New Year, new thinking..

[Coly23]

Ginger, Gerda, sjohns6. Thank you all so much for the visit!

Ginger - you know my spin cycle well! I try so hard to not have any expectations but as soon as I see him my resolve starts to buckle! Yes you are right, I am still attached and I don't know yet if I want to detach because once I do I really don't know if I can go back and I really do think my heart has to harden to be able to do thus. Whilst we are still married I feel I need a certain amount of attachment to hope one day we might be able to reconcile. I am still going about living my life without him in it. Making decisions that just effect myself and D but he is still there in my heart. Does that make sense?

Gerda - I have also been reading some of your sitch. I see that your H is still at home and you have been at this for a very long time! That must be tough on you.

You ask if I want my marriage to be restored and the answer is yes! This was the reason I came here looking for help. Althought I know I am not very good at the whole DB stuff I know that I am much better at dealing with this than when I first got here.

I was so happy to read your post and thought you had a pretty good handle on how I am feeling! Your are so right in that my anxiety comes from trying to take a hard line with H because I keep thinking I must look like a doormat to everyone else. Sometimes I rationalise why I still stay attached as being the fact that we are still married and then I feel guilty. But you have hit the nail on the head. I am still his wife and he is still my husband. Accepting help from him should not make me feel bad. From now on if he wants to do it I will accept graciously.

My H has always been very hard to read. He has always kept everything stuffed inside him and will usually act without telling anyone what he intends to do. So our marriage has always been a challenge in that sense. I didn't see it about him still having an attachment and that he might be struggling. I always thought he was very detached but for him do so readily come over I guess there must be something still helping his attached.

sjohn6 - I'm sorry your W is moving out soon. That must be hard on you and your kids. I remember that time well and it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through. You are so kind to post some encouragement to me when you are going through such a tough time yourself.

You are right, I do have to keep reminding myself that I am not a bitter person and I don't want to treat my H unkindly even though some times I want to shake him and tell him to wake up!!

The other issue off course, as you said, is the absence of an OP. I know my H, he is very shy and does not let new people in very easily. He has tons of friends but these are people he has known since childhood and if you aren't one of them, as with me, you will never be part of his inner circle. I am not saying that he won't meet anyone soon but it does make it tough to know that he would rather live alone than with me and D! Your comment about it being about them and not us is still hard to swallow and I keep having to remind myself of that and also that this could have happened with anyone and not just me!

Journaling - So as Ginger so accurately described my spin cycle I am afraid it got switched up to turbo spin and I had a bit of a melt down! Everything was going well until I had a couple of cocktails after work on Wednesday and sent him a stupid text in which I asked him why he is so offish with me and D when he comes over and that it is sad that we don't get to see the old H anymore but I bet everyone else does! As you can predict - no response. So then I texted him to ask if the insurance we have covers showers and he came back straight away to say no. So in my fit of rage because he didn't respond to my first text I told him that he should cancel that insurance gong forward or transfer it to me or transfer it to his address. No response to that one either!

So to cut a long story short, I asked him if he was now going to ignore me as I have spoken about feeeelings (oooh!) and he came back and said that I should know by now that he does not respond well to things like that and that he knows he is always on his guard when he comes over, oh and to let him know how the engineer gets on! So I went back and said yes I know he doesn't talk about feelings because that's how we got into this situation in the first place! I asked him how he expected me and D to be as he just ran away without any explanation and did he realise that myself and D put our hearts on the line every time we invite him over? I am very annoyed at this because when he comes over we do out best to be very good hosts and we are always kind so he has no reason to be on his guard all the time. I said that if he wants to be able to rebuild anything with us whatsoever he needs to bring his own walls down and to stop expecting me to do all the hard work!

I then told him how the engineer got on and that he will have to come out again next week. He asked about the shower and I told him I had ordered the part which will be delivered on Monday. He seemed to think we still had a couple of the spare parts in the house and told me all the places they might be. Anyway I did find them in the end, although it was too late to cancel the order, and he offered to come after work to fit it. I graciously accepted but said that if he showed me I could maybe do it next time which is what he did. We had a cup of tea afterwards and he went home to continue working as he had stuff to finish.

I think order has been restored but I will probably end up doing the same thing again! Although I am not afraid anymore to tell him how I feel even if I don't get a response from him!

Happy weekend everyone!