You can't control her happiness. Only she can. It's not going to be possible for you to take away every possiblity of guilt, and that will just wear you out and make you bitter.
I think that most of our WAS's are just out there looking for the greener side of the fence. And since the LBS represents the old side of the fence, we get blamed and feel guilty for everything on our side. They have to get to that other side before they will look back and see it's just the same. Or as most of us are trying to do here, make our side look better for when the WAS looks our way w/an open mind.
Sorry, UD, I don't think there is a way to stop the train. But you don't have to make the ride so pleasant that she doesn't want to get off.
Have I confused you w/my thoughts yet? I have to apologize, I am taking cold medication today! T
I'm sorry to read about your W's insistence on D. I hoped she'd figure it out a bit sooner that there is a better way.
I'd never validate her feelings or choice to D. This could be used 'against' you in the future both in her head, and with D3. How about a simple "I don't agree with you, but I am letting you go."
IMHO, the WAS' guilt is the very thing they need to wrestle with in order to grow. Let her sit with this, as without it, you may be helping her to stunt her growth.
Focus on the R, UD.
Gabriel
PS - I admire your distance running. Never could see myself running that long, but then again, life sure has a way of bringing change, doesn't it?
I just re-read the first page of this thread, and you have outlined some fantastic goals there! How are you coming on all of those? Besides being the best darn daddy to D3, since you already meet that one daily?
Thanks for your thoughts. I will post in some detail on my weekend update tomorrow.
I just wanted to prod Gabe into discussing in a little more detail his view that: "she needs to wrestle with her guilt to grow up". I dont know about this. You know, she has so much guilt, she does not seem to have the energy to think about loss of the R or rebuilding or anything. But maybe what you are saying is that ones she starts to wrestle with her guilt she will being to see her role in the demise of the R and then start taking responsibility? Actually my W arrived at that point (or so I thought) sometime late last year. But since then she has continually regressed. Now I dont even know what she is feeling. Her moods change on a daily basis....
You advice on focusing on the R is right. I am doing my best in that regard.
UD
The 3 laws of DBing:
1. PMA is critical to DBing.
2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical.
3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.
Yep, I was talking about the WAS' need to feel their guilt and stew in it in order to think about their role (central) in their unhappiness and, to a lesser extent, in their mutual role in the R probs. Most theory on identity formation (Marcia, Erikson) talks about the need for the person to 'go thru the fire' - facing distress, discomfort regarding one's one darkness - in order to come out of this process more fully aware and committed.
It seems like the WAS is running/distracting - doing many things often seen in a moratorium (when a person takes a break from real identity work) or worse - in diffusion (when a person quits identity work indefinitely, with no intent to return; think new R or M, substance abuse, general deterioration). I'm hoping that some of the exploring done in the MLC mode is a revisiting of the adolescent work most of us completed, leading the WAS back to a sounder identity and hopefully, a realization that the LBS was a positive option for them (assuming hard personal work and improvement by the LBS.
Since we are talking about the guilt issue and MHO is that any positive directions from the WAS may depend on if they can work on this internal turmoil which includes guilt, etc. My question is how do you present anything like that and still d/b? I don't want to stand over my ex and say look at what you did, but sometimes I feel he has blinders on.
This is my latest sitch, s8 asked me the other day if dad remembers him? He has difficulty w/language and social skills, and the phone calls from dad are just not enough for him at this time. Is there really any right way to bring this up to ex?
Again sorry for the hijack, but this is an interesting topic. T
I am truly grateful for your insights. I am entirely with you on this issue of guilt. I want to comment on what Gabriel is saying a little bit so I share my thoughts and experience on this:
"Yep, I was talking about the WAS' need to feel their guilt and stew in it in order to think about their role (central) in their unhappiness and, to a lesser extent, in their mutual role in the R probs." - You dont know how true it is with my WAW. At first, in classic WAW mode she blamed me for everything. (It actually bordered on ludicrous, she blamed everybody, my parents, my sister, my cousins, our friends, called everybody weird, said she had nothing in common with anybody, including our really good friends). Then, in the past year, it has been nobody is to blame. Now she says she cannot find her way back to the M. In other words "it's not you, it's me". But things change with her on a weekly basis so clearly there is a lot of internal turmoil.
" Most theory on identity formation (Marcia, Erikson) talks about the need for the person to 'go thru the fire' - facing distress, discomfort regarding one's one darkness - in order to come out of this process more fully aware and committed." - This is an incredibly apt insight. I have always felt that my W did not have "her own personality". She often adopts the personality of the group in which she finds herself. This has been the case ever since I have known her. When she was in the engineering field she hung out with a lot of engineers and tried to fit in that group. That was when she met and she really enjoyed "geeky engineering humor", scientific ideas and insights etc. Then, after she switched to law, she started scoffing at those things that she previously enjoyed. When she got into academia and started hanging out with the ivy-league crowd she got snooty herself but in a very uncomfortable, fake kind of way. Right now, I think she is actually becoming uncomfortable with that crowd also (there are some colleagues who are eccentric in that crowd and they are getting on her nerves). Meanwhile, motherhood has cast a whole another spin on her personality. She does not know how to balance everything. David Deida points out that women with an essentially "feminine essence" (and my W is definitely one of them) become strained when they have to accentuate their masculine aspects as they fit into the workplace. I see this in my W definitely. So, I am quite sure that my W, as part of midlife evaluation, is doing a lot of identity work. Now, how she turns out when she comes out of the tunnel, I dont know.
