Now what?/ One Day at a Time

[HaWho]

Hi Melweb - your h does remind me a bit of mine. He gave me the speech over and over again and he kept threatening that he was getting an apartment.

My h's tag line was that he needed a woman to look at him "meaningfully." And after BD #2 he went through this period where he kept telling me he had no feelings for me anymore. He kept doing it to the point that I avoided rooms he was in.

One day we were in the car together and again, out of the blue came the "I feel nothing for you" speech. I finally turned to him and said calmly "I got the memo the first time." And when he walked out of the car I rolled down my window and said, with a smile, "by the way, it's not normal to keep telling someone that over and over again." He looked shocked. Not sure if he didn't realize the repetition and/or did not realize how weird it was. Not good DBing on my part as you are supposed to validate, but sane people can only take so much craziness.

Your h reminds me of mine because mine was what I would call "a cake eating dreamer." He had all sorts of dreams as to how this was all going to go. And he thought I was going to go along with it (all part of his dream).

You can't reason with the MLCer. It's time to go into roommate mode. Stop talking. I promise you, you will be more powerful through listening. You will start to see things you will never see by reasoning with him. I began by biting my lip as he talked until it became second nature to just listen.

Here's something I did that did work. Once I got the gist of what he was saying (and it was repetition) I kind of yawned and said "ok, well I have some stuff to do" and I left him in the middle of his soliloquy. Or I would get up and say "ok, well, I'll let you get in with your night." I stopped staying for the whole speech and I was always the one who left first. It did shock him. To this day I am DONE with r talks. No temptation on my part to ever ask anymore. I heard months and months of garbage.

As for the OW, you have told him there can't be a marriage with 3 people. But your actions need to reflect your boundaries. Otherwise he thinks he can have it all. It's an either/or scenario here and your actions need show to this. Either he wants a married woman who cheats or he wants the wife he married. And right now, there is no way he wants you. No MLCer is ready for his spouse right now, he's too broken. And so, if for right now he chooses the OW, you haven't lost ANYTHING if you have retained your self respect.

Regarding the trip to Mexico, often what I did in the early days before I had regained my own strong boundaries was, I thought: what advice would I give my kids? What if my kids knew this and were watching me?"

It's not about winning him back or beating OW. It's about: who am I and who do I become in the midst of craziness? Do you really want THIS version of himself back? Do yo believe he can just shake this off in a few months. Time to apply lots of logic where there is none.