Ok, I got a spontaneous idea. I didn't think about it, didn't post about it, didn't seek approval, really even from myself, I just did it. It felt good to just make a decision for once, good or bad!
What did I do you may ask? Well, my W is shopping with a friend (GF) of hers today and she called me to tell me that they would be at the mall right near my work. I joked about meeting her for lunch (only a joke because I only get 1/2 hour for lunch) and she said to go ahead. I said I may stop by but didn't know. NOW, my thought was that I wanted to do a 180 that really takes me back to my roots in terms of our R. You see, I am a hopeless romantic who, for some reason, forgot to let my W see that part of me. She's made MANY comments about that over the years, and even since this whole thing started. So I decided on a whim to buy a single rose and leave it for her at the checkout counter of her favorite store. I knew she had not been there yet and knew she would go so it was perfect. I left the flower with one of the girls in the store along with a description of my W and her name. She said she'd try to make sure she got it.
I did actually see W and her friend eating and had a sandwich with them before rushing back to work.
SO, I left and awhile later I talked to W on the phone. We just made a couple comments about lunch and in the end she said "oh, and thanks for the rose" with no real emotion in her voice. I played dumb but admitted to it a second later and said you're welcome.
I have NO idea if she like the gesture or not, I couldn't tell from the phone call at all. All I know is that I had fun doing it and it's true to who I want to be, with my W or anyone else for that matter. Sure, it could be seen as pressure, but I don't see it that way. Will I regret being impulsive? Maybe, but likely not. I miss being that way, and I don't necessarily need her to feel a certain way to do it. Of course, if she says "don't ever do that kind of thing for me again." well, then I will honor that request.
I see my sitch being at the point where SOME romantic overtures are reasonable, and if not, then oh well, something ventured, something gained, either good feelings or knowledge or sometimes both. I am over not taking risks in this. I still don't feel comfortable with some things, but in keeping with the idea that I am courting my W all over again, may as well start at the beginning.
I will post more about this if there is more to post.
GH, your W has apparently made a decision to rededicate herself to your marriage, even though she won't tell you any such thing. I think she wants to be pursued now in some ways. I've come to that conclusion with my own W as well. Pursuit in some cases, I think, can be good as long as it's in the form of loving courtship and non-pressuring.
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth." (Psalm 145:18)
Quote: Pursuit in some cases, I think, can be good as long as it's in the form of loving courtship and non-pressuring.
Well, RB, I think you are right. It really does matter, at least to me anyway, HOW and WHY the action is taken. In this case, I was just doing what I felt without expectation of how it would result. That's something that whould have been VERY hard for me to do in the past. I almost never took risks like this. If I did something, I pretty much knew how it was going to be taken. Not this time. That said, there has been NO reaction from my W. She hasn't mentioned it at all except to say the rose was in her trunk (that I should get it out and put it in water). I don't know still whether she liked it or not. I suspect I never will. Suppose this kind of thing is still lost on her. Oh well, at least so far it wasn't a BAD thing, it's just not a thing at all. Tis ok though. It was something I felt like doing and no harm, no foul.
I will update if the story changes after the kids go down.
Last night was again uneventful so I will just talk about feelings and the general mood of everything.
Apparently, the rose had NO effect on my W what-so-ever. If it did, she's not hinting at it at all. Again, no worries, but it is interesting.
Last night was another cold one. Suppose the rose could have contributed to that. W was distant, but not much more that usual. Also, there was nothing on TV (sad that it matters) and she was watching some shows I don't watch that she had taped. So, I was upstairs working out and watching basketball and she was downstairs watching her shows and making the kid's lunches. She did come to bed really early but for no other reason than to get more sleep (did I think there was any other reason to come to bed early...lol).
Another day in limboland. Like Frank said over in piecing, it's the not knowing that kills us right now. It's the wondering why they are acting the way they are. Why they can't see that we're the right one to be with, etc.
Mama is going through the same thing. Limbo is SO hard because first they took away their love, now they've taken away our reason for intense emotion, our call to action as it were. Sure, as I told mama, we need to be our own call to action. We need to be our own reason to love and live. However, after all these years of rightly or wrongly relying on our spouses for support and energy when they DID love us, and now, for however long (and this is wrong), looking towards them as a reason to rage, fight, change, improve, suffer and fear, we are now set adrift in limboland without an anchor or rudder other than ourselves. It's a scary place to be without a map or emotional GPS unit. It's strange/horrible to realize that there was actually some comfort in the intensity of the pain I was in. The void seems like it's worse.