" I'm hoping that some of the exploring done in the MLC mode is a revisiting of the adolescent work most of us completed, leading the WAS back to a sounder identity and hopefully, a realization that the LBS was a positive option for them (assuming hard personal work and improvement by the LBS." - Again, Gabriel, this is an excellent insight. Completely in line with Peter O'Connor's book on midlife crisis. He draws a lot of his insights and thoughts from Jung's work. I have no psychology training, but I believe that Carl Jung had an MLC and laid out theory on what happens to people in midlife. What I am most surprised about is that MLC does not seem to be an accepted problem in the psychiatry community as far as I know. I.e. there is no therapy for it. O'Connor (a spychiatrist) has a whole chapter devoted to the effect of MLC on marriage which is very insightful. Regarding adolescent work, what you say is absolutely true, a large part of my personality was already formed after I passed through adolescence. I had a rebellious (not in a bad way), deep adolescence. I was quite tormented and thoughtful. I have not changed much in the adulthood in a substantial way from a spiritual standpoint. My family was very tight and my parents were very involved in my upbringing. My W on ther other hand had little parental supervision and had an essentially wild adolescence. Her personality did not get "fixed" during adolescence and so she has not truly "found" herself yet. My relationship with my W was the only "real" long-term relationship I have had. On the other hand, my W had several short-term and at least two "long-term" boyfriends (3-4 years) whom SHE broke off with. All of these reflect to me an internal unrest for her that she has been unable to resolve. I am not sure what makes her happy at this point and the truth is neither does she. I want a stable family and home and to raise children and make them into good human beings. I dont think she knows how and if she can work in that system. She is easily bored with steadiness. Stability has not appealed to her as much as to me.
I know I am rambling here but I hope I have laid out some things that may provide grounds for thought and discussion.
UD
The 3 laws of DBing:
1. PMA is critical to DBing.
2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical.
3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.
I am truly grateful for your insights. I am entirely with you on this issue of guilt. I want to comment on what Gabriel is saying a little bit so I share my thoughts and experience on this:
"Yep, I was talking about the WAS' need to feel their guilt and stew in it in order to think about their role (central) in their unhappiness and, to a lesser extent, in their mutual role in the R probs."
- You dont know how true it is with my WAW. At first, in classic WAW mode she blamed me for everything. (It actually bordered on ludicrous, she blamed everybody, my parents, my sister, my cousins, our friends, called everybody weird, said she had nothing in common with anybody, including our really good friends). Then, in the past year, it has been nobody is to blame. Now she says she cannot find her way back to the M. In other words "it's not you, it's me". But things change with her on a weekly basis so clearly there is a lot of internal turmoil.
" Most theory on identity formation (Marcia, Erikson) talks about the need for the person to 'go thru the fire' - facing distress, discomfort regarding one's one darkness - in order to come out of this process more fully aware and committed."
- This is an incredibly apt insight. I have always felt that my W did not have "her own personality". She often adopts the personality of the group in which she finds herself. This has been the case ever since I have known her. When she was in the engineering field she hung out with a lot of engineers and tried to fit in that group. That was when she met and she really enjoyed "geeky engineering humor", scientific ideas and insights etc. Then, after she switched to law, she started scoffing at those things that she previously enjoyed. When she got into academia and started hanging out with the ivy-league crowd she got snooty herself but in a very uncomfortable, fake kind of way. Right now, I think she is actually becoming uncomfortable with that crowd also (there are some colleagues who are eccentric in that crowd and they are getting on her nerves). Meanwhile, motherhood has cast a whole another spin on her personality. She does not know how to balance everything. David Deida points out that women with an essentially "feminine essence" (and my W is definitely one of them) become strained when they have to accentuate their masculine aspects as they fit into the workplace. I see this in my W definitely. So, I am quite sure that my W, as part of midlife evaluation, is doing a lot of identity work. Now, how she turns out when she comes out of the tunnel, I dont know.
" I'm hoping that some of the exploring done in the MLC mode is a revisiting of the adolescent work most of us completed, leading the WAS back to a sounder identity and hopefully, a realization that the LBS was a positive option for them (assuming hard personal work and improvement by the LBS."
