Forgiveness?????

[MuddleThrough]

I guess maybe it's more an issue because I just don't think I can ever be good enough.

What is your motivation for thinking this? Do you think this kind of self pity will cause your H (or us) to tell you that you ARE good enough? Will him telling you this make you believe it, or make it true? Or will you continue to dig around and find things to feel bad about in order to get this sort of response from your H?

If there is one thing you can walk away from this situation learning, learn that no one can tell you whether you are good enough or not. You need to know it, through your own very capable tools of self evaluation - and if you're not good enough (in the sense of skills, etc - because EVERYONE is good enough as a person), make yourself better. Taking personal responsibility for your life and happiness is the most important step to actually achieving it.

One thing I recognized very early in my sitch, and I think this is the realization in myself that allowed me to decide to personally heal, is that I was dwelling in my pain, actually causing it to be greater than it was. More important than this, though, was the reason that I was doing this. I realized that I was perpetuating my pain because I wanted someone, my W mainly, to make it all better, to take it away. Somewhere deep within me I believed that my pain deserved a reaction from someone. Why? Well, I think this is something that everyone feels to some degree or another - because as babies our pain or distress almost always got a response from a parent or caregiver.

I realized through this thought process that I was controlling my emotions - that I was emphasizing and prolonging my pain in order to get a response. Not that I was displaying it in a pathetic attempt to show my W just how bad I felt, but I was somehow sure that just FEELING that badly entitled me to be rescued. I was putting myself into the role of victim - actually building this role up myself, and creating all the proper feelings through my thoughts and actions. You know what? I realized that I was controlling the very thing I wanted my W to change! I was trying to make someone else responsible for my feelings, and my manipulative attempt at getting them to change my feelings was done by changing the way I felt. I had the skills to change how I felt, and I was using them. I just needed to take responsibility. I made the decision that I never wanted to acti in such an underhanded way again. Not only would I NEVER get what I wanted through this type of interaction, the burden I put on my W, or anyone else that I had a relationship with was totally unfair.

If you don't already see how this relates to what you said, let me try to explain a little further. This flaw lies so deeply within our relationships, and it seems like it's such a common thread between all our sitches - the fact that we put the responsibility for our happiness on our spouse/partner. In doing so, we set ourselves up to play the victim, to feel entitled, to need to be rescued, etc. We DON'T take responsibility for how we feel, for the direction our lives take. We take the responsibility for our personal choices and put it on our spouse. And yet we CHOOSE to find fault with our spouse, or attempt to have them change when they don't “make us” feel the way we think we are entitled to feel.

Forgive me if I’m being a little harsh here, I know the only way that this experience is going to be put to good use is if I grow from it, mature and give up silly notions that may have been a way of life for me as a child. I think you need to ask yourself a very basic, but important question: do you truly want to be happy? If so, then be responsible for this because YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO HAPPINESS. It is not a given, it will not be found in anything external. The ONLY way you are going to get there is if you start taking sole responsibility for it. This stuff is difficult, especially now that we’re all in the midst of a crisis. But if you don’t accept responsibility for yourself and your life (I’m NOT saying that you’re responsible for everything that happens in it) you will never REALIZE that happiness is always just a choice away.

You are really in a great position right now. Recognize that you have the choice to see so much GOOD right now. Choose to see the good. Everytime you choose to see the bad (you are afraid that you will see OW when you see H, etc) recognize that you CHOSE to see that, and you could have chosen to see something good in the experience (I will have the opportunity to appreciate my H - to love him). I know it's difficult to do this, to say the least. The pain is real and can be consuming. You do have power over it, however. You can choose to use it to keep you in this trap, or to liberate you and set you on a personal journey towards all the good in your life.