So after my whopper of a temp check, maybe W will see it as such, as an attempt by Burned to establish control. She didn’t take my bait, she just DBed me with the whole “fine, if that’s what you want” attitude. So I am just going to pull way, way back and hope I dodged the bullet.
H: 35 W: 33 M: 11 T: 13
4/10/18: I discovered A and confronted ("BD1") 6/23/18: I moved out 8/31/18: MC ends ("BD2")
burned, aside from this whole file/not file exchange, how often do you have contact via text/email with W?
It doesn't sound like things will immediately settle into a NC situation, but when they do I think this may help. Not NC in the sense that you're punishing her, or withdrawing - but NC in the sense that once you don't have anything to communicate back and forth I think you'll find some more peace. Look forward to that in your future: peace.
Until then, keep doing your best. When in doubt - do nothing.
I've read folks here saying often "Doing nothing IS doing something". I think of it with the phrase from (again - here I go...) my favorite poet..
"Anyone who has sat in Lotus for more than a few seconds knows it takes a h3ll of a lot more muscle to stay than to go" - A. Gibson
Meaning - STAY STILL. That takes a lot of strength. Stillness is your goal. Settle into yourself and your intentions.
Amoafwl, I will respond to you in a separate post. I don’t think these things don’t work. I think in terms of wholeheartedness and correctness, my grades are C and F, respectively. I have accomplished some of my goals, and I’m starting to see improvements in how I interact with others, along with consistently better moods, fewer bad days, less thinking about her, more detachment. I’m starting to be Me again.
And do you know what Me is? I’m petty, vindictive, passive-aggressive, impatient, selfish, and generally callous. I hide my hateful tendencies under a thin veneer of charm, wit, niceness. I’m arrogant and entitled and prideful. I resent when things don’t work the way I want them to, because I think I’m special and don’t have to put in the work. I blame others for my lack of satisfaction in life. I’m not the good person I’ve duped people into thinking I am. I’m a victim and a fraud. I ask for advice and then I ridicule it, because “I know better.”
I am just like her.
So, speaking of her, I’m just about done with her. I’m strongly contemplating changing my FB marital status to “Separated” (hey, it’s only been what, 6 months?) and watch what happens. Did I mention I’m petty?
It’s not right for me to have to suffer all of the consequences of her actions. I’m done being the scapegoat. I’m done being the “hero.” I’m tired of lying to myself thinking any of this will ever change. I deserve a better life. And my fear has evaporated, because my mind and my conscience are clear. Bring it, woman. You can’t hurt me anymore.
So...pros and cons? Blow this thing up? Make her start to feel the heat? We’re all but divorced anyway. What do I have to lose? We all know the outcome. She’ll never change. I won’t want her back. Too much damage has been done. Time to have a little fun.
(This stuff is mostly sarcastic, but I’m trying to start a good discussion, just for the sake of learning. Grab your 2x4s and smack me around. I can take it now.)
H: 35 W: 33 M: 11 T: 13
4/10/18: I discovered A and confronted ("BD1") 6/23/18: I moved out 8/31/18: MC ends ("BD2")
And do you know what Me is? I’m petty, vindictive, passive-aggressive, impatient, selfish, and generally callous. I hide my hateful tendencies under a thin veneer of charm, wit, niceness. I’m arrogant and entitled and prideful. I resent when things don’t work the way I want them to, because I think I’m special and don’t have to put in the work. I blame others for my lack of satisfaction in life. I’m not the good person I’ve duped people into thinking I am. I’m a victim and a fraud. I ask for advice and then I ridicule it, because “I know better”
So maybe instead of worrying about everything else, you work on these things....
I’m sure there are plenty of good qualities to balance this out. In any case, the first step to solving any problem is to identify it.
Do you want to be all of those things the rest of your life?
So...pros and cons? Blow this thing up? Make her start to feel the heat? We’re all but divorced anyway.
And will you look forward to looking in the mirror 6 months after these actions? Will you be glad you had 15 minutes of relief? Because that is all it will be.
Just take your R status on FB and hide it. Just make it private, that's all. No announcement, no drama - just remove it.
You need a paradigm shift. I don't know what that is. You oscillate between the same two thoughts: your love and hate for her. Your love and hate for yourself. I'm not sure if that's what it is, but it's a cycling pattern.
Without getting into an Ayn Rand debate (because it always ends up bloody), I do think one of her major themes is pertinent here. That theme is:
If you are confronting a contradiction - check your premise. One of your assumptions is wrong.
Burned, I have to post again. You've really riled me up. You prob won't like me but tough cookies.
I don't understand why you think life happens TO you. Your interactions with your life are always reactionary. If you sat still for 1 full week and didn't "do" anything but just SIT. What would you want in your life? Not what do you want to happen, or what specific person, or what do you want to fix. But like...if you could do anything what would it be?
Do you sit still? Not laze about after work, but sit STILL. No planning. No thinking about the past.
You need to create something in your life from scratch. Don't take something that happened to you and react. Don't take a nice cookie-cutter life that we're all told to have (meet/date/marry/2.5 kids/dog) and apply it to yourself. You need to do something a little wonky, a little "weird", a little off-kilter and do it because it intrigues you. I don't know what it is, but you need to stop your repetitious thoughts and actions.
