Separated In Process of Divorce (Anniversary)

[180Man]

Sellout, I have been following your thread with interest because I believe we are at very similar timelines in our situations. I bring this up for a couple of reasons: I can identify with you very much due to similarities in our situations, your thread has a lot of great advice from a lot of great people which has helped me as well, and lastly, anything I say needs to be prefaced with the fact that I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, either!

That being said, I agree with their assessment of your text conversation on the last page. I know it [censored] to hear when we screw something up, but...so it goes. Certainly it was not some large blunder, just something to learn from. Don't sweat it.

I also agree with the sentiment of bringing a different YOU to the table if/when that time comes. I would love to hear ideas you have on the GAL process because I'm looking for additional ways to improve myself that maybe I haven't considered. Maybe you've started...who knows...practicing taekwondo and have found it's very helpful? Who knows, but I like the idea of sharing suggestions we might not think of ourselves. Much of the GAL thing seems, to me at least, a very personal journey, but I can see where there would be other thoughts and suggestions from people here that could spark interest and ideas that may help.

I've been going to the gym 6 days a week for a couple months now and my wife noticed when I saw her last month. I did initially start doing it for her, but over time I felt so great every day that I continued doing it for me. Same story with church. Now they're asking me to play in the church band! I was the last person to ever being doing that...but shoot...we are all here (except maybe Jeep74 ) because we don't believe that people can't change, we don't believe in "once a cheater always a cheater." But we have to acknowledge there are two sides to the coin and it is highly likely that we contributed to an emotional scenario that helped make our spouse more vulnerable to the A. That took me a long time to see and I won't hijack your thread going into it, but if there's anything I know, I know that neither of our wives want to come back to what they left. While it's true that they screwed up royally, we cannot control them. We control us. For me right now, that means I'm about to leave for the gym. And when I get back I'm going to fix one of my guitars so I can take it to practice next week. And then after that I'm going to do some reading about forgiveness. And hopefully somewhere in there tonight I'll find time to search for another GAL activity I can get involved in which will not only keep me occupied but also steer me toward self-improvement.

Hang in there man, I'd buy you a beer right now if I could!