The heart to conquer it...

[sage]

Karen --
I'm glad you came by! I saw your post on your thread yesterday and have been wanting to respond...too much work to give it proper justice.

You're not dredging difficult stuff up for me but I really appreciate you wondering/worrying about that.

Do you hold yourself primarily responsible for the past probs in your M? Do you think you drove him away, caused him to treat you poorly/lie?

I hope this doesn't sound pat but I honestly hold myself 100% for my contribution to the problems in our M and 0% responsible for HIS contributions. that sounds a lot more definitive than it really is, doesn't it?

I've always been a self-critical person (ok, I've always been a critical person -- self and otherwise!) so even pre-bomb I felt like I took responsibility for my role, etc. What was missing, though (pre-bomb and pre-db) was the acceptance that MY way was in fact NOT the only way to do things and I completely missed the fact that I had hurt my h in a hundred small ways that had contributed to our issues. BUT, how he "manifested" his pain, hurt, whatever, was truly his responsibility.

I'm not explaining this well!

I guess my point is that there came a point while I was DB'ing where I could CLEARLY and HONESTLY see that while I wasn't responsible for h's a, or even for his lying (his response of choice), I had contributed significantly to his pain. Now, his pain relief of choice was his responsibility -- and it could have taken a number of forms -- LOTS of them more healthy than the ones he chose -- but the contribution to getting him to that point of pain was partly mine.

Divorce Remedy helped me get to the point of understanding how I had contributed because it forced me to really scrutinize h's complaints about our M and my actions that contributed to them. "Relationship Rescue", "Men are From Mars" and "Love is Letting Go of Fear" were also instrumental in my understanding some of the more subtle ways (well, subtle to me!) that I had hurt my h.

Also, did you get a lot from the book "Addicted to Unhappiness?"

I remember feeling positively about the book but I can't recall anything particularly concrete.

I hope I'm not dredging up too much for you. If so, say so. I am just questioning if I really "deserve" the treatment that H has been giving me-withholding, lying about internet porn-saying that since he was unhappy he used it and since I didn't trust him anyway, he did it. And him not wanting to be around me/take me to the weekly festival where I had 2 jealous outbursts-one outrageous? Am I totally ignorant? Some of my friends, my sis, and even his mom think he is being mean, but they don't "see" what I do from behind closed doors.

So...one of the things that I was going to post on your thread was that I was totally caught up in the trap of thinking that because OTHERS were "outraged" by some of the things that my h did (this was actually way before the A) that I must be RIGHT and he must be WRONG. I would frankly stop listening to what other people think...it's a real trap.

And then I would realize that it's not about DESERVE and it's not even about RIGHT and WRONG. Does your behavior justify his behavior. Does his behavior justify yours? Who the heck knows? But it SURE IS a cycle right now that one of you has the chance to break.

Sometimes I think H should be nicer and work with me to overcome my probs. He says that this is MY prob. and that he won't go to MC because it is all me. And, the C we did go to confirmed that as well, and told him not to reassure me.

I used to have a similar argument with h myself. Let me ask you this, Karen. Why would you expect h to be nicer and more reassuring to you than you are to yourself?

Here's what has worked for me....

I take 100% responsibility for working on my crap as often as I can...and, if in the process, h works on his crap too, well all the better.

Work on your trust issues and perhaps he'll work on lying. Either way...you come out the winner because you have addressed the only part you can control.

Another way to view it...I wasn't sure if my M was going to survive or not...but I had to work on the stuff I was bringing to the table because I can promise you that it gets carried with you regardless of the R you're in...I strongly suspect, Karen, that you'd find yourself with similar issues next time around...not because you "deserve" it but because you haven't decided to break the cycle.

Do absolutely everything you can to heal yourself and I think that h will do his own work too.

Sage