Muddle's Muddy Waters

[grasshopper]

First of all, Muddle, forgive me if I am belaboring this. To me, this is a fun exercise and helps me focus my thoughts so...

The lack of something, to me, can't ever be a bad thing, because by definition, it isn't anything at all.

VERY interesting. I see your point but I think I am operating on the idea that my W and I BOTH had the same idea of what a "good" marriage was to us and neither of us lived up to that mutual understanding. The real problem is that I did't even know I was missing the same things as her until I really started to explore what I wanted.

Again, very interesting thought.

My W came to see things in such a negative light AFTER the A was in full swing. To me, this meant that the A had changed her perspective, and because she wanted out of the M in order to peruse the A, she looked at our M from an angle she never did before.

So what you are saying is that either because SHE told you so, or you inferred it yourself, you think this otherwise happily married W of yours decided one sunny morning that she would start an affair, THEN started to gain a distorted, or "different", more negative perspective on your M? I submit that people in an A almost ALWAYS develop DEEPER negative views of their marriage but I also think that being "away" from the marriage and with OM helps them recognize what has been missing all along. That does NOT mean they were happy, it just means that in my W's case, she learned a lot more about WHY she was unhappy where before she only knew she was.

I think we are both talking a lot about perspective here and I agree that if our premise is that perspective is everything and theirs is different AND valid, then we are basically on the same page.

I just fully accept the fact that for whatever reason, my W thought our marriage was "bad" enough or unfulfilling enough to have an affair. She was NOT happy and that is for many reasons, not just our marriage, this is true, but so too is it true that she chose to try to be fulfilled by a man, something that she had living with her already. Something's wrong with that picture if you accept your permise that the marriage/R was "good" and they just made a choice to go another direction.

It took me some time to realize that this did not make her wrong about what she saw. Although her perspective and motivations caused her to veer more negatively when viewing an aspect of our M than she used to, and than I did and do, it doesn't change the fact that those things she's passing judgement on exist.

You SEEM to be making my point here. I am more concerned about my W's perspective on things than any abstract philosophy on good and bad. To my W, our marriage was bad. Period. For me to think that it was good and simply in need of some patch-work would be, in my mind, discounting her perspective. She was ready to leave. She had her mental bags packed and you don't do that when there is a good situation that needs some work. You do that when you suffer through years of, yes, unfulfilled expectations and desires and decide to DO something about it.

I have read that before, but I'm sure you're well aware of the variety of opinions on As out there.

Maybe not so much as you'd hope. I would welcome more info on this. I guess my ideas on A's comes from reading the books I have, mainly DB/DR and the thousands of posts I have read here over the past several months.

No M is perfect, and even if you have wide open lines of communication, there are never any guarantees. To me, an A is all about personal choice. The person who chose to have the A, chose to have the A for their own reasons, whether it had to do with the M or not. I think that quite often, an A is an attempt to fill a void in oneself, one that can not be filled by marriage, or any relationship for that matter. It's quite possible for anyone to have this void in a good marriage if they are not happy with or in themselves.

I would have to guess that there are theories out there that say that an affair can happen to any marriage, no matter how good or bad and that it's mostly about personal development or lack-thereof that is the motivating factor and NOT the marriage or spouse. IF that is the theory, then I guess I just have to disagree. It may all be about those things, but to me in the end, the decision to have the affair and continue it for any length of time is a reflection on the quality of the marriage and thus there IS hope for reconciliation should the quality of the marriage be improved and the individual perspectives on it exposed and are addressed by each partner.

I guess this is where we sorta agree and not. I DO think persoal choice and filling "voids" has a lot to do with it, but in the end, as I said, choosing to fill those voids outside the marriage rather than address them from within denots a situation that was not conducive for individual growth, i.e. bad for both partners. As you say later on, and I could not agree more, marriage is about two whole people choosing to be with each other. In a "bad" marriage, I think one or both of the individuals are not able to grow and thus when one of them decides to try to grow, they find themselves "stuck". I know that's more about MY sitch than a universal but...

Did we have false expectations of what M would be? I think this is a big part of it.

