What good stuff in this thread! Andy I'm happy for you and your wife for her acknowledgment of your patience! The part about your wife seeing you as playing the victim is somewhat similar to what we are going through now. Thank you for writing on my tiny thread while I was visiting my daughter. You are right, as usual, I need to stay the course and be patient with my H who has truly stretched himself to the max with work. He knows that this is no way to live but thinks the way out it is to go through this period. I can’t see that things will ever be different. I do feel sorry for him in many ways and I have forgiven him as best as I can for everything he has done that hurt me up to this very moment. I'm going to try to stick to the thread I'm writing now for a while even though it starts out with me in a pretty negative state of mind...at least the title is good [Smile] and hopefully I'll live up to it in time. Think I better check out that "Fire Your Shrink, now with-a-new-title" book. I am pretty disgusted with my whiney, anxious, victim, fat self (not that I'm all bad [Wink] but improvements are really needed). I identify with you, Rachel about not wanting to live anxiously and know that you, Phoenix, are right about venting as a way of staying in one’s crapola. Personally I do better with encouragement than with prodding and unfortunately have not yet mastered a healthy way to receive kicks in the butt (but I’m working on it). They pretty much lay me flat because I’ve lost touch with myself. I’m working on it the best I can figure out.

I got back about a week and a half ago from a lengthy visit with my daughter's family. She has been recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and is coping well with a lot of pain. I got to be with my granddaughter the whole time and spent a week with her at her bio-dad's while my daughter and her husband visited a dear family friend (the first trip just the two of them have ever taken). I am so proud of how well every part of my granddaughter's extended family get along with each other. She is a very fortunate little girl (and along with her mom would be top on my favorite people on the planet list even if they weren't mine!). Anyway, have been pretty busy since getting back and not moping too much. I really hate that I'm so damn self-absorbed too. For those who don’t know me, I’ve been a very sporadic member of this group for a long time, and once used the name alottolearn. I write and read up a storm and then am gone for months. At the beginning of finding out about the extent of the trouble in our marriage all I did was read and write, just to try to get my mind around it all, first alone then at marriagebuilders. I found this site after several months. I’ve made some important changes but still haven’t managed to make others that are also important. Still I am grateful for every moment of seeing things more clearly, every healthy limit I’ve ever been able to set, all the love I have experienced , giving and receiving, and that at base, I’m persistent but flexible, patient, and a realistic optimist (the realistic part is new [Roll Eyes] ). The blessing of awareness and the chutzpa to do something with it are what I value above all else. I’ve seen a lot of that around here and am grateful for that too.

2L