Husband left for the second time - 8

[Maika]

Nicole - wow! That was quite a response. One thing that I have admired about you is that you do have a open heart and you leave it on the page. There is so much to process and respond to in what you wrote. I am going to try and pick out some key things and give you my thoughts.

Regarding my husband being a bad person, yes, he became someone unrecognizable. For over seven years he was a kind, gentle, thoughtful, funny, and loving man. Then he became the polar opposite. I don't want that version of him back and I can't take him back after he's done this twice, but the old version was a good man.

I know you've said this before, but with your deep desire to keep the marriage, I am wondering how much you're willing to bend on this. In all your writing, I feel that you prioritize saving the marriage vs. reclaiming yourself. I don't believe that you would make it easy for him, but I believe that you have a breaking point and you would cave in to have him back rather than have a relationship that meets your true needs as a woman and partner. You still have an attachment to the 'familiar' prior to him wreaking havoc on the marriage, and it seems you're not able to shake it off. The good news is that I believe you have given us more insight into your life and your challenges and I'll talk about them below.

You mention a deep rooted fear of being alone, abandonment, depression, and anxiety. I think I've struggled with a lot anxiety over certain things, especially health and religion.

I believe one thing we haven't explored is your relationship with your religious beliefs. I have read in the past how your beliefs have wired you from going out dating and meeting people and even having casual sexual relationships. I am not here to change your religious beliefs and ask you to abandon them. What I am curious is if you had the same religious beliefs as WH prior to meeting him or if you converted? If they were same prior to WH, did you freely explore the religion or was it something passed down in the family and you were expected to have the same beliefs? I'd like to see more on this and you exploring whether the beliefs you have are truly yours or something that was bequeathed to you through family. If you converted, why did you do that? Was it because you truly agreed with those religious beliefs or was it because it was needed to get married?

The reason I am asking about this is because I am wondering how much self-exploration you have done about what your values are and if they are actually 'yours' or if you adopted these values because of other reasons. And this dovetails into my next point.

I went through ages 18 - 30 mostly alone in life.

How much are your beliefs about being rooted in a community and having a community around you? Loneliness is a beast and wanting to be part of something can spark adopting specific religious beliefs to have a sense of community and togetherness.

What past counselors have suggested, and what I keep hearing from friends in real life, is that I lack confidence.

Understanding your life story, that makes 100% sense. Of course you lack confidence in yourself and that's keep you from moving forward because I believe at the core, I don't think you know who you really are and what you really want. Going inward is scary. I know from experience. But, you need to do that and understand where that lack of confidence is coming from, and if your actions are resulting from you wanting to fill that void.

And I know there are many people out there who say it's important to be happy alone and to not need anyone else, but in my experience life was better when shared with someone special.

Absolutely. Life is incredible when shared with someone else. However, if a partnership is needed as an escape strategy from your own self and creating your own happiness, then it's never going to yield those dividends because your well-being is entirely dependent on the partnership. And I won't go into your response around co-dependency, but when you add up everything in your life: loneliness + lack of confidence + sparse meaningful relationships + roots of your belief systems - your relationship with WH screams of co-dependency. I know it's hard to see it when you're in it, but it's so obvious to outsiders that you are using this partnership to self-medicate your hurt from your life. That will never solve it.

I look at the short and long term, micro and macro, one theory vs another theory and I just feel plain confused. I feel I have no belief system, no strong conviction, and no clarity because the evidence is lacking in all directions. If DB is about saving oneself that's great, and eventually we all need to save ourselves in our new solo roles, but if DB can only anecdotally claim to save marriages and there's no evidence that it works then who is to say it's better than another approach, such as filing for immediate divorce when a spouse cheats or leaves, or marriage counseling, or whatever else one might choose to do.

I feel on being analytical. I also have similar tendencies. But, trying the constantly keep peeling the layers with the belief that some more profound truth will be found is a fruitless task. At some point, it's turtles all the way down. This goes back to my original point above - you are prioritizing saving your marriage vs. reclaiming yourself. The truth is that the former will never happen without the latter. The best chance you can have is by focusing on the latter. Yes, DB has it's shortcomings and it's marketed to 'save' marriages, but once you're in this dimension, it becomes evidently clear that this is a long game and the path towards it is through you, not around you. You cannot hang on to your marriage - this is why you haven't let go, detached, and started to live your life on your own terms. I don't think you can live life on your own terms because you haven't dealt with your confidence issues, your belief systems, and working on changing your story from the past to what you want in the future, and even in the now.

I agree that a year is a good benchmark to pass and if the marriage hasn't been fixed it's not worth saving, however, I never wanted to get divorced so it's hard to find the urgency in filing. It's almost better when the other person does it like your ex-wife did. Then you have no choice, and you're catapulted forward, and you give up completely.

Last point. I think it's a good DB message to not move ahead with divorce if you don't want it. I think it definitely makes sense for the first 12-18 months because the LBS is still finding their feet. However, I think at this point the LBS has to seriously contemplate their relationship with 'standing' for the marriage. I am not the one to say that you should file for D and etc etc, but I will say that you have to reckon with yourself why you would want to continue in the face of the WH/WW doing whatever they're doing. The LBS has to take back control and make decisions, even if the decision is to do nothing and continue the current trajectory. I am not a proponent of leaving the D decision to the WW/WH. If they file, so be it. But if they don't, the LBS has to decide. As you know, in my case, I took action and made the decision because I wanted to chart my life based on my values and needs, and not be subject to the whims of someone else.

I believe you need to seriously consider this question, among other questions I have raised.

I will share one more thing from my journey, which loops back to something I mentioned earlier. I left my religion and community 4 years ago. It was a road that was about 8 years in the making. I knew that my values didn't align with the religious community, and it took that much time to muster up the conviction and courage to leave knowing full well that I was going to lose an entire community of people. But what I believed was more important and I had given it serious thought and talked to many people.

The point of that story is not to convince you to give up your religious beliefs. The point is that you need to understand why you do what you do and believe what you believe. And also to illustrate that I know the journey is hard. But saving yourself and getting to the point of clarity is worth every moment of pain and rejection.

My hope is that you push yourself further with all of this and get comfortable being uncomfortable. The biggest growth will come from that. I am in your corner always!