We all try taking sense into our now internally unrecognizable spouse. It’s ok. Don’t beat yourself up. And don’t fret over it.
I will tell you something, those conversations aren’t pointless. You learn from them. You needed to have that conversation to ensure you tried everything. It’s just a step along the path. No big deal.
Thank you for saying this, D. This is where the fierce compassion for myself should come in, but all the values I’ve listed as my thread title feel far away right now. I regret exposing myself to more hurt. I wasn’t indifferent enough to avoid internalizing the awful things he was saying. I’ve been reading more about divorcing and/or cheating spouses rewriting history to remind myself it is a normal thing, and not about me. I read that over and over, and yet... since there is some truth to what he is saying—as I’ve worked the last year to recognize my part in SSM and not put all that responsibility on him (as he is attempting to do to me)—it is more difficult for me to stand back and feel confident in what I can take responsibility for and what I can let go. I know, rationally, the blame and projection is not about me, but it’s like I have to keep convincing/reminding myself of that every five minutes, fighting my impulse to doubt.
I didn’t quite complete my compassionate indifference training, apparently.
I am trying not to rewrite our history to match his rewriting, but I am grieving what I thought the M was. I am asking whether he was pretending to be happy at point X or Y—how many of my memories are based on the assumption that H was showing me his true self when he wasn’t?
I admire yours and others’ abilities to see their M without rosy or dark glasses, as you write in your post. Maybe it is just that I am too close to be able to find a middle ground at this time, as I think Gerda and bttrfly are suggesting, and it’s only causing me pain to try to sort out what was love and what was not.
To make it worse, mutual friend is also doing her own rewriting alongside me, looking for flags that she should have noticed in our M but didn’t.
How do I find my strength again in my own beliefs? How do I find the strength and self-confidence to not be swayed by the attacks that will come as we move toward negotiating? Through setting boundaries and not listening to another attack he tries to launch, through indifference. But compassionate indifference comes from knowing my own self-worth and not buying into his narrative of me or the M, and I’m struggling with that. Why? I think his arguing that he was never happy (and the fact that the bits he uses as evidence are sometimes founded in reality) has messed with my ability to separate old H from new H. In other words, I thought I had done that, but now I feel instead like I was mistaken. This new H is who he was all along, this miserable, unsatisfied H; he simply couldn’t admit it to himself or me. So I was caught in a lie if the M without knowing it until now.
Does that make sense? That is the effect of the last, great spewing, and that has had a domino effect. At the same time, I recognize that if he really was that unhappy, why did he marry me after 7 years, and then 9 more years after that come to terms with his extreme unhappiness?
I’m caught in this circle where nothing makes sense—not even that he must have been happy, or he wouldn’t have endured for so long. Not even that makes sense.
I wish there was a reset button to get me back on track.
Yesterday was my birthday. It was fine. I was less torn up than last year, which was a month out from BD. H still made me a cake last year, I suppose because he was feeling a bit of guilt. Even after MIL reached out in February to say she would always love me and we should talk soon, she did not wish me a happy birthday. I haven’t heard from her since that February text.. I of course think H has convinced her of how awful I am too. I remind myself that I control me only. I don’t control what anyone else believes or says. Still, it stings.
Still plenty of birthday cake here—a big New York cheesecake. Everyone is welcome to a slice!
