Spoke with H. Convo about bills. I asked what the plan was. I have kids at home crying wondering when they were going to see him, etc. I suppose not a good excuse but I did it.
He said he has not seen a lawyer, or spoke to one or even gone on line to look for one. He said if he knew what he wanted he would have done that by now.
After talking for awhile-he says he thinks its best if we are done. I said so there is nothing more to say? He said you seem to think so. I said no I am asking you. He said yes lets get together today or tomorrow. H will call me.
He brought up he can't be forgiven for OW. And, I am too good for him. The kids will be fine. And all he ever wanted was to be loved for who he was. Just the way he was.
Yes, I admit I tried to "fix" but really help him. Now to find out he is an alcoholic. I couldn't help. The mood swings etc I thought was depression and encouraged him to seek help at the time. This obviously made him angry at me but never said anything till now. He has held this all in. Saying I didn't love him for who he was. I did and do I was trying to be a friend and a spouse.
I do still love him and want our family to be together. I suppose now he feels OW loves him "the way he is". I can't compete or change that in his eyes.
I would like advice on our next conversation if it happens. I have put myself out there to him. Said we wanted him home. Only to be rejected time after time and I will no longer do that. It looks needy I am assuming. Help. Thanks
The problem with you being in this 'limbo' is that you WANT a direction to move in. Unfortunately as you have discovered that when you press for one from them, it is not the one you want.
IF this is an MLC then, "I don't know," is a good thing. You might not believe it, but it beats them knowing 100% that they are done.
Advice, do not press for an answer in the future.
As for:
Quote:
He brought up he can't be forgiven for OW
Well you said you forgave him...and that came too easy, I'm pretty sure inside, that you said this to appease him. Not calling you a liar, I just think it is not 100% geniune right now.
As for what he said.
My wife said something similar.
I told my wife, not to ever assume what I was or was not capable of, especially if I was this great person. That it was not her place to tell me what I could or could not do in regard to forgiveness.
Quote:
I will no longer do that.
Good, you said you read the book right?
You bring up the things you want, it reminds them of the things they don't want. (Right now)
Don't bring up Laywers or Divorce to him.
Talk softly.
In another post in newcomers, Julz, you basically vented about how unfair this all was, how come we had to do all the work. : )
You are the one here, you are the one with the books, this is how it is right now.
Try an vent here, or on an old-timers thread, but try not to do that on a new person, they have as many doubts as you do and the idea is to calm them; support them; get them to see new ways of thinking and living. I am asking as an old-timer here, not as a moderator. But as someone who knows the value of support.
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
Emotional day. I see the benefit of detaching is for ME. Not going there again.
I keep thinking in order to heal I need answers. Well, I see the anwers aren't always honesty from my H so why bother. Also, I will never understand it anyway.
Of course, he texted and said couldn't get together tonight. Surprise! Not. I said Okay. GOt one back from H that said sorry we will talk soon. I didn't reply. We shall see. I am going to think on that one. The wounds are too fresh.
The answers will seldom live up to the hurt anyway.
In time, you'll (hopefully) come to realize that even most of your questions are unimportant. And that you don't really need the answers, or even want them.
A simple truth? We all die with unanswered questions.
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
Jack - I think possibly that what people sometimes mean by answers is an aid to closure, and it is nice to have that.
You got back together with your wife, and I have forgotten, if I ever knew, how long you were apart. But people who reconcile perhaps have a different dynamic when they post.
Many of us live a long time with a gaping wound while our formerly loving spouses flounder around. And a long marriage does leave a gaping wound, which takes time to heal, however much you work on yourself. It does heal in time, but it is painful for a long time.
Some answers do come eventually [see Hearts Blessing for example] and imo they help, particularly if you do not reconcile. What we have to recognise is that we many times do not get answers, and we have to learn to live without them, but they are nice when they come. Or have been in my case.
Of course we all die with unanswered questions, but is that truly a helpful reply? In the course of quite a long life I have learned that if you wait quietly answers may come, and they helped me.
I would certainly not encourage anyone to sit around and simply wait, but I am not certain that the questions we ask are unimportant. That seems to me to slightly trivialise what we are going through or have been through. As you say in your bye line - 'you learn' and that surely is a major part of all the pain and suffering: what we learn.
My greatest regret, which I have repeatedly shared with life,
is that I wasted so much time trying to understand what was NOT understandable...I had been married for almost 25 years when h left so I know what a gaping wound it makes. I felt I was missing an organ that was vital to living.
But after almost a year of this, I could endure no more
and I would do anything (other than suicide) to stop the pain....even change ME!
