WH came back. Piecing. Almost at 2 year mark.

[25yearsmlc]

C-nut, thank you. I think your courage and growth are inspiring. We started posting at around the same time and I feel a connection to you. I still smile when I think of your first threads and how hard we hit you with 2*4s. lol. You took them better than anyone :-)

25, please DO hijack my thread! I have learned so much from you over the years. I recall summer 3 years ago, after H left me for OW. I was on vacation with my children in this beautiful, near perfect, place; sunny and gorgeous day, crystal blue waters, happy kids, etc, etc. There I sat, emaciated from weight loss, restless and anxious from racing thoughts and months of sleepless nights, and as I have said before, I was a shell of a person. My go-to safety net, where I didn't feel entirely lost, were these forums. If you posted it, I made sure to read it. You didn't know, but you got me through some very dark times.

means more to me than you know. REALLY...



It is because of the vets like you that I am here posting now. I just know that there are 100s or 1000s of readers out there just like us. If anything I share brings them comfort too, then it is all worthwhile. .... Okay, I am way off track now :-)

I watched the Ted talk yesterday and I really enjoyed it. She talked about the importance of vulnerability and that it is necessary (risk) in order to have joy in life. What stuck with me the most is that she talked about our addictive culture and how we numb pain. She said that you cannot only numb pain, but you are also numbing the other emotions, including joy. That made me think. Hard. I have spent a lot of time numbing myself and perhaps that is why I have been so stuck.

I've watched and listened to the same TED Talk and greatly benefitted. It prompts a lot of reflection.


I can relate to your example of gambling. I think our vulnerabilities are the chips we have to put on the table if we want to win any prize. When someone has broken our trust or heart, it is that much harder to put the chips down. So now we have to put down all of our chips, and so we have that much more to lose also.

Yes the vulnerabilities are a part of it. In my situation in the past, I wish I had played a different game or hedged bets or whatever...

In my situation since the recon, I also am trying to understand the red flags I ignored - that my kids now bring up.

I want to know someday , Why i kept trying to win it all back,

and I do think it's b/c if I walked away from the table then, then all the money (YEARS and love, loyalty, history, dreams, etc) would be lost forever.

Only when it became clear I'd lose any ability to feel safe again (h was gone, even though I was so sick and he acted weird about money, which I had not noticed before)...
So only when it was blindingly obvious that h was OUT, and only when he practically dared me to file for D WHILE denying he wanted a divorce, did I walk away from the table and file for divorce.

(Gaslight behaviors continue but there is no one left to gaslight.)

In your situation, your h is now asking you to play again, but he seems to be putting all his cards on the table. And he's been at the table with an open hand, awhile now, right?

Okay, okay, maybe I'm carrying the metaphor too far...



Over the last several years there has been an ongoing match of head verses heart. Rational mind verses emotions. Decisions verses feelings. Really there isn't one winner is there?

Great question. I have said and believed in the past that "where the head goes, the heart will follow...if we let it."

I think I believe it! I did not always practice it. And no, I do not believe we should "always follow the gut".

Sometimes we are incredibly afraid and insecure and bring about the very thing we most fear. Heck, h did that with money. Constantly fearing not having enough is why he kept chasing the almighty dollar and moving, and never building stability enough for ME to establish a legal career or for him to build enough of a practice so he'd leave for the next "sure thing".

Then blaming me for not being where he wanted to be, in life.

But there are times we do have to follow our intuitive side. I guess it's about whether our perceptions have roots in reality. And that's personal inner work we have to do to know what to trust.

Fear and shame are things I want a lot LESS of in my life. Shame leads to secrets and those are not okay with me anymore.

Fear is - fear of what? That we are not good enough to have a loving lasting R?

I mean, what is our deepest fear? I think that's something to really dig in for.


For me, what I am learning on this journey is that my heart, feelings, and emotions are constantly changing. Like your blood flowing and your BP, it is never stagnant, and if it is, it will clot off and then the entire system (body) is at risk. When you go into your doc's office and get a BP reading, it does not have much meaning. It is one snap shot in time. If you took 10 readings in a row, they would all be different. That is how I think of our emotions.

Amen. I can feel a series of emotions and I can feel mixed conflicting ones at once. What are we supposed to "Do" with those? Sort them out I suppose. See what sticks...



My head, rational mind, and my decisions are something that have changed too. However they are not bouncing up and down and all over the place. They are evolving and improving over time. As I grow and learn


, I can mold and refine them to suit my needs. They are within my control.



^^yes, cognitive behavioral therapy is real. And it's mandatory to self awareness or change

OR we'll be letting emotions push us in directions we don't even look at, b/c we are RUNNING from pain...and not thinking things out.

I saw an IC after my mom died, d19 went to college and we moved for h's job, again, all in 6 weeks. This was before I knew H was checking out...again...

We discussed grief. She said that if you stare at grief in front of you, it can paralyze and overwhelm.

If you hide from it, it will find and push you in A direction....

so we have to learn to see it next to us while we move forward, anyhow. It's there, it hurts but it does not prevent or direct our movement.

make sense?


I choose to control them and let them win more of the battles. Therefore I trust my decisions over my emotions. Ultimately, it is because of this that my M will survive.

Blu


Blu

I think your m surviving is fine, but I hope and believe it can do more. (Or not? I don't "know")

Marrying the head and heart takes time and effort. My belief is that in restored m's, the union between our views of the r, and our feelings about it,

will MOSTLY match. Those who seek 100% full agreement are probably going to be disappointed eternally.

You already see that our emotions change and our thoughts evolve.

Maybe just work on getting them on the same page, then the same paragraph and go from there?