Update - 09/18/11 06:38 PM
It’s been almost 5 months since I gave a real update about what has been going on in my situation. I am posting now because I think that seeing how our situations change over time helps all of us to put the puzzle pieces together. Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive both here and in the alt over the past 3 years. Even though I haven’t been posting much I continue to read the MLC threads on a regular basis. There is SO much wisdom there! I am very grateful to all of you who so generously share on the MLC threads. I always find something to feed my soul and to provide new insights when I read there. Thank you all!
Over the past 4-5 months I have been going through a big transition. Over the summer I was anticipating the 3 year anniversary of the bomb, which actually occurred last week. I was preparing myself for this anniversary because to me it seemed that if XH hadn’t made significant movement forward and toward me by then (September), it would be time to move on. ………and since my emotions were in flux during that time, I needed some time away from posting on the boards. The abridged version is in the next paragraph. The detailed version (including Jody’s comments) is below (WARNING ----- it’s long!).
• XH’s mother passed away 6 months ago
• In April – June I initiated more contact, thinking that XH would have a void in his life with his mother gone
• XH accepted about half of my invitations, but I never knew if he would be moody or more like his old self (Jeckyl or Hyde). In retrospect I think XH WAS actually making some forward progress during the first 3 months after his mother’s death. He suggested we start playing online board games and we played every night for 30-90 minutes before bedtime, IM’ing back and forth. I felt pretty certain there wasn’t anyone special in his life.
• I was grieving X-MIL too and had increasing financial pressures. I was frustrated, anticipating the 3 year bomb anniversary, and not DB’ing very well. Jody was telling me that XH saw me as someone always waiting outside his front door whom he can “let in” whenever he decides to.
• I think XH may have seen this website when he and his sister visited my house in mid-June for an impromptu dinner and drinks. Not sure. Another reason I’ve been laying low.
• XH and I had a heated discussion while playing TT in late June (more details below). I set some boundaries………didn’t do a good job of it, but over the past few months XH has not been taking me for granted as much.
• Contact really cooled off for about 6-7 weeks, although we played TT a couple times during that period. I always left quickly and didn’t linger to chat (we didn’t chat much during the games either), even though XH seemed to want to chat afterward.
• I felt some relief. Felt that I had made “the break” and focused on GAL, repairing things around the house (stuff that needed to be fixed before XH walked), and invited a fella to go biking with me (kinda sorta “date”). He had phoned to ask me on a date 2 years earlier but I wasn’t anywhere near ready then. It was enjoyable, but we haven’t seen each other again.
• During July and August I did not initiate at all. I waited days to respond to XH’s board game plays. I told XH I wasn’t able to play TT at times, and he had plans at other times, so weeks went by with minimal or no contact.
• In mid-August, when XH wanted to play TT but the room we needed wasn’t available, I told XH I’d take a rain check for the following week. XH then kicked it into high gear and found a place to play (more details below). Over the last month XH has begun initiating a lot more (more details below).
• XH told me in mid-August that he is having a biopsy for pro$t8 cancer (he is also having other annoying health problems at the same time). The biopsy was rescheduled from early Sept to later this week. XH should know the results in ~1 ½ weeks. Even if he doesn’t have cancer, his condition has probably progressed to the point where he will need surgery anyway, and that will have a big impact on the way that he relates to women.
• Over the past few months I’ve also had short, frank convos with X-SIL and a long-time friend of XH’s. They both know that X-MIL’s alcoholism has impacted him more deeply than XH realizes. XH’s friend (good guy) agreed with me that XH needs to find the happiness he is looking for within himself.
• In summary, I can tell that events in XH’s life have caused him to think about where he is in his life. He seems to treat me as a trusted friend but not someone with romantic potential. However, I’m not sure if he sees anyone as a romantic object right now and frankly I’m not certain I have romantic feelings for HIM either, even though I do still miss my H VERY, VERY much! I feel like a widow. XH seems depressed. He is NOT his former self, but the conversations that we have had over the summer have been very real. No posturing. I would be very surprised if XH was dating anyone special right now. I don’t get that sense. He’s too depressed.
• I have become VERY detached as the result of this summer’s events. I look at XH in the same way I look at one of my patients who doesn’t do what they need to do to get healthy. XH even said once that he wonders if his compulsion to not follow medical advice for non-surgical management (e.g. withhold fluids before bedtime) is like an alcoholic compulsion.