Focusing on external reasons for the pain I was in, under the guise of "trying to understand" and "getting closure" was NOT helpful.
Getting closure by asking WASs questions is an illusory endeavor we spin our wheels in.
Even if they answer, their answers cannot be trusted.
Usually they don't know, or they say what they feel at the moment, which changes daily
OR they say what they think you want to hear OR they say what they think will hurt you.... or you force them into a decision they feel cornered into and then you cement them into an answer you never wanted.
NONE OF WHICH MAKES IT TRUE OR HELPFUL....
Trying to comprehend the incomprehensible is a waste of time.
AND
who says our spouse has those answers,
or wants to share them with US?
Therefore-- as I told Life, the time I spent on obsessing about what h wanted/ thought/felt/planned to do or the WHY WHY WHY???? of it all
could INSTEAD
have been spent on MY LIFE and MY GROWTH and MY CHILDREN"S journey and GAL that much faster. (It also, ironically, would have attracted my h back that much sooner.)
A 10 y/o girl I met at a cancer camp once told me an important gem. She said
she used to "wonder, why me, God? Why am I sick w/cancer? Why, why, why? Then one day I said 'I just am' and I decided to be happy and have fun while I can"...and she did have a great summer. It was her last.
What a lesson that young child taught me and I'm so glad a mutual friend finally reminded me of that...
Hence all the emphasis we ALL place on
being in the present and making "this day forward" better.
Beatrice, this advice we give is not BECAUSE we are reconciled...
it's because we learned it here before we were reconciled. And it helped us reconcile...
WE CHANGED.
And when one person in a two person relationship changes, the R itself changes, by definition.
Life, how about you NOT have any more conversations like the one you pushed for with your h? If you need "Closure" for real, if you need to know what the plan is, MAKE A PLAN yourself...
OR be ready for him to say bye bye and prepare yourself for that.
Re-read the posts sent on this very thread that address this.
You have the 37 rules and the last one, I think, is to
stop backsliding from the hard earned growth you are painfully gaining.
Why suffer for nothing? At least grow from this. At least improve YOURSELF so no matter what, your life will improve from your personal work.
THAT IS A FACT.
Don't repeat the same mistakes....again & again...come on...you can do this.
Maybe Your h is just an alcoholic looking for excuses to stay drunk, and having an OW who lets him.
Assume for a minute that it is the truth,
what can YOU do to change that? (HINT: the Answer is...nothing...)
So you GAL and do some real 180s...for at least several weeks...
you are NOT doing 180s for long enough to have any idea
whether they help.
No approach of less than AT LEAST weeks, ( I'd say 90 days) can be said to have been tried.
How long has this situation been going on?
Can you come up with at least an internal timeline as to how long you will endure all this?
That may help you b/c you'll then know there is a light at the end of the tunnel the length of that tunnel is what you choose.
THAT is something you can control.
And It's easier to go longer in this course of action, if you are GAL b/c you aren't miserable then...which is another reason for GAL of course...
I found myself capable of staying married even though h was gone, for 2 years b/c I wasn't suffering as much after the first year. (I looked forward to dating though, so eventually I had an internal deadline but never shared it with h.)
I was starting to have a good time and knew that I would be happy with or without h, and that also, paradoxically, that very realization helped H wake up!! Oh the irony...
GAL, looking forward to MY future/ MY KIDS future,
building our lives with hope, AND without regard to what H might do, had the byproduct of making me mysterious & attractive to h...
go figure. I've said this many times. The approach is the same whether the m is over or has boatloads of hope.
YOU GAL and CHANGE YOURSELF...you do 180s' over time...
Solution based therapy is based on the simple but radical idea that doing what works is more important than what happened to someone when they were young, or reached puberty or their first m or their parent's...
THOSE issues have their place, but it's not here. That's all. Read the Div Remedy book again & again if you have to. But there IS a reason for why we do what we do.
Give it a real chance life/Beatrice.
I know it's hard. I know it's probably the worst thing that you've ever experienced...
We know that Bad things happen to good people.
The question isn't "why?"
but what are you going to do with your life now?
If your life were a novel, ask who is writing your novel? Is your WAS? IS HE determining how your novel goes? How do YOU want the novel to go?
Why not make this next chapter go YOUR WAY?
Be the author of your life. Start now.
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
This is fantastic advice 25, thank you. I went back to read it a few times.
I'm sorry that it seems I am jumping in to respond without a proper intro but I can't get it to post for some reason. I have tried 2 times already. Trying again now
