If you read my sitch, you will see why it is hard to have respect for my husband and why what he has done is so lacking in principles and integrity.
He just left here about an hour ago after being here since 3:30. This is his normal routine. However, he has asked for a visitation schedule all the sudden. that is his OW dictating to him that he is wrong to be with his children all the time--the truth, I believe, is that she is afraid of the time he spends around me.
D9 cannot understand why a visitation schedule means we cannot spend time together-all of us-as a family. When I told her she would be seeing dad one or two days a week and every other weekend, she thought that meant we would all go away together on the weekend or he would stay here on the weekends instead of leaving at night. Of course, D9 has no idea about the OW--only D17 does.
My faith is all that holds me together some days. I struggle with the thought that God has led me to love my husband unconditionally while I continue to hurt over and over for the pain my children are going through. It breaks my heart for him to leave every night, more so than it does the kids' hearts. And yet, he has no clue all of the pain he is inflicting on all of us.
Living Gods' Blessings with grace and dignity~ SMW
M40/H36 T16/M14 4K B2/08 S4/08 current
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. I Corinthians 13:7
I simply do not understand how you can be friends with a man who is with another woman when you are still in love with him...but, that is probably what I'm doing and don't even know it.
SMW- I know that feeling when every time H leaves it is like being left AGAIN...perhaps the visitation schedule will actually be better for you. It was for me when we were implementing it. Then everything got wishy washy and it was so yummy in one way (more time together) but the pain...aargh.
Some thoughts back to Coaches original post. This is a pretty theoretical "Systems Oriented" treatment, so if your mind works that way, read on and feel free to contribute. Otherwise, just ignore this - my apologies for the formulas and complexity.
Originally Posted By: Coach
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.
I think you can summarize this by saying that in order to have a chance at reconciliation, you have to cross the "great divide" of "limboland".
Limboland is a place of fear, uncertainty and doubt. It is that part of the R where you are trying to slowly and quietly restart a R with someone who is not capable of reciprocating and who is very capable of hurting you...
...often.
To get through limboland, you have to be able to be strong, confident, and self-assured even while you are being rejected and hurt by your spouse. If you are not strong enough, you will get hurt, it will break down your self confidence, and your attempts to re-attract your spouse will fail.
Some have called this "making sure your wall is strong so that your spouse can't punch holes in it"
I have started looking at it as a balance equation:
on one side is your "sense of self" - how much you love yourself, support yourself, are aware of yourself, etc. Some may call this your mojo
On the other side are your "emotional attachment" to your spouse - how emotionally important are they to you, how much you rely on their validation, etc., and the "hurtfulness" oif the things the WAS is likely to do while lashing out.
The balance is based on the idea that if a person who is emotionally important to you does something hurtful to you, then you going to be in more pain than if someone you don't care about does the same thing.
So...
If "Sense of Self" >> "Emotional Attachment" + "Hurtfulness",
then you are going to be OK - sail right on through limboland. Your wall will be unscathed and you will successfully pass the tests.
if, however:
"Sense of Self" < "Emotional Attachment" + "Hurtfulness",
then you are in trouble. You will crumble, get angry, lash back at your WAS, resort to begging, pursuing, etc. Your WAS will have tested your wall and punched a hole in it.
Since there is not much you can do about hurtfulness, the only 2 variables you control are your "Sense of Self" and your "Emotional Attachment" to your spouse.
Emotional Attachment is not necessarily a bad thing - it is also the basis for intimacy, love, etc, so in the best case, leave this strong.
Focus first on your "Sense of Self" - GAL, PMA, Kill the Snakes, etc. Build yourself up until you love yourself again. I have heard this again and again on these boards in many different forms.
Most people will most likely also have to focus on detaching - reducing their reliance on and emotional connection with their WAS. This is going to be critical in the early phases before you have built up your sense of self.
Remember, however, you can't be successful by merely detaching, because as you build up the friendship, you naturally become more emotionally attached again - until the hurtfulness starts punching holes in your wall.
So I would think that the steps to reestablishing friendship would be.
1) Detach to the point where you can still maintain your sense of self in spite of the hurtful things your WAS is doing. I.E those things may still hurt, but you are sill in control, can be rational, etc. This may require completely disengaging from the person.
2) Build up yourself - focus on your self confidence. Love yourself.
3) After, and only after, step 2 is sufficiently complete, start to reengage.
4) Keep building yourself up. As your sense of self gets stronger, you can allow yourself to engage more, love more, be more supportive, be closer friends. etc.