Yes and no. I think, as I said, in my personal case, the things that my W "expected" from our marriage were some of the same things I did yet neither of us ever took the time of effort to try to GET those things. We just too it for granted and ended up here. In general expectations are bad (oops, sorry), however, mutual expectations are usually refered to as an agreement and thus, since both people are working towards the same goal, of upholding the agreement, then you're fine. The tricky part of MY sitch is that my W and I didn't know until recently that we even shared the same expectations, just that they manifested themselves in different ways. Now that we are communicating much better, we are discovering that had we only known what the other truly wanted from the marriage, things may very well have been different. We both agree on that.

I think some people need to be on the brink of disaster in order to "fix" something, and thinking of the old M as bad does that for you, motivating you to change it.

Obviously this does apply to me in particular because as I said, my W WAS unhappy and I did nothing to address her concerns to the extent that I could. Some of that was in her, and up to her to address, but a lot of it was the dynamic of our marriage and yes, it DID take this affair to wake me up to that fact. I WAS motivated at first by the "brink" but now I am motivated by the possibilities of a much better, happier marriage where we can BOTH grow as individuals and learn to be interdependant and NOT codependant, wanting to share in each other's lives, not NEEDING that.

At present, I would like to think of my M as what it is, with significant room to improve on a good thing. This allows me to be primarily motivated by love and not fear.

I was motivated by fear of losing all I have and now I am motivated by the love of my family. The definition, or semantics of how I think about my "old" marriage really doesn't have much bearing on that. I only use the past mistakes in my marriage as a tool to understand what I don't want to do in the future. I use the present, the most important time, to embrace the love and life I have, grow my PMA, increse the communication between us and in general, rebuild our marriage in the likeness we would BOTH be happy with.

Truly, the past and future don't really even exist but in our minds anyway so WTH...live on, lol.

GH

P.S. Before someone accuses me of thinking too much, I only think about this stuff when I read something here. The rest of my day is spent actually LIVING, not thinking about how to live...or at least I WANT it to be, lol.

[MuddleThrough]

So what you are saying is that either because SHE told you so, or you inferred it yourself, you think this otherwise happily married W of yours decided one sunny morning that she would start an affair, THEN started to gain a distorted, or "different", more negative perspective on your M?

I certainly didn't mean to come across as if the M was great (or SHE thought it was great), and then she decided to see it as if it weren't. All I'm saying is that you often talk about your W trying to tell you that things weren't working before the A. I didn't have that experience until the A was going on. Sure, we had fights. Sure, my W said she wanted a D in the heat of one or two of the fights, but the reality of her world wasn't ever communicated to me in a direct and clear way - and I am sure, in my case, that was because it was a feeling that could not be understood and articulated. In fact, that has been the problem since the A has started - it took my W a long time to be able to articulate her thoughts on the M or her life because I don't think she clearly understood/understands them.

In fact, my W has said to me that she came to realize that she was fooling herself (actually, she said that we were fooling ourselves) about how good our R was. If we both thought it was, wasn't it? I guess we were only looking at the good when we thought that, but the fact that there's bad doesn't change the good - your choice to see the bad outweighing the good does.

Also, how often have you heard someone say they decided to start an A? Everyone says "it just happened". They were blindsided by the feelings. We all are cynical about this, but the simple fact is that the situation arose and it felt good, and was pursued. This is something that I think can't be ignored because it proves, to me at least, that the state of the M DIDN'T drive this, but rather, contributed to a general sense of unhappiness that left the WAS vulnerably to seeing the opportunity the A represents as a risk worth taking.

That does NOT mean they were happy, it just means that in my W's case, she learned a lot more about WHY she was unhappy where before she only knew she was.

I think this is my experience as well. But again, we operate on the premise that M can not and will not make either partner happy, so the lack of happiness or actual misery of the WAS is unfairly placed on the LBSs shoulders. Perhaps this is entirely done as a convenient mechanism to attempt to absolve themselves of the guilt they feel, but the REASONING of a WAS is certainly not logical or reliable.

I think we are both talking a lot about perspective here and I agree that if our premise is that perspective is everything and theirs is different AND valid, then we are basically on the same page.

Agreed. Just because it's different and valid does not mean that we have to agree with it, but we do have to accept it. Ain't it great how subjective reality can be?

I just fully accept the fact that for whatever reason, my W thought our marriage was "bad" enough or unfulfilling enough to have an affair.

