Sorry, just thinking out loud here...had a lot of stuff going round in my head recently.
I still don't understand why any of this happened/is happening. I feel totally confused over that, totally confused. And lost.
Now it's starting to dawn on me that as much as my H will have to face the issues he has run away from/is running away from in any future relationship that he has (and my guess if that he won't face them, that he'll continue running away from them, as I believe him to be a coward. Anyway, that's for him to deal with himself and none of my business now), I will have to deal with my issues.
Some of them were obvious to me before all of this (managed to do a lot of very positive, transformative work on myself a good few years ago), some of them are becoming obvious to me only now.
And they're becoming obvious to me because I know that the man I went out with on my birthday really likes me.
I now realise that one of my biggest fears is losing my capacity for independent thought and being controlled and hemmed in (I had a very, very controlling father...pathological in his level of control).
This was never a question with my H. We were two very independent people, who gave each other *a lot* of space. And for the last three years of our M he was never actually, physically here, he was working the other side of the world mostly.
But that's not exactly normal, is it? Not to be physically in the same house, or even in the same country? Not for such huge, extended periods of time anyway. One week, two weeks...sure. But months and months on end? And then years on end?
So when big, strapping, handsome man is chasing me and I'm feeling panic because am scared that he might want to hem me in and control me, and I feel like I want to run away as far and as fast as I can, then that's one of my fears, one of my own deepest fears, that I'm going to have to face in any relationship that I have in the future that is bringing that up. It's not his actions, per se, and the kind of person he is, that is making me feel like that, but my own background and my own experience that is triggering those fears.
I am so grateful for that insight. That is something that I didn't know about myself before all of this happened. And it's knowledge that I can carry forward with me, and use to make me more self aware and stronger in the future. It will make me more compassionate to other people as well.
As much as my H is on his own journey (and I never doubted that), I am really on mine.
I am just sad, deeply sad. I don't think that any relationship I will have in the future can ever be imbued with that youthful naivety, hope and energy that I seemed to have when I met my H and when we fell in love. It feels like the world has changed forever, and is a much sadder, more poignant place. I almost can't bear the pain of that knowledge at times.
