D - As Nef said, time and patience. It's ok to feel angry, hurt, resentment, etc. I think the pain will lesson as you continue to move forward with your life and make it the best that it can possibly be. Try to focus on the positives, you can make a clean break with no kids involved and your still very young. I have not lived with my XW in 1.5 years but I still feel some anger especially when I have to send her that child support payment every month. She gets to live the single life every other week and she got paid on top of it...............SMH, I digress.
(long aside) -- I had a mate (gourd) from when I lived down there, but it has disappeared over the years.
It's interesting, I just gave up coffee. For many years I lived in some of the biggest coffee countries of the world (Italy, Argentina, Colombia) and I never touched it, but over the past 6 years I started relying on it. I drank 2-3 cups a day, and was feeling like I needed it to wake up. But I have also had a lot of problems with gastritis, so I gave up the coffee cold turkey a few weeks ago. I have been drinking a lot of tea, both black and herbal, but mate sounds appealing as well. It might be a bit expensive up here as a daily habit.
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Thanks Joseph,
For sure, the pain has already lessened ten-fold. In fact, I am generally feeling very positive about life, more so than even pre-BD when I was depressed.
W 34 Me 42 Married 7 years together 8 0 kids 1 beloved dog BD 4/6/2018 I moved out 4/7/2018 I moved back in alone 8/05/2018 I file 3/06/2019 D official 5/7/2019
... but I'd still like to work past the resentment all together. Perhaps it is just a question of time and patience.
I am early in this process, with H moving out only 1 months ago, but resentment crops up pretty regularly, and more so in the several months leading up to me asking him to move out. I resent Hs indecision whether he thinks he is capable of, or even wants to, work to save a 27 year marriage. I resent all the years he left me to raise kids almost on my own while he pursued his hobbies and, probably, other women. I resent his inability to open up to me on a deep, emotional, intimate way. I resent his refusal to deal with his depression in a more appropriate and productive manner. This list goes on.
But, resentment is useless, isn't it? Doesn't stop us from feeling it, but only time I think can start dulling it so it doesn't take such sudden hold of us. It will eventually, I hope, just be a fleeting thought easily passed by as we get on with living.
But, resentment is useless, isn't it? Doesn't stop us from feeling it, but only time I think can start dulling it so it doesn't take such sudden hold of us. It will eventually, I hope, just be a fleeting thought easily passed by as we get on with living.
For sure, it is more than useless, it is damaging to the soul. It will eat away at a person from the inside if you let it. I have seen more than a few divorced people who can't move on with their lives, so strong is this feeling.
You are very early in your sitch and it is to be expected. It will dull with time for sure. At this point I can see it for what it is when the feeling crops up and then let it go to focus my mind elsewhere. I'd just like to be able to drop it completely and move on to acceptance, or at least indifference.
W 34 Me 42 Married 7 years together 8 0 kids 1 beloved dog BD 4/6/2018 I moved out 4/7/2018 I moved back in alone 8/05/2018 I file 3/06/2019 D official 5/7/2019
The past week has been a bit more up and down emotionally. I think part of it is the birthday I have coming up - perhaps another reminder of my mortality and the passing years. Also after some time off from self-reflection I have been re-reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F##k and taking notes on it, and that has stirred up some things as well. The section on absolute responsibility for our lives spoke to me. Just because we are responsible doesn't mean we are to blame, fault is the past, responsibility is the present. I definitely fell into the trap of the victim mindset before BD. I was unable to distinguish between the external things I couldn't control and the internal reactions and attitudes that I could. I saw all the uncontrollable elements and the ways (in my mind) the world was conspiring against me and more or less gave up. I turned to numbing behaviors (thankfully nothing too destructive, just internet and tv) and fell into depression. Taking responsibility was hard post BD, but I know that I am getting better at it.
The other section that spoke to me was about fear of failure, how most of us reach a place where we are afraid to fail because we are using sh@tty metrics to measure success/failure. I certainly reached that point both in my relationship and in my professional life. It seems strange to me, because my life has been marked by some bold decisions - moving to a country where I didn't speak the language and giving up a secure job, marrying my wife after only a year of dating. But at some point, fear became a dominating factor in my life. Fear of losing my job, fear of losing my wife, fear of being rejected by people socially. That's just not a healthy place to be. A few weeks or month after BD I remember thinking to myself that I really had nothing to be afraid of anymore. I had lost my W and my MR - the worst thing I could ever imagine had happened, and there I was, wobbling, but still standing. I felt like a heavy drape had been removed, and all the other fears seemed more trivial. I learned how to "lead-rope" while rock-climbing which would have previously terrified me, I got my first tattoo, on a simpler level I forced myself to go out with common friends whose judgement/pity/derision I would have feared earlier.
