8 month things improving

[Rita]

BPD -- Believe me, I understand the thought trap you are in. I regularly re-enter that trap and then DnJ or Job or various other friends here have to hike all the way out to my thought trap with a crowbar and pry it open and put some balm on the trap-shaped wound on my ankle, give me a drink from the canteen (or preferably the flask!), reset the trap to catch its intended prey, the MLCer, and hike me home.

But just in case you are able to pry it off yourself, here is a sample of how. I always want extreme specifics from my friends here, and I don't always get it so I will be specific! : ) --

Hard part is that I believe she realizes the fantasy life is not attainable and that I am her easy choice

You are not her easy choice. That's not true on any level, even hers. Making a marriage work, let alone be amazing, is really hard. The easy choice is the affair and the running. Even the MLCer knows that. Keeping you as a possibility doesn't make you the easy choice. It just makes you a choice among two or three choices, and I know how horribly painful that is.

17 years of marriage / 3 kids / life of great memories and now I'm simply Plan B. Hard pill to swallow. ....

You are not simply Plan B and there is no pill you need to swallow. Avoid her MLC pills and go eat something you enjoy! You are not Plan B but BPD, a wonderful loving man who has upheld his vows against impossible odds. Your W's ability to see that through her MLC glasses is not what determines the truth of it. Stick to the truth, not the words coming out of her mouth.

I hope her feelings are just buried and will return, it would be nice if she would work on the marriage since she has decided to stick with it. ....

Her feelings are without a shadow of a doubt just buried. It's extremely possible that her feelings will return; the question is not if they will return but if you want to wait that long. You have no control over the feelings returning; you only have control over your choice to enjoy your life while you are waiting or enjoy your life while choosing not to wait anymore. I have been waiting for seven years, and there were some six-month periods along the way where my H seemed to be climbing out of the tunnel only to slink back into it -- or, at times, to dynamite a new passage back in. I never want to see the MLC version of my H again, but somehow I know that I am still standing for the man I loved before even though I have no idea where he went and I really don't want to keep standing when the person who looks kind of like him and seems to have swallowed him whole is so evil. But the point is -- you have been standing for an extremely short time, and I would really recommend to you that you try to imagine her return not happening for two years and go from there with your attempts to GAL, let her go, and be her friend if you want or don't if you don't. Thinking you are going to work things out right now is going to make her feel trapped and make you feel crazy and tortured.

And finally --

It's like trying to watch a pot boil.

Um, surely if you are referencing that idiom, you know that the point of all grandmas and moms saying that is to get you the heck away from the stove because that pot ain't going to boil with you standing there. Yes, that is exactly true, what you are doing is exactly like watching a pot boil, and every single person with a grandma knows that we are not to watch pots boil! Go outside and play and only come back in for a cuppa tea when you hear that whistle blowing! Your W chooses when to whistle, no point in waiting there to watch it, and she sure won't like that or be able to whistle very well with your eyes glued to her.

I want you to know that I get it. I am writing on your thread tonight because I am desperately lonely and came on the board to feel less lonely. I should be doing my work but am instead writing to you in part to dispel my own feelings of sorrow. I am seven years in and I am still crushed by the various revelations or monster-moves that come my way. But not nearly as crushed as I used to be, and from the outside, no one would know that my heart is hurting. In the old days I was 103 pounds and smoking a pack a day and looked like a deer in headlights. (Though admittedly where I live, that's considered desirable, and people were always complimenting me and asking me how me and my H were staying so trim!) But I have finally gotten H out of my house, I have finally accepted his efforts to divorce me, I am trying to live a life despite the pain. And yes, I am still on some crazy level, deep down, standing. But I am not watching him anymore, I do feel sad but I never watch his behavior anymore or expect anything from him, and so I have a certain freedom now. You can too, whether your stand is a year, two years or ten.