Thanks for your compliment, Ellie. It was a bittersweet feature in our R. I truly was so attracted to her, yet my compliments to her often were readily dismissed, as her depressive thinking was just opposite - that she was ugly, etc... Very painful to see that in the beautiful woman that I love. The idea that I was entranced just by her also was rejected, with her constantly assuming that I was about to leave her or have an affair.
It must be a bit of a relief for her to not have that possibility to worry about anymore, as she left me first. Yet, I wonder if she's puzzled by my not living as she predicted - not jumping into dating or new Rs.
Ellie, maybe if you just said that "It hurts me when you point out my flaws. Don't you know that I'm way harder on myself than you'll ever be? I want my man to love me and hunger for me and ravish me just as I am." In hindsight, I would have given just about anything for such direct communications from my W. Even in my idiocy, I think I could have heard and learned from that.
UD, the synthesis or combining of the hidden and public selves is a big task for W as well. She is going to have to swallow tons of false pride for this to be possible. I saw her admit fault 3x in our 11 yrs, so admitting to needs or flaws in order to grow would be huge. If anything, I became skewed to the opposite, admitting fault or claiming too much responsibility for the R probs as if to keep the peace, or come up with some rationale for our sitch, or to try to win her over. Not very healthy for me.
