Milestones of Moving On (?)

[TJT]

Thank you Yail. I read your reply this morning and it did make me feel good to have someone who could empathize!

Same thing with my H in terms of no monstering. He did slightly increase his "night caps" but it wasn't at all along the lines of alcoholism.

There were a few times before all this happened, a little over a year ago (which now lines up with when I think he started seeing OW) where he intermittently started working out again. And what makes me really sick about it all is I DO remember him doing the super cliche thing and buying new underwear... and this man doesn't hardly buy anything for himself. I joked at the time about whether he must have a girlfriend... I will admit there was a sliver of me that was worried but of course I didn't dig any further and just trusted him. But it's totally true...if your spouse suddenly buys new underwear, dead giveaway apparently!!

I now wonder at what point they started getting intimate, how many times he had been intimate with her and then again with me, even if they were just kissing on the regular and then him coming home to kiss me. It turns me completely upside down, but I would be willing to accept all of it if he could just snap out of it and genuinely express some remorse.

I really struggle imagining how I am going to deal with this long term if that doesn't happen. It's sad that I have more hope for my H coming back than I do in thinking I could find someone new. I try to "practice" looking for a new mate all the time (basically literally just looking and going into evaluation mode), to get myself in the habit and go through the motions I guess, even though I'm nowhere near ready, and even during my "practices" I end up feeling disappointed. I don't feel like I'll ever be able to date in a healthy way because of this whole situation, and that the odds of finding someone "organically" while I'm NOT looking are pretty slim. Or that it will be 10, 20 years from now which I also don't want to accept because I want someone who has spent a significant portion of life with me and experienced the growth I'll have in my career and as a person, not half a life with me where all they have to go off of to try to learn about me is stories.

It's a big deal to me because I feel like nobody is going to know you like someone who knew you when you were in such normative years in your life. That's the part I'm most mad at my H for. I gave him something that was so valuable to me - my time and experiences of key moments in my life (not to mention sacrificing to be with someone who had a young child and ex already, and getting over trust issues I had with him before we got serious) - and he is just walking away from that like a transaction.

I am realizing today that while I am a little more "stable" in my feelings, without huge swings as of late, I am definitely feeling more depth of hurt. I feel like there's a hole so deep inside of my being that I can't even locate it, like there's a sword lodged in there somewhere that's stuck and not being pulled out. It's making me cry just writing it.

I empathize with all the people who are dealing with this after decades of marriage who don't really even have another shot at starting over and rebuilding a significant length of time with someone. I do not think I could go on in a situation like that, full stop. It would ruin me.

Sorry, I think I got extra sad because I went out to get groceries tonight and then I also stopped by to eat dinner by myself before I came home, at a spot that me and H would always go to that he introduced me to. Like I said before, just very very much missing him right now.

Burned, if you read this, I did get dog food as well as a 6-pack of beer and strategically placed them side by side in a very visible area of the cart in the hopes it might scream "single woman" and attract a nice dude who also has a dog like you said could happen, haha. All I ended up seeing was another couple getting into an argument. Which also makes me more sad because rather than thinking "thank goodness that's not me", I actually used to love going to stores with my H and just holding hands and farting around looking at stuff, and he would always make me scratch his back while we were browsing but then I'd threaten to stop when he started getting too comfortable and walking too slow in the aisle. It just made me wish he was there, even if it was to have an argument!

On that same note, not sure if this happens to anyone else but I am in full relationship-saving mode with everyone I see. I mean I don't actually say or do anything, but any time I see a couple getting fussy with each other I totally feel like going up to them and saying something to put in perspective how lucky they are to be together. Or even the ones that are walking around holding hands or being sweet to each other, I feel like going up to those ones and telling them not to ever lose sight of that. I am obsessed (not intentionally) with noticing whether people in public are married or not and then wondering what their story is, if they will stay together forever, etc. And I get really really envious of them too, and almost embarrassed, just hoping that one day I will have an H again and happily stroll through life doing mundane things with my person instead of by myself, or with my mom, or with my friends who are either also married or in long-term relationships.

I hate how everything about this feels except when I'm working or really need to get something done where I've always been super focused. Aside from that I'm not really enjoying any extra element of the "freedom" I have. It seems kind of overrated at this point!

OH, I did hear from his mom today after all. She messaged me AND asked if I could come out to their place for lunch sometime this week. Didn't expect that at all. I did agree to come out (that's okay, right?) I assume his dad may be working during the day and it will just be her and his grandparents, but I'm not sure. I would love to see them both but my FIL is more passive and I don't know if he would consider it weird to have me over. I am not planning on talking about H at all, in terms of asking questions about whether they've heard from him, etc. If they talk about him or ask me things, I will talk, but I am not going to instigate it as that is not the reason for me coming over.

I also plan to apologize to them for not being as engaged and in touch with them over the years because I know I should have been and it is embarrassing that it took all of this for me to show them how much I do care. Not that I never did anything nice or something, but I wouldn't really ever message or call them out of the blue or independently from H just to see how they were doing. They would always communicate through H and we'd plan things that way.To my credit, it's the in-laws and it often seems there's kind of an invisible line of engagement in relationships like that.

I just hope they don't see it as fake, like my H accused me of being as I was trying to make changes before he moved out. Yes, it's definitely different than I used to act and yes, much of it has been spurred by him leaving. Shoot me, I'm human... and I don't have a big family unit myself, and definitely not a strong one, so that kind of stuff and getting personal with people I didn't grow up with is hard. But when you feel like you're going to lose it, you definitely don't just let it go if it meant something to you, and I would absolutely CONTINUE to b a better daughter-in-law in the future even if he were to come back. It's not just for show and this is what I wish my H could see. I am trying and willing to grow SO hard.

Dropped my stepson's birthday card in the mail today too. I hope his teenage self doesn't just rejoice in the $20 and throw it away and that he can feel I really do miss him. There's so many things I've been wondering about with his extracurricular activities, school, the girlfriend my H said he went on his first date with right before he moved out, all the things. Like I've said before, I really felt he was just getting to an age where I would be able to grow a lot more into my role as a step parent, given I was pretty bad at it when he was younger (given I was younger and me and H were, and still had been, growing into each other as parent figures).

Grr, another update that was intended to be short that's now super long.