Trying to detach from WTF world

[Treasur]

Thanks, juju. I think I'm just tired of pain and grief. Losing my parents and my H simultaneously, my home, my garden, my financial stability, my mental health for a bit...it's been a heavy load. Self-care is tricky sometimes because I just feel exhausted by the rubble that needs to be dealt with. I guess it is an adjustment too because until this, I was a very lucky person and blessed with a lot of love so maybe a bit complacent.

Better this morning. As you say, I have learned that feelings pass.

I've been reading ... and other posts here, and they have helped me see the need to drop the rope and stop smoking 'hopium'. Like everyone else, I've felt my STBXH had stolen my reality/history by overwriting it. I've veered from desperately wanting to hold on to my own good memories vs. wondering if it was all a fake. When I'm angry at the WTF chaos that STBXH unleashed into my life, I think yup, he never really was who I thought or loved me because you don't do this to someone you care about. But somehow, in my quieter moments, that doesn't feel like the truth. I could be wrong, of course I could, but in the end I think you have to trust your gut.

I think our relationship was good and mostly healthy. I think my H really cherished me and I see no evidence, even with a cold dark eye, that he wasn't the man I thought he was or was a serial cheater or abusive to me. I just don't. I think our weak spots were that I was an impatient fixer who mind read him too much and he was given to avoiding responsibility for his own s**t, taking the fixes but resenting the feeling of being controlled at the same time. I think we both got into a pattern of not talking about what we were both unhappy about in life, sometimes to protect the other person. I think he had broken bits from his FOO which I underestimated and a low-grade cycle of depression over the years. We had a rough life patch and both of us shut down a bit and disconnected. I think he was unhappy with his life, initially not with me, and then obviously decided I was the problem. I don't know if his A triggered his breakdown or if the breakdown led him to the A as a coping strategy. I do know that he was diagnosed with severe OCD/depression and has been in therapy since. I got the ILYB script. His pattern has been to run, hide and avoid me and every other bit of his old life. I can see ways in which our M could have been better but his choices meant we never had the chance to talk about them. Sad. Some of the WTF stuff has been pretty extreme and rationally just tells me that this isn't about me or even our M; it's about him destroying his old self and flailing around trying to create a new one. And bizarrely perhaps he felt we were too close for him to do that without destroying our relationship too. And he chose to talk to others rather than me, to run and to have an A - all of that rather than just talk to me. I think he was/is afraid to talk to me because of his assumptions about how I'd react. Some right, some wrong. And he decided that he doesn't love me and doesn't want me in his life.

Being rational again, it's as if he can't let himself see me or take a more moderate path even to S and D. Do I think he is happy and at peace with his choices? Logically, probably not. If he was, he would be handling the D process differently and acting more rationally.

None of this changes what is real now. I love my H and I would have taken a bullet for him. But I can't let him destroy any more of my life while he is busy destroying his own. Someone has to be calm and sane around here! Acceptance for me - and it has been hard - is that he is no longer the man I married and he brings chaos and destruction right now because that is where he is in his own life. I can be compassionate about that but I don't want to live a life full of WTF, where I am waiting for the next shock or feel threatened by his OW or by his crazy self-destructive financial/practical choices. And that is reality as it stands.

So, for me? The pain of losing my family will come and go. Whether I like it or not, my H will soon be my STBXH and is unlikely to ever talk to me again. I will probably never see him again or know what happens to him. I love him and I will miss him; he is unique for me and leaves a unique space. To D rather than just talk seems madness to me, but that is the choice he has made. It says nothing about me or my value as a wife or human being. I need a life that is not WTF crazy because it just isn't who I am and I resent it being forced on me. The only way to stop it is to turn my back on it, which means severing my links with him, which means D is the only sensible option. Followed by NC at all forever, as if he died.

So DBing is for me, not him, to save myself from the wreckage of his train wreck if that makes sense. But some days, it is very hard and I miss his pre-shark eyes face. I miss seeing him smile at me. I miss listening to his thoughts and ideas. But, if he had died (and he was suicidal for months), this is pretty much where I would be. The same pain, the same bewilderment, the same anger. When the D is done and there are no practical links between us at all, it will be easier to grieve for him and move forward without having to deal with the painful frustrating WTF reality of what he is now. It will be nice to remember my beloved without having to deal with this silent irrational monster who has replaced him.