Ups and Downs (III)

[OFP]

Sometimes i feel like I'm self sabatoging. Or maybe deep down I don't want this relationship either. Maybe I never did and was just pushing husband away in past cause I didn't have guts to end things back then.

Interesting that you too came to this conclusion fairly quickly, possibly faster than myself even.

I am point keeping because I need to know it's not all me. I often feel like it is.

This one was hard for me too. Blaming the other is not healthy, Blaming yourself is not healthy. Well then who am I supposed to blame? No one I guess. But it takes time.

Let me ask one question...what would it mean if it was all you? What if it is your fault? Why would that be the end of the world?

I'm not saying it is.

But if it was, wouldn't that mean you could change the dynamic of your interactions, and could potentially save your M, and have the M you wanted? What is so horrible about that?

That's an interesting perspective. If only it was that easy! We could make a change and the spouse would come running back, right? So we make that change, and they don't come back anyway. Well, in my case, there's nothing at all I can do different before the OFP is up.

Thanks jksd. Thats all done. I guess no one wants to deal with the actual process of it. I do want to do it the right way though. I want to avoid a nasty battle, I want to be fair, I do not want to be taken advantage of.

This was my approach also... go in with the intent of being fair, hopefully she would too. Wrong! I assume her atty ran the game, she was too dumb to say anything to him, or was just being too greedy herself, I'll never know. Go in planning to sound aggressive, act aggressive, but plan to make a LOT of concessions! Every concession will feel like another stab in the heart. It will drive you crazy. In about 2 weeks you'll look back at the concessions and say "I guess that wasn't so bad after all." Well, hopefully anyway.

I think we were just two people that did not know how to make a relationship work. I have been thinking about it a lot. We had very different needs, we had different interests. When I married him my best friend talked to me about really considering it. Not because my husband is a bad guy, but she was concerned about compatibility. My mother also told me "you are day, he is night".

Same here... the incompatibility is possibly what made you miserable? Made you resent him? Lack of ability to have a conversation on the same level should possibly jump right to the top of the list?

Now that's not to say there were not good times.

I would sure hope so, otherwise why would you have stayed?

I didn't think these issues were unsolvable but he did. I truly believed that we could have went to a good therapist, read and did exercises to improve the relationship, learned about the nature of relationships and the universal issues between husbands and wives so that we could understand them and learn to address them. He did not want to.

I hear you. Another item to add to the list of incompatibilities, you can't change a person's interest in improvement, whether it is life, the M, or even self.

Sometimes I wonder if I did this. Was I too impulsive? Did I self sabatoge with taking husband to court/ calling him out at court/ a lot of my reactions? I am Definatly more comfortable out of limbo. At time I felt like such a failure and so guilt ridden.

I questioned this also. But sounds like you are stuck as I was. In some cases, the only way out of limbo is D. And if your M was as you have stated, it may have been inevitable anyway.