Okay, I'm probably not going to be able to do a Koshka Mega-post, so I will have to do this in installments.
As you may recall, we left our heroine post HBomb fall-out (see my last thread) whereby she absolutely lost her cool from the constant reeling in and letting go by her SO.
My last solid post on my last thread was prior to my birthday (July 17), so I will try to pick up from there.
I had taken a hiatus from this BB while I tried to work through my crap and use the Feeling Good book. It was a break I sorely needed. Not that I don't love you guys or value your input, but I was finding myself spinning out of control in confusion from all of the input here and from my friends and family and all of the books I had been reading. So I put everything down for a bit and just focused on one lesson at a time from the Feeling Good book. I had been beating myself up profusely for my meltdown, just certain that I had entirely blown any progress or chance of reconciliation out of the water.
The Feeling Good book helped me realize that while my actions were not all that great, it did not mean that I was a rotten or lousey person (this is what I had convinced myself of). Furthermore, the Feeling Good book helped me identify a major tape that had been playing in my head nearly all of my life which had been sabatoging this and all of my prior relationships.
What was the tape? "You don't deserve to be happy with any man because your dad left [died]." I swear, the second I identified it from my subconscious, it was suddenly screaming in my head. It was a huge break through for me. I realized that this was something that contributed to me being critical of my partner and caused me to do a lot of unnecessary fault-finding, both of myself and my partner.
Once I was able to identify that, it was like this incredible light was cast upon my life and all of the choices were there for me to see. I cannot explain how grateful I felt for having this revealed to me, once I got over the pain and the shock of it all.
I received this book right about the time of my birthday.
As Wes posted for all of you, SO took me out on my birthday for a couple of drinks. He told me then that he didn't care what the consequences were of seeing me [with OW2]; that because of what we had shared together I held a piece of his soul and by seeing me, he was honoring that piece of himself. He then went on to tell me not to wait for him [to get his act together]. I DR'd very well, listened, affirmed, and just took the information in w/o making too many statements or judgments.
Keeping his "don't wait for me" statement in mind, I got into the Feeling Good book and realized that I did not need him to be in my life for me to have a completely happy and fruitful life.
We emailed back and forth lightly over the next couple of weeks, and my PMA improved tenfold and my depression lifted completely. I had decided to go ahead and start dating.
One of the gentlemen that had been pursuing me was selected and I started to let him know that I was interested. We had some romantic interludes but no real date.
I have to state for the record here that SO had NO CLUE THAT MY THINKING OR ACTIONS HAD MOVED THIS DIRECTION. I never told him.
That brings us up to the last full week in July. More later.
