Moving On

[may22]

Wayfinder, Cardinal... thank you so much for this.

So I'm here I'm watching and reading and thinking of you, May I hope you know that. There are a few things I want to say with out telling you what to do because you seem to be getting a lot of that. I'm just going to tell you one thing: May be kind to yourself. Please, please be kind to May in whatever you do going forward. Don't beat yourself up over what you did or didn't do right up until this point. Don't beat yourself up if you need time to mull over your next move here. Don't beat yourself up if you are totally incapable of detaching right now. Don't over analyze what you say or do right now. You are being taken down with the ship. You are not responsible for anything you say or do until you get your bearings. That's not a free pass to be evil, but it is a free pass to survive this any way necessary, ok? Be kind and forgiving of yourself.

I needed this. I am not detached. I am spending time wishing I had kept my head down DBing for another month or three. I did something not DB this morning after I said I wouldn't. I saw him in the kitchen and looked at him and we hugged. I said ILY and he said ILY too. I said I know we can be happy together if we gave it a chance. Do you have a spark of that hope inside you too? He said yes, May, I do. If I didn't I'd be gone. We sat there for a minute and then I went to my zoom call and he went to his. No need for 2x4s, folks, I know. But this is just hard and I'm not fully up to it quite yet.

Next he was leaning in. He was letting go. But he's hard headed and wants to do things his way. And this relapse or collapse whatever it maybe is entirely because he was unwilling to accept that any one knew better than him about how to let go of an AP. He wasn't fooling you the last 4 months. They weren't a lie. This idiot has been honest to a fault in the last 4 months. I truly believe he does love you. I truly believe he does want his family. But he very much wants his fantasy regardless of the fall out it will have on the former. The question here isn't if he was lying this whole time. He wasn't.

WF this validation is really important to me, somehow. I do believe this, I'm a good observer of human behavior, and H's "I was just trying and saying what I thought you wanted to hear" and "I never stopped loving her" is gaslighting and reinventing the past. I get that is how he feels now. But that is not where we were. Of course, that just circles me back into regretting starting our R conversations back up on our own, maybe we should have done video sessions with our MC. I also am thinking that we never got to the point of thinking positively together about our future MR. I don't think he's spent a lot of time there. I had thought we had to wait till she was out of his head.

But... I can't change the past, I can't control how he thinks or what he does. But I CAN trust my own truth in this. I wasn't deluded.

The question here is is it time for May to just love May more. More than her marriage. More than her old life. More than her fears for her children. More than her H. Is it time to love yourself more than you love anything or any one else? Is it time for you to be the one making self involved choices so that you can come out on the other side of this being the May you want to see on the other side?

I have to sit with this. I was thinking-- I know I don't love myself more than I love my kids. But if he leaves, would I be able to cut him out of my life as much as humanly possible while still being a cordial co-parent? I think I can. That will be the after-the-LRT cold hard NC. And he is right in that those behaviors will not be in the best interest of our children. Of course it would be better for them for us to still be friends. So I *do* have a line where I know I'll love myself more, because I have to be healthy and happy and fulfilled if I want to be a good mom to them, and I don't think the path to that is through being friends with my ex under these circumstances.

But I just don't think I'm to the point right now-- not that I can't get there with time-- that I can be the one to take major action. Maybe LRT but not filing. I think at this point I am just not yet to a place of calmness where I can really think through all these questions, plus others posed by Alison, Scout, and others, to figure out what I want and need. I still am at the baby steps of re-focusing on me and detaching from him.

Yes, I second what WF says about not beating yourself up, period. I’ve spent time wishing I was more detached and I’ve definitely spent time overanalyzing, and ultimately, I think it’s hard not to do either, ever. Best to let yourself be. It’s okay, and you will get to where you need to be. Maybe a good time to sit outside and do a few minutes of meditating, or close your bedroom door. Maybe “You control how you play” over and over.

Thanks, Cardinal. It is funny-- I am actually recognizing my own process in all of this. First I spin and freak out. From the last time, I KNOW yoga or meditation or that you control how you play video will help me. I know. I keep thinking I should do it. But I can't stop the thoughts binging around in my head enough to actually do it. I got out the yoga mat yesterday and set up to practice while H and the kids were out, and I ended up doing something else. But you reminding me about that control video is giving me what I need to actually DO it. So thank you for that!

I often feel like things happen for a purpose, though. This week I had signed up for this compassion training, every morning M-Th. A great deal of the curriculum was guided meditation, and so I had to do it. The first day was painful. The second day, even more so. I had to sit one of the exercises out. But it got better and now I've just finished the last session. I feel calmer and better and like I can start in on these self-care practices again that I know will help me. If I hadn't had this course already on my calendar, I don't know that I'd have been able to get back to meditation. Now I'm feeling that I can.

I know if I continue to settle my mind, focus on me, I'll gradually be able to detach again and think of the great future possibilities in front of me where H isn't part of my life. I think the problem is I've been holding on for so long to this vision of M2.0 (after letting go of my vision of M1.0) and everything that comes along with that, the dreams of traveling one summer all through Europe when the kids are in HS, all the things you can do when M and D are still married, the finances, the house, etc. There are some very significant financial benefits to staying M to H that will simply be gone if we D. He is retired military and so we have inexpensive health care forever and a pension. (I could probably sue for a portion of it if we Ded or use it as leverage for the house, since pensions are community property in my state. i wouldn't get half automatically because we haven't been married long enough.) We have our old place as a rental that even now has positive net income over the mortgage and eventually will be fully paid for. These things have always been our safety net-- I knew we'd always be fine, since we had the pension, we had a place we could live, we have health care. He'll still have those things when we split (assuming I get this house and he gets the condo, which is worth about a third of the house). But actually divorcing him means I lose a very significant safety net.

At the simplest level: my H has made a choice (though can’t seem to act on it fully); I have made a very different choice not to be the one to file. I can own my choice (though I give myself permission to change my mind in the future), and I want to give H the freedom to own his choice. Obviously, there are complicated, difficult consequences that come with, say, choosing to leave your family to try out a fantasy R with someone else. Your job isn’t to hold his hand through this or make him feel any way about his decision. Or to feel pressure to file or not to file, all things considered. It’s to take care of yourself, whatever that means in the moment. And allow yourself the time you need to get your bearings. You are okay, may, however you are right now.

The way you put this really helps me-- what is and isn't my job. It isn't my job to help him make this decision, or to support him through the process. He is an adult and this is his work to do. Right now I need time to focus on me and start the work all over again of detaching. My work is on me.

Something I think is important for newbies-- I do think that detaching is a fake-it-til-you-make-it kind of thing. You just need to start doing it in order for it to catch. But it is also important not to fool yourself about how far along you are in the detachment process, because at least for me, when you really get maybe 50-75% detachment your WS will start to feel that. But before that, they know when you're faking it, as long as you're around them enough. (I assume you can fake it through texts and short personal interactions, but not if you live together... at least not me). You can't do things to force any particular outcome. You have to do it for you. You have to really drop the rope and mean it for the rope to actually fall. And I don't know that I'll be able to really take any big steps or make any major decisions until I've journeyed back along the detachment path for some ways. It feels all over like a weird Escher drawing of stairs, or something. So hard to define how to get on the path and then how to get to your goal.

I love you guys. xx M