Crossroads

[unchien]

may ~

The most empathetic thing I can say about your H is that he seems like he's in an emotional vortex and making highly impulsive decisions. He does not sound like someone who has undergone deep introspection and made the kind of lasting change you are looking for. He sounds like someone operating under a lot of fear and emotion and making dramatic gestures like showing you that box of cr*p.

True lasting change is evident over time. It is not dependent on the daily fluctuations of one's emotions.

Hang in there, you have a lot of people here rooting for you. Things will get better.

[may22]

Thanks, everyone. Thinking a lot. If I make this decision, it will not be spur of the moment as crossing the line of asking my H to leave has always been the one thing I said I would never, ever do. That I cannot do it, that taking that step is violating one of my core values and breaking a sacred oath I made to my children when I chose to have them.

I am not saying I think it is wrong for people to leave their Hs or to D. I think every situation is different and people need to make the choices that are the best for their children and then them, in that order. I also think that for most if not many, those two things are the same. But not always. I am now 100% prepared to be on my own, with my kids, establish my own life without H, be the best mom I could be, find that sexy philanthropist (Sage ) and have that thrill and joy of falling in love again with someone new. Seeing what I can do on my own. Fixing the $hit around the house myself. Taking over all those tasks that H does and finding empowerment in doing it all on my own. Reclaiming space in the house and with my time from H. Being able to be wholly honest with my friends and family and let myself lean on them. I am ready for that. Looking forward to it, even.

And, for the first time, I also see that the option, for me, to make the choice myself is there. It was never really there for me before. Now it is, and I can do it if I decide it is what I want for me and for my kids. But just because that option is now available to me psychologically doesn't mean I will decide it is the right choice for me, today. But having it as an option is so freeing. I wish you guys could feel how I feel right now. I know that I can make this choice when I'm ready to make it, and I can make it tomorrow or in two months or a year (once I get the post nup done, I'm doing nothing until that is ironed out and signed).

I'm not numb to the lying. But for whatever reason, hearing all those last things and seeing the memorabilia go in the garbage made it real to me, maybe for the first time, totally real. That my husband has been in a relationship with another woman for a long time. That our marriage is indeed over. It was over a long time ago. I just didn't know. Now I do. I'm not holding on to what was anymore, or what I wished it to be. It is what it is. Nothing to be done about the past. Only decisions to be made about the future, and if I want to consider a new relationship with my H, or move on on my own.

And after standing through all of the BS I have stood through, I'm really not prepared to ask him to leave at this very moment out of anger about the latest revelation. Especially because for those of you who have been following me, you know that while his body has been here, he has never said explicitly to me that he wants this M, that he believes we can reestablish intimacy between us, fall back in love, whatever.

Also, I don't think he's being purposefully manipulative. I actually don't think he has the EQ to do that, especially at this level. He is confused and sad and scared. And I am not going to get emotionally dragged into caring about where his head is right now. The emotional fog has lifted for me around my H at the moment. I am no longer buffeted by anger and sadness when I think about H and AP together. It happened. (I do still have rage about the potential future, though. That isn't dealt with yet.) I am not gobbling up these crumbs. But I may-- may-- be willing to wait a bit to see if something more substantial can emerge.

Question for you guys, though. I have my next IC appointment on Wednesday and want to talk to her about my values and the question that has come up here a bunch, whether or not I value myself. Any other suggestions? We've talked somewhat about my attitude towards D, which I can address again with her as well.

I love and appreciate you all, so much. xx M

[LH19]

M,

I wanted to bring your post from PM99s thread in regards to your comments to me. I want to make it clear that I am not telling you to "kick your H to the curb". What I am suggesting that you need to get him out of the house to work on himself and earn another chance with you. Right now he does not see you as a person of value and quite frankly I think he gets his rocks off manipulating you. If he doesn't have to work to get you back he will certainly walk again in the future. You are seeing it first hand with PM99 what happens when it's too easy. You are being driven by fear and what you fear you attract. You talk about your core values, beliefs and boundaries. I am assuming that affairs, lies and manipulation don't make the list. You can certainly turn a blind eye and let him right back in with no questions asked that is certainly your right. Or you can stand strong and make it clear that it's not so simple anymore. Humans by nature want what they have to work for so make him earn it.

[Ginger1]

You are extremely skeptical of how one day he wanted to go back to OW and found an apartment to the next day saying the right things to stay in the house, right?how do you flop from going back to your affair partner of 2 years one day to the next being totally committed to rebuilding your M?

He said all the right things to get the vacation he wanted. He got it. And came home and said he wanted his mistress back and he was in love with her.

Do these things align with your core values?

I get that you feel empowered to ask him to leave....

But may, do you have any boundaries? What are your boundaries if you do? How do you enforce them?

[may22]

May, how can you be sure that AP didn't give him full blown rejection after he reached out? This is a very fast u-turn on his part. Do you believe him when he says she is still there for him and this is HIS choice?

