Thank you for the clarification Wayfarer. I notice you joined in Jan 2020, I assume you were just a lurker before then? Or maybe you started a new account?
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
Thank you for the clarification Wayfarer. I notice you joined in Jan 2020, I assume you were just a lurker before then? Or maybe you started a new account?
Lurker. But only for about a month or so. My stich moved fast and furious due to my H being who he is. I basically had to hold on for the ride and not lose my mind. Focus on me and the kids. Things just happened to work out in my favor. But when I got here I was desperate for anything that made me feel better. And really diving deep in here gave me something to hold on to.
Thank you for the clarification Wayfarer. I notice you joined in Jan 2020, I assume you were just a lurker before then? Or maybe you started a new account?
Lurker. But only for about a month or so. My stich moved fast and furious due to my H being who he is. I basically had to hold on for the ride and not lose my mind. Focus on me and the kids. Things just happened to work out in my favor. But when I got here I was desperate for anything that made me feel better. And really diving deep in here gave me something to hold on to.
Yep, I remember reading your sitch. Glad everything is going well for you! SD, if you get nothing else out of all this please get that you will be okay no matter what. And we are here to help and support.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
SD isn't in emotional crisis. He isn't losing his mind and just trying to survive.
At least not today.
Originally Posted by wayfarer
That being said SD. I think you have your wits about you, although I do believe your love blinds you more often than not.
That's probably true. I try to stay grounded but I also look at things from a more detached perspective at times and can see where I had my blinders on.
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But I can see that you are still very much in love with your W. That as removed from her chaos as you may think you are, you are not removed from her.
At one point during this I wasn't sure that I loved her, wasn't sure it was worth fighting for, thought it might be easier to move on and do whatever I want. I was so stuck in my head, weighing pros and cons, ruminating, planning, etc. that it was impossible to know anything. Then I had a moment of clarity. And then another. And I then knew without a doubt that I love her. But you are right, I am not removed from her. Not even close. I am more removed than I was, but there's a long way to go.
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I just hope you are being a light house and carefully watching your own shores. WSs will drag you along and keep you at arms length as long as they are allowed to. You are going to have to ask yourself at some point here how long arms length is good enough. How long will arms length serve you? SteveLW put a date on his. I put a date on mine. It's an arbitrary date. It can be moved forward or backwards as you see fit, but at the very least it's a date set to reassess. Steve set his as a year. I set mine as a year. H had a year to figure out what he wanted by then or I was going to figure it out for him. You deserve a life where you aren't perpetually waiting on a person who isn't sure about you.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Interesting you both went with a year. I don't know that I can go another 7 months. But then again, if you asked me 5 months ago if I could go until now, I probably would've said no. The timing I've been toying with is May, that is when the studio lease it up which makes it natural milepost for deciding which way we're gonna go.
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And while I know right now it feels like that happiness would be with her in your old life, you have to realize that MR is dead and gone and never to return. If, and that's a big if, if you and W reconcile and move forward you have to accept that that marriage is a whole new marriage.
I want a whole new marriage and do not want the old one. I want a better one. I think we have the potential to make that happen, but we also have the potential to blow it all up in a big way.
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Also I did see a while back someone asked you what you're goals were for yourself? Have you come up with some concrete ones yet? Have you taken the time to look at your life looking forward both with and without W in it? Finances? Custody? Placement?
I have a lot of personal goals I'm working on. Some are coming better than others. For the future I have looked into housing, splitting out finances, lawyers, etc. I don't have a set plan, just vague ideas.
I wasn't trying to attack LH, Steve, Sandi, or anyone with my comment about me finding the alpha male/getting your b@lls out of your W's purse stuff gross. I would caution LBHs from embracing that path fully, though, as I don't know that it will help either save their M or get any future woman to date them, depending on their circumstances. As Sandi and I worked out at one point, we live in very different places and have very different circles of friends and acquaintances, as she doesn't know anyone who lived together before getting married and I don't know anyone who DIDN'T. So yes, I believe that women exist who would respond well to that approach. I simply don't know any of them. Also, it's offensive. I'm just mentioning it in case you guys care. I stopped reading LBH threads for a good long time because I just found all the alpha-male-rah-rah talk so offputting, and I can again. Or maybe can all agree to start saying "grow a pair of ovaries" for awhile instead and see how that goes. (Does that sound ridiculous to you?)
And LH, I wasn't referring to your advice specifically in/re GTFO. I just feel that there is a very cookie-cutter approach here quite frequently, particularly for LBHs, that equates to man up/take your b@lls back/NMMNG/kick her out unless she immediately ends her A/gets off dating sites/whatever, which of course is completely outside of the LBH's control, so effectively is kick her out. Blu touched on this in her post the other day on how things have changed on this board. I don't have experience pre 2019 here, but like WF I find the MLC board much kinder and open to helping the LBS find their own path through their mess rather than this board, right now. I've considered moving my thread over there for that specific reason even though it doesn't really make sense for my sitch right now.
I remember very clearly a year ago WF, new to the board and describing her sitch and getting beat up here with posters telling her to kick her H out, and her saying that if PA=D in every situation, there wouldn't be many LBWs who reconciled with their Hs here; that the automatic "kick him out" response is really not that different from the begging/pleading on the other end of the spectrum. Both are knee-jerk responses and these are situations, especially when children are involved, that deserve thoughtful, non-emotional consideration before choosing a path. It takes time to process what is happening and separate your fears and emotions from an honest evaluation of your situation, and to choose actions based on your values and beliefs rather than your feelings.
