Milestones of Moving On (?)

[TJT]

Thank you all SO so much for responding and adding your thoughts. No apologies needed for "hijacking". I insert my sitch into my replies to y'all all the time... I think it's helpful to share perspectives.

In other words: validate the emotions, not the misperception of reality. Act calmly and logically.

I've been reading about how to validate so that I know how to do it if/when H were to approach me. Right now the hard part is that I don't even have the opportunity. H is not contacting me, and I am not contacting him (unless I have to ask about his portions of bills). He is not being much of an archnemesis to me, at least not actively in my specific direction. It's more passive / indirect as he keeps living his life with OW.

One thing my MIL did say to me was once a while back she mentioned she had talked to me, and H asked her "You still talk to her?" I was flabbergasted by this... like, H not only has made the decision to basically forget about me, but he also thinks it would be normal for everyone else to just wipe me from their slates too?! I can see how that may have been more of a self-protecting comment than anything (realizing that my MIL has the ability to continue sharing info with me) but it's still just really stupid.

At any rate, this is one reason why I am not posting anything on SM, as much as I want to post my own memes about pain and hurt and commitment and to tell everyone I know. I need to be level-headed and ensure others' perception of me is level-headed, and just go through my own process.

This is why the lighthouse is so important if your goal is to have them back in your life one day. Because if they realize that you have always truly been there for them, then there is the chance that they will ask you to be part of their recovery when they are ready to change. Standing up a lighthouse for them is 100% faith-based. There are absolutely no guarantees that it will ever change anything, but you do it out of love.

This combined with what I said in response to burned above are the two hardest things for me to reconcile. As I've discussed here before, I want to be the lighthouse but how does he even know I'm the lighthouse if we pretty much ZERO interaction? IF he "comes out of it", and I haven't done anything while he's been "in it", then it seems he will have nothing to go on (aside from maybe the stuff I said to him before he actually moved out, about how I didn't want this and would be willing to work on the M with him). And even if I've said stuff before, how would he know I haven't changed my mind?

This was also why filing is so terrifying for me. I don't see filing as being much of a "lighthouse". I just got the confirmation back today that the court accepted the petition so it's now officially a "case"... I'm kind of freaking out. I feel terrible because I don't really want to be D and now there's this very real record of me filing, and I am afraid H would see that as the equivalent of me smashing out the light in the lighthouse (yes, even though he is the one living with OW and doing god knows what).

My plan now is basically to just let it sit for a while... I don't have to serve him right away, and ultimately if I never let him know about it, it could get dismissed without any "approval" needed from either of us (or I could definitely ask for it to be dismissed if I wanted to) and I'd just have to start over if I want to do it again later. I also learned that apparently if he does file AND serve me (or otherwise let me know about it so I can answer), his petition will trump mine if I've never let him know about it, even if mine was earlier.

So, having this formally "in the system" gives me an option to drop it on him a little more quickly if I feel like I really need to or want to. Other than that I may have just spent $400 only to accomplish nothing if I chicken out and can't bring myself to move it forward before the court dismisses it, OR if H does in fact decide to file on his own (I've tried to look up the time frame for dismissal and apparently it varies, so I'm not quite sure how long I have but I know they should let me know when it's coming up).

Oh well, she says, time to keep searching for “the one” who won’t let me drop myself onto a jagged surface. When all along it was Burned who wanted so much to protect her from that.

Yeah. This is the hopelessness I feel AND why I think I have a feeling of guilt. Back to that whole acknowledging there are things I could have done better and if that could have changed anything.

But as we can see in my posts of messages he had sent me quite close to BD... and to the point DV made in her post.. clearly what we had was real and he DID still love me despite the things he said led to him wanting to get a divorce. My H did say during that same convo that he was conflicted... that he knew what he wanted to do but also didn't know.

There lies the mystery - was he conflicted out of self-preservation and not wanting to look like the bad guy, but knew in his heart he really didn't want to be with me anymore? Or was he conflicted because he knew he wanted to be with OW but he ALSO knew that deep down, even though he claimed to not be IN love anymore, that he may not be making the right decision? Joe, I fully submit to your response that I will NOT ever be able to understand it. I think what I'm not bought into yet is that it doesn't matter. I feel like "if only" I could understand, it would matter, because then I feel like I'd have my answer as to whether H is just an A-hole or if I should hold on and wait for the H I think exists to come back..

There needs to be a way to gauge the level of pain this all causes. We all need to get hooked up to a brain scanner so this can be measured. It's pure torture and as much as I know we all have faith that we'll come out the other side, I definitely believe it will be with a major emotional limp that I'll be living with the rest of my life, if not worse.

Ughhh I feel like I am emotionally regressing so hard right now and going back to denial that my H would really do this to me or that it's possible he won't come back. The more I try to move on, the worse my yearning for him seems to get!!

In other news, I got up this morning, albeit super late, and got dressed and put makeup on. Still have zero other plans for the day, aside from maybe tidying up the house a little to keep myself busy. I would like to go out to eat at least but I don't have anyone to really go with (I can try my mom I guess but she doesn't like the restaurant I want to go to, grr) plus I'm now pretty much broke for another week. That's the other hard part about this, at least if I wasn't stuck with this massive mortgage on my own I'd have a little more money to do things for myself. But I'm both emotionally and financially barreeelly making it. It's pretty terrible feeling like you're on your last leg every day and might fall over dead at any moment.