Still putting one foot in front of the other...

[Elbereth]

Hello all!

Thank you all for your opinions on contacting H's childhood friend. I can totally see where this could be problematic, but in my situation I felt it would work out ok. And it seems to have. H knows I have made effort to maintain all of our mutual relationships. And he has encouraged that I do. He is the one who has told his friend about the affair and all, and they are supporting both of us. In fact, he is very open with everyone that is more than an acquaintance about his affair. His friend asked for status of where things were because he wanted to know where his head was at. I told him without drama, anger or feelings, but stressing that I wanted H to have support if he was on the verge of a breakdown. I didn't ask for anything more. He did reach out my H (I only know they spoke because H mentioned speaking to him) but the friend didn't 'follow up' with me nor did I ask him too. The friend supports marriage and would love to see us reconcile, and he is also confused at H's behavior. Even though he doesn't agree with my H's behavior and thinks he's making a mistake, they are such close and old friends that he is going to support him regardless. And he (and his wife) are loving and supportive of me as well. H is still stressed but I think it helped as his mood has been lighter.

Thanks CWarrior for checking in on me...yes, I've been offline lately. There has been a lot going on and some of it is that I've just been thinking a lot. I've been served the D papers by H, and things have been friendly enough between us. He's still living in the home. He is applying for jobs elsewhere and he may be moving away soon. So he's pretty much changing everything in his life all at once. I've started to pack boxes and doing those sort of things to prepare for the move, but the lack of clarity on H's plans is making things complicated as he wants to stay in the house longer, but I want to take all the furniture he doesn't want but would need in the short term (but I don't want to hire movers twice). We are going to talk to some real estate agents and I'm hoping we can move out and they stage the house, so I can just do one move. I think this issue will work out, so I'm just packing the stuff that will be stored first...and will work my way to the critical stuff last. It's not like I have to leave by the end of the month, it's that I am ready to...but if it shifts a week or two, I do have the flexibility in my situation to do that. If I want too of course.

As for thinking a lot...well, it's interesting. I know everyone keeps telling me to not rewrite my history with my marriage but when I think about our lives together, I am starting to realize that our relationship was not what it should have been for what I feel marriage and partnership should be. I was listening to a few podcasts lately (one being Oprah's) and the idea of "the universe/God sends you whispers of things to pay attention too. If you ignore the whispers, you get a smack in the face, and if you ignore the smack in the face, you get the brick wall falling on top of you" or something along those lines. When I look at my marriage and our relationship, I do see whispers that I should have paid more attention too, I see that the whispers happened several times and many times I made other excuses for them. The universe even smacked me the face and I still pushed forward and made excuses. I'm loyal and committed and don't give up easily. Now, I see his affair as the brick wall falling on my head. It's as if the universe knew that I loved my H so much, and I would do so much based on my principles and personality, that it would take this 'brick wall falling on my head' to wake me up to the what the universe has been trying to tell me.

So I guess where my head is at the moment is that I realize that a part of me does deeply love my husband...but I honestly am not even sure that the man I am so in love with IS EVEN REAL or if he is the person I tried to believe he was. I think I saw him for someone better than he really is or just put too much focus on the good things about him and ignored the not so good behaviors. I settled for things I should not have settled for. I was a much better partner to him than he was to me. I've been told this even before the BD. He was more important to me than I was to him. Many of his actions provided these whispers. Over and over. And I made excuses for them. I'm seeing that now.

So, I've come to this place where I feel settled with what has happened and I am just wanting to put my energy into what it takes for me to be happy again. I've been doing a lot of that already, yes, but what I think has shifted is that emotionally, I feel like I've accepted it. Call it forgiveness if you want...but to me, it's I've accepted this is what has happened and I am better off moving on from it and putting all energy into my own happiness. Like the final thread tying me to him is broken. I'm not sure if that makes sense...as I do feel like I've already been at this point but it feels different to me now for some reason.

Anyway, I'm exhausted and need to get to sleep...but that's the scoop friends. I will catch up on all of your sitch's soon, as I also want to know where everyone is at and how everyone else is doing. Tonight, I'm just tired out. And I hope all the mothers out there had a lovely Mother's Day. I had a special one...thanks for the wishes! And thanks for all of your guidance and support too!

El