Hit the Wall....Am I on the otherside?

[VINCES]

Who needs Atkin's, when we have the WAS diet...

I went from 236 to 210...all my suits look like I'm a little kid wearing my dad's cloths...I just spent all this $ taking cloths to be altered this summer due to some weight gain Now it looks like I have to take them back to the same tailer and say reverse everything you just did 6 mos ago.

[Tim297181]

So I guess Valentines Day took a little more out of me than I thought!
The last few days I just have been exhausted! Menatlly, physically and emmotionally!
Not truly detatched as well as I thought. Still looking toward my W for any signs of coming back, but there is none, and I should not expect any right now! Even a simple as a card on a commercial holiday would have been rewarding! Sad but true that I would have got fufillment from that! Need to find my own self fufillment!
Living together is hard. 1/3 of time we still treat each other like a happy married couple, 1/3 of time it is just like roommates, 1/3 it is just palin old difficult! No one said it would be easy, so it is up to me to accept the pain and keep going or just give in! The answer is.......

KEEP GOING I WANT MY MARRIAGE TO WORK!

[Tim297181]

So I believe it is time to see what is on the other side of the wall!
It has been long enough. It has been almost a year. The tank is just about dry for me personally.

I have given myself to helping my W succeed in school and her life but I am losing myself.
Today was the day for the talk.
Basically the last 2 weeks my W has been completely absent from my life and the kids. She has had midterms and has been home only a couple nites to kiss the kids goodnite. She has not always been studying there have also been several nites of drinks with friends and with the OM. She has a life without me and because of me.
So today after she had to sleep in after being extremely hung over we had a talk.
Basically she initiated the talk. It startedoff well in that she and I both wanted to discuss our sitch and how it was hurting us and the kids. We spoke about what was happening. She said she is confused, and knows the sitch has to stop. She knows she is hurting me, and feels i deserve better than her. She can not understand why I want to be with her.
I proclaimed my love, and new understanding for her. Similar discussions that we had when we recouncilled for a few months. How I found alot about myself, and how important she is to me and how much I truly love her. WE discussed that when we did recouncil for awhile we connected at a completely new and refreshing level. I spiled my guts. She is my soul mate. She will lite my heart and fills my body with joy everytime she enters the room and that will be like that until the end of time. I told her that I foregive her and that I hope she can foregive me.
Her respose was she loves me and agrees with me that we have found a new level of love but she still has a lot to deal with. Never outright said it but the OM. So I called her on it and said because of the OM we have not been able to explore our new appreciation for each other. She agreed but disagreed. She said she fell out of love with my 2 yrs ago, but saw me in a different light recently. She still loves me and loves the OM.
She said for me to go on with my life and that a divorce is what she wanted. The response was forced. she said that if i wanted a decision right now that is it!

A few minutes later after I was devasted (but expected it), she said she is not a 100% sure and is confused, but knows what we are doing needs to stop. Then she told me she had to see the OM tonite to talk, and that she was not going to put the kids to bed again.
Long story short. I have hit the wall. I have had enough. I do not want to divorce and I made that clear to my W, and that the decision to divorce is hers. the fact is I am tired and know this is the time to move on in life for everyone. The sad story is my W prefers to be with an alcoholic, gambler, and former drug abuser than me.

As of right now I still have some fight left but the wedding ring may come off soon, after a year in the trenches!

[grasshopper]

Long story short. I have hit the wall. I have had enough. I do not want to divorce and I made that clear to my W, and that the decision to divorce is hers. the fact is I am tired and know this is the time to move on in life for everyone. The sad story is my W prefers to be with an alcoholic, gambler, and former drug abuser than me.

