25 yearsMLC 10 years late I FILE part 2

[25yearsmlc]

[quote=bigybiz]Hey 25 -I saw the letter you posted on Cali's thread and I have a question for you. I did not want to hijack Cali's thread.

In the letter you posted it basically stated the WAW feels that 6 months of super/reformed/remorseful husband
is not going to make up for the years of neglect etc. That I understand.


1) Do you really understand? I'm being sincere. It's very easy to say, but a lot harder to do. To face our own roles in the demise of our m is usually devastating.

And what the WAW wrote there, was that after just 6 months of her h's alleged personal work, she was only beginning to believe the changes without scoffing,

NOT that the changes had overcome the pain she had felt for so long.

(Nor do I believe that it can "make up for" the harms done).

Without going into a martyrdom detail, zno matter what my h does or says and even the most genuine REAL changes in him, will ever undo the damage done by missing years of our children's lives. It cannot be our goal to make things "even." How could we quantify it?

No couple can agree on their marital history fully, but sometimes all that matters is their view of the future, agreeing on where to go from this day forward.


I have been brought to my knees facing my own role in the demise of our m and to the damage I allowed or caused to our children for a decade. It's profound humbling.

It is humbling but it is not humiliating. There's a difference between humility and humiliation.

Many people (including my h) do not know this. The shame of poor choices and what feels like humiliation to my h, probably precluded him from facing the trail of destruction his choices created in his life. He created the very alienation in our family, that angered him. He probably cannot face it.

His issues, his disappointment in his life, his unresolved childhood issues, his r's with our children, his treatment of me, were burdens to me.

As I let go of his issues and his r's and his problems, I feel freer and I feel kinder, better, healthier and more at peace. His issues should never have been in my sandbox. And now, they are not.

Besides, I have so many of my own struggles, grief and debris in my sandbox, I'm in no position to harp about his.

My belief is that genuine Humility is key to self awareness and then change. It's NOT the same as humiliation.

After the BD, and hearing what my W feels is the source of our undoing etc - I wonder if she will ever realize that she had a role in the R issues too?


I'm not familiar enough with your situation to know the answer to ^^this.

Here is my gestalt of your stance...I think you fear that your failings equate to you being a POS and therefore you cannot stay with the pain of acknowledging them, and the remorse it causes is too scary to face for very long. So you are compelled to rotate the mirror back to her when it hurts to look in it for long,

My gut says that you have a "scorecard" that measures her sins in order for you to feel on a level playing field. It is a scorecard you need to get rid of. Scorecards are always destructive in marriages.

Plus, here's a Newsflash - Your wife - 1) she has her own scorecard, and on hers, you are way behind,
And

2) Plus, she's not here trying to save the marriage. You are.

So trying to get her to see & count her wrongs at this point, is self defeating. Maybe it stems from a need of yours to cope with the humility and possible shame you feel about your role. Don't wallow there in shame, b/c people who cannot bear to look within, have the tendency is to lash out at others and say "No, it's YOU not me..."

Try to convert the shame into a healthier useful awakening, get back up, dust yourself off and step forward.

If your w has had years of unmet needs to which she's now awakened, she may feel the way I do. Which is that I'm NOT interested in changes h can claim to be making (and claimed to make a decade ago). Or maybe does make.

I believe I'll never feel the same about him. *Even though I also say "never say never"* And I have 2 family members who remarried their former spouses FWIW.

Hypothetically, if h were to repeat his recon efforts of 10 years ago, and say he wanted the m to work,

BUT THEN if he were to tell me what MY role was in this situation, after all the personal work I've done, versus zero on his end, honestly, I'd probably laugh, scoff or throw something at him and keep moving...


Between me and you and the thousand of readers of this site...as for MY ROLE? YES I OWN MY ROLE and I'm still working on that. I've had a great DB coach and now have a great T. I have to face How i was silent and complicit in bad choices, ask why I didn't enforce boundaries (fear, probably) and whatever I was hiding from, carping with snarky rewards at times, and blending into h's dreams so much that I am discovering mine now...

BUT i'm working on that with my therapist, not my h. I have amends to make as a mother, to my kids. Not to h.

I'm not here to "make my m work" with a man who just won't get it, b/c when he has had his moments of clarity in the past, they did not result in lasting change. So my interest in spending more years of my life hoping it'll all be worth it SOMEDAY...well I'm not interested in that..

My W neglected and rejected me too.



1) Is she here on this site trying to stay married? No she's not. So how does your scorecard help you with your goal? (It does not). I have the feeling that if you admitted you had a temper problem in the marriage, for instance, that you'd bring up times she lost her temper, before the session was over.

That^^ type of interaction is why a lot of MC's sessions end up being bitch sessions and just rehashing old arguments getting nowhere.


Why not clean your own sandbox and stay out of hers? What if you modeled what self awareness, & humbled personal growth look like?


During the months of R talk - she always had a way to justify it. Further, she did not like the MC telling her that she is too blame too.


If she justified it then it sounds like she's not ready to own her role. So drop it, and show her what a confident man does when he sees HIS errors. A confident person can admit to dropping the ball and not believe it makes him a POS. And a confident person won't apologize AND THEN wait for it to be reciprocated. That's not an apology that is a tactic to "even things out".

Either you are sorry for what you did/said, etc, or you are not. HER reaction is irrelevant. And worrying about it at this point is soooo counter productive if you really want to reconcile. Do you, or do you want to not be the rejected party?

I'm sincerely asking you, to ask yourself.

Finally look,

Your w wants out of the m. So, She's not interested in returning to the marriage she left,

UNLESS

she believes that it can be a better/different marriage than before.

It's your job to show her that it can be better/different. How are you doing that?

So either let go of worrying about her own issues till later...or decide you don't want to be married to her.

But to vent about her issues and when she's going to see your side, when she'll work on her issues, the 2 to Tango, etc etc

Is very counter productive at this stage, imo.