my wildest imagination could have predicted that he would be capable of doing this. And I am angry at him because I held him to higher standards and he failed me. I hold myself to these very same standards.

I'll bet he feels the same way. I'll bet he felt so neglected and unfulfilled he felt his options were suicide or divorce...but he didn't believe in either option, so instead of acting on his feelings he moved out and tried to get some space to try to create a situation where he could feel differently. Compared to the number of H's that simply file and fire up a replacement relationship I think this is pretty stand up of him. I totally understand how you feel betrayed, shattered, and violated by him...I just think that if you guys go on to share a 50 year marriage and you look back at the 2-3 years you went through here...I think you'll feel differently about his character once you're out of the pain and you can see things more clearly.

As for this comment:

I never neglected children (babies then) and I never walked away from our marriage.

I'm sure XW could say the same thing. But there is something else she DID neglect. Something that caused every bit as much pain to me in the marriage as the divorce itself did. Something that is so foundationally important to me that it was as important as the children to her.

When you say you hold yourself to high standards, that's true, but you hold yourself to YOUR high standards. I would bet if you asked him you failed in his standards. And if those standards currently include being forgiving and loving you're not doing so hot at the moment either.

That all said, leaving the past in the past for a moment...what are you offering to bring him back? Is unbridled anger being the woman only a fool would leave? If he left because he couldn't live that way anymore, are you sending the message that you've taken responsibility for your contributions to the breakdown of the marriage, and you're ready and willing to do things differently? Most importantly...if H died in a crash tomorrow, would you feel regretful that you didn't unload all of your spew onto him, or would you feel regretful that you didn't show the love deep in your heart? I appreciate that you're not spewing at him directly and are trying to control yourself around him, and that's great. But you can't act your way through piecing or a marriage, so at some point you have to figure out how you can actually be a person he can partner with.

I know this isn't easy to read, I also know it isn't 'right' it's discussion, I also know that your anger is very real...but most importantly I know enough to know that you, even if you disagree, won't hate me for sharing my thoughts. And that, Julie, is a sign of my respect for you, because if I was afraid of being raged at I wouldn't have been able to be this open with you. If you feel I'm painting you to be a monster that's not the case. As I've said, it's normal to have these feelings, and it's impressive that you've controlled yourself and are trying to see past the red goggles. Truly. If anything Julie I think that I've had a lot of anger myself towards XW and society and I've spent a ton of time thinking of these very things.

I come back to the point I made before. This anger is telling you something. It's telling you that you have exposed nerves. Entitlements? Expectations? Maybe. I have really been challenging myself and I keep asking myself "WHY". Why am I so angry? Because XW did _____. Why is that so important? Because I think that she should have done ________. Why is that so important? Because I deserve/need/want ________. Why do I need/deserve/want _____?

It's that last question that I've wrestled with. Is it because I can't be happy without that? Because I feel there is something missing and broken in my life and ________ makes me feel ok about it?

For me the answer was yes. I wasn't ok with myself, here, and now. I depended on XW's love to take the edge off. It was like I was in pain, and she was the pain killer, and she PROMISED to always be there to numb my pain, and now she wasn't, and so she was at fault for my pain. That's how it looked. That's how it felt.

I have since removed myself from the pain. I am no longer living in pain. I am ok. XW wants to D? Great, there's your signed D papers. Not what I wanted, but your journey. And frankly while I wouldn't have left her, I wouldn't have left her because maybe I was so dependent on the pain killer that I couldn't have, and that my so called 'values' and 'standards' I hold myself to are simply disguises of my neediness. And looking back I can really see how my dependence on her led me to controlling behavior that made life unbearable for her.

We're different people. I don't have the answers. I just know you have work to do. You're doing it, so that's great. Just don't think of him as a bad guy or morally inferior, because that's not what morally superior people do.