1) Hs that love their wives do not care about their W's weight. Sex is about feeling close, connected and loved. It has zero to do with how W looks. So many Ws say "I look like a mess, hair undone, in sweats, and he still wants to have sex." Yep. Because we don't care.
Totally agree - he didn't care, but I cared. How I felt about myself and my body and feeling insecure made me not want to have sex. It had nothing to do with him - we had great sex at any size. It made me feel like a failure and awful, and sometimes no one can break through that. I knew inside it was a physical manifestation of me not handling stuff in life like I needed to,
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2) As one neat freak to another: It doesn't matter. Stop nagging him about it. He does not care about neatness like you do and never will. Stop trying to change him. I spent 18+ years trying to change my W in this regard. After BD I gave it up. If I want things neat I make them neat! I no longer harp on her for it. Guess what? My life and hers are so much better. The tension and stress over it is gone. I will always be a neat freak.She never will be. Accept his sloppiness and move on.
Also agree - one of the first things I discussed in IC. My IC was like "you are a very black and white person," so the first thing I challenged myself to see as a gray area was cleanliness. Before it was like - any dish in the sink = UNCLEAN. Since H has been gone, this has been an easy one for me to conquer on my own. I think the cleanliness ramped up because our new house is brand new construction so I wanted to keep it nice, and this was an anxiety escape for me. It was ridiculous, and I recognize as much. Does the couch needing to be dust busted really impact my quality of life? No. I had lost perspective on this and used it as a distraction for bigger problems, so this in essence is now a non-issue. Granted, there's less to clean because it's just me, but I haven't dove into cleaning as a distraction now, and do not care if I leave some dishes in the sink, or something unclean for a few days. It doesn't matter.
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3) Do not use stress and "mental breakdowns" as an excuse. Throwing things at some one is and always will be a choice. Own it. It was wrong. Admit it, improve, and move on.
Also agree - it's not an excuse. There isn't any excuse. Owning all of that has been hard, but I have been doing it. This is a change that needed to happen regardless of whatever is going on with my H and I.
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4) Marriage is not about independence. Marriage is about shared lives. Experiences. Connection. While self-differentiation is important (google that), being too independent in a marriage is always a recipe for disaster. This is another 180 I had to make to save my marriage. I am as independent as they come. Be one half of a MR, not a single person trying to play a married person.
I am definitely incredibly guilty of this. I will read back in your history to see how you overcame this. I've been thinking a lot about this and how it really affected this marriage. I think part of it is due to my previous marriage, and how if I wasn't the one who did something, it didn't get done, because he was a POS alcoholic. I explored this in IC and also in our last MC, and said it wasn't fair of me to not give my current H a chance to do stuff on his own and not nitpick him (this is different than being independent, but dovetails into the reasons why I felt the need to maintain so much independence - b/c I got so royally screwed the first time, and was scared.). I think this is something I want to bring up again in IC and in our next MC session after doing more ruminating. Part of this is financial, too - I make about 2x as much as H from my newer job, and that is a big deal to me - having financial independence.
I have made a list of what reconciling would look like from my end (IC suggested this) - this list is just for me, and I haven't shared it with H and don't plan to unless it comes up, but being more interdependent is part of it. I can see why H would feel like he is a lesser person/not as involved in decisions based on how independent I was. I didn't want to put the cart before the horse, but it was important for me to figure out what I wanted and what I'd need if we do reconcile to make sure I could trust him to not just run out again if something got hard. He's young and I think genuinely never had to deal with any relationship conflict, and to his credit, this is a big thing to deal with.
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5) Drop all expectations. You've been fired as his W. Assume for now that there will be nothing done for bdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc. That is your reality today. The bday trip is perfect! This is what we try to get new LBSs to understand for GAL. Concentrate on more like this.
Remember, this is about improving. Remember to GAL....180...detach. Expect the worst, hope for the best.
The firing analogy hit home for me - in our first good MC session, the MC asked me what I did for work, and if I ever got frustrated, and I said yes. He said well you'd never hit someone there, would you? And I said absolutely not. This put things in a different perspective for me, and made me question why I wasn't taking my own marriage as seriously as I do my career. It [censored] feeling fired, because you're right. Sometimes I feel like an idiot kid who broke their favorite toy and am crying over it. All I can do is learn from my mistakes, regardless of what the future holds. Thankfully (I guess?) I have a lot of individual growth to do - as does he. It makes focusing on that better, and helps me identify the ways it was affecting our relationship where I hadn't noticed.
Part of being so independent means the GAL part isn't challenging for me - I was consistently maintaining independent friendships and doing stuff/hobbies. I usually have to schedule nights off from social stuff to take time for myself instead of vice versa.
Another piece of IC for me has been stop trying to control everything (generally, not even just in this situation), so that's been a tough one as well. Patience has always been my biggest life struggle, so I am trying to take this as an opportunity to become more empathetic and patient. Because I do still love my H, it's easier to feel that, regardless of my own feelings. He definitely had some contributions to the environment not being great as well, but I have not once blamed him for any of this and taken full responsibility for my pieces. Him opening up about feeling codependent helped - because I am so independent, he would put a lot of pressure on himself to 'take care of me' and then get so hurt/frustrated that it didn't work or have the desired effect. I know he is having a hard time with this, too - seeing someone that you love struggle with something and then having that something hurt you is brutal.