The goal is to get to the point where your sense of self, your self confidence, your mojo, is so strong that you can love without expectations, give lovingly - all of the things Coach recommends - without the pain that is inflicted "punching a hole in your wall" and causing you to get lost in your emotions.
Hopefully then, with time, the "Hurtfulness" will subside and you will be able to allow yourself to be less detached - remembering the DB truism that you have to keep up the GAL efforts for yourself for life. Otherwise, your "Sense of Self" falls, eventually tipping the balance back to the point where you lose control and attractiveness again.
Last edited by Thinker; 06/02/0902:28 AM.
Me 42, W 39, S8, S6, S2 M 11y, A & ILYBNILWY 11/08 Walking away from a bad situation.
I know who I am, I have found me again and I had detached really well. I know that I am an attractive, vibrant woman with many good traits. But he was gone and I did not have to face him on day to day basis. I did not have to deal with him being nice one minute and cold as hell the next.
DH told me that I "deserved better". Great. Why can't he be better? Why is he willing to settle for mediocrity in his life? These are the questions that will, in all likelihood, never get answered.
Living God's blessings with grace and dignity~ SMW
M40/H36 T16/M14 4K B2/08 S4/08 current
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. I Corinthians 13:7
Yeah, AK...in your sitch, he seems to be doing more avoiding responsibility than chasing dreams. Selfish which is not respect-worthy. My H just told me today that he has almost saved up the $ for my 1st months and security on a new place. I asked him how and he said he was saving and had sold some of his stuff, which was a surprise to me. I was actually both relieved and devastated that he has been finding a way to pay for my new place. (cue tears!!) So it is a strange balance there...respect for the fact that H had f'ed up our finances so badly and left me and rented a new place for himself which only compounds our $$ issues??? NO WAY!! The integrity is I more or less feel bad that he was struggling internally for so long and couldn't tell me. Couldn't even tell me until he had to LEAVE me in order to clear his head. As if it was all my fault. And now I guess I have to respect him starting to get his crap together and clueing me in on how he is handling it...I guess. I think the respect we (I am including you and your sitch in this) lacked for each other in the R is different from respecting what they are doing/not doing now. I think it is fair to say just by being the LBS and from all of our dedicated posts that we have established the H's could have done things more respectfully and still could be. Your H is following a "dream life", and from what you have told...he is not exactly being realistic in his dream. Hopefully he will realise before it is too late that he truly has a dream life right in front of him.
I totally understand what you say about figuring things out as you write them...it happens all the time to me!
If I got off topic, what I meant was that I don't think that your H is doing things that deserve respect right NOW. And my H either. BUT, in the meantime...respecting them as a person...like as in being polite, and validating, etc. is a good start, until we can start respecting their actions. Remember, you have to earn that kind of respect.
I guess for now I'll approach this in a more theoretical vein, rather than start out with my sitch.
Why be friends with a Walkaway?
I suppose even at this rather abstract level one needs to disaggregate a bit. I'm not sure the question is about being friends with Walkaway throughout the DB process or after, but whether moving towards friendship is sensible / desirable / advisable.
Jody, my DB Coach, is a firm proponent of moving towards friendship as part of the process. I can't speak for her, but what I took away from her POV is that friendship is the "gateway" to romance (+ end) or cooperative parenting (- end). If Walkaway can't start liking Left-Behind, s/he is certainly not likely to "come back and start loving."
Okay, that's a bitter pill to swallow (cue Mary Poppins). But the entire process is a bitter pill to swallow -- yet one does it.
The easy way out is to go completely and literally dark, right? -- F*ck you! I'll never speak to you again. And off you go. Lots of people do it. Maybe millions. And why not? One deserves better. Can't blame them, really. Can't s/he see what she's doing to me? The dog? The kids?
Well, no. Or, if yes, s/he doesn't think so much of it that it's a deal-breaker.
So in one sense, one has the choice: friends or nothing.
Now that begs the definition of "friends." The Wiki definition is a bit too slanted for my taste. The Oxford English Dictionary gives us this for friend:
Quote:
1.a.One joined to another in mutual benevolence and intimacy. Not ordinarily applied to lovers or relatives. but cf uses 3, 4
2. Used loosely in various ways: e.g. applied to a mere acquaintance, or to a stranger, as a mark of goodwill.
3. A kinsman or near relation.
4. A lover or paramour, of either sex.
6.a. As opposed to enemy in various senses: One who is on good terms with another, not hostile or at variance.
So at a minimum, the DB'er could shoot for a friend of Type 6 -- that is, not an enemy.