I struggle with this, because I don't know that it's as simple as standing at a crossroads and saying "Hm, I could have an affair - let's see, was my marriage "bad" enough to warrant this? I think this is something that has to be figured out after the fact, and in a sense, the fact that the A is or has happened defines the M as bad enough for WAS, at least that's my opinion. Again, perspective, perspective. You see, had my W decided that she wouldn't pursue the A, the M would have had much more intrinsic value - because of her choice, not the other way around. Now the opposite is true for her - but she passes off the responsibility for her choice onto the M - something that in and of itself doesn't exist and therefore can not have any power over one's choices.

She was NOT happy and that is for many reasons, not just our marriage, this is true, but so too is it true that she chose to try to be fulfilled by a man, something that she had living with her already.

So, do you think that any man can have a successful M with any woman?

Something's wrong with that picture if you accept your permise that the marriage/R was "good" and they just made a choice to go another direction.

Well, I think I'm headed out onto a thin limb here, but what I said before about M not existing in and of itself comes into play here. It's our decisions that make a M. Our decisions about how to act and react. So the state of a M is entirely subjective and is in fact the choice at the moment - how you choose to see the M and how you choose to act in the moment. So the M is POTENTIAL, and not really anything at all. Your perspective is what makes it what it is - and of course history makes it FEEL like it is something fixed and unchangable. So yes, in a sense, their choice made the M bad, and took away some of the good potential.

You SEEM to be making my point here. I am more concerned about my W's perspective on things than any abstract philosophy on good and bad. To my W, our marriage was bad. Period. For me to think that it was good and simply in need of some patch-work would be, in my mind, discounting her perspective.

I disagree with you saying that to allow yourself to see the R the way you do would be discounting her perspective. Just because you don't agree with her perspective doesn't mean that you discount it. Look, I think it would be somewhat hypocritical if you REALLY thought that because her opinion was that the M was over and you DIDN'T pack her bags for her and help her leave, because you recognized the merits of your own perspective, even though it didn't jibe with your W's. I know that you don't see any intrinsic value on a R, because if a R could be intrinsically bad, then WE would be stupid to try and work on them. So just because she has that perspective AT THE MOMENT doesn't mean that the M is/was bad or will be viewed that way forever. Your perspective on what you are doing to the state of the M has absolutely nothing to do with your W's perspective. The reasons you are doing what you're doing may, but your understanding of what you are doing doesn't. Same thing with your lack of understanding of where your mutual expectations weren't being met.

She was ready to leave. She had her mental bags packed and you don't do that when there is a good situation that needs some work. You do that when you suffer through years of, yes, unfulfilled expectations and desires and decide to DO something about it.

This implies that people react to situations without any will at all. Their feelings require action. Sure, she had a reason, or an excuse, to leave. She didn't feel like she had much reason to stay either. I think you said it without meaning to, one's perspective in life determines whether you suffer through the same events that you could appreciate. She chose to be ready to leave - sure she had reasons on both sides. If she didn't have those reasons, do you think she wouldn't have made that choice? Maybe, maybe not. If you want to do something, you can ALWAYS find reasons.

in the end, the decision to have the affair and continue it for any length of time is a reflection on the quality of the marriage and thus there IS hope for reconciliation should the quality of the marriage be improved and the individual perspectives on it exposed and are addressed by each partner.

Agree and disagree. I think that blaming the decision to have and continue an A on the M is a way of having at least 50% control over the motivation. I don't think you have any. I think that for my W, a big part of the motivation for continuing the A is her personal self esteem - feeling that people expect her to fail so she's going to show them, on some level or other. I do absolutely agree that reconciliation is possible - and I for one am very optimistic about this - if both perspectives are thoroughly explored, and an agreement is forged that takes into account both perspectives and unifies life and marriage goals of the partners. This way, with each partner being true to their own view and part of the agreement, true fulfillment can be a reality.

In a "bad" marriage, I think one or both of the individuals are not able to grow and thus when one of them decides to try to grow, they find themselves "stuck". I know that's more about MY sitch than a universal but...

I agree with you here - but I would add to this that I think that almost all obstacles to growth are self imposed. Humans are incredibly resourceful creatures. So, in a sense you proved my point.

I think, as I said, in my personal case, the things that my W "expected" from our marriage were some of the same things I did yet neither of us ever took the time of effort to try to GET those things. We just too it for granted and ended up here.

I agree - it's all too easy to mis-prioritize energy. I know that in my sitch we didn't work towards anything, but rather we accepted it for what it was, as if it had a life of its own.