• Right now XH is not anywhere near the man I knew before. In some ways he is becoming more “real”, but his walls are still very high. This fall I am focusing on finishing the home repairs, doing some marketing for my work, doing some very nice things for myself, and socializing more…………….Moving forward. Not initiating with XH but not burning that bridge either.
Below is a more detailed overview of what has happened in my situation.
My last real update was in May. XH’s mother passed away at the end of March. After her death I felt that there was an opportunity to grow closer to XH because I knew that his schedule would be much less full (he wouldn’t be visiting his mother) and I thought he would be lonely. I invited XH to do several things and he turned down about 50% and accepted about 50% of my invitations (i.e. movie, going out to eat together) but was very withdrawn at times when he DID accept. He was very much like Jeckyl and Hyde during this time. I never knew who I was going to see when we got together. I acted “as if”. I’m not sure if XH knew he was being so moody. We played TT almost every week.
In early June XH stored his kayaks at my house and told me I could use them. XH was very friendly with me at our health club, giving me tips on my weight training form. I asked him about a broken latch on my garden gate and he fixed it a couple days later while I was at work, even though he only had about 4-5 hours’ sleep the night before. That was significant because XH hadn’t done many AoS for me since the bomb. When we were together pre-bomb he did AoS all the time. In early May, XH invited me to play online board games and we played every night for 30-90 minutes before bed, chatting online as we played. This routine went on for about 6-7 weeks. I felt pretty certain XH wasn’t dating anyone then because he wouldn’t be online chatting and playing games with me before bedtime if he had an overnight guest.
In early June I loaned XH my bike so he could go riding with a close childhood friend who was visiting from out of state. I met and chatted with his friend (male) a bit. X-SIL also visited from out of state. She, XH, and I played TT. They came to my house afterward for drinks and an impromptu dinner.
Encouraged by this forward movement I continued to initiate, trying to take advantage of the opportunity I perceived. XH began canceling our weekly TT game on short notice because he had made plans with various people. I became frustrated because I felt that he was not treating me with consideration when he canceled on relatively short notice. At the same time I was frustrated because GAL plans I had made were falling through (other friends canceled plans) and I was spending a
fair amount of time maintaining and fixing things around my home. When XH left I knew that I would face 2 big financial hurdles in the subsequent few years: I would need a new roof on my home and I would need to replace my car. I was dealing with these financial stresses at the same time that XH withdrew from me. I am happy to report now that my insurance company will be replacing my roof in the next couple weeks. (That was divine intervention once again.)
In retrospect now, I see that pushed too hard at that time. If I had just let things develop naturally, they may have returned to the forward movement that seemed to have developed……….Instead, when XH canceled TT on little notice to attend the concert of an musician he dislikes with a female friend, I got very frustrated. This frustration led to a pretty heated discussion between XH and me in late June during TT. I told him I thought he had been inconsiderate to cancel on such late notice. He apologized, but I kept jabbing at him (not normal behavior for me). He asked me why I was jabbing at him and I told him “I’ve been frustrated that your walls are so high. I have made invitations to you to do things and you have just blown me off. I really don’t have any interest in just playing TT with you. I can do that with anyone. I can play with someone in the TT league or find someone online to have that kind of casual interaction with. Friends to me are people that you share with and do things with.” Not good DB’ing. I was losing my patience…………At one point in the convo XH asked me if I wanted to just stop playing then. I said “Fine! That’s fine with me.”……..but then XH said “Why don’t we just keep playing a bit longer”. ……..XH and I have rarely ever raised our voices to one another, so this exchange was a big departure for us. At one point XH said in reference to our pre-bomb R “We both made mistakes”. That caught my attention because it’s the closest he’s come to admitting any culpability in the last 3 years, but I thought “Geez. It’s been 3 years since the bomb and THIS is the closest you have gotten to taking any responsibility for YOUR part of this?” I just thought to myself, “He is SO far from seeing HIS part in this. Why should I continue to DB?” XH said that his walls are up because he is still angry with me because of all the money he spent to get a D even though we had a pre*nup. There was more conversation and then I said “I wouldn’t want that old M. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good that my H couldn’t tell me he was unhappy but instead told his best friend”. XH looked VERY surprised at that truth dart since I had always avoided R talks post-bomb. I told him “You’ve been so moody and depressed and I’ve tried really hard to be understanding and supportive.” Bad DB’ing again! Afterward, when we walked out to our cars I said, “Thanks for raising the issue that I was being cranky. I have been frustrated about this issue (canceling on short notice) and I appreciate being able to talk to you about it. You were right. I was cranky and I am sorry for that. When your walls are so high it’s just not fun for me”.