I get it. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to kick my cheating H to the curb. I told him a bunch of times to GTFO. But that happened when I was angry and letting my pride get in the way of my ultimate goal, which was to give my children a happy, stable two parent household; and in the absence of that, to be able to look back five years from know and know in my heart that I gave this M everything I could. I can't afford to have regrets about something that would be so impactful on my kids. It would break me. But that is just ME! I guess the point I am trying to make was that everyone's situation is different. Every person has their own boundaries and they may be different than yours. Developing and cultivating self-respect and self-compassion, then learning about your own boundaries by understanding your own emotional responses to various situations and learning how to enforce them-- this is all part of the process. It takes time. And is a very personal journey. I think we do newbies a disservice by TELLING them what to do, or what we would do in their situation. Give them the tools to detach emotionally (back to the basics of GAL, self-care, avoiding R talks) so that they can begin to figure out for themselves what is the best path for them.
And FWIW... this is what MWD says too. She advocates for staying in the house if you can handle it, even in an active affair. She says people might call you a doormat but you know better. You're fighting for your M in the smartest way you know how. It clearly isn't a path everyone can take, but it is also not completely crazy to contemplate it.
Self-respect has never been a problem for me, BTW, though I know a whole bunch of posters thought that here because I didn't file for D the second I learned about the PA. The reason I suggested he work on his own self-respect is that SD himself said it was a problem for him.
I think that the emotional detachment comes with time and practice, removing the focus from your WS and placing it squarely on you and your children. Do the work on yourself. If you can do it and want to do it while still living with your WS, go for it. That is SD's choice and I support it as long as it seems like he's able to do the work and continue his work on detachment throughout... and from what i read, I think he is able to do that. I do think there is value internally in setting a date for at the very least reevaluation of the situation (but I don't agree with an arbitrary date based on the end of COVID because dating sites will be jumping after that? That is weird and confusing.).
SD, thanks for the responses to my questions. I think you are doing really well. Don't try to skip over any of the steps-- this is one of those situations that you just have to go THROUGH it. Don't feel pressured to move faster than is right for you. Take what serves you from this board and don't get bogged down by advice that doesn't fit your situation. But also listen, even if you don't agree, and commit to continue reevaluating your situation and boundaries with a clear eye and be ready to make changes when the time is right. I think if you continue on this path, regardless of what happens with your M, you're going to grow immensely through the trauma and will be grateful for the gifts it gave to you.
Have you read any Esther Perel? I think you might enjoy her books. Also, you might like to read DnJ's thread over on the MLC board. He has some incredible posts about validation and boundaries and detachment. He is very wise and I think what he writes might resonate with you.
Hang in there.
xx M
Me (46) H (42) M:14 T:18, D9 & D11 4/19 - 12/19: series of escalating BDs 9/20 - present: R and piecing
And LH, I wasn't referring to your advice specifically in/re GTFO. I just feel that there is a very cookie-cutter approach here quite frequently, particularly for LBHs, that equates to man up/take your b@lls back/NMMNG/kick her out unless she immediately ends her A/gets off dating sites/whatever, which of course is completely outside of the LBH's control, so effectively is kick her out.
So May I would like to see some support on these claims. Take some time over the weekend.
Originally Posted by may22
Blu touched on this in her post the other day on how things have changed on this board. I don't have experience pre 2019 here, but like WF I find the MLC board much kinder and open to helping the LBS find their own path through their mess rather than this board, right now.
So I am going to disagree with you here too. When I started here 6 years ago there were at least 3 posters Doodler, Jeep and Texhubby whose every post was kick that lying cheating WW out of the house and move on. Early on I was like WTF? This is suppose to be a marriage saving board. Well now that I have lived through it I understand what they were saying. Most WWs aren't worth it. They are not good people. It's the reality of it. Now having said that I am not saying I have never suggest drastic measures (new Steve and Curtis come to mind). But that is not my opening line nor do I see that from many posters.
So I think you have to look at each situation individually and adjust accordingly. In your sitch self-respect may have been the problem, but in SD's a lack of respect from a WW might have been the key.
It was definitely a big part of it all, because you can't respect someone who doesn't respect themselves. If you asked me a year ago if I respected myself, I likely would've said "sure, of course, duh!" but looking back now I can see the truth of how I really was. Does that excuse my W? Nope, like 97Hope said - "get a dog."
Originally Posted by SteveLW
And in society that now tries to deny the biological differences between men and women, it can cause confusion when LBHs, like myself and SD, come here with our self-confidence completely shot by WWs that lost any shred of respect for us 2+ years ago.
I think the biological stuff is separate from the "masculine" vs. "feminine" needs we all have though. I think a lot of men in our situations focus heavily on the more macho aspects of being masculine and swing from being a doormat to something out of Jersey Shore to compensate for our self-confidence being completely shot. Even if things don't work out for my M, I don't have any desire to be a "player" looking for hookups and all that and if things don't work out I know it won't destroy my confidence the way it would've 3-4 months ago.
Originally Posted by SteveLW
But the fact that the majority of heterosexual women cannot be attracted to a man that they do not respect is a pretty well-known fact.
Totally agree, however the variable in that equation is different women respect different things. My W is a strong-willed, stubborn, Finnish/Irish woman with a doctorate. Me standing up and saying "listen here little lady...." won't fly. (Not that that is what people are suggesting I do). Her seeing me do 180s, being present, being more confident in myself, getting in shape, and all the GAL stuff though, is a different story. It is tough to quantify, but the energy I give off today is so much different than what it was a year ago. I laugh SO much more. I remember at one point last year where we were doing something and we both started laughing - full on belly laughs - and after I thought to myself how GOOD that felt because I hadn't done it in so long.
