I have been thinking about this all weekend and after just reading Thinker and Puppy over on SP's thread I have to post this.
Quote:
Originally Posted By: Thinker Originally Posted By: The Wifey Can you have the same mojo if you aren't convinced you are already D? If you can't just be fixated on that and have to straddle the limbo pole a bit?
It's Hard. It's Really Hard!
- As soon as you think things are improving, you suddenly realize that you DO have something to lose - and start being afraid of losing it! (Fear)
- As soon as you start seeing some improvement, you start expecting more, and get frustrated when things stop or revert! (Anger)
- As soon as the WAS starts showing pain, your instincts for caretaking kick in (Pursuit)
- WAS backs off and you feel the loss all over again (Pain and Sorrow)
The DB methodology doesn't give much guidance here except "Stay Strong", "Take it Slow", etc., It
It's difficult, but it is still an improvement over where you are /were.
We'll all have to figure it out together...
omg, YES!!! YES, THAT'S IT!!! Someone finally put a finger on what it is I've been struggling with!
Puppy
I don't have the outline worked out in my head yet so this is a work in progress. I tell this from my perspective of what worked for me and my view of what "love" is. I was the LBS, I am a man and I was not dealing with a A on either side. So here goes.
Two goals of DB. First work on yourself to become stronger, wiser, and love yourself. You can't become attractive to your WAS until you have yourself squared away - emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically. You can't give out what you don't have. This idea leads to the "love is the opposite of fear" concept.
When the LBS spouse initally gets here we are now post-bomb. Lot's of emotions - anger, guilt, confusion, frustration, and fear. Very valid and normal reactions to the situation. We also tend to pursue right after the bomb (bargaining.) Then maybe some helplessness and hopelessness (depression.) Once we accept the situation for what it is can we start working on ourselves and our M. Add the denial in pre-bomb and you got the five stages of grief. (Denial, bargaining, anger depression, and acceptance.) All negative emotions on this side of the ledger - fear being the "King Snake." ("snakes on a brain" is my phrase for your deepest fears.) Fear blinds, cripples and weakens us from being our best. Fear is a coping tool to keep us from getting hurt, in DB world it's our heart that we think we are protecting. Yet by protecting it we are keeping it from healing, growing and giving. So the goal of DB is to cope by: 180 behaviour - replace unproductive with healthy and productive GAL - stay busy, keep your brain and hands productive (quiets the snakes for a while) act as if - pretend to be strong until you are goals - focus and measurable actions try something different - big one not talked about enough here, open your mind, heart and soul up to new ideas and letting go of dysfunctional beliefs. I think this step walks you from acceptance across the divide from fear to love.
The great divide - limboland. We have accepted we need to work on ourselves, we acknowledge our M might not be saved, we understand our role in our sitch and we are detaching. We are also afraid of moving forward - might hear more WAS script, rollercoaster makes me sick, might get more empty promises. Guess what? For our WAS to be where they are they have already reached this point and have decided that the pain of staying is greater than the pain of leaving (read FEAR.) So you fellow DBers have a choice stay in the land of fear or choose to love anyway. By finding this place you already know what some of the answers are. It's finding the strength, wisdom and love to push on. Just saw Groundhog Day over the weekend. What was the transformation Phil Connors (Bill Murray) had to get out of his limboland? He took the focus off of his needs and wants and started caring about others (love.) Until then he met with frustration and depression. Once he got his mojo on then he was seen as attractive and interesting to not just to Rita, his love interest, but the whole community.
So whether or not you reconcile one of your goals should be get yourself to the point where you love yourelf enougth to be able to love (philia) others, be a friend, and give with no expectations. You have to be pretty secure in who you are to do this. To get here you need to do work. This in itself it why DBing is valuable.
Becoming friends. Let's define friends first. From Wiki:
Quote:
Friendship is co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more people. In this sense, the term connotes a relationship which involves mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection and respect along with a degree of rendering service to friends in times of need or crisis. Friends will welcome each other's company and exhibit loyalty towards each other, often to the point of altruism. Their tastes will usually be similar and may converge, and they will share enjoyable activities. They will also engage in mutually helping behavior, such as exchange of advice and the sharing of hardship. A friend is someone who may often demonstrate reciprocating and reflective behaviors. Yet for many, friendship is nothing more than the trust that someone or something will not harm them.
Value that is found in friendships is often the result of a friend demonstrating the following on a consistent basis:
the tendency to desire what is best for the other, sympathy and empathy, honesty, perhaps in situations where it may be difficult for others to speak the truth, especially in terms of pointing out the perceived faults of one's counterpart, mutual understanding.
Here is the bridge from fear to love: - wanting what is best for the other - true giving - sympathy and empathy-- "you need space, OK I understand that." - honesty-- healthy boundaries, communication, and transparency - mutual understanding --validation, no defensiveness I would add a big one here because it is at the heart of loving yourself - forgiveness. Accept yours/his/hers faults and love anyway.
Love is a verb. It's what you do that shows your spouse you love them. Yes that is possible while seperated. Be a great parent, I read here once that women love to see their husbands play with their kids. I was all over that. See things from your WAS perspective, you can't be effective at that if you are over on the fear/anger side. Take away all of their objections and make the changes for yourself. Make yourself attractive from the inside out.
So why be friends? It is the first step to intimate love. Jealousy could work but in my mind you are starting the relationship over based on fear not love. (still have the work to do.) I want to be the kind of friend to my W that is unbeatable. I want to flip that fear of staying vs fear of leaving into the joy of staying outweighs any potential joy of leaving. It's at this stage that I can continue down the path of deepening the love. This is the second goal of DBing.
