Gerda Rises Up to Go On

[Gerda]

DnJ, I am glad you wrote to me today, it was good to "see" you. I read your post and will have to mull over it a bit. We may be saying the same thing or we may be saying the opposite, I am not sure. I agree that feeling forced to miserably accept a "directive" from God is a path to disaster. I imagine our MLCers felt this way somehow. But I also think that there can be great freedom in surrendering one's will to what you don't want to do, I think that's why those things are in the bible, as God knew we would not want to do those things so He lays it out for our benefit, just like I lay out for my kids that they should not eat ice cream for every meal. Or that they should not lie or steal, and why, etc.

I have certainly found that to be true for many things, and it is the reason I am still standing.

I just don't know about the current discomfort. And lately everyone around me is telling me that I missed the signs, that H must always have been like this, that this was always in him, etc. Some friends will say things like, "Well, he was always lazy compared to you, you were always the one doing all the work at the business," etc. Or talking about how there was always some part of him that was unreachable or various other things that seemed to others like a sign of something simmering. I am also reading a book about divorcing a narcissist to try to get my head around the clarity i need at court, and it is incredible how accurate it is in describing how the narcissist goes about the court process in a totally destructive way that draws the LBS in and makes the LBS appear to be "difficult" too. This is exactly what is happing to me -- all I want is to settle but the judge screams at both of us for refusing to settle. Last time I was there she was yelling at me, "Do you really want to be those people who waste all that time and money refusing to settle? Stop it!"

But as a result of these things, I start to doubt my entire life with him, to wonder if he was lying for 18 years or if I was blind. I remembered that a long time ago, before I came to faith, he was talking about his faith and his need for God, and he said, "You have no idea how terrible I am." At the time I didn't get it. When I came to faith I thought I understood what he meant. Now I wonder if he was facing who he actually had been all along, and decided to give in to that. I don't want to believe his rewriting of history. But for some time now I wondered if I married, in a sense, my mother, since so many things are exactly the same since MLC, and all that is happening is exactly what I went through as a teen with my parents, and I always thought I would avoid at all costs!

DnJ -- do you battle that too or are you very sure that your W was nothing like who she is now? Are you confident that you couldn't have known?

Tomorrow I have court and I am battling Ye Olde Fears.

Tomorrow's agenda -- to show the court that I am physically afraid of H and he cannot return to the house, that I am out of money and can no longer pay him anything, that he has not paid child support last month and I assume won't this coming month and that I have now proposed settlement three times and he refuses to settle. But it's hard to get my lawyer to see how important all these things are.

What I fear is that she won't listen to any of this and just like last time will scream at both of us for not settling and will try to punish me for not settling by allowing him to move back even though I want nothing more than to settle. I fear that I will have to promise to give him money when there is no way for me to get anymore. I fear that he will be allowed back.

H thinks that the court-ordered appraisal is wrong, that he will be able to get 1.5 times the appraised value in a bidding war that I guess will magically happen immediately after putting the house on the market, that he can force me to sell instead of buying him out. He does not even respond to the idea that it would be better not to move the kids during the school year.

I am falling asleep while writing, last night could not sleep at all so it must be caching up to me. So I will close up shop but with extreme gratitude and will write a better reply about your other options soon.