- Again, Gabriel, this is an excellent insight. Completely in line with Peter O'Connor's book on midlife crisis. He draws a lot of his insights and thoughts from Jung's work. I have no psychology training, but I believe that Carl Jung had an MLC and laid out theory on what happens to people in midlife. What I am most surprised about is that MLC does not seem to be an accepted problem in the psychiatry community as far as I know. I.e. there is no therapy for it. O'Connor (a spychiatrist) has a whole chapter devoted to the effect of MLC on marriage which is very insightful.
Regarding adolescent work, what you say is absolutely true, a large part of my personality was already formed after I passed through adolescence. I had a rebellious (not in a bad way), deep adolescence. I was quite tormented and thoughtful. I have not changed much in the adulthood in a substantial way from a spiritual standpoint. My family was very tight and my parents were very involved in my upbringing. My W on ther other hand had little parental supervision and had an essentially wild adolescence. Her personality did not get "fixed" during adolescence and so she has not truly "found" herself yet. My relationship with my W was the only "real" long-term relationship I have had. On the other hand, my W had several short-term and at least two "long-term" boyfriends (3-4 years) whom SHE broke off with. All of these reflect to me an internal unrest for her that she has been unable to resolve. I am not sure what makes her happy at this point and the truth is neither does she. I want a stable family and home and to raise children and make them into good human beings. I dont think she knows how and if she can work in that system. She is easily bored with steadiness. Stability has not appealed to her as much as to me.
I know I am rambling here but I hope I have laid out some things that may provide grounds for thought and discussion.
UD
The 3 laws of DBing:
1. PMA is critical to DBing.
2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical.
3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.
Wow! What's with all the deep thinking. j/k. Interesting notions. Might explain some things but doesn't in any way address what to do about it. All these things are ways of saying that our ex's had stunted growth, deeply ingrained problems, low self-esteem, whatever and that's why we are pre-D or D.
But it still comes down to...are the changes in ourselves noticable and enduring enough to break down whatever the barrier is to successful reconciliation? Have we done the things that would allow love of us to overcome these barriers? Have we even done enough to help them come to love us again?
Don't get me wrong, I like the discussion. I just don't want to feel powerless in the face of something ingrained in our WAS. But the point is well taken. We are not able to make our ex-spouses/STB exs happy and complete. They have to find that in themselves before they will really be able to handle the kind of R that we all want. But the focus still has to be upon ourselves and the things we can control.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
Your questions are interesting: "are the changes in ourselves noticable and enduring enough to break down whatever the barrier is to successful reconciliation? Have we done the things that would allow love of us to overcome these barriers? Have we even done enough to help them come to love us again?"
I dont think we can do anything to influence them. They have to go through the process of self-work and discover that which is deep within them. Meanwhile we have the opportunity afforded by the break in the marriage to do self-work on us. To examine what within us gave rise to the conditions under which our WAW's left. Nobody is or can be perfect. But there may be some key elements of who we are now that needs to be tackled and changed. And typically the WAW points this out correctly as one of our problems (except they exaggerate even small problems as insurmountable). We cannot engineer the return of the WAW, we can only make ourselves attractive through addressing our own issues.
Perhaps this is a good time and place to confess my own insights into what I did wrong. This is based on my WAW's telling me in the period prior to separation and from my own reading and reflection:
1. I had become less of a man. I was not managing myself independently and had become somewhat dependent on her. (WAW said this and it is true). 2. I needed to stand up for myself and exhibit some confidence. I had let personality-building go as I had gotten complacent after marriage. (WAW said this and it is true). 3. I acted like I could not manage my life without her. Bad idea. (Deida points out the danger in this). 4. I had lost self-confidence and that made me try to control her. (my own self-examination). 5. I had gotten so busy with work that I had neglected hobbies and GAL activities that made me feel whole just for myself. 6. I had become neglectful of my spiritual strengthening.
So, in some ways, due to various reasons I had become a diluted human being, lacking inner strength and direction. I had become world-weary and unable to project an image of self-assurance. This was transmitted to my W. Deida is spot-on about predicting the dire consequences of this dynamic. She became weary and it triggered her loss of way. She figured the only way out was "external divorce" as opposed to "internal divorce" (this is a term that Peter O'Conner uses. He says the way to rejuvenate a marriage during one spouse's MLC is by an internal divorce, i.e. get rid of the old marriage and forge a new one within the R, dont go for a fresh brand-new R with someone else, which would be an external divorce). I am addressing each of these shortcomings of mine. Some I am doing better at than others. But in any case I will fix these holes in me and I will be better as a man and person.
The key is I cannot make my WAW complete or happy unless deep down I am complete and happy with myself.
UD
The 3 laws of DBing:
1. PMA is critical to DBing.
2. Since drop in WAW's PMA leads to drop in LBS's PMA and vice-versa detachment is critical.
3. Validate to raise WAW's PMA and GAL to raise LBS's.
j/k. Interesting notions. Might explain some things but doesn't in any way address what to do about it. All these things are ways of saying that our ex's had stunted growth, deeply ingrained problems, low self-esteem, whatever and that's why we are pre-D or D.