HELP!!! H now wants to try

[123snap]

here is the thing, someone once said is what you are doing bringing you closer or further from you goal. what is your goal? for me it is happiness for my family and I believe that it entails us being together, however, my happiness needs to come from me, not the outside, and that is my work to do, no matter what.

you have to deal with your life with or without your h, so you can either work on yourself and deal with the without part, or you can focus on yourself, be patient and see what happens. either way you have to work on you first, I know this myself and I know it is hard, like I said i have noticed myself slipping, but it is an improvement for me to notice my outward focus and recognize what I am doing rather then focus it on someone else causing it and waiting or looking for them to solve it. baby steps with ourselves as well. we can't solve all our own problems overnight, nor are we perfect enough to never backslide.

marriage will always be more work than being single, you have a whole different person to work into your life, it is easy to please yourself, you pick out everything you like for example, it is harder to gel 2 seperate bodies and minds into a cohesive working arrangement, and then comes the emotions. The trouble I got into is thinking and feeling like those 2 minds needed to be of one mind most of the time. it is better if it is 2, it really is.

remember when you first met your h, how much different did you treat him and act around him then than you do now? some of the differences are good, they point to a maturing relationship, but some of them, at least in my case, are a result of forgetting and getting lazy and complacent. We tend to treat those closest to us the worst in terms of general consideration and being nicey nice, you know what I mean.

and yes you do deserve happiness and love and you are worth it, now you have to decide if he is worth it, if your marriage is worth it and then you have to decide to be patient. One thing that was really an eye opener was when someone said, here we are "trying" working on ourselves and "doing" all this stuff to save our marriage, we forget that for them just coming back is trying, they are dealing with their own set of emotions and issues and they don't look like ourselves or present in a way we can see or understand at times, but they are there, the other person has to deal with their stuff, you have to deal with yours, there is nothing you can do or say to rush or hurry the process, or effect the changes except deal with each day. as my friend says, choose to be happy each day, and do what is right in front of you, the rest will come.

I have a hard time understanding the whole lack of affection thing too, but I just have to accept that he isn't there yet, and I have to be patient, because I want it to be real, and I want it to come from him, not be given to pacify me, does that make sense.

hang in there, it is still okay to cry you know, it is still okay to have bad days and to feel like you can't cope. it is okay to be angry and hurt and scared and all those other emotions we felt in the beginning, they are still running around, for me less and less, but they are still around. we just have to acknowledge them, feel them, and then put on our big girl panties and deal.

life will go on, we can choose to make it happy for ourselves. we still have power and choices, even when it feels like it is all on their terms, we still have choices.

I choose to try and make it work, you have to make a choice for you