I know some of the DBers won't reconcile their M, some of the posters I learned the most from didn't. Getting across the divide to the "land of love" (sounds real cheesy I know) from the fog of fear and land of snakes will make you a stronger, wiser, and more loving person. If your spouse had a addiction how would you handle it? Just try it and see what happens. You all can handle it.
I welcome some dialouge, questions, feedback and input.
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
Friendship is co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more people.
How does one reconcile the potential and likely one-sidedness of these DB "friendships"? I am not by any means challenging your post, I think it is beautiful and right on. The WAS often behaves as quite the opposite of a "friend."
After a number of attempts to move forward out of Limboland with my WAW, I have found that the scariest part is that there are no groundrules.
Understand what I mean here. In any R, there are groundrules. If I do X, then she will react with Y. I am allowed or encouraged to do A and discouraged from doing B. Most of these are never explicitly stated. Some, like "We won't lie to each other" or "we will be faithful to each other" are just (sometimes mistakenly) assumed. Even new R's have groundrules - there are certain expecations for a first date, etc.
When you move forward out of limboland, THERE ARE NO GROUNDRULES.
The groundrules from the old R were part of the problem - they have to be discarded. The new ones have not developed. The R is neither new nor established.
You have to act without having any idea what the reaction will be. You have to do without having any idea what you should do. You have to learn the new groundrules by experience as you go along.
And, since the R is changing fluidly during this time, the lessons you learned yesterday don't apply today - and those from today won't apply to tomorrow.
Going ahead under these circumstances requires immense self knowledge and self confidence - something most LBS's are lacking by definition of their circumstances.
Last edited by Thinker; 06/01/0908:08 PM.
Me 42, W 39, S8, S6, S2 M 11y, A & ILYBNILWY 11/08 Walking away from a bad situation.
Yeah, I was wondering how to reconcile these as well. I, myself, would never allow anyone who was capable of such behaviors to be my "friend."
I have a small, very solid core of people who I consider to be my friends. If any one of them betrayed my trust, or stuck a knife in my back, they would be off the friend list. Gone. It's just that simple.
Are we making any distinction here between whether the WAS has walked away due to infidelity? Or not?
I think if there is a active A then that needs to be terminated first. The A just adds steps in the process and work to be done that is specific to healing that wound. But I do think you can start a friendship up while the healing begins. Wouldn't you say most A start as a friendship? That hardest part for me would be to understand how it all happened from the others perspective. Understand does not mean you condone the behavior or blindly trust at the moment. I can't imagine the emotions felt in dealing with a A. In my mind it would take a lot of grace, forgiveness and love to deal with the aftermath. I think you would have to fully work thru the stages of grief, work on yourself and have a spouse uninvolved in the A to start the friendship process.
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
This is interesting, Coach. Being friends with a WAS can at times seem like a one way street. They can be sometimes friendly, other times cold and aloof. My H and I have at least one friendly interaction a day and usually share a laugh or joke. The problem is that this is often followed by aloof behaviour on his part at some later point.
The thing is that you can't force the type of friendship you would like on anyone, WAS or otherwise. I guess it has to evolve and like any other friendhip if it is worth it you will invest the time and energy.Give space where it is needed. Let it progress naturally.
I continue to be a friend by doing little non-pursuing things e.g I made a salad, would you like some? Or by asking how was your day? These seem like little things but in my case they have helped the sitch. H actually started telling me about his day without me having to ask.
I have a small, very solid core of people who I consider to be my friends. If any one of them betrayed my trust, or stuck a knife in my back, they would be off the friend list. Gone. It's just that simple.
Yep that's what seperates fear from love - trust. That faith that the other has my best interest at heart. Faith, you need it to believe. Believing is stronger that feeling or thinking. So you need trust in your own actions, what I am doing is good for me regardless of the outcome. That get's to Thinkers point of having confidence (loving yourself) enougth to be fearless. So the idea of being friends is to restablish the trust thru your actions. The WAS has felt and is as hurt as the LBS is. We dehumanise them by using words like - script, WAS, fog, MLCers, cake-eaters. Not all of their behavior is honorable at times but we married a person who we vowed to love, honor and cherish througth sickness and health. As a DBer you are called to lead thru this time. That is honorable, strong, loving, and wise. People will let you down, we will be filled with doubt and feel forsaken. Faith is a simple idea but hard to put into practice. Forgiveness is a powerful weapon in the love arsenal. If you ever had to ask for forgiveness and then receive it then you get the power of it. I wouldn't be so quick to just check a fellow human off my list. My W showed me a funny cartoon just yesterday. A woman was at the Pearly Gates and St Peter says to her, "You never colored outside the lines but you sure talked about everyone else when they did." Cheers
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
Going ahead under these circumstances requires immense self knowledge and self confidence - something most LBS's are lacking by definition of their circumstances.
If you had no fear how much confidence (love) would you have? Drop the rope (you are already dead), list all the bad stuff going on - seperated, broke, D papers filed, splitting time with my kids, conflicting advice, heartbroken........ If I am still going to give this a shot I have a choice. What is one characteristic women say is sexy ? ...... confidence. You have to get it in your mind you will survive and thrive even if you get D. Then you don't fear D. Now you can boldy step out of limboland. Once you love yourself enougth not to be afraid then you can match giving that love to someone else. Hard to be angry when you see the world full of opportunity and possibilities. This is a win-win for you. Here is the groundrule - Love your neighbor as yourself.
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
How does one reconcile the potential and likely one-sidedness of these DB "friendships"? I am not by any means challenging your post, I think it is beautiful and right on. The WAS often behaves as quite the opposite of a "friend."
All of your DB efforts are going to be one-sided for a while. Faith, confidence and boundaries are all healthy fuel for keeping the engine chugging.
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
