[HelenaJ]

After giving it more though as to how I would define success, I guess I have to define it both ways don't I? So, to stay in this M, success would look like an H who wants to try...who admits he's not perfect and wants to try. I don't even care what that looks like, those are the only two criteria. To exit this M, success would look like me feeling confident that I did everything I could. Waited as long as I could, tried as hard as I could.
Trying as hard as I can is looking a little different these days. My 180 is accepting his pronouncement of never giving me his heart again and trying to live my own life without apologizing, without questioning, without pleading...in fact without any R talk at all. It's hard sometimes for me to even see that I'm trying....because on the surface it looks like I've told him to go to hell. I mean I pretty much have right? I wonder sometimes how I might soften just a little. I refrain from doing so because I feel like for me to talk to him in any way outside the kids, for me to acknowledge him and include him in my life in any way is to give in to his request that we continue to live as a family just not as a couple. I have already told him NO, that is not happening. I am not going to live some weird, half, and disingenuous life. How do I explain to people that I only have half a husband? Like, we don't go anywhere socially together because we're not *really* husband and wife? NO. Not doing that. So I struggle with how to conduct myself so as to still be a kind and decent human being but yet hold strong to my convictions in that type of M will not work for me.
Right now, I do not even acknowledge him unless he speaks to me and even then I may or may not look at him.
So, what am I waiting for, why am I still here? There are quite a few practical reasons, but the most pertinent one to my M is that I'm hoping that once he sees I am serious about not living like that, he will become more open to finding another way. In all honesty I do not expect that to happen, not even a little bit of me really thinks that will happen. I think I would have to actually leave in order for him to truly get it that I'm not willing to live like this. And for me to leave puts the kids in a very sad situation where their lives will forever change and that kills me. BUT. I feel like if he actually lets me go, if he can do that, then I'll finally after all these years have my answer. Somedays I seriously wonder why I'm procrastinating getting that answer, but I know it's because I don't want to look back and wonder if I'd just given it a little longer, could things have been different? So rather than leave physically, I'm testing this out while living in the same house. It's been about 7 months since I started to really rebuke H's behaviors toward me...about the same amount of time since we've been intimate, maybe even a little longer actually. It's been about 2.5 months since he actually told me he doesn't ever want to go anywhere socially with me again, accepts we'll never be physically intimate again and he'll never give me his heart again and can't be that "all in, fairy tale husband" for me. So, I guess some progress has been made if you can call it that. My refusal to continue on with the way things were and question his behaviors toward me at least forced him to take a position in the matter rather than sending me mixed signals based on how he feels toward me on any given day. So now I know how he feels. I, in turn, have made it clear how I feel. Now I need to give it time so he knows I'm not going back to how things were. So, with this time, do I continue to be hard? Or do I soften? I feel like if I soften at all, even a little, it sends the message that I'm going backward, closer to how things were and it sends the message to him that all he needs to do is wait me out. And that is definitely NOT the message I want to send.