New Year, new thinking..

[sjohns6]

Coly,

I spent a little time reading your sitch. Not all the way back, but quite a bit. Im with Gerda on this one. You sound like a kind and loving person. That is a good thing. If you want to be kind to H, do it for yourself...not for him. I think that is how you can still do it without expectations from him. I mean dont be a doormat and try not to over analyze everything he does, but you can be yourself without worrying how he is going to take it.

My W had an EA early on and it didnt last long. Not sure it sat well with her. That was over a year ago and now she is moving out. I am fairly certain there is no OP, so I get your confusion over it. I am with mine to. I almost feel like it would make more sense and help me get over it as I dont think I would hold on so tight if she was leaving me for someone else. But why would she leave just to leave? Am I that unbearable? The answer to that (which is hard for me to wrap my head around) is that it really has nothing to do with me, and I dont think it has anything to do with you either. Its about them. I think they are looking for their independence...to FIND themselves. That doesnt make it that much easier, but its easier to understand than it being something that I have done. I know Im a catch and I bet you are too. They MUST be broken to not see that in us.

Hugs to you. Hope your today is going well.

[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!

[Rita]

Oh my gosh, Coly, poor you! I get it, I was there. I have not reached even the bottom of the beginning of mountain that leads to the summit of detachment, but I think I have made a little farther than you because while I was reading your play-by-play, I was almost shouting, NO NO NO!

OK, so in this case, here is what I suggest -- have all the same feelings you have, that part is fine. But do not let them cross your lips! Zip your lips, run out of the area, throw your phone across the room, do whatever you have to do to not let the words get out. You don't need to FEEL detached to act detached. Maybe you are waiting to feel detached to do it.

Here is what it could look like for what you posted --

Get a little booklet to put in your bag. Anything you want to say in response to H, do not say. Write it in the booklet. Do not allow yourself to answer anything he says for at least half a day but preferably a full day. DO NOT TALK ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS OR HIS FEELINGS or ask him any questions about either of those things. Just go to your little booklet and write all the things you want to say. Make deals with yourself to wait until that night if it's morning or the next morning if it's night, before you say anything to him. Try to not respond to him for several days if you can.

When he moves out or does things that makes you crazy, even if he considers an OW, tell yourself, this is part of the process, this is part of the process, there is no way out but through. I trust that this thing he is trying is counterfeit, and he will realize this once he lives through it and experiences it deeply. Say to yourself, "I let him go, I let him go, I let him go," even when you don't.

Reading what you wrote here, I can see that he feels constantly backed into a corner.

You could also try this one which I have done -- Whatever month you are in, say, I will not mention anything about feelings until the middle of the next month. What ends up happening is that when you have a rule like that, you end up making it through the pain and then you don't need to say anything about feelings anymore.

What I do now, which you'll see from my posts, is that I never volunteer anything but I still have trouble not responding when my H sends me long diatribes about how he is feeling. I still want to make him see the truth somehow. So I practice the above with that when I am able. But as far as ever volunteering anything or asking any questions, etc., I have made it through that school and graduated! Believe me, it feels good to have that kind of patience and self control, and you will have more head space to think about things you enjoy. I still fall into the spirals but they stay in my mind, I don't say anything to him about it.

Coly, if you believe in God, there is a much easier way to do all these things -- I don't want to post that here but all the things I do to enable these things, I translated into secular language here. If you visit the site of rejoice ministries, check out how to zip the lips as a start. I actually became a Christian because of my stand, and when I started I just followed some of these things as an exercise, I was kind of atheist and Jewish! But I found it really helpful and easier to follow those teachings through that lens. Eventually following them worked on me in another way but that's another story! You could also try doing the love dare, I did that first and was not a believer, I just skipped the parts that were Christian. It taught me how to let go of him, even though I myself was still a mess inside.

Reading your sitch, I had a feeling that total restoration is ahead of you, I don't know why, but I really did. But I feel like your H is your idol still, you need to let him go and find a new meaning for your life and trust that he will come back when the time is right and he has made it through this darkness in his soul.

Sorry this is so long.

Hugs, Coly, I get exactly how you feel!

[Ginger1]

Oh Coly. I just want to give you a big hug. I don't know if you have noticed that if there is a chance of reconciliation it usually only happens when the LBS lets go. You can love and let go. It's not easy, but you can.

Your exH is on guard not because you aren't polite and lovely when you spend time with him. Because he KNOWS you have expectations of you wanting something he can't give. Because he recognizes the cycle and knows the texts are going to come in. He DOES realize that you and D put your hearts on the line when he comes over. He knows it comes with expectation. And shame on him for not declining the invite knowing this and that he can't give you what you want.

I hate to see you go through this cycle over and over. I know how much it hurts you when he doesn't respond in the way you hope.

You have to let go for yourself, and D. Then who knows? But you are inflicting pain on yourself and you don't deserve to hurt like that.

[HaWho]

Coly - I agree with Ginger. I suppose there is no one method to letting go as it's an individual process. I know it's hard.

For me, what helps (and maybe it will help you?) is to remind myself that everyone deserves to be in a relationship with an equally engaged person. While depression/MLC or just being a walk away may explain the neglect, it does not excuse it.

You can still stand for your marriage by living your life like you really believe you deserve better.

If you were unmarried, met a guy, started dating him and this was the pattern from the get go, what would you do?

[DnJ]

Hi Coly23, I understand your reservations of detaching and worry of loosing your feelings towards H. I have / had the same fears. I share your views of having some attachment due to being married and wanting to reconcile, along with not wanting to harden your heart.

I am fairly well detached from W, her actions and words do not emotionally hijack me and send me into a spin (mostly). Perhaps your view is, if one was fully detached one would not care at all, not a great place for reconciliation I think. That may be more a semantics arguement than anything. btw that is my view hence why I see my self as fairly well detached, not detached. Again semantics.

Point is you will not loose your feelings towards H. I still love my W. I know, how crazy is that? After all this time and all she has done - I love her.

You can become emotional detached, you can let go, and not harden your heart.

I wrote out how detachment worked for me and deleted it. It was quite wordy and kind of preachy, did not seem appropriate for a response on your thread.

The short version is being accurate with feeling, thoughts, and beliefs will lead to realizations and the ability to let go.

Ok, that is rather vague. Kind of wishing I copied what I wrote before deleting, I would just paste it on my thread. SMH.

At any rate, I do agree with HaWho. Learning how to let go is an individual process and it is difficult.

[Rita]

Coly and DnJ, thank goodness DnJ did post a version of this on his own thread because it rocks. His post here rocks too but you need the detail of his other version. Go read it, Coly!

[Coly23]

Just popping back to say a big thank you to all of you who posted to me! I am sorry I did not post earlier. I just start to feel very overwhelmed and just need to step away very quickly.

Just know that you are all in my thoughts and I will pop in ever now and again and update if there is anything going on. At the moment there is nothing happening except life! H is still out there living his on his own and I'm living it with my D. We had a wonderful holiday recently, the first with just the two of us. Grateful for the chance to spend this time with her seeing as she is becoming more and more independent.

Hugs to you all... Xx

[job]

Coly,

I am glad you returned to post an update. It's okay...we all need to step away every now and then. You are always welcome here and you don't have to return to post about him...you can post about how things are going w/you and your daughter. I'm am so happy to read that you and your daughter had a wonderful holiday. That's all that matters...living life and enjoying the time you spend w/your child.

Take care of yourself and don't be a stranger.

[Westo]

I echo what Job said,

Please don’t be a stranger and I too understand that sometimes you have to step back (((cwtch)))