Quote: Perhaps you hated weakness in yourself as much as in your wife. I wish - just wish - that she would have found a way not to look for and external answer for herself. Going to another person is NOT the way to feel good about oneself, to find validation. This comes from the inside out ONLY. I can only hope that this will become clear to her in the future.
That was part of my problem. I despised myself for being so weak that I would be so easily overpowered by the sale of my company, and its subsequent psychological destruction. Then as I became more depressed and drank at nite, I despised myself MORE for not being 'able to quit'.
W knows that going ourside herself is not the way to validate. She has been seeing our counselor and KNOWS this from her own experiences in therapy, and in spirituality counseling. OM is a 'predator', a man of dark energy who saw a vulnerable woman and took emotional advantage of her. His life is a series of bad relationships - he was living with his girlfriend when he met W and dumped her using W as an excuse, even though we are 3,000 miles away. W was weak and wanted ANYTHING that was different than what we had at that time.
About a week ago W thought he was gone due to lack of or poor contact from him for a couple weeks and had a conversation with ME telling me she knew she needed to work on her self esteem and not get it from external sources, and she KNEW she had been getting it from him and that it was over (then). 2 days later he called her, and it was all rosy again. She forgot everything she had said.
So, she knows the problem is within herself but she is addicted to the feelings.
Quote: So...you are a good man regardless of your ability to 'fix' the situation. You are not being asked to do so...only to love yourself and let the revelations this produces bring you back to health. You are SO on your way!
Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to 'fix' this. She needs to figure it out on her own, and I need to rediscover my self.
So I have to let her go.
Quote: My H said a funny thing to me before he left last week. He said "maybe I'll have to lose you to find you". This may be. I said I wish we could all keep from getting to the breaking point, but maybe sometimes we have to be broken to be put back together in a better way, we have to be lost in order to be found.
I think you are right. It's a hard lesson but one that is sure to 'stick' when it's all done. Thanks for your kind support.
