Hi SC, it sounds like you've jumped right into DB'ing, you're handling things quite well so far.
You say you don't think there's an OW and in your case you may be right. This may indeed have everything to do with the violent confrontations you've had with your H. A lot of people think that it's OK for a woman to strike and/ or throw things at a man because men are supposed to be "stronger", but it is just as bad as a man doing such things towards a woman. I was dating a woman for a while that was very sweet and loving, but then we got in a minor argument and the monster came out. She was yelling and screaming and ran into my kitchen and grabbed a knife and pointed it at me, then cut herself with it. I can't even begin to describe how freaked out I was, I never did see her the same way again. I don't scare easily and she was 8" shorter and 60 pounds lighter than me, but she legitimately scared me. So don't play down the impact that may have had on your H. I'm glad to hear you're in IC for it now.
Your H isn't going to believe your changes for a while, so you've got to show him consistent changed behavior over a long period of time. Stick with the IC, keep your anger under control and be patient! Good luck!
AS- I agree. It's definitely my action that caused this, and that's one of the many reasons I dont actually think theres an OW. That situation sounds terrifying and I'm sorry you went through something like that. At the beginning of my IC and when speaking to some close friends about what I did, I definitely struggled with understanding how this was as bad as other domestic abuse, and no matter how I feel about generational and gender differences, the impact on H was the same and I had to come to terms with that and validate his feelings when we went to MC and when we spoke about it in the beginning.
We have talked about it some - I opened up a few weeks ago when he was at the house picking up the dogs about how I was having a hard time in IC and being hard on myself because it meant putting myself into the same camp as my XH who was horribly abusive to me many times (gave me a concussion was probably the most awful offense). Dealing with those feelings in IC has been rough but needed to happen. During that convo H did say that I am nowhere near how my XH was, and while that was nice to hear, it doesnt change anything. H did say that when he started his IC he had a hard time confronting some uncomfortable stuff about his behavior, too (impulsive related). During this convo, I'd said I missed being able to talk to him about this stuff. He said he is always there for me, but I havent called or brought it up again as it seems to go against DB stuff.
The other piece of showing that's changed - idk how to ever do that, as it was probably over a year in between the BD occurrence and the previous one. I thought I'd handled it, and we definitely had tense fights between those where nothing like that happened. We discussed the incident and the why pretty thoroughly in MC so there isnt really anything else to say about it. Ultimately he may decide he can never trust me again and move on. Or he may decide once hes had some emotional distance from that situation that he can start to. While that was the catalyst, it definitely wasnt our only issue - the biggest ones were that he felt I talked down to him, and in our last MC session I had identified some subtle but frequent things I was doing or saying that I didnt realize or understand was making him feel that way. Biggest one being saying things like 'can you help me do x' instead of 'can we do x' and taking his opinion into consideration and not being so focused on logistics. He seemed impressed that I was able to identify these on my own and understood that I didnt realize the impact of that language difference. But with this, it's another thing where I cant really show those changes because 'we' arent really doing joint things right now. I understand he needs to work on his own feelings of codependency and being able to make himself happy before touching this couples stuff, and he may decide he doesnt want to work stuff out, but who knows. Hes isolated himself in a boring town away from friends and is focusing on work, which burns him out faster than he recalls. He has a lot of time to think/reflect and figure out what he wants once the fun/relief of being apart has worn off. When he would go out of town for work when we were together, I'd always intiay be excited bc it can be fun to have that solo time, but it quickly becomes...not fun.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
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.
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.
If you read all the quotes, You will have wise words from coach, Robx, AllenA, and many other posters.
I believe you are ahead of most posters on your DBing. Keep learning and changing. Focus on your personal growth.
Right now is a time to challenge your belief system. Things that work are almost always counter-intuitive.
For example, I would tell him that you don't believe MC is working. I would tell him that you would like to attend retrouvaille to see if R is even worth saving. We can start the D paperwork when we get back.
How do you show high value? By turning down AT LEAST the next two times he wants to spend time with you.
Learn to give vague answers.
H:"Did you do anything fun today?" 2 hours later W:"Yes, I did"
"What is best for my kids is best for me" Amor Fati Link to quotes: https://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2879712
Re: 95% or whatever - I am going to wait and give him whatever time he needs to sort his feelings out. If a time comes where I decide I am just over it and want him to move the rest of his stuff out of the house and GTFO more than I want to work stuff out, that's how long I will wait. I know what it feels like to feel 95% - that's how I felt in my first M. I was mostly done, but went to counseling in the offchance it'd work. It (among other things) didn't. IDK where that 5% is coming from, and ultimately it doesn't matter. He knows where I stand, and I currently don't feel like a doormat by being in limbo. We are both growing right now, and I need to be patient with both of us. It's only been 5 weeks - 2 of those he was at his moms, 3 in his new place 4 hours away.
