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

[Tim297181]

After a year she sees the damage that she inflicted on me and the kids. She really feels the pain of that. It took me WANTING a D for her to see it.

Buzzer And now, why I really wrote. I beg to differ here... It took YOU wanting a D for YOU to give her the emotional space she needed to gain clarity.

This is what I keep harping on lately... People keep hanging on until they get pushed too far. My question to you, which may help others, is whether you can now see how much it would have helped if you could really have let go and given her the same emotional space by firmly taking your own emotional space (including setting and enforcing pretty significant boundaries) before you were pushed to pursuing a D yourself?? Can you see now how that detachment and letting go would have been a very loving thing at that time rather than a betrayal of love??

My guess is that you can, and I really think you have the right perspective. I'm just pushing on these questions so that others might be helped by your answers.

Best,
Oldtimer

Thanx OT

To begin with I am not sure if my head was ever screwed on straight but I do feel alot better about myself and the direction my life is going in right now!

In regards to your last quote......

I do feel it was me wanting a D that gave the space in our R! It was a big dose of reality that she needed!

I agree if I could have let go earlier and just set the boundaries it may have never got to that point of me wanting a D. My W never let go of me. She never wanted a D either. The OM was her escape and her way of not dealing with all our M issues. The more I pushed to work things out the more she wanted to run from our problems and use the OM as her escape!

Once I was detatched and let go of her she got scared and realized that the world she was living in was not reality, and was not the answer. She gained clarity, and so did I!
Looking back it sounds so easy but as we have all found out it is one of the hardest things in life to do....detatch and set new boundaries from the person you love! We want to hold on so hard because we dont want to lose the person that means so much to us.

You have to let go and be comfortable with the fact that life may have to go on without your spouse. You just can't verbalize it, you have to take true actions. You don't have to go dark, or move out. Just live the life you want to live without the emmotional validation from your spouse.

If you can be happy within yourself and realize that your spouse does not need to be there to feel that, you have detatched. Then you can be honest and be ready to share that happiness with someone, and just hopefully your spouse can see it and be strong enough to want to share the happiness with you!