Hopefully Drifting Ashore (Riding the Wave 4)

[Sage4]

Hi sweet Wayfarer! I have missed your wise words and am so happy to see an update from you!

Something you shared on May's thread stuck with me as I was reading your update:

For me it's a little more complex because I was trained to swallow this stuff from a young age. The only way I know how to advocate for myself is to first detach and then walk away with no going back. Making the choice to stay, and H's decision to turn back in to the marriage is a huge exercise for me to break my ingrained behavior. My fear with H turning back in is rooted in part in here.

Not only are you doing a ton of great work in your R right now (piecing is no walk in the park), but in light of the coping mechanisms you learned in childhood, you are also doing the extremely difficult task of re-wiring your brain into a whole new way of interacting with H, with yourself, with the world. Bravo, sister. You really are a wonder.

H is much more comfortable talking about why he decided to turn back toward me and the marriage then discussing why he turned away. I still think it's going to be a long time before he really understands himself in the situation, but it is what it is.

Do you think that part of this is H's fear of hurting you further? Do you think that maybe he is trying to protect you and fiercely guard his M with you right now? That maybe he is capable of recognizing the why's, but just not able to do so out loud for fear of what it may bring up?

In other news, my maid of honor/childhood best friend is expecting. She started dating her H around the time H and I started dating. They were engaged after H and I were already married but they had a super short engagement so they could start working on the growing family thing as we aren't exactly getting any younger. I had no idea how much this would affect me. With H re-investing in the marriage I don't have that same anger that he stole 7 years from me any more, but I do still feel like he stole a year of my life. He stole a year of our marriage to find something he still can't articulate and never actually found out there. A year and half ago he wanted to have a house and be trying for a baby by now. A year ago he started an EA that led to a PA that led us here. And now by the time we get our marriage fully back on track I will be nearly 40, our kids will both be adults, and the concept of a baby at that time would just be ridiculous. Right now I'm dealing with the anger of his demons taking something he's known I've wanted for 8 years. I brought it up with IC and were going to be working through that.

(((((wayfarer)))))

Words are too mere to fully encapsulate my feelings for you around this, but I see you, my heart feels for you.

But I guess the point of all this is that the anger, the sadness. All that stuff just comes in waves. This whole process of working through my feelings around this sh!tstorm feels much like the way my grief for my mother washes over me. At first it's constant like surviving a shipwreck in a storm. Out to sea adrift hanging on to what you can to survive waves and rain battering you. Feeling like your drowning in the anger and sadness. And little by little the storm clears. first the wind dies down and so do the pounding swells. Then the rain stops. At some point the sun starts to peek through and you have a little room to breath, but then remember your stranded in the middle of the ocean and trying to survive. Then slow you start to drift ashore. The waves pushing you along until you reach the safety of shore. More time passes and you start to forget you were ever in danger or how hard getting through all that was. Then a storm hits and it doesn't challenge your survival but it brings all that other stuff back up.

This is such a beautiful, resonant analogy.

R after all of this isn't easy. It's exhausting. It's so much self work. And so much work together. But most days in most ways our MR is better and stronger...
Now I have the solace of "well what is he going to do, leave me?" I know that if that's his choice because I'm trying to have a healthy authentic relationship and to be healthy and true to myself then he was never really in this nor was he ever really for me.

DB for life, baby. You are going to be the poster child of this forum if you keep it up with these sorts of truth bombs.

We carve out time to talk about the heavy stuff. We carve out time to just enjoy each other's company. But the bulk of our time is spent living our everyday lives trying to get by in these weird weird times. I can honestly say I have no idea when I'll feel like we're out of the woods, but I feel like my intuition from the get go wasn't wrong. For better or worse I'm H's person and he's mine, and we'll keep chugging along.

You are doing such a good job at all of this, WF.

xx