I went out with some friends last night. I felt like the old me had returned. I was able just to be in the present with my friends and laugh, and I wasn't so focused on my sadness or disappointment with how my life has turned out. I didn't wonder what H was doing and I didn't wish he was there. I felt that I was enough on my own.
Today is a lovely sunny spring day, and I have a hard time with those. I was planning on keeping up the previous owner's veggie garden, and had harvested seeds in the fall in order to do so. So if all were well, I'd have been out in the yard today trying to figure it all out. But I don't get to do that, because I had to leave.
I feel like my life, particularly my living situation, is back to being reactive. One thing that I liked about the house was that we chose it together. We chose what we wanted rather than just reacting to what limitations we had on us.
I felt like my chosen life was just beginning, and I'd relaxed into it and - WHAMMO - it's gone.
Also, I am aggravated because I received a response from H today at around 9am. I'd sent my message around 4 yesterday. His was one sentence and very neutral about keeping an eye out for whatever I send to him.
Why? Why even respond? Perhaps it was ego-driven, since I'd turned down his offer to meet. Perhaps he is feeling a little conciliatory. Perhaps he's started to miss me.
I don't like feeling this way and wondering, because it takes me back in and it all starts to hurt again. It makes me wish I was meeting him... the old him, though. Not the angry closed off version.
But I also know it wouldn't make a difference at this point anyway. Missing me isn't going to be enough. He's got to understand that he's got some issues that aren't my fault and be committed to addressing them if he wants successful closeness with me (or anyone, but hopefully me.)
I keep reading about other women whose H's were in MLC and how they lived their lives as people pleasers and when they hit midlife they get so angry about how their life has been all about accommodating other people. That's him to a T.
After he said he wanted out, I even heard about how I "made him" do this and that, and how he didn't speak up and somehow it's all my fault for not being psychic and knowing how he really felt. He said he goes too far with women even when he's not happy and doesn't know how to have boundaries in relationships (and the counselor told him that being alone would not allow him to practice having them, but he didn't care.)
I never wanted to be with a doormat and, while I don't know for sure, I certainly didn't feel like he was being one with me. I know I'm the only woman in his life who encouraged him to be himself, and that it was okay to have boundaries and be angry sometimes. He spent his childhood, and some of his adult life, care-taking his needy mother. Then he married his ex and she filled that role.
And I didn't need nor want a caretaker, but I got one. And I didn't know it at the time. And he's reached a point where it's all too much so I've got 50 years of anger and resentment coming my way, even though I didn't do the crime so I shouldn't have to do the time.
So our life and the house got yanked away because it was the most recent commitment he'd made and he's so angry at accommodating women in a way that feels suffocating to him, even though I never wanted that from him.
It all hurts. I'm not looking forward to hitting him with legal documents. I still love him so I want to protect him and for him to be happy. But I also understand that my instincts in this time aren't trustworthy and I can't operate like I used to.
And maybe this is the wake up call he needs. He'll be getting documents with the worse case scenario for him. I don't know what I'll do and if I'll ultimately back down and make his exit not so tough on him. I have time to decide, I guess.
I don't know. I feel like I'm flying in darkness right now. I don't know what's right and wrong.
I also feel badly because his exW and him were able to use mediators to divorce, and here I am with an attorney. But he was never like this with her. He was rather submissive with her and strove for fairness. (Plus, she wanted the D.)
What we have is so much anger from him toward me. So much that I had to get out of the firing range, because it was making me so miserable and making me feel so excluded while I watched him with his kids. I felt like Emotional Quasimodo and I had to put myself first and get out of his way. I doubt he'll see that though; maybe he thinks I'm punitive and immature in a way his ex isn't. (Which isn't true at all, but it still hurts after watching her heinous entitlement for so many years.)