In general expectations are bad (oops, sorry)

Eh, they're a fact of life. I go to work in the morning, and I expect the office to be there Wait - in that example it is bad!

both people are working towards the same goal

This is the key. I think we accepted the M in and of itself. We didn't recognize that being married is a process, and we need to keep re-evaluating our goals.

it DID take this affair to wake me up to that fact.

I agree. Same for me. Glad it happened though - the waking up, I mean.

I only use the past mistakes in my marriage as a tool to understand what I don't want to do in the future.

Critical - use the past as a source of good to build on and "other stuff" to leave out.

P.S. Before someone accuses me of thinking too much, I only think about this stuff when I read something here. The rest of my day is spent actually LIVING, not thinking about how to live...or at least I WANT it to be, lol.

Well, this is living, isn't it?

[grasshopper]

OMG, we type a LOT. Here, I will distill my response down to one particular thing you said.

I think that blaming the decision to have and continue an A on the M is a way of having at least 50% control over the motivation. I don't think you have any.

I totally disagree. I think I had a LOT of control over her MOTIVATION to have an affair but no control over her choice to do it once that motivation was in place, or the motivation to stay was diminished. I think that's actually what this fictitious "marriage" thing IS. It is our attempt to motivate another person to be with us. You can substitute court or attract or entice or seduce or whatever word you want but to me, that is the essence of marriage, something I knew LITTLE about before DB. Then, after reading DB, I finally "got" it. Marriage and especially a healthy marriage is NOT about two "joined" people living in a rigid, predetermined box of "vows" but rather two "whole" people NOT taking things for granted and out of love and desire for one another, willingly and enthusiastically doing for one another.

To me, this is all about motivation and how we can influence our partners, but NOT control them. There is a big difference and to be clear, all I am talking about is the basic tenant of DB that says to have a full marriage we first have to be true to ourselves and know what WE want. Once we can do that, our spouses will be motivated to see us not as clingy, needy people, but whole people, worthy of their love...because we KNOW we are worthy not because they deem us so.

So, I DO think I play a part, through my actions/words in the marriage, in my W's motivation to stay or go. As I said, without that belief, DB does not work, IMHO.

GH

P.S. Yes, this IS living to me. I love nothing more than a friendly debate. Thank you!

[MuddleThrough]

I think that blaming the decision to have and continue an A on the M is a way of having at least 50% control over the motivation. I don't think you have any.

Ok - I shouldn't have said that I don't think you have any control over motivation. There is, of course, a fair amount of impact on the state of the M, and therefore, the existance of something to escape. As for an attractive draw - I truly think that has more to do with how much the WAS contributes to the M. You get what you put in, and if you don't give much love, you don't feel any.

I totally disagree. I think I had a LOT of control over her MOTIVATION to have an affair but no control over her choice to do it once that motivation was in place, or the motivation to stay was diminished.

So I take it from this that your W has thoroughly examined her motivation and placed responsibility for the A squarely on your M? I don't mean to challenge you here really, but rather to get information, because my W has talked with her therapist, and they agree that the two are not necessarily intrinsically linked. I couldn't believe it that her therapist would say this, but she did. I think the thinking here is that there are problems in the M and there is someone that my W was/is attracted to and is having a R with. Yes, she wants to escape her life, but she is being attracted by something else. It certainly doesn't make it any easier for her to come to terms with this when she has someone validating her and helping her compartmentalize her experience.

I think that's actually what this fictitious "marriage" thing IS. It is our attempt to motivate another person to be with us. You can substitute court or attract or entice or seduce or whatever word you want but to me, that is the essence of marriage, something I knew LITTLE about before DB. Then, after reading DB, I finally "got" it.

I have had the same realization. I never understood that M is a process. I guess I always thought of it as a state or an end. I never really thought that either of us would consider leaving - naive, I know, considering the high divorce rate.

Marriage and especially a healthy marriage is NOT about two "joined" people living in a rigid, predetermined box of "vows" but rather two "whole" people NOT taking things for granted and out of love and desire for one another, willingly and enthusiastically doing for one another.

Ah, vows. This to me now is all about a perspective we agree to live by. I think that the limited "box" of vows when looked at this way are not, in fact, limited. I think the fact that they are so universally used, they've become a sort of cliche and we don't truly understand the way they should impact our outlook in the present.

So, I DO think I play a part, through my actions/words in the marriage, in my W's motivation to stay or go. As I said, without that belief, DB does not work, IMHO.

