Now you just got to believe your own thoughts. Allowing your thoughts to influence and alter your values is a slow process.
It's simple--just believe my own thoughts! Believe the ones I want to reinforce and discard the others. Deceptively simple sometimes.
Originally Posted by wooba
I don't even think it was a difference in love languages, it's simply the fact that these people need to figure their sh1t out first. If they don't look within, it's always someone else who's ruining their day.
DejaVu and wooba, yes, the common thread is that we may look within, but we can't force them to, as much as we, okay now I'm talking about myself, think that might help them and not just the M. It has taken me a long time to begin to believe that H feeling unloved was not all due to something I did or didn't do. As my IC said the other day, I could have spoken his love languages perfectly, and he still probably would have found something that seemed to tell him I didn't love him enough, because those feelings of unworthiness are and always were a part of him that existed long before I came along. It's his job to begin to understand where they come from from and that they aren't caused by me.
Gerda, I hope you are enjoying your break from the boards! In some ways I think it would be easier for me to understand my H's behavior if I thought he had always been a narcissist or BPD (as I entertained for a while when I was trying to make sense of his behavior for myself). I sometimes feel I could write him off then--like, I would never want to be in a R with this person again! Of course I know it wouldn't be that simple.
I keep coming back to my H saying he had to kill part of himself to break free from the pain he was in, and it tracks so much with the kind of thing he later said when we got back together after I broke up with him when we were dating. He had, then, the awareness that he was just doing stuff to stay busy and outrun the pain of our breakup. When he said recently that he had to kill part of himself during BD, it both reminded me how ingrained this pattern is for him and also renewed my hope a little that eventually he will again realize that all the running he is doing won't protect him from pain or fix his unhappiness in the long run.
It was easier for me to long for the day when this would all be over and I would be living alone again when he was angry and irritable. He's been somewhat generous and kind for the last couple of months, and it's easier to miss the good in him that I still believe is there somewhere. I've had dreams for the last couple of weeks where we're reconnecting in some way. And then I feel naive for still thinking this would ever be possible. One of my far-away friends texted me recently to ask me about something she saw him post on social media. I haven't followed him for over a year now, so I don't see anything. I asked her if he seemed different to her, just via his curated social media persona, and she said something like her 20-year-old sister's posts are more sober and sane, and it's clear he thinks he is living some kind of timeline of what he sees as liberation, but is really just in delusion and denial.
Like, I know he has a long way to go. And I know if he doesn't do the work there is no way he would ever be a capable partner to me or anyone else. I'm not sitting around waiting for him, but I am still living with him, so what does that mean?
20 months post-BD, 4 months after he filed and nothing happened we are back to living as friendly roommates. My IC has pointed out this is part of the same pattern as when we were M, in that he was extremely avoidant and I fell into that pattern too. The difference is when we were M, I didn't realize how much he was shoving down or how much of a people pleaser he was to the people close to him. Now I'm at least aware of the pattern.
But I'm not comfortable with the idea that I'm still just part of reenacting a similar pattern with him. I also don't know what else I'm supposed to do, if I don't want to leave the house and I don't want to try to push the D faster myself (partly because I'm still thinking he'll be more open to agreements if he feels like he is in control, partly because I don't know that I could really move anything along at this point myself anyway, since the ball is in his court).
I do feel like I participate in this alternate reality with him, where we're joking and sharing food and no one mentions this whole crazy annulment/divorce thing that's going on in the background.
It's like unless he can make himself really angry, angry enough to, say, finally file for an annulment, he shoves all that down and just focuses on staying busy with his new friends and life is good.
He created this alternate reality. I guess I resent a little that I should be the one who is constantly saying, let's communicate about this D and how long are you actually going to live here? Doesn't that presume that I could pop his alternate reality bubble or cause him to move through this process in any other way than he chooses to? Any time I've suggested mediation or tried to in some way to move things forward, nothing happens.
But I also realize part of me doesn't want him completely gone from my life. Part of me thinks isn't it possible he also doesn't want to face what it would mean to move out and never see me again? And the other part of me says, he doesn't care about that. So I'm in this place of feeling a little delusional myself. By participating in this alternate reality, I'm maybe just prolonging my grief. While I'm still living with him, I can't fully move on. My other friend said something about it being like living with a teenager who has their own life and has no interest in yours. That hurt, but it does feel true.
Mulling all that over on this sunny, windy day. Sending warm thoughts to all of you in colder places!