While I am hurt right now, I do actually support his moving away and doing what he needs to do to feel OK, with or without me. Marrying someone in the military means sometimes we will be apart. I made it clear that I support it and don't see it as an obstacle to R.
I was actually planning on saying something similar about MC after our next session (I have some stuff I want to say in the next one) because I do believe that. He had said after our last one that he doesn't have much more to say, and while he was willing to still go, didn't want it to be fruitless, either. I agree with that. I don't think he would agree to one of those weekends. Military offers some relationship weekends away, and we have talked about that. How do I navigate this convo knowing that he wouldn't agree to something like that? As far as paperwork - I think the onus is on him to file anything, since he is the one who wants it. We have only been separated for 5 weeks, and the state requires 6 months, so we have a bit.
Assuming I have a chance to turn him down, I will! Giving vague answers about my birthday was HARD. And I can tell he found that to be strange/different for me. Again, not sure when I will really have an opportunity to be vague anyhow, as there isn't currently a reason for us to communicate.
One of our dogs is the kind of dog that when he escapes, the only way to get him to come back is to ignore him. (the other dog feels immediate guilt and runs right back in!) I am trying to think about that in this whole thing. I don't intend to fully ignore my H, but it helps me remember to not chase. If we go after that dog, he just continues to run. If not, he sits across from the house and just stares at us. Eventually he gets curious and comes back. Sometimes I do put a treat or something in the yard, but not active chase.
I am still in the crying every day phase, wanting to call him phase, but I haven't given in and I know it'll eventually get easier, and I am finding ways to make it easier on myself. I try to not analyze every interaction that comes up. I have started reading the quotes and will continue - thank you. Part of my GAL is not being a gross slob at home, and that is for me. I have taken more pride in my appearance (I used to work in the beauty industry, and then in an office alone for a small business, so did a 180 there and am trying to come back from it now that I have a job sort of inbetween). My coworkers have noticed (saying I look like a model and amazing etc), and one time when H came to get the dogs the first thing he said was 'wow your hair looks great!' This is all for me, though - taking care of myself for me.
Regarding the holiday party next week in our social group - I am excited because this is a place where I am openly high value, and will see lots of people who see me as such, and that will feel good, and I think add to whatever he's got going on in his mind (or not - either way, I will have fun and look amazing.)
Additional question/thought: (apologies if this is addressed in the book - my copy comes Thursday)
How does one handle a 180 regarding the "as if" attitude? My attitude and stance has always been "I want to be with you and am OK alone." My H knows that I can be 100% OK sitting and home and move on from things. One of the issues in our marriage was me being too independent and him not feeling needed or wanted enough. Doing NC, doesn't that feed into that issue? I don't want to call him up wallowing and crying and begging, but how does one walk that line on a 180 while still giving space for him to think?
How does one handle a 180 regarding the "as if" attitude? My attitude and stance has always been "I want to be with you and am OK alone." My H knows that I can be 100% OK sitting and home and move on from things. One of the issues in our marriage was me being too independent and him not feeling needed or wanted enough. Doing NC, doesn't that feed into that issue? I don't want to call him up wallowing and crying and begging, but how does one walk that line on a 180 while still giving space for him to think?
This is a very common question/ concern. Let me offer two scenarios in response:
Scenario 1- you and your H have been going through a rough spot and you talk about it. He says he thinks you've been cold and distant in the M and would like for you to try to do something about it. The proper response in this case is to be more warm and loving, reach out more, text more, have more sexy time, pay attention to him and make him feel wanted and loved. Maybe look into some MC, and pick up a few books on how to bring love back to the M.
Scenario 2- you've been BD'd. Your H is done and wants out of the M. When asked why he drags out a laundry list of things, one of which is you were too cold and distant in the M.
The difference in scenario 2 is that your H does not want you to fix what he perceives as wrong, because he is ALREADY DONE. Most WAS's really struggle with this, because they -think- that the response to scenario 1 is what will "fix" scenario 2 as well. But by the time you've been BD'd a switch has been flipped and there's no magic pill to fix things. You're faced with a lot of hard work and patience to bounce back from scenario 2. You give him time and space and work on yourself. You focus on your life, you get out and GAL. You do things to increase your attractiveness and appeal. And eventually once he wrestles his demons to the ground, maybe he'll approach you about recon.