I'm sure. There were a lot of details. Also, I think he'd be more worried about trashing the potential for our R by telling me he was lying again about his communication with her than by me feeling he was choosing me as plan B because plan A wasn't available anymore.

I want to make it clear that I am not telling you to "kick your H to the curb". What I am suggesting that you need to get him out of the house to work on himself and earn another chance with you.

I get that and appreciate the clarification. Like a trial separation? Or done and moving on? I just don't feel like a trial separation is useful at all. I have zero chance of trusting he won't be in contact with his AP if we S for any reason, which means that basically I have to believe he is talking to her, which then means I'm done. No need to look back. It is the same exact thing as him moving out and us separating for real. I feel it would just be more wishy-washiness. Also, it is the actual separation and its effects on the children that is my major roadblock to a separation, so it isn't a trigger I want to pull until I'm absolutely sure that is what is best for the children and for me.

I could potentially get behind asking him to move down to the basement for a bit to give me more space. That has been something I'm considering.

He might never do that May, he might never learn or grow, but do you see that you are driven by fear here, fear that the notion of your marriage will be lost. You dont have to D now, but you need to have self respect and grow into a happy woman who is content and in harmony with herself.

Thanks, Gigi... I need to look up vedic astrology. I actually am not scared that my marriage is lost. It is gone. That's OK. There is nothing I can do about that now. What's past is past, and I'm trying to make sure I have a totally clear-eyed view of what is now and what I can do within my own boundaries and in alignment with my own values before I make my next move.

You talk about your core values, beliefs and boundaries. I am assuming that affairs, lies and manipulation don't make the list.

My core values, beliefs, and boundaries are for me and shape what is and is not acceptable in terms of my own choices and behaviors. H's behavior and choices are all on him, not on me. Of course I never would have picked a life partner whose values were that different from my own. I don't think they were. But people do change, are in a bad place and starting to look at 40, get on a slippery slope of small choices that feel good and seem OK and can be justified in the moment, and suddenly you are not the person you thought you were. I think that is what has happened to my H.

Now he needs to find his way back-- not necessarily back into our M, but back to having his behaviors align with his own values. Or, he won't. I don't know and it is completely out of my control. He spent all this time convincing himself that D was the right course of action because True Love, or our R had no chance, or I didn't really love him because of the SSM, or whatever. He's grieved our M. I've now grieved it too, this past week. He can decide to be someone who lives by his values, or maybe he want to be that person but is too weak or governed by his own impulses and selfishness to actually do it, or maybe he no longer cares and just wants to consume whatever life has on offer without worrying about breaking commitments or the consequences your choices have on other people. That is for him to decide. For me, I need to decide how I want to live my own life, how I want to feel when I look back on this time period without regret. I'm not going to ask him to leave because I think it would have the greatest chance of saving my marriage. I can't traumatize the children without actually knowing in my bones that the best thing for all of us is to leave. And when I leave, or ask him to leave, it will be for good. (Yes, Wayfinder, I know it doesn't have to be that way. But that is where my heart is at this point.)

[Valeska19]

Question for you guys, though. I have my next IC appointment on Wednesday and want to talk to her about my values and the question that has come up here a bunch, whether or not I value myself. Any other suggestions? We've talked somewhat about my attitude towards D, which I can address again with her as well.

I agree with Ginger about boundaries. That would be my suggestion to discuss above all else as they are a form of self care and help enforce/protect/figure out your core values.

Also - how about a plan or a list of benchmarks that your H has show/follow?

[may22]

Hi Ginger and Valeska,

Boundaries... what i have been working on with my IC since June. Something that basically didn't exist in our relationship so has been pretty difficult for me to even understand, let alone stand up and enforce. A bunch of posters, especially AlisonUK, have really helped me here.

My current boundaries are:
-- leaving the M, S or D, is a bright line for me. I will not be friends if we S or D. We will not play happy family. Easy.
-- I do not want to hear about H's feelings for AP. (I realize that we kind of blew through this one with him telling me the rest of the stories about the times they spent together and her love notes to him. But, it was my choice to look and to listen-- he checked in multiple times throughout to be sure I did want to hear.) To the extent that I want to know about the A, I want it to be facts, not feelings. This has been relatively easy for me to hold, excepting the conversation yesterday. For months after we tried to R the first time he found it impossible to discuss any aspect of the A without shoving BUT I LOVE HER down my throat, so we avoided talking about it/her.
-- I do not want to talk about any fantasyland D scenarios where he is with AP yet H and I still eat dinner as a family and vacation together.
-- I don't want to talk about the SSM with him. I've shared where I was multiple times and my regret for hurting him, and to me there is no reason to go over it again and again if we are not staying together. I am tired of it coming up as a justification for the A, so am not willing to talk about it any more.
-- I will not make this decision for him.

Those are my authentic boundaries at this point. My IC really wants me to stop being empathetic to him and stop letting him lean on me to process his emotions (she thinks I shoulder his emotional burden and he has this unhealthy need to process through all this cr@p with me, has wanted me to make the decision together with him, etc.). For the most part, he's stopped bringing up the SSM and talking about fantasyland D scenarios.

