You can paint the house, stay up to snuff on the upkeep, and think you are doing quite well, only to find out the other part of the equation never really liked the color. What?
Now you can bitch about not speaking up, why they just "went along", or you can start the hard part of scraping, or sandblasting, or heck, I guess even getting another house?
If you're wise, you listen, pay attention and make the changes. If not, you mope and whine, drag your feet and the house gets uglier and uglier until no one likes it. Then you're gonna have a heck of a time getting anyone to even look at it, let alone want to live in it or buy it.
Just an old contractor's way of looking at it I guess.
Can't eat, can't sleep. Can't listen to music, can't watch movies. Obsessed with knowing everything that your spouse is doing. Hang on every word your spouse speaks. Write or verbalize numerous pledges to become a better person. Read everything you can on the sanctity of marriage and how to save a marriage, and actually think there is something to be gained by sharing all of it with your spouse. Willing to appeal to any and all friends and family in an effort to "reach" your spouse. Emotions run the gamut: fear, anger, depression, anxiety, hopelessness.
Stage Two - A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.. At some point a little bit of knowledge finally creeps into the picture. May come thru a friend or family member, or maybe something you've been reading. You realize the first two fundamental truths - 1) You're not perfect, and 2) You can't control what another person chooses to do.
In this stage we start to try to improve ourselves, but it's mostly improvement done to try to win our spouses affection. We stop pressuring, we stop pleading, begging, etc, and try being nice and giving them a little space.
Unfortunately, our spouse responds to the change by doing or saying something nice or thoughtful back to us. This is unfortunate because we jump at the crumb thrown our way and reach out again, get summarily rejected, and generally wind up back in stage one again.
Stage Three - "Fool Me once, Shame on You..." After a period of time working thru stage one again, we move on to this stage where we are now a little wiser to the ways of the MLC spouse. We begin to understand that niceness CAN lead to niceness in return, but that it does NOT change how our spouse feels fundamentally.
We renew our focus on ourselves, this time with less of the motivation coming from our desire to impress our spouse and more of it coming from a genuine desire to rediscover the person we always hoped we would be. We begin to venture out into the world again, start focusing a bit better on work and friends.
We are less inclined to obssess about our spouse, but it's still there. Ocasionally it rears it's head, usually when we are surprised with another hurtful revelation, and this can still send us back to stage one or two for a refresher course.
Two key things happen here. First, we actually begin to see some personal progress that we feel good about. Secondly, that progress establishes a determination that will fuel us forward.
Stage Four - "How Long Does It Take Again to Establish a New Habit?" Practice does not always make perfect, but regular practice does eventually establish a habit. Making progress in ourselves causes us to want to make more progress. We begin remembering things we always thought we would do or try and realize that we now have that opportunity. Slowly but surely we begin chipping away at the rust that had accumulated on the person we once were, and we begin to like the return of the old, energetic self.
We still hold out hope that our spouse will be a part of our life again. But we've also reached a point of honesty and realized that our relationship had become something less than what it once was. We can see that both spouses had let hurts, disappointments, and laziness diminish the love and commitment that we started out with. We acknowledge inside ourselves that both of us truly had much that needed worked on and improved.
Despite the love we still have for our spouse, we've begun to entertain the notion that it might just be possible to still have a full and meaningful life, even if they choose to never return.
These are just some of my weird thoughts about the process, and of course they come from my experiences, which are not necessarily the same as others.
Bill
"Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
Sounds awfully close to me too, at least as far as I've moved through this anyway. From #4 back to #1 at times or #2, depending on the length and breadth of the "niceities".
Great thread. Wonderful insight. It is a journey for the LBS, for some a much longer journey than others. The stages as described all seem spot on.
I can accept that all questions can't be answered, and maybe shouldn't be answered. I will keep one question within me, for at least awhile longer - not that I will ever expect an answer, but it is there nagging all the same.
Me 45 M 25 yrs; T 31 yrs;bomb 8/15/06; moves out 7/18/08 D 18, D 14, S 12