BS, and you know it. Sad part is that you fail to see your W's confusion for what it is, confusion. She said nothing about preferring the drug abuser over you. She simply said she loved both of you. Remember, from his point of view, she prefers a bad, inattentive, overbearing, manipulative husband to the wonderful man he is. Remember, there is more than just your perspective here and no matter how f-ed up your W's and his are, they are factors in this. You may say you're none of the things he thinks you are, but I'm sure he says he's fully recovered and not the drug abuser you think he is. Your W hears all of this. How confusing is that?
What I am saying is that your W initiated a conversation where she opened up to you and you responded by trying to grab her once again.
Don't take it hard, I would probably do the same thing, but please recognize it for what it was. It was the OLD Tim resurfacing again. Sure, she delivered what felt like the knockout blow. It would feel like that for me, I'm sure of it.
You COULD look at it that way, OR, you could look at it like this; she opened up to you, on her own. She told you she still loved you. She told you she's still confused. She told you she doesn't want an ultimatum right now. She told you she's seen the changes in you. She told you she basically needed time to sort things out.
SO, what's different about this speech than the initial "ILYBINILWY" speach a year ago? Was a D not at least implied in that one too?
Really, you were presented with an opportunity to listen to and validate your W's point of view and you did a bit of that but mainly, you made sure she felt the full brunt of your pull at her by expressing totally opposite, STRONG feelings to her that probably did not make her feel too good.
You just need to step back and really evaluate where you are. You have come a LONG way from even a few weeks ago, and I think you are still able to keep going. Reach deep and try to understand that wherever YOU are in all this, your W is somewhere totally different and any opportunity you get to read the map and see where your roads may cross is a good thing, even if it seems like that place is 1000 miles away.
Like I said here and in my emails to you, you need to finally get to a place in all this where you can stifle that need of yours to express your innermost feelings. I think they come off as attempted manipulation to your W no matter how heartfelt YOU think they are. I think she would feel safer confessing to you if she knew her confession would not be met by powerful rebuke in the form of your expression of undying love. Make sense?

GH

[Tim297181]

Not much has changed in my sitch. My W and are pleasant to each other, but I see her getting angry at me for little things. Similar patterns to before.

The one thing that I am considering doing is taking my wedding ring off. My W does not wear hers. I always have worn mine since we seperated the first time. Or should I say I wear it religiously now compared to before in our M when I would actually lose it for weeks at a time.
The ring is sgnificant in that my W noticed early on that I always had it on, and I placed huge importance on it after we seperated.
Now do I take it off and give it her and say she can hold on to it for now. I want to wear as soon as she is ready to work on our M and R, and she is ready to put hers back on.
The reason for this is after reading OT's post on GH thread I feel I need to break away from the old, let my W know I am going on with my life, and yet give her the chance to give it back on her terms???@@?

[StrongNSassy]

Just responded to your post on GHs thread but now you really have sparked my curiousity about the ring...you indicated that you've lost it before for weeks at a time now that your M is falling apart you are consistently wearing it and she has noticed this...Do you take your ring off because of you work?

My exH always claimed that he had lost his several times and each time I replaced it, being a bit naive at the time until I finally found one of them sitting in the car ashtray...never bothered again. I realized it was just part of him.

Just want to clarify that this isn't some sort of power struggle between the two of you. Again your removal of the ring is up to you and the statement that you are making to her. She's already noticed that you are wearing it more now. It goes back to the WTH did it take this long for something to happen before changes are made that WAS seem to feel happens with an LBS. This may or may not be the case. But she is asking you for a D, what effect are you hoping to achieve by handing her back the ring? If she's asking for a D, seems to me she wants a D. Doesn't mean that she will feel this way tomorrow or the next, but today that is what she is thinking. By your removal of the ring, I would think she would feel that you were in agreement. I could be wrong of course. Just my thoughts.

[oldtimer]

Ah well, if that is your intent, why don't you say so directly.

"W, I know you place importance on the symbolism of our rings. I want to give you my ring to hold for now. My removing it represents giving us both the space and freedom we need to see what we each want from the future. My giving it to you represents my conscious choice to let go of trying to control the outcome of this process and demonstrating to us both that I do not want a marriage R with you unless we both know that it is something you have freely chosen."

[StrongNSassy]

Beautifully written OT!!

[oldtimer]

Why thank you :-) In my X-M, I kept the ring on for a long time after the bomb. I actually think it was a bit controlling, holier than thou... It certainly didn't validate where XH was in the R, lol.

[StrongNSassy]

I can relate...when my exH would "lose" his ring, I was the good W replacing it. LOL!! Oh I finally caught on that the ring actually was putting a dampner on his "single" lifestyle!! I suppose you could say that I thought by him "wearing" it he would remember he was M. NOT...I've actually got a few sitting around if anyone is interested in buying a few rings.