New here - W unwilling to work on it

[30andLost]

Hey guys, Just wanted to journal here and look for some support too.

So this weekend was pretty rough for me. I have been feeling SO lonely lately. My W has been going out with her single friends, going to bars and clubs while I haven't been able to do any of this. Mostly because all of my friends are married and can't or don't want to do any of these things. I can't exactly go to a bar or club by myself! I'm not quite there yet anyways.

I would love to go out but I just can't seem to find any friends my age to go out with. I am trying to go out with some friends on Mar 10, but they are married and have to see if their schedules are free. If it works out, it should be fun. At least a stinkin break from my loneliness!

So, I was/am so lonely, that I prayed to God for a friend whom I could do these things with. I asked him to put someone in my life that I could enjoy life with. He answered my prayer, but not according to my will, but according to his. I went to church Saturday night and was feeling really disconnected, just wasn't feeling it at all. When I got home, I received an e-mail from one of my closest married friends, and it was about God and lifes troubles of all things. This is particularly strange because this friend shares the same view of God that I once did, basically that he didn't exist. The e-mail was from an interview with Rick Warren and in it he talked about getting through lifes troubles with help from God. The one sentenced that pierced my heart was this, "God cares more about your character than your comfort."

This hit home for me because as lonely and as riddled with pain that I am right now, I have to believe that God is building in my character the ability to be ok with me. He doesn't want me to seek out friends or clubs or bars to make me feel whole. He wants me to be ok with myself. To be ok making me happy all of the time, because I am the only one that I will always be able to depend on to make myself happy.

Throughout my Love Addiction I constantly looked to others to make me happy. I needed their constant attention in order to feel whole and happy. I demanded and used so much of their attention that I drove them away from me. This cannot happen in my future. I will only continue to cause the thing I fear the most, which is being abandoned and alone.

So in this way, God is building in my character the ability to be ok with me, so that I will not be a burden to others that I love in my life, only to fill my own emptiness.

This leads me to today, where I was still feeling so alone and hopeless with my M and situation. I was going to ask my W if we could talk about us. Big DBing no-no. I prayed to God for strength, and through praying to Him, I realized what I was actually doing.

What I was attempting, or wanting, to do, was to have my W fill my emptiness with hope. I was going to ask her where she thought we were, so that I could get reassurances from her to make me feel better. This would have been bad. My will has caused my current pain. I chose to go outside of our marriage to fill the emptiness and abandonment that I felt within, and I need to bear the emotional consequences of those actions. I need to make me feel ok, because I have never taken responsibility for that in the past. I need to stop asking others in my life to appease my insecurities, because they are mine to deal with, especially not my W's. She has asked me for space and time and to avoid future or R talk entirely. I need to respect this. I cannot ever again ignore her requests and her needs, only to satisfy myself and my own insecurities and feelings of emptiness.

Though this is a great realization for myself and my progress to sanity, it does not remove the pain entirely. It puts the pain in perspective, but it does not take it away. The pain is a tool that I believe God is using, to keep me focused on what I must do. I must learn to be ok with myself, alone, with no one to boost me up by me and God. This is hard. I've spent 25 years constantly seeking the affection and approval of others to fill me up and make me feel worthy and happy. I know this will not be a quick fix, just as the pain I have caused my W will not be fixed quickly.

PATIENCE is the key. It is hard to hold onto sometimes but I have not slipped. I have wanted too, BAD. But I have been able to control my emotions, and take ownership of them. Lonliness is another emotion that I have to control. I believe it is the last one, and most painful one that I have to address, but it is essential to my recovery and my future ability to maintain a healthy relationship with another, be it with my W or not.

I have made progress on my control issues, my lust issues, and I have only begun to enter into the work I need to do on my lonliness and fears of abandonment. Again, this work will be hard, but I look to all of you for support and reassurances that this pain will end. Maybe not this week, this month, but soon, and it will be worth the work I've done and the pain I've endured.

Thanks for listening and helping and supporting where you can.

B