I absolutely agree that we impact our S's experience in the M. We influence our S's sense of safety and security. We influence whether they want to stay or go. I do not, however, believe that this dynamic is as strong when there is a third party involved in the M. In one of my first posts on this board I expressed my concern that the feedback loop being utilized in the DB method wasn't geared towards a R with 3 people in it. I have seen more clearly the ways in which it works, and I see the huge potential for it without this particular symptom bringing the M to crisis point.

I guess what I really struggle with is whether an A is truly a symptom of a S wanting to leave the M, or whether it is something that happens and can make it likely that someone who's not operating at 100%, and therefore being fulfilled in the M, will see the M as something worth walking away from. It's the chicken and the egg argument.

P.S. Yes, this IS living to me. I love nothing more than a friendly debate. Thank you!

Thank you!

[grasshopper]

You get what you put in, and if you don't give much love, you don't feel any.

And that is my point. I now KNOW I was not giving as I should have been, or really how I WANTED to be. I was letting my own ignorance and complacency fool me into believing that things were "all good". Sad.

So I take it from this that your W has thoroughly examined her motivation and placed responsibility for the A squarely on your M?

I'm not sure my W has thoroughly examined anything but I do know that once the bombs fell, it was one of those "ah ha" moments for ME and almost immediately I DID thoroughly examine MY part in all this and I know just from behaviors and things I did or did not do, I failed to live up to my own vision of my marriage. I started to figure out that she probably felt the same way. Once we started talking about things a month or two later, she confirmed that suspicion. Like I have said, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what was wrong with our marriage. It was not a subtle thing. There were MAJOR issues that we both reacted to, the sad part is it took W having an affair for ME to react to them. The affair WAS her reaction. So, yes, after whatever process she went through, I guess she DID put the blame for the A squarely on the state of the M. She said she lived in misery for a long time, and looking back, remembering my W's moods, her emotions, her crying (usually attributed to other things but...) and such, I can see how unhappy she was.

NOW, here comes the kicker. I KNOW a lot of her unhappiness could NOT have been fixed by a better marriage but I do think the forces that lead to the A COULD have probably been lessened to the point where she would have decided to work things out instead of trying to run. These are all things SHE told me, and as I said, I figured out on my own.

Does any of that make it true? Who knows, but it seems to function as truth to me, her and my C so it's what I am going with for the time being.

Yes, she wants to escape her life, but she is being attracted by something else. It certainly doesn't make it any easier for her to come to terms with this when she has someone validating her and helping her compartmentalize her experience.

Very true, which is why most experts agree that there is a cap on the amount of TRUE progress that can be made while the affair continues.

I never understood that M is a process. I guess I always thought of it as a state or an end. I never really thought that either of us would consider leaving - naive, I know, considering the high divorce rate.

Same here. I feel foolish when I think about how I used to see this stuff.

We influence whether they want to stay or go. I do not, however, believe that this dynamic is as strong when there is a third party involved in the M.

Again, I agree.

I guess what I really struggle with is whether an A is truly a symptom of a S wanting to leave the M, or whether it is something that happens and can make it likely that someone who's not operating at 100%, and therefore being fulfilled in the M, will see the M as something worth walking away from. It's the chicken and the egg argument

Well, to me, this is the pivotal question you need to answer before accepting DB as the "right" way for you to attempt to save your marriage because if you believe the A is a cause, not an effect, then you need to try to stop the A to get rid of the cause. If, on the other hand, you accept, as DB/DR claim, that the affair is merely a BIG symptom of the overall issues in the marriage, i.e. that the marriage was broken and the A is a result of that "break", then you can accept the affair and begin working on the things that really matter, the REAL issues.

GH

[MuddleThrough]

Well, to me, this is the pivotal question you need to answer before accepting DB as the "right" way for you to attempt to save your marriage because if you believe the A is a cause, not an effect, then you need to try to stop the A to get rid of the cause. If, on the other hand, you accept, as DB/DR claim, that the affair is merely a BIG symptom of the overall issues in the marriage, i.e. that the marriage was broken and the A is a result of that "break", then you can accept the affair and begin working on the things that really matter, the REAL issues.

