W Never Left, But This Is Tough!

[toughlover]

I don't think we lose anything by giving to others.

Thanks! I needed that. So true.

One thing our MC has me doing is working on truly loving her unconditionally. That's tough, but I believe that's what God calls husbands to do. Unfortunately, I'm a woefully imperfect human being and often get distracted by what I'm not getting right now.

One thing our MC has us doing is focusing on love and respect. He's also a pastoral counselor so in addition to the usual pragmatic stuff, we've asked him to work with us in a pastoral sense as well, keeping Biblical and all that.

One thing Paul tells husbands and wives in Ephesians is this:

"However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband."

So, he's got her focusing on respecting me right now (since, in addition to everything else, there's no greater way for a wife to disrespect her husband than to give herself to another man), and he's got me focusing on loving her unconditionally, even sacrificially. One effect being...I lost a major amount of respect for her because of her lack of character in doing this, and I need to respect someone to really trust them and be happy with them, so focusing on loving her right now not only keeps things constructive, but gives her the time and the opportunity to earn my respect back if she so chooses.

Lemme say this: it ain't fun. Not fun at all. It does seem to work, especially when coupled with the DB stuff.

In fact, since my wife's heart is not really with me yet, but her mind is, I'm sort of doing some DB-Lite ... keeping some distance, doing things on my own, but still taking time to be with her.

But the facts are: she's here, taking care of the home, the kids, and even me (just not all there yet); she's committed (so far, so good); and while things are not where I really want them to be between her and I, they're probably better than they've been in years in all the other ways...maybe even better than they've ever been.

I still can't see how she thought what she was doing was a good idea, though. That's part of the problem for me...when I look at that, I just see her as a major train wreck...and it's hard to love a train wreck.