I'm hearing someone who is not happy with themselves and that won't change until you just dig up whoever it is you really are and who you are really supposed to be. All those negative traits you listed above - that's your true SELF fighting with whomever you're pretending to be. IThat battle is coming out in negative traits, but I don't think the traits are your true self. You have a major internal battle going on and it has nothing to do with W.
This is not written with the intention of making you feel like you're a bad person. I don't think you are. I'm pretty sure you're not because I actually dated "you" (well, your internet personality doppelganger) in college for two years. So I weirdly feel like I know you because your personality similarities are striking.
What is something in your life that you've really had to fight or fight for? What adversity have you faced, if you feel like sharing? I think you need to remember back to whatever pain or fight you had then, and think about how you walked through it. How you were stronger after. Share your scars, and remember that we didn't get them to look cool. We got them when we had no other choices.
And do you know what Me is? I’m petty, vindictive, passive-aggressive, impatient, selfish, and generally callous. I hide my hateful tendencies under a thin veneer of charm, wit, niceness. I’m arrogant and entitled and prideful. I resent when things don’t work the way I want them to, because I think I’m special and don’t have to put in the work. I blame others for my lack of satisfaction in life. I’m not the good person I’ve duped people into thinking I am. I’m a victim and a fraud. I ask for advice and then I ridicule it, because “I know better.”
I am just like her.
We all have 4 fingers pointing back at us while we point one at "the bad person".
This is what it all really is about. This is an inward journey. How do I want to treat other people. What can I change to be more in line with how I want to be.
"What is best for my kids is best for me" Amor Fati Link to quotes: https://www.divorcebusting.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2879712
Well I didn’t get the feedback I expected (righteous indignation!) but I definitely got the feedback I needed.
It’s easier to focus on what’s wrong with other people because then I don’t have to focus on what’s wrong with me. And I always have 3 or 4 fingers pointed back at me. The problem is, I judge myself much too harshly.
I don’t know if this is the right place to get into that really deep stuff. It’s Divorce Busting, not “free online psychotherapy.” I’ll bring it up with IC tomorrow. I have my fair share of pretty deep scars that I’ve always been good about keeping to myself. Except when I used them as excuses for the ways I sometimes acted toward W and others.
I will say that in a lot of ways my life is a story of opposites, dichotomies, dialectics, whatever you want to call them. And in her worst moments after BD (and even before) W was quick to point out that I always see things in black-and-white and that that’s a major problem. Actually the most recent time she said that was the last time I saw her, our last R talk, she said that the breakdown of our M isn’t black-and-white. Sounded like a cruddy way of saying “it’s your fault too” but it’s all true. Not my fault she cheated, but of course I contributed to the breakdown of the M. Maybe things got worse after BD because I was so defensive and so focused on the pain of betrayal that she didn’t realize that I was aware of my contributions, and blamed it all on her? She speaks cryptically sometimes, and I also remember her saying that she didn’t think it was fair that she was the one who had to make a decision on her own about whether or not to stay in the M. Maybe that was her way of saying “I don’t want to feel like this is all my fault”? So she was also right that I’m not a very good listener, but surely when you’re saying things that are THAT important, you could be a bit more direct when you KNOW the other person is a fairly straightforward black-and-white kind of guy? Like when she said we should do MC (before the A). But as several people pointed out, it’s not right to blame her for my own blindness.
It’s also why I’ve consistently second-guessed going dark. I think she saw that as more of the same, “He gets angry and shuts down when he doesn’t get what he wants, because it’s always either-or. He hasn’t changed.” The irony is that I wouldn’t have gotten to all of these insights if I was still frantically clinging to her. So going dark was both detrimental AND necessay and...hey look at me integrating two opposites!
So I guess I’ve hit the point where I’ve detached from her enough that now I’m focused more on myself. Stage 5 maybe? I was hoping the righteous indignation would help with detachment, and maybe it did, but now my own demons are staring me in the face and telling me, You’re going to go through this again and hurt another innocent beautiful creature if you don’t fix it. That’s what I’ve been told here, over and over, but I don’t think I was ready to hear it until now.
Kind of humiliating, though, that she cheated on me and dumped me, and not only have I lost her but I’ve also lost the blissful denial that I was able to perpetuate by “using” her. Allll kinds of messed-upness in that R. Also kind of annoying that just around the time that I’m calm enough and detached enough to be able to TELL her all of these realizations and SHOW her what I’m capable of, she’s tying up the last of the loose ends so she can move on. I’ll probably always be a disappointment in her mind, a “failure” in the sense that I wasn’t who she thought I was. There’s no going back. Someday I hope she’ll take a look at the new me (and as of today I’m still the same me) and maybe she’ll like that I became more like the person she hoped I could be.
But it’s going to be a long road.
H: 35 W: 33 M: 11 T: 13
4/10/18: I discovered A and confronted ("BD1") 6/23/18: I moved out 8/31/18: MC ends ("BD2")
The reason why she is cryptic? Because she was afraid of what your reaction was going to be if she was direct. She was hoping you would get the clue on your own so she doesn't have to hear more of the same and the backlash.
I lived a life like that. I know it wasn't the right way of handling it, but I lived in so much fear of my ex's reactions (he was exactly how you describe yourself) that I became very passive aggressive hoping he would figure it out so I wouldn't have to deal with what would come if I was direct and he didn't agree, because he never agreed because he was also a victim of some sort. He was always right. ALWAYS.
great step in admitting what your faults are. But not it is the time for you to do the work on them. I wouldn't even think about W. Just how you could help yourself.
