Moving On

[may22]

The question you have to ask yourself isn't should I kick him out or not but what am I standing for ?

Have you ever honestly looked at your M, your H or have you been too busy trying to save your M, fix your H?

I need to spend some time here. I did re-read through my threads and journals back in December/Jan/Feb, when I was in the same space as I am now. I did take some time then to really assess my H and whether he is the kind of person I want to be with long-term, and if my M was the kind of M I wanted long-term. I would say... maybe. I still believe H is a good but flawed human being, though being incredibly selfish right now, plus he is in love with someone else which kind of makes him a bad H by definition, whether he is currently in contact with her or not. The hard thing is our R in the past several months has been so good, except for the romance, and I definitely started to feel the loss of that. It is ironic that I never missed it before. Maybe I just want what I don't have. I don't know.

I know it's complicated, it's hard, kids are involved, sunk costs, you love him -- girl, ask yourself honestly. Is this love, to you? Is this acceptable, to you? Love is commitment, it's showing up. That's all it is. It's not happiness, it's not lust, it's not anything else. Feelings fade. Love is a choice. He's choosing to love someone else. [/scout]
I am 100% with you. But to him, right now, love is a feeling. He's said it over and over. He wants to feel that feeling with someone and he doesn't feel that with me, anymore (or maybe ever, to the extent he feels it with AP). And it is true that I did not show him love for many years during the SSM -- I did take him for granted. Anyway, no, this isn't love to me. Hopefully I will do better in my next R.

[quote=AlisonUK]I don't think you can R with a man who wants someone else, and isn't willing to do the work to get her out of his life and repair both himself and the marriage. I believe you have waited, and I believe you said you were going to wait and maybe see where you were in August. Do you want to do that still, or does this change things?
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The only thing I think is left to you now is strict 100% consistent, cold, cold cold Last Resort going dark. You act as if you are single and he happens to be there, and you are willing to tolerate it civilly.
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He will probably try every emotionally manipulative trick in the book to get you to stop it so he can have what he wants - your approval and forgiveness and the admiration of his grubby little mistress, and all of you buying into the fiction that he has a one great love, and a brilliantly understanding best friend who just happens to be the mother of his children. But that isn't true. It never was. He just needs it to be so he's not a complete... well... reprobate - and you don't need to give him that story. And even though the process of divorcing him will be horrible and it will hurt, it will also have an end point - where you can close the door and lock it behind him. And the other version of the story - where you wait for him to grow a conscience and commit to you - that doesn't really have an end point, does it?
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I think your husband needs to change, badly. Your marriage won't work unless he changes his mind about his mistress, about who he is, about his part in it, and about what he needs to do next. And people don't change unless the discomfort of that is outweighed by the comfort of staying the same. I think your H is pretty well comfortable right now - and I'm not sure you can supply enough discomfort to him that would outweigh what it is going to cost him to take a look at himself and the stories he has been spinning himself.
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Sit with this. Think about whether you want a man like this - who isn't able to reflect on his own behaviour, and who thinks treating women this way is preferable than taking the pain of self reflection.

I am sitting with this. What is angering me right now is that I *did* see signs of change, of reflection, the beginnings of taking responsibility. And maybe that is what scared him right back into the arms of AP. I don't know and it isn't within my control, but it still is a bummer as it gave me hope (making this right now all the harder) and also, at least a little, shows that it might be possible. He told me last night (again) that he is scared he did so much damage to our R, to me, that it will be impossible for him to get over it and to forgive himself. Maybe this is true, in which case there is no point to continuing to hope for a future. He bounces back and forth between that narrative and the "I deserve to be happy too" story.

In/re supplying discomfort and cold cold cold LRS... I'm unsure I can do this while he is in the house, in front of the children. I have a really hard time with demonstrating this in front of them. I have been distant and quiet but responsive so far today. This is one of the big reasons why I would like him to leave. I simply don't think I can pull off an authentic cold NC under the same roof while under quarantine.

Also, I had a question for you (Alison) about boundaries vs. control. He feels that i am forcing him to stay by threatening him with the withdrawal of my friendship if we S under these circumstances. (I have said that if I felt like we both had given our R the best shot and agreed we were better off apart than together, I could remain friends with him... but that wasn't going to happen with AP in the picture. I can't work on our R in any capacity, towards civil S/D or M2.0, with a third party in the picture. That is a boundary for me). I feel you are the vvvvv best at boundaries... how would you put this or live this out? Just show him after he leaves? This is hard because of his insistence that we do this together. (As I write this I realize what a crazy fantasy world he is living in, to expect or even ask this of me.)

I don't know if I will wait. i don't want to make any decisions from an emotional standpoint and right now neither of us are forcing anything. I think I know what the smart choice is for me-- move on.