(((NZ))). The coldness coming from the person who once promised to love you forever is so hard. I remember being so confused by it. How could this person who promised to love me forever...who had been my best friend for yers...who I had always been 100% faithful to and supported without question...how could he be so devoid of feeling and look at me with such resentment? The answer is quite simple... He just wasn’t that person anymore. The person I married no longer existed. He had been slowly but surely detaching and moving on for years (in my sitch it was over a period of about five years before BD happened). It helped me a lot to fully recognize that. My H was long gone. This new person is a stranger to me and but for a few interactions we’ve had when I have seen glimpses of him, he Is not the person I knew. He has a new life...new loyalties... Once I was able to really see that and accept it (acceptance is a big one), detachment happened much, much quicker for me. By the time I found out about his engagement to OW, it barely even registered with me and I knew that I would be okay.
What got me there? The support of family and friends, for sure, but most importantly, coming to this board almost daily, posting, reading other’s posts and following the advice of the veterans on here. Don’t get me wrong... I wasn’t a perfect DB student. Not at all. I made plenty of mistakes. Looking back, I cringe when I read some of my earliest posts. If only I had known then what I know now. The irony is that I DID know it... I just didn’t believe it.
When others told me I would be okay, I could not imagine it. I was positive that I would never love anyone the way I loved my H. And you know what? That is probably true. I never will love anyone the way I loved my H... but that’s not because he was my one true love. It’s because the person who loved him also no longer exists. I don’t see that as a good or a bad thing...it is just the reality... and I am at peace with it. I am different.... older, wiser, stronger, and less reliant on others. I can look back on my life with XH with fondness and reminisce with my kids without being sad or upset in any way. I am happy and enjoying my life. When people told me two years ago that I would get to this place, I did NOT believe them. I was in so much emotional pain, I could not even comprehend that I wouldn’t always feel that way. But I persevered and had faith and slowly but surely I moved forward with my life and the pain subsided.
So I’m going to tell you what people told me and I know that, right now, you probably won’t believe me but that is okay. Feel what you need to feel but know that it will not always be this way. Follow the advice of the people on here. Keep taking baby steps in the right direction. You WILL get there if you do NZ. It’s not an easy process but it is a necessary one...and a valuable one. Whether you end up with saving your M or not, you will come out of this a better, stronger version of you...guaranteed. (((HUGS)))