What it really does for me is MAKE me realize that I was NOT as self focused as I thought/claimed to be because without my W doing things to motivate me (going out with OM, etc) I am lacking something. That will change of course now that I see it for what it is, but it is a little tough to realize, after all this, that my W still has some kind of emotional hold on me, good, bad or otherwise. I guess I can chalk it up to almost a decade of codependency at worst or love at best.
Now is the quiet time. Now is the time to calmly explore who I am and WHY I am doing what I am doing and really figure out what I want. I know I still want my marriage, and I still love my W but I don't love the patience I need to have . I have to chart a course that is TRULY self focused and still allow for a way my W can find me should she have the desire to.
Growth cannot stop now. That much I know for sure, the rest I will have to just live through and hope for the best, which is NOT to say I am going to be passive in my life, just passive when it comes to one aspect of it. In all other matters, it's full speed ahead!
I am thinking about at least buying an emotional outboard motor for my raft so maybe I can get out of libmoland faster...
I came accross this word in a book I am reading (fiction, not self help, lol) and I was curious about it. It is interesting to note what Ghandi said about the word and it's meaning...
Gandhi noted:
"In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered, in the earliest stages, that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For, what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but one's own self."
So it appears as though the Indians have a word for DB...lol. AND, that Ghandi used this princepal in his life's work. Not a bad example to follow I guess.
Oh Grasshopper, I feel your pain. If you look at Alway_14's thread in piecing she too is right where we both are at. We are questioning our sanity and ready to throw in the towel. Please hang in there! If you want we can send private messages to eachother - I can be your emotional outboard...just a thought.
I want to tell you a story about a man and women that I once knew that were both married and having an affair. I have been thinking about them and relating it to my/our situations.
The woman was married to a handsome, fun, charasmatic man who had one flaw - he was addicted to sex. Not only with his wife but with every other woman he knew. Because he was so charming, women fell for him left and right. Nothing ever lasted, just one night stands. The young wife loved this man and loved the idea of being married so she chose to put up with it. One day after a company softball game the wife went out drinking, a male co-worker had always given her attention which she never really thought anything about. Then in the parking lot as they were leaving, he kissed her. Passionately! Over time this kiss turned into a romantic love affair. It lasted 5 years. The man was married with kids! They both knew they were wrong but they had finally found their true love. Both of their spouses eventunately found out and they both denied the affair and became more secretive and creative with their meetings. They both still loved their spouses and continued to live their double lifes. One day the young wifes husband told her he was leaving, he met a stripper and wanted a life with her. She was devastated. She cried for days and days but let him go. Now was her chance to be with her true love. But...he couldn't leave his kids. She didn't understand. She thought he loved her. She cooled things off with him. Then one Valentine's Day she was out in a bar with her single friends drinking when she saw HIM. The most handsome man! She had to meet him! He saw her too, it was love at first sight. They talked, he drove his friends home and came back for her. They went back to her house and talked all night. They started dating right away. After a few weeks he moved in with her. They went on a romantic trip to Mexico. He sent her flowers at work every month on the day they met. They flooded eachother with cards professing their undying love. Six months later he proposed to her. They were married on the year anniversary of their meeting on Valentines' Day 1994. They wanted kids right away but unfortunately had 2 misscarriages, then in 1995 they had a beautiful baby girl! She was colicky and he worked two jobs. The wife became depressed. Then in 1997 they had another baby girl! They were all so happy!! In 2000 they had a little boy, a stillborn. The wife became depressed again. In 2001 they moved into a bigger home and had a beautiful little boy!! One big happy family. But money was getting tight. The wife took a job waitressing leaving her husband home at night with three small kids. He was lonely, the wife was never in the mood for sex. She was too tired, too fat, you name it. She never initiated anything. He always did, and was turned down lots of times. Then the husband started to put up walls. He started to guard his feelings. He felt hurt and rejected. He thought he was a loving and nuturing husband, why didn't his wife want him. He started to have a bad self image of himself. Plus all she did was complain, nothing ever made her happy. He started avoiding coming home. He worked more and more overtime. He started going rollerblading after work. He needed to think. Then he met someone at work and they started to talk, she could feel his pain. She was unhappy too, they started an affair........move to today.....the women in the story is me. Karma? What goes around comes around? Who knows? What I do know is when I was in the affair, I wasn't thinking clearly. I was too wrapped up in this other person. This is where my H is now. Sure he loves me, just not "in love" with me and he loves his kids enough to stick around but all he wants is her. She accepts him for who he is, she adores him, appreciates him, makes him feel good about himself. Everything his wife should have been doing but didn't. She went off track. She put her life and her kids first and never considered her husbands feelings at all. Sure she thought she was being a good wife, but she wasn't. Now she has a chance to really look at herself and change. Maybe it won't bring back her H, although she hopes with all of her heart that it does.