Five days later XH emailed me “presently, ….our relationship as friends extends to the borders that are now established. If you want more from me in time, conversation, dissection of our past relationship, etc….I don't have that to offer.”
I spoke with Jody shortly after that. She said that it’s scary for me to change gears. It’s very common that between transitions, the LBS has to step back because it creates a disruption of the status quo. It’s necessary for the WAS to pick up the slack. Jody said that if I looked at the whole road map, I was at a T intersection. She said that I needed to slow down in order to turn the corner. If I turned one way, it could lead to the end of the R. If I turned the other way, it could lead to the next stage of the R. She said I could say to XH “Something has come up and I’m not available for TT this week. How about if we play next week?” (I did, in fact, reschedule a few times and once, when the community center wasn’t available I told XH “I’ll take a rain check for next week”. XH then got VERY busy and found a place to play….and when THAT place didn’t pan out, he scramble to fina a 2nd place to play……After we finished playing that night I received an email from XH inviting me to play TT AND to go out to dinner afterward the next week……so it appeared that my pullback resulted in XH pursuing me.)
Jody said that XH may have been using the financial settlement as justification for his distance. She said it is important to XH that he feels he is in charge of the cadence. Let him initiate. At that point, to him it felt like his job was to avoid my overtures.
She said I should pull back because that is part of the process. It disrupts the status quo.
About 7 weeks after our heated discussion and minimal contact, XH began inviting me to do things other than TT. First he invited me to dinner after TT. He told me that he is having a biopsy to test for pro$t8 cancer. XH seems to be thinking about his mortality. My cat got sick and XH offered reassurances and said he was praying for her. That was noteworthy because XH wasn’t religious at all when we were together. Like me, he had a bad experience with religion in his childhood.
XH had also bought a very nice new racing bike in July but never invited me to go biking with him…………… until 2 weeks ago. XH injured his foot and can’t play TT for ~10 weeks but invited me to go biking on our regular TT night. We biked several miles, stopped to have dinner/drinks (his idea), then biked back in the dark under a full moon. Fun evening! We talked over dinner. XH said a friend of his who works in health care had told him about all of the problems that can occur following pro$t8 surgery. I think he is beginning to realize that the way he relates to women will have to change if he has surgery. The conversation turned naturally to a point where I told XH about David $chnarch's work saying we need to push the boundaries of our sexual comfort to keep Rs fresh because $ex is so important to our motivation to work on Rs. XH nodded his head in strong agreement. I then said that $chnarch does 2 day intensive counseling and has also trained therapists in his approach all over the country.” I said “ We should have done that.” XH’s eyes and facial expression at this comment was neutral. He didn’t withdraw and he didn’t affirm.
One week later XH sent me a funny birthday card (on the front were 3 middle-aged women and one of them said “ So I said, “I just don’t see how that trapeze is going to hold both of us……” and it went on from there) and invited me out for cake to celebrate my birthday. I suggested a movie beforehand and XH agreed. We whispered back and forth during the movie. ………XH flirted with the hostess at the restaurant while we were waiting to be seated. Annoying, but our conversation was unguarded over dinner. ……..so this was the 3rd time that we did something outside of TT, in spite of what XH said about not wanting to socialize outside of TT at the end of June. We have had a number of unguarded conversations since X-MIL’s death. At birthday dinner, XH and I talked about looking back at our lives and if there is anything else that we would like to do before leaving this world. We both said that we feel very blessed. XH said he doesn’t have any major goals to accomplish yet in life. I said there are some places in this world I would still like to see.
That’s the update. I am feeling much more detached. XH is making some small movement in processing what has happened, but is nowhere near taking responsibility for his role in what happened. I have continued to see small and big miracles in my life. I am very grateful to feel God's presence in my life during these difficult years. I continue to grow and change through this process.
Thank you all! Any and all feedback is welcomed.
GAG
Over the past 4