It's still a work in progress though. For my upcoming birthday I really wanted to have friends come over to my house, since it has been so solitary for the past three months, but I don't have many "real" friends in my city. Everyone I know is a common friend of my W and I, or a co-worker with whom I get along but don't really have much contact with outside of work. It was legitimately frightening to put out the invitation on social media and spread it to basically anyone I am even an acquaintance with. My mind definitely went to the thoughts of people receiving the invite thinking "Why?" or the thought that everyone would just ignore it. And to top it off, it is a week later and only half a dozen people out of the 60-70 people I sent it to have let me know that they will be coming. It really could be quite lame. What I am comforting myself with is the thought that I want to lean in to the fear, to make myself vulnerable and open and to share some good food, drinks, music, maybe a bonfire with people who want to be in my life. If I judge it by that metric there is still success even if the party itself is a flop. My values are pushing through the fear and spending time with friends. I want to get so accustomed to the fear that it loses its ability to paralyze me, to continue to feel it but be able to put it in its place.
I'm still struggling and trying to work through my resentment towards my W. I did 4 straight days of (hot) yoga (my shoulders are quite sore!) and worked on "forgiveness" and "letting go" as my intention throughout. By the fourth day I could feel my mindset shifting and softening. Not that I am where I want to be, but I could feel movement and fluidity where before I felt stuck in rigidity.
In any case, if anyone has read this long, thanks! I haven't been able to get in to see my IC and won't until next week, so this has become my opportunity to let out some things.
W 34 Me 42 Married 7 years together 8 0 kids 1 beloved dog BD 4/6/2018 I moved out 4/7/2018 I moved back in alone 8/05/2018 I file 3/06/2019 D official 5/7/2019
Today is my first birthday since BD, just about 7 months ago. All of my family is in other parts of the country, and I haven't seen any friends. It is a bit lonely. Normally at least at work people would congratulate me, I know that parents of some students even organized a cake or something. However, I got called for jury duty yesterday and had to go back again today. I was dismissed as a juror around 10:30 in the morning, and so got to head home for a day off since my classes were already covered. I decided to take the dog out for a walk and go to one of my favorite restaurants where it was warm enough to sit on the front patio and have a birthday lunch with the dog. Still, I have gone most of the day without speaking to anyone and it leaves a lot of time to be in my head. Podcasts are a great way to fill up the time but 4 hours of them is more than filling even for me. As long as the weather holds this evening I will go out for a weekly bike ride with some friends and enjoy a beer afterwards. That should help a lot.
Yesterday I had a 2 hour lunch from jury duty so I decided to try to take advantage of the time and go rock climbing at the gym. When I got outside the courthouse I discovered that someone had stolen my rear (red) light from my bike even though it was locked-up not ten feet from the entrance and security guards. Then when I got to the gym I discovered that the problems (routes) that I had been working on for 3 weeks were gone. These were projects that I would visualize myself doing each night before I went to bed, they occupied a lot of my thoughts. They should have been up for another 3 weeks, but the gym reset them for a special competition that evening. I'm not sure if it was the combination of events, my hurry in trying to squeeze in the workout, or stress from my birthday but mentally I just lost it for a moment. I was so furious that I could barely speak, my brain could only focus on the anger to the point that it couldn't work. I didn't explode at the employees or anything like that, but internally I certainly was out of control. It took a few minutes for me to calm down and reframe my mind - what I value about going to the gym is challenging myself physically and mentally and the process of improving, which I can do just as easily on other routes. In the past I would have been content to be resentful that they had changed the routes and ruined the experience for me, a victim mindset. I wouldn't even complain about it, but I would let the resentment fester inside me. But this time I wanted to take control of the narrative and shape it according to my values. It wasn't instantaneous, but I did get there and I enjoyed my limited time there.
Just an hour ago I got a call from an old friend who still lives in South America and was friends with W and I when we were there. It was the first time in a long time that I had to explain that we were no longer together to someone who actually knew us. He was shocked but like most people I know down there completely positive and future-focused "echado para adelante" as they say. Then, I got a sweet text message from SIL sending me a big hug and wishing me much happiness on my birthday. It was genuine and nice, but it still stung a little bit.
W 34 Me 42 Married 7 years together 8 0 kids 1 beloved dog BD 4/6/2018 I moved out 4/7/2018 I moved back in alone 8/05/2018 I file 3/06/2019 D official 5/7/2019
