Welcome back Pamila!! I hear Hong Kong is a must visit for anybody. Did you count the # of tower cranes? I heard that there are well over 100!!
Hmmmm...Rosebowl..me thinks we are close in proximity as that trip may be in my future, also. Are you a Badger fan?
Quote: H calls her the "fatal attraction"
My H describes his OW as a "fatal attraction"
Quote: I really do feel that H and I are moving closer together, one tiny step at a time. And I continue to realize that OW is merely the symptom and not the problem.
Keep the focus on the baby steps, the positives your H is displaying. I know my H's actions are speaking volumes these days!
Hi Pam, Welcome back! I've been thinking of you a lot and wondering how things were going. I'm so glad to hear that it's going much better.
It sounds like so many positive baby steps are happening for you. And you've got so much wisdome and insight, I'm latching on to it and "borrowing" it to use on myself! I needed to be reminded of some of your thoughts and to read LivenLearn's post to you! thanks, as always!
Pamila, I can't remember if this pertains to your H, but I read an interview with Shirley Glass in which she said that some people who have difficult childhoods marry stable, rooted partners but then go back later in life and find a more volatile person to resolve the issues of feeling unloved by such people (like their parents). I guess imago therapy would hold this idea also. I don't know what to believe--it seems right for my H but I do not claim to hold all truth, capital T, here. I will say that my H is attracted to OW's drama, volatility, liveliness, exoticness (other culture), youth, emotionalism, etc. etc.....just as his own dad was in his affair partners.
Are our H's resolving childhood issues? Very likely. Are our H's addressing depression--can't "feel" love in a normal, day-to-day setting at home, so seek out this E ticket ride? Very likely. I wonder if someday my H will see OW as too much: demands, emotion, compulsion, craziness. A fatal attraction. I would love to hear those words from my H!
But, like you, I feel my H has to play this out. I hope he does this while I'm still around. The future is murky to me.
Funny, my friends think I'm nuts to even contemplate sticking around. I'm not opposed to "moving on" in the right circumstances and doubt I will be an extreme DBer for years and years, but that I would even think about H in terms of reconciliation, maybe, is a shocker for my friends. They think I show too much compassion for his childhood issues and compulsions. While I think H is pathetically weak in this regard, I do think they are real for him. I do think he is trying to do his best (sorry as that is). Arrrgh. Now the OW factor....talk about a piece of work, eh?
No matter what the orgins of our H's behavior, your other poster is right to say that the best we can do is let it play out on its own and to be our fabulous, irresitible selves out of the fray.
I offer all this because it seems similar to what your H has been doing, maybe? I'm just so glad that (even if it's not over) yours seems to poking he head above water a bit. So glad Hong Kong went well.
Hey Deb, I read your sitch last night when I could not sleep, hang in there okay? When I have more energy I will try to string together some thoughts for you.
GBO, I do believe that what you are saying has a lot of validity. Just in being with H for the past few days I remembered again how different we are, how differently we process things. Sometimes he just doesn't "receive" love in the way that I give it, and it is not a LL issue.
You are also right about people not understanding, my very own brother doesn't get why I haven't given up on H. If H and I are able to resolve all this and get back together I think it could be a real possibility that my relationship with my brother would be forever altered for the worse.
I just keep doing this all day by day. Somewhere in the Bible is a verse that says "do not worry about tomorrow, for each day has enough trouble of its own." I believe the King James version states it "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
God continues to give me grace for each new day and although I have "grounds" for D-ing H, I am not convinced that it is the way to proceed. It may look to others like I am a glutton for punishment but I don't perceive it that way.
back on the coaster again, (but hey, at least I have a lot of company ) Pam
Quote: You are also right about people not understanding, my very own brother doesn't get why I haven't given up on H. If H and I are able to resolve all this and get back together I think it could be a real possibility that my relationship with my brother would be forever altered for the worse.