Of "friendship," the OED says
Quote:
1.a. The state or relation of being a friend.
b. A friendly relation or intimacy.
2. Friendly feeling or disposition felt or shown by one person for or towards another; friendliness; on friendly terms.
So we can see there's a lot of wiggle room here in how one defines the scope and boundary conditions of one's "friendship" with Walkaway.
Where is the value-added, then? An incomplete list: Preserves something from a relationship of [ __ ] years' duration; a connection with the past; a working relation for financial challenges (many people can't afford to D, for example); more successful -- or if that begs the question, more "affirmative" or more "positive" -- co-parenting; lower aggregate hostility; modeling good conflict-resolution for children; modeling maturity for children; beating Walkaway at her/his own game; and -- not to be discounted -- prepares the ground for further / continued DB'ing -- models 180s, GALs, new attitudes, changes, helps construct Golden Bridge.
Now when the idea -- be friends with WAS -- comes up, I don't think it's meant to be interpreted (though it often is) as "roll-over for WAS," "give in to WAS," or "pretend WAS didn't walk away."
There are concentric rings of "friendship" that we construct, especially in the aggressively social United States. My war buddy begins every story with "I got a friend of mine," and what follows inevitably deals with some act of adolescent malfeasance or twenty-something stupidity (generally accompanied by the liberal consumption of Schaefer or Pabst Blue Ribbon) with a chap War Buddy hasn't seen hide nor hair of in 30 years. But "I got a friend of mine."
Plus, friendship is a remarkably elastic thing. You will recall (he said, breaking the rule about abstracting away from his sitch) that I went to Big Midwestern City to mojogenerate. There I met up with some -- friends -- from high school, all of whom I hadn't seen since 19-ought-Eleventy-Three. Yet within minutes of the awkward "Ohmigods!" and handshakes, we were laughing about the same things we laughed about back then.
"Be friends with WAS" doesn't mean, I think, "be best friends" or "confide all your secrets" or "trust implicitly." I think it does mean that, absent abuse or some categorical violation of one's ethical or moral code -- in which case, why are you wasting time DB'ing with respect to the marriage anyway? -- all else being equal a positive (cordial) relationship (or if you don't like that word, "interaction") with WAS is better than a hostile one.
Why? Again, an incomplete list -- more cooperative on settlement, helps you move, can call to fix that leaky faucet, more willing to bend on nit-noid custody details ("I can't pick up tonight, would you mind?"), useful for lifting heavy objects (especially if there's a risk of injury -- bwah-hah-ha!).
For me -- and this was every bit as bitter a pill for me to swallow, my fellow DB'ers, as yours might be for you -- the answer to the first part of Coach's question came down to this:
Being friends will make Herself happy.
If she's happy, the kids will be happy(ier).
If the kids are happy, I'm happy.
So being friends -- of some sort -- with WAW is a purely selfish act on my part.
I have come to the realization that I am actually concerned with H turning around and saying "See, I knew everything would work out alright" or something of that ilk. Yes, I am confessing to a subtle resistance to actually being ok for fear that H will use that to his moral advantage and sleep better at night. H and I actually discussed this once when he was telling me some of the "You'll see, this will be better" banter...and I said something like, ya, it will because I will make sure I'm happier one way or the other. I'd have to be a moron to go through all of this and not gain some insight and grow. But I felt it was similar to if he decided to drive over my foot and then say "Gee, I'm so happy that the doctor said your foot will heal. I know it will take surgery and a few years of physical therapy but you'll probably be walking better than you were before...oh, and sorry, I wont be able to take you to your doctor's appointments or help you out but I know you'll be better off." I actually told my little metaphor to H months ago and he just said he didn't get it, go figure.
I really have to work through this one because it is an impasse for me on some level. I don't want him thinking this was alright because we end up friends and all's well that ends well. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, I just wont care.
It just seems like such a mindf*ck. If I can't be "friends" than I'm bitter and I'm not stepping up. But I am still stuck on what the point is of divorcing if two people are "friends" and have the history, the love, the kids etc. Just seems like a shame to me.
I'm going with the day by day and I reserve the right to change course on an as need basis.
DH told me that I "deserved better". Great. Why can't he be better? ~ SMW
SMW...My H told me the same thing. And oddly, he IS being better towards me since he left. What the hell is that about??? I think they are just failing us and they knw it and it is like they cannot see past that failure in order to just go and GIVE what we deserve. Hmm? I am not trying to give any answer or insight to this, just commenting that I got that same line. And it didn't feel too good!
