I’ve been watching from afar but not posting because have been unsure of what to say, but I want to let you know I’ve thought about you and your sitch every single day.
In a way, we are now both in the same sitch, but have taken different routes to it. My arrival at this place has not been out of choice per se – where you have fought on, I had come to a dead end because my WH absolutely refused to engage.
I want to say I understand the need to move, to act, to do SOMETHING – I too am an April baby and I think we have a few similarities personality wise. Because my WH froze me out so early, I necessarily reached this point where I’ve come to see inaction as a sort of course of action. It’s the LRT really.
I don’t think you should file for divorce, not at all. At the moment my DS is away with WH – we’ve had to split the Easter holidays. It’s horrible without him. I want to spend every night under the same roof with my DS.
I think you should just table the whole MR at the moment. Take it easy, especially with your health issues. Don’t do anything. If you don’t want to get divorced because of the implications it will have for your children, DON’T. There’s no law that says just because your marriage isn’t being actively worked on you have to actively dismantle it. Just coast. If your WH wants a divorce, let him handle it. That’s the tack I’ve taken with my WH.
I had a wobble a week ago because I realized that my window for filing for divorce based on adultery closes at the end of the month. I spoke to my father who had this sage advice to offer: don’t file for divorce if it’s not something you actively want, let WH do it, because when the children are older they will realize that you did absolutely nothing to destroy the marriage and their family and it was 100% all WH. Your hands and your conscience will be clean and you will have peace of mind for the rest of your life. I think it’s more probable that I would regret divorcing in pain and anger, rather than being divorced by a WH who is acting in a totally despicable way – the negative feelings associated with the latter situation are linked to ego and a desire to reject rather than be rejected, which has roots in vindictiveness.
My faith has developed and grown through this process and acts as a guide for how to conduct myself in these situations. Which is to forgive and release – detachment really. Interestingly, forgiveness does not equate to reconciliation – you can forgive but choose not to reconcile.
The guidance I’ve been receiving from Christian quarters is to let go and let God deal with WH. There’s a line from a book I’ve been reading by a Christian author, which does make the point that if WH were to re-engage in the M, it has to be out of his will, not because he was lured back into it. He should re-enter the marriage as he did the first time around – totally out of his own volition. You can’t make him to stay in the marriage anymore than you could have manipulated him to marry you in the first place. You still work on GAL, but now entirely and only for yourself – whether it results in WH being attracted back is incidental.
I recognize too well your previous description about how focused you were on WH’s movements, because I felt like that too – what has happened may have been necessary to jolt you into true detachment – it certainly sounds like you’ve reached it now.
A word of warning from someone who’s been there – it comes and goes. The first time I felt true detachment I was elated, thinking I had reached healing. But another interaction with WH destabilized me. Yesterday I had a terrible day with missing DS and WH and loving them so much I spent most of it crying on the floor. They don’t call it a roller coaster for nothing
