Journaling... Today has been a much better day. Still feeling under the weather but mentally stronger. My H just called to talk to the kids and we had a brief conversation. I could tell he was uncomfortable even just exchanging pleasantries. He’s coming over tomorrow to help me put up our tree. We’ll see how that goes. Detach, detach, detach... really working hard on that. Doing it with love but also reminding myself of all the cr@p he pulled. Helps a bit.
Only if you let him. You are not wrong. You are the one he dropped and whose heart he broke. You are the one who will let him back in. You make the call. If he gets his way, how long is it going to be before he pulls this stunt again? Are you just going to let all the hurt he caused you be set aside?
I meant that he will get his way and fast track the division of assets and D. The other part...he really wants nothing to do with me and would be a vanisher if we didn’t have kids together. I am opening the door to let him go. I don’t think I will have to worry too much about him returning. I am coming to terms with it.
Thanks Pain. I wish I had your confidence. I can put it off for awhile...but he is determined, I think. The main thing is that I get to stay in our house and hopefully he will be open to a child care schedule that meets our children’s needs as opposed to his. He will struggle with that I think. But I choose to focus on the here and now and worry about that later. Need to continue to detach and GAL so I can prepare myself to have a fun holiday season.
Woke up early this morning feeling mildly down. I find that I remind myself each morning that this isn’t a nightmare, my H has left and he wants a D. Reality-based thinking but not overly helpful.
Been thinking about the concept of love and how it starts out as an overwhelming, chemically-charged feeling that eventually goes away and morphs into a comfortable familiarity that is easy to under value. It is also very active in that each day, you must choose to love someone...forgive them for their shortcomings (and we all have many) and accept them for who they are. You also have to continue to give something of yourself and make efforts even when you are tired and don’t feel like it. Too many of us become complacent and just let things go. I did this. My H did this. We are both guilty of it and if I could go back, I would do things so much differently. I would stop telling him how much I loved him and start showing him. Action... that is what was missing in our marriage...on both our parts. I will forever regret not figuring that out sooner. But...you can’t go back and can only move forward. So now I need to focus on actively loving him...by letting him go and becoming a better person, a better parent, a better (future) partner. My H? Not sure what he would do differently. In his mind, he would probably just leave sooner without all of the lies. That makes me sad. I wonder if he is actually really capable of truly loving someone - through the good times and the bad. I suspect not. For him love is a passive thing. You either feel it or you don’t and it is the other person’s responsibility to make you feel it. I wish I had known that before I married him. He has a lot of emptiness inside of him and he used me to fill it for awhile. But it has caught up to him and to us. I think he will look for something or someone else to fill it because it is the easy way out. I don’t think he will ask himself the tough questions or really do the work he would need to do to be capable of real love. I am sad for him in that regard because I really do wish him peace and self-fulfillment.
Bittersweet moment this morning. Since our kids were born, I’ve really struggled with my self image which was tied a lot to my weight. It affected our sex life big time. I did not feel attractive. I could not imagine he found me attractive. So I avoided ML even though I craved intimacy. I did not talk to him about it. I think I was too ashamed and embarrassed and I know he suffered from what probably looked like indifference. Last January, I decided to lose the weight once and for all so I could start to feel like myself again. I set what I thought was a bit of a lofty goal (high school weight) but I thought...go big or go home, right? So this morning I stepped on my scale and not only did I reach my goal, I am actually one pound under it. Yay me!!! So...feeling better in my own skin, for the most part. I guess it is important to find something to feel good about even when things seem pretty dark. Progress...even if only in tiny little steps is important. I feel like maybe I made some progress these past few days but it has been really, really tough. Better days are ahead.
It must be the day for it DV6. I'm having one of those days where I'm having to 'fake it' but just want to crawl under a rock and shut the world out. Mixture of hormones and tiredness I think. Right royally fed up of the whole darn thing.
I also think I've been 'unsettled' by news at the weekend, which if I know my husband, means there may be trouble in paradise. It's tempting to contact him on a pretext and be 'mrs nice and concerned' just to stir it up a bit. Desperate, wicked, nasty, foolish etc etc I know and I won't do it. But it's tempting.
2 more days at work and then a trip to London to see middle son and his partner. We'll do touristy things and see the Christmas lights and laugh, eat and be merry. That's the plan anyway.
Ah Yorkie. Sorry about your day. My sadness is lingering as well. Really trying to get a handle on it. Feeling a lot of shame today. I know that my H had many choices to make and ultimately he made the ones that led us here but I've also really been thinking about the choices I have made as well. Even the ones I made when I first found out about this. He stayed home for three days and I just remember that I spent that whole time trying to explain to him the error of his ways...lecturing about the things he could have done differently...talking at him. He was so quiet. I wanted him to explain the unexplainable and he could not. I invited him to talk to me and he did not trust me enough to do so. That hurts me deeply. He has hidden so much from me over the years and he tells me he tried to tell me things. I am so sad that I do not remember those attempts. I've always thought of myself as a good listener and the one person in the world, who I loved with all my heart, did not feel heard by me. I carry a lot of shame around that. And I know it takes two. I get that. But how could I miss something so fundamentally important? I'm not sure I will ever really understand. So my biggest task now is to try to come to terms with it...to own my own part...to take responsibility...and to find some peace. Funny...all this time I have been thinking about and focusing on finding a way to forgive my H but I really think the person I am struggling most to forgive is myself. Wow...this is SUCH a PAINFUL process.
We never know the full story because we on the forums aren't living it. However, everything you have described about your H is that he is a very broken man. I doubt there is or was much you can do for it. You take care of you for him and he takes care of him for you. Unfortunately, he doesn't sound like he is willing or capable to do his work and he may never be willing. To me it sounds like you carry shame for not being able to fix a person that wasn't yours to fix. Find your faults and fix them, be a better version of yourself that's all you can hope for.
Here are 2 quotes for you.
"What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger."
This one is much harsher, but its important for all of us LBS, its one I still struggle with. "He/she was never yours its just your turn."
H(37) W(35) D8, D5, S3 T20, M13 BD 8/31/18 EA Discovered 9/13/18 Mediation 10/3/18 W files for D 10/12/18 W moves out 11/10/18 EA confirmed 12/25/18 D Final 1/10/19
I'm with you on the shame feeling. I cringe at some of the things I did and said in the early days. I also remember pleading, crying etc etc and him asking me to give him more time and just be patient. I didn't listen. I wanted it sorting immediately. I couldn't understand what the big deal was; he'd had an affair, I would forgive him, we loved each other and just needed to crack on with it. he kept saying he was frightened. He thought there was something worth saving in the marriage but was scared it would just be what it was before. But within a few weeks of declarations of love and intent, he was back sleeping with OW and within a matter of weeks, declared that he would never ever live with me again. I do feel strong most of the time, but I also know there is 'bravado' on both sides. So many things left unsaid, mostly because I would get hysterical or nasty about OW and he would run away.
I have apologised for my part in the breakdown but I also find at times I want to take on his shame and guilt as he seems unable. I know that's not right. So, I'm just going to sit and wait and see what happens.
I know what sort of wife he wants me to be and I cannot be that person. But perhaps, given time he would have some insight into why he thinks that and deal with his issues and maybe his 'ideal' would change.
I am GAL and living my life to the full, but you can't keep busy all the time and then the 'voices' start. I'm blaming the darned hormones for today's pity party.