Ditto with my sister. Although on the very verge of walking out on her husband years ago, she seems to think I should just cut H right out of the picture forever. She also married a man who was 'already three months separated" (with three kids) and of course it was all the ex wife's fault... I now see more and more how that is obviously what a separated spouse is going to say to any OP who turns up on the scene and provides a shoulder to cry on.
Livnlearn
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
Yesterday morning H called at 6:15 am. He was on his way over (!) said he wanted to have breakfast with the boys and spend a little time with me before he went to work.
Turned out that after the boys went to school he wanted to pray with me (!).
I am grateful for this and consider it more than a baby step. I would call it a leap of faith.
H said that he woke up early and felt like God was telling him to get it together.
Not to put a wet blankie on this but I am a wee bit concerned that if God choses not to answer his prayers (some of which were for his business) that H will once again feel like God has let him down.
P- Cool that he wants to pray with you, it can't be a far stretch to him understanding that God does what God wants, in God's time.
Remember what we can control- our attitude, our actions. And what we have no power over (their attitude, behavior/actions)is a waste of time for us to try to figure out, worry about or try to manipulate.
I am trying to be who I want to be (no easy task) and see what happens from there.
Quote: I read an interview with Shirley Glass in which she said that some people who have difficult childhoods marry stable, rooted partners but then go back later in life and find a more volatile person to resolve the issues of feeling unloved by such people (like their parents).
This is really interesting. (BTW, was this in the NYTimes magazine a month ago?) Not to hijack, but I wonder what it says about people who had difficult childhoods but stable, rooted parents, i.e., people who were NOT volatile but simply unloving in other ways.
I'd like to take this over to my thread.
Anyway, Pam, it sounds like OW is very quickly crashing and burning. How outrageous that she stalked you in Hong Kong, using your H's Expedia pw! But I think you and others are right to think that staying away, and letting her spectacular light show happen as she shoots across the sky (OK, I'm absolutely mangling a shooting star metaphor here ) is the best tack.
I laughed out loud at the image of the photograph you found - sounds like her behavior is every bit as ridiculous, and your H must see it. If he is calling her a Fatal A then he must be seeing it more clearly than ever.
She is crashing and burning (or burning, then crashing) - let her!
Good to hear from you. How timely your message is to me. H will be leaving tomorrow to go back to Brazil- ow land- and I am fighting to remember the things that you have just so nicely reminded me of...
Quote: Remember what we can control- our attitude, our actions. And what we have no power over (their attitude, behavior/actions)is a waste of time for us to try to figure out, worry about or try to manipulate.
I am fighting the urge to e-mail snoop and see if ow knows he is coming, fighting the urge to check up on him and see what he is doing and where he is staying while he is there, etc etc.
Taking the high road is sometimes, heck oftentimes, hard work.
But it is a committment that I am willing to make.
I was GBO who brought this idea to my thread and I really have been chewing it over. I think that it has a lot of validity.
There was a companion thought (I am not sure if this was in the article or if it was a GBO original) regarding depression and how in the midst of our spouse's depression they cannot feel love in a stable basic committed way, so they seek it from a more ungrounded volatile source.
I know that this was also true of my H. I also know that H sort of realizes all this, but at this point he sees it through a glass but dimly.
Ever since his A began he has described it as meeting his need for passion in his life. H is a highly creative, passionate person and I am a more rooted, gounded intellectual type. I think, he acts.
I can understand how he was attracted to his ow, and am believing that as he gets to a healthier place in his own life that he will come to realize that she offers a very incomplete package.
Waiting for her antics, childishness, and fireworks to consume and destroy her (or at least her R with my H)is not easy.
Fatal attraction though she is, there are still consequences to be paid all around. I (and H) also watched my FIL carry on a long term A with his fatal attraction, which ended only when my FIL died of a heart attack at age 56. My MIL carries much bitterness about this still.
So I am praying, believing and expecting this to all eventually burn out. But I also realize that it is by no means a foregone conclusion.
Are you a Badger fan?
)
- let her!