I still need to stop him from talking about his feelings for AP, though he will respect my boundary with a simple hand motion reminder. (Before, he would pout and say he didn't want to talk about the outlines of what had happened without the feelings because they were inseparable). I'm actually wondering if spilling the rest of his guts will help here-- he'd said in the week leading up to the most recent BD and during that conversation that he felt there were things I still needed to understand about him, that I didn't "see" him, and from what I can tell I think that it is all just about his feelings for her that I had refused to hear.

This week has been the longest week ever.

[may22]

The other thing is you're hearing from a lot of people who were physically separated. Very, very few of us have dealt with this process with the WS in the same house full time from beginning of the A to piecing. It's a pretty rare occurrence on here. I think there are plethora of variables in that. So with that in mind I'll agree you need to keep focusing on you. Keep self assessing what's acceptable for you. What's healthy and what's not for you. Keep checking and re-checking those boundaries.You really should get the legal stuff in order here, as a safety net. However, outside of that you have time. You don't have to kick him out to make this decision, but if you do, out doesn't mean over. Yes, I like you felt like if he's out that door I'm done with this, but it doesn't have to be. Right now I think it's just important you take your space as you need it and if that means him in the basement, ok. If that means him in another house, ok. I think it's also important to make sure you have the time you need here. So if you want a week, a month or a year to decided and you want to do it with him in the house that's up to you.

Wayfarer, this is really very helpful. I have to say I've had you on my mind quite a bit, recently. I remember you saying once that you actually felt kind of bad for your H when he got dumped by his AP. You were able to see so clearly from the very, very beginning what was going on and just took your own emotions out of it, decided what was best for your girls and buckled down and just took one step at a time, every day, no BS. Sometimes I think if I had been able to channel more of my inner WF back in the spring I'd be in a different place right now, but maybe not. Guess it is all part of my journey. But I'm feeling that inner WF zen right now that I have been chasing for so long and it feels good. xoxo

[Sage4]

Hi May,

I agree with so much of what everyone is saying and suggesting. And I also totally empathize with the position you are in and the paths that lay before you. None of which have clear roadmap for you to follow. Which means that you get to listen to your gut, stay true to you and do the best you can right now with the information you have (from H, from all of us, from within yourself).

I think there is a blurry line between enabling H/empathizing too much with him, and your own self-worth/value. For a long time in my R, I was able to be a great enabler and also have a strong sense of self worth and value. So the two felt pretty exclusive from each other to me. Until H betrayed my trust/love/emotional support. The enabler in me wanted to be big and take it all and 'help' him through this difficult time. But I couldn't do that and also protect my own value as a human. So I spent too long losing my own self-worth in this process. Which made me 1) less attractive; and 2) highlighted H's inadequacies, because here he was decimating me and even then, I 'pitied' and tried to take care of him. (<<not really, of course, but I can see that's what he felt)

I know that many people see H as a master manipulator, but he could also just be really dependent on you to fix, answer, solve and navigate the tough emotional stuff for him as he lacks the muscle strength to do so on his own. Which is partly his fault and partly yours for enabling him for so long. H needs to fall, hard. And then build himself back up, brick by brick so he has the stamina and strength to stand on his own two feet for the rest of his life. Can you 'allow' this to happen? Can you watch him do this and not lift a finger to help him? Because until he does this all on his own, you will not be able to move forward into a true partnership and path to M 2.0. WF is a great example of this.

Along this thought, would you be willing to explore if the things you think are lines in the sand right now, might not be in your best interest? Nor facilitate the best outcome? Can you let go of everything you thought were absolute truths right now and start from scratch? No matter what happens in the future, right now you are walking in a very different landscape than you were a few months ago and you might need a different pair of shoes.

You are going to be great, May. Whatever happens.

(((May)))

[may22]

Hi Sage,

it is good to hear from you... hope you are doing OK.

Question for you about the enabling. Did you realize you were doing this during the healthy part of your M? Or is it just now that you're seeing it? For me, I never ever ever thought that was a role I played with my H. I definitely don't see myself even now as helping him or taking care of him. Just frustrated and angry with him and sort of sorry for him in between. When we were talking more and when everyone here and my IC was like screaming at me to stop processing all his garbage with him/for him, I was totally taken aback. It didn't feel like that to me at all. I felt like I was just trying to follow the DB validation rules (along with the occasional truth dart when I couldn't stand it any longer).

More recently, though, I've recognized this more. Most of all last week when I was in a place to be able to shut him down quickly each time and it really became clear that he wants me to talk about it all with him. The entire time he has wanted me to make the decision for him. My IC's exercise for me was to shut my mouth and let him stew when he says self-pitying things. I can do this. I think if I choose to stay i'll need to build pretty thick emotional walls for awhile. Expect nothing. Co exist and focus on the children and myself and see how that goes.

A different pair of shoes. That resonates. if it were just my shoes it would be so easy. my girls love their dad so GD much. I almost wish we were high conflict so I had a good reason to S.