Sorry, to end here but I've gotta take the kiddies to school.
WOW mama, that's one heck of a story. I can't lie and say I followed all the way through (it got somewhat confusing in the middle somewhere as to who was who doing who) but I got the idea. SO, I guess you are saying you understand where your H is coming from because you were there yourself? Is that it in a nutshell, and BTW had you talked about your "affair" history here before?
So, like I said, it's the calm time now. That's the most dangerous for me because I am now calmly thinking about talking to my W this weekend. Who knows, maybe I will, maybe i won't. I am not emotional about it. It's not from anger or an intense need to know anything, it's just because there seems to be good that could come from a little R talk. S'pose I could be wrong.
The way I see it is that there is SO much unknown both from my perspective and my W's that I don't know if we could "find" each other even if we both wanted to. What I mean is that I wonder if it would help for my W to know I will forgive her for what she's done? I wonder if it would help if she knows just how I feel about our OLD marriage that I think SHE thinks I want back? Would it help for her to know that I DON'T want the first physical contact we have other than back rubs, to be sex? Would it help me to know if the OM is still around, and would she tell the truth? Would it help me to know just how committed she is to working things out? Would I feel better knowing that she's just still uncomfortable with the idea of "us" and all it's ramifications (i.e. affection, etc), and would she even say that was why we are still in limbo? More importantly, could I handle it if she said OM was still in the picture? Could I deal with her saying she's still not sure she wants "us"? Could I be ok with WHATEVER came of this talk?
Well, I guess I don't have the answers to those questions yet, but I am asking them of myself and that to me means I am looking for a way to do this. IF I decide to do it, and I am leaning as always towards NOT doing it, then I will do it with a clear head and heart, knowing that pain is as likely as comfort at this point...a good reason to limbo a little more I guess.
I just hope this idea passes. I know it's not from emotion that I get this urge to talk, but it IS from the void and I know that's probably worse. In the end, I am probably just quietly venting. This too will pass...In the end I am being impatient...this I know. Time is on our side...didn't someone famous say that?
Sorry for the rambling. No, I never talked about it before because that marriage is over. This is the one that I am trying to save and I have always been faithful. But since in another lifetime I was a person involved in an affair I have started thinking.
1. I deserve this after what I did to the other man's wife. I wish I could apologize to her, but I choose to leave that in the past.
2. Because I contributed to my H's lack of self-esteem he choose to have an A with someone who makes him feel good about himself. That is exactly where I was at. If my ex-H would have given me what I needed I would never have considered looking elsewhere.
3. I have been trying to show my H how much he means to me by my actions. Words mean nothing to him right now. I have been trying to be more appreciative of even the little things he does. I compliment him more and I am trying to be a overall better person (someone he feels comfortable being around.)
I'm hoping that in time my H will see my changes and lower his walls long enough to give me another chance. It is those changes that I am working on now, that is all as there is absolutely nothing I can do about the OW.
Communication about what you feel and what you want sounds good if you are ready to take that emotional risk with her.
I would caution you against telling your W you forgive her. I told XH that I forgave him everything and it made him furious -- he did not feel there was anything to forgive although he had become involved with at least one OW and lied to me about it at that point. Maybe 2 years later he wound up apologizing, but at the time, he took my forgiveness as condescending, martyring, holier-than-thou criticism. If your W wants forgiveness or even really gets that there is something to apologize for, she will apologize.
Maybe she has, but I'm under the impression that she has just said she was sorry that things are so hard for you, not that she is sorry about having an A. Indeed, I doubt she is sorry about having the A yet, at least insofar as it being a betrayal. My guess would be that she is still rationalizing it left and right.
Besides, have you really forgiven her? The more you can really do so, the more it will help you... It is great that you are trying and have come as far as you can. But the most important thing about the forgiveness right now is that it helps you. And, then when she is ready for it, you will have it to share with her.
