Your whole message sounds like my life, and the last paragraph of your post could have been written by me. Ditto Ditto Ditto.
What time wasters we are. We will be waiting for the cows to come home before these men give us what we want. They can't and they won't because they are different to us. They don't see things the same way we do, don't hold the same things precious like we do. We are emotional they aren't.
The clouds opened for me this week and I finally saw the silver lining. An incident happened on Valentine's day where I was expecting certain things to happen and they didn't. I fell into another big emotional heap and then realised that I am reading too much into every thing my H does. Every action he took or didn't take, not responding, not talking, not doing, screamed things at me that just aren't there or weren't true. I was expecting my H to do things that he didn't even know he was supposed to be doing then using the results (nothing) to justify my "right" to wallow in self pity.
I then knew what doing a 180 was all about. I understood it completely. I started to break the situation down into smaller pieces and doing a 180 on each of those pieces. The change within my H was evident in one day. I had become as Michele had told me a Fix-it addict. I was so lost in my self and my emotional state and was looking for solutions outside me to help me fix the problem. Waiting for something or someone else to fix everything.
I now know that the solutions are within me. I can make a difference, I can be proactive. OK my H made the big mistake and as he says will never forgive himself for what he put me through, but it could just have easily been me. I have no right to punish him and get all self-righteous and be a martyr. I was waiting for him to fix it because he broke it but it takes two to tango.
Because I was so involved with me and my recovery and having my needs met I failed to "see" H in the bigger picture. I failed to see who he was and where he has come from and where he is going.
Now that I have taken the pressure off myself (and H) I am starting to see that he does have qualities that can be admired. I am starting to see him not as a fool, a liar, untrustworthy and a weak man but as someone who had just lost his way over the years. Someone who had lost his footing and stumbled and the more he fell the more he got lost.
He does deserve my love and my understanding and if we continue on this path then I believe the other things that I need will be given to me, will fall into place of their own accord. I just have to have faith and keep faith and even though I know there will be other tests further down the track, I will be more able to cope with them using my newfound strength and resilience and the resources I have been given through people like Michele and the rest of the people on this forum.
[This message has been edited by Delaceyk (edited 02-18-2000).]
