Milestones of Moving On (?)

[TJT]

Hey Joe. Thank you for stopping by my thread and reading and responding

Are you GAL'ing? Are you doing 180's? DB is marketed as a "last ditch" effort to win your spouse back, but what I found over the last year was that it has been WAY more about making myself a much better version. I took all the time and energy I would have WASTED on my XW and used it to upgrade myself. While I was in the worst of it, I did GAL with an empty feeling. I did it because this site taught me to do it.

I am GALing. Maybe not AS much in recent weeks with the holidays, but I have been doing more than I thought I'd be comfortable with. I've had friends over at the house which was great, I've gone out to movies and a play and dinner with friends. I have another friend who is in town from another state and she is going to come and grill out with me and stay overnight later this week. I am going to Yoga, not super frequently but I try to once a week at least. And I am cooking more for myself, which is sort of a sore subject because it was something meaningful in me and H's marriage, but I am trying to put it into new perspective and find joy in it for myself.

Being in a new community I've also pushed myself not to isolate myself from neighbors. New neighbors right next to me will be moving in later this week. But some of these things just make me more sad because these people are families and I don't have one anymore. So, yeah, I definitely do it with an empty feeling or even a resentful feeling and like nobody IRL really understands what I'm going through. I don't end up HATING it but everything - in fact sometimes I have found myself enjoying it - it just seems to circle back to missing H or at a minimum wanting someone else to build a life with me ASAP even if it's not H (which I KNOW I do not want to do as it wouldn't be healthy at this stage). It's like even when I'm doing something and happy with myself, the minute I'm not "distracted" any more I feel the exact same.. sad, lonely, why is this happening, why wasn't I able to change it, etc.

But this was not about you, TJT. This has always been about your spouse. You are NOT deficient. And even if you were, that is not a reason to cheat. Just reading what you've written here gives me the impression that you're a caring, thoughtful, and intelligent woman. Listen, you were good enough to get him to marry you in the beginning, and you're good enough now. It's not about that.

Thank you Joe. I really appreciate this reminder.

The OM can't hold a candle to me in any way. She had a mental breakdown and left me because she ran from her situation and went to someone else because they were new and she saw a way out. Now that is different than your sitch, but I tell you this because I want you to know that you are not at fault, no matter what your self-perceived deficiencies might be.

I haven't read your sitch yet (will try to do later today) but the little snippet of your W wanting a way out actually sounds a lot like my H. And I have gotten it out of my ILs that they feel at least somewhat the same about him avoiding his issues and my parents definitely agree with that assessment.

I definitely feel that there has been an element of depression, lack of self-esteem, etc. contributing to my H's A, catalyzed by work issues, issues he's been having with his family, health issues... I mean, there has to be something a lot more serious than just "not being happy" and something I "did" for someone to drop 20k on a brand new home, only to completely withdraw 2 months later and BD (which I still feel bad about because he didn't even really BD... it was I who initiated a conversation about him basically acting like he wanted that, which he then just confirmed he thought was best. I regret that approach but I guess I didn't honestly think it would go that way!)

Anyway, I get that it doesn't make sense for him to be blaming his complete unhappiness on me, but it does amplify the insecurities I do have. I picture him and OW in a sexual fantasy land and wonder if I was just the stale boring wife in the bedroom (he never asked for anything different and I figured as long as we were being intimate he would be happy).

His MIL did also mention that he said something about me not treating his son the way he wanted me to - which absolutely has been a point of contention in our relationship, however 1) I was 20 years old when I met him with a 4 year-old and an XW with joint custody, so yeah there was a learning curve for me... and 2) he has always been very lax from a discipline perspective, which I admit has frustrated me.

But the point is I did talk to him about what I needed from him to feel like we were a team in parenting his son and for ME to feel like I wasn't always the bad guy when he needed discipline and that I got respect as a stepparent, both from him and his son. It just never changed and typically really important conversations only occurred between him and his son privately. I know in some cases it was good and appropriate for them to bond - but many times it made me feel like an outsider to their relationship.

I 100% realize these kinds of things that were issues in our M - the issues themselves and how he addressed them (or lacktherof). But I love him and they were never things that I wasn't willing to keep pushing through, and it just gets more and more clear to me that he has never really wanted to work on change of any kind. If you could manage to dig back through my sitch, I talk somewhere about all the times I did feel like something was "off" and how I would try to talk to him, suggest going to a marital workshop or even just individual activities between us to build a stronger relationship, but he always scoffed. And this was well before I felt he was really distancing himself, so I could never quite understand why he wasn't willing to "protect" our relationship by doing some maintenance work every now and then. But I guess I just took it as him being content with how things were. And I just accepted it because I did not want to be that "nagging" wife!

But I digress.

Stay strong. The first thing you have to save in a divorce is not the marriage, it's yourself.

I know this has to be true and I hate that I seem to be so codependent. I have always thought of myself as a very independent person, but I am learning through this process that I am only independent when it comes to logistics - money, having an organized life, work, etc. When it comes to emotions, I have some level of independence but apparently placed way more weight than I should have on H to make me happy, since I now feel like my whole life is ruined without him. I still believe that life is to be shared and that it's normal to feel that emptiness even if we are truly happy with ourselves, and that we all do require some level of validation. I guess I just need to be easier on myself so that I'm not so afraid that nobody else will ever accept my flaws. I'd like to think someone will and won't use them as an excuse to leave like H has.

My H did say at some point that this wasn't my fault, blah blah blah, but that's just more frustrating for him to acknowledge something like that and yet not work on it. And this is why I'm so pessimistic about whether he will EVER work on things, since that seems to be the pattern. I just think at some point, he has to get to an age or a mental state where he wants to break his own cycle... and I'd like to think that I am/was a force in his life that would help him realize that (I am the longest and I'd say most serious romantic relationship he's had, which makes this even harder to understand), but realistically I know I have to accept that it may never happen, like ovrrnbw said.