Pivotal question, maybe, but only if you examine things in a really cerebral, philosophical way, like we do. I think that whether you see the M as damaged by the A or the A as a nasty manifestation of the faults in the M, there's work to be done. Affairs generally die out on their own. They generally don't last. I think it's generally accepted that you can do a lot to prolong the A, and nothing to stop it. An A is a traumatic event in a M whether the cause is attributable to the M or not. So, there's significant work to be done to save a M, regardless of the motivation for the A.
I think the really pivotal thing in deciding whether DB/DR was right for me was the issue of control and the intrinsic impact attempting it had over respect for one's partner. DB really caused me to back off of judging my W as wrong, bad, immature, etc, etc, and helped me to realize that if I continued to view her this way, and to try and stop her behavior that was damaging our life, I was going to truly lose all the respect I had for her, because I was making it contingent on whether she held the same views and values as I did. DB made me realize that I could respect her even though she was acting contrary to what I thought was right, and I got a lot of insight into why. I held this belief of equality before the A, and I was allowing myself to live differently than I believed. In fact, I think this A experience has made me more aware of where I fell short of this ideal in practice throughout the M.
Acting to try and end the A is saying that I don't respect you to make decisions for yourself. You aren't aware of reality. You are not on the same level as I am. This is not the person I want to be, regardless of whether these statements have any truth in them.

[grasshopper]

And we'll end today's discussion with that master's thesis. I agree 100% with all that. Nice.

GH

[MuddleThrough]

Yeah, alright. Heads back out of the clouds.

So, last night, I came home, got the grill going and my W sat down outside next to me and said: "Have you noticed that I haven't been depressed for the past few months?" - oh no, I sense that she's trying to get me to admit that this A has been a GOOD thing (and I also remembered reading somewhere about the OP being a way of self medicating and temporarily relieving depression), and so I respond somewhat vaguely, trying to tell her that I haven't really noticed her mood, but that I have noticed changes in her outlook. She has been far more motivated to do things for herself. To be honest, I haven't really been exposed to a happy person, but rather one who vascilates between being ok and being a bit of a raving hysterical lunatic (a little dramatic, I know, but you get my point). So I try and communicate this to her without really being in any way offensive or judgemental. In short, I didn't say a whole lot of anything. So she walks away unhappy, although she plays it off saying that she wouldn't expect me to notice because I don't care about her feelings. Ugh, overall a bad spot for two reasons: 1. I could have easily validated her, and let it be at that - we would have had a nice time, regardless of whether she thought she got me to agree to something I didn't agree with and 2. I was totally indirect in an effort to spare her feelings - I should have been either direct with my thoughts or direct about the fact that I didn't want to discuss it because I thought it would have made things worse. The worst thing, however, is that I was motivated in my actions/words by fear. Had I chosen to act out of love, there would have been no question that I could have found plenty of reason to agree with her. Again, Ugh.

[MuddleThrough]

I haven't journaled in a few days, partially because there's nothing really new in my sitch, and partially because I'm a little nervous to put this down in print. I have been finding myself more distanced from my wife in the past several days. My perspective of her is not one I like, and it has more to do with her actions than anything else. I have actually stopped a lot of my affection towards her (even though it was sparing at best before) and this has changed my perception of her. Additionally, she has been going through a tough time because her friend and coconspirator has taken a LOA, and hasn't returned W's phone calls. She has been going on and on and on about this. I haven't really got much sympathy for her, because this is who her friend is. I want to point this out to W, but I never do. I just listen and tell her I understand how she feels. I don't take her side, but I don't try and influence her at all either. This kind of action on her part makes me see her as someone who's choosing to be entirely helpless and totally reliant on other people to help her escape her hell. I KNOW that I can't do anything for her - she needs to decide to do so herself - but I wish there was at least some recognition of her part in all of this.

Needless to say, I have found myself pondering a life without her. And just as I can see a great life with her, I also saw a great life without her. I know this is somewhat reactive thinking, and that's another reason I hesitate to put it into print, but I think there's some value to it. I find myself becoming impatient, partially because I know that it could well be a long time before she realizes that the A is a problem to her and decides to do something about it, and once that happens, it will be a long time before our relationship becomes something good again that we lovingly nourish together. I know it sounds a bit pessemistic, but I think it's realistic. I question whether SHE has it in her to be strong enough to get through all of this.

[grasshopper]

I know it sounds a bit pessemistic, but I think it's realistic. I question whether SHE has it in her to be strong enough to get through all of this.

Actually muddle, it sounds like a view that fits in with that psychology today article. Like you said, it's all about perception and choices. I have faith in you that you'll make the right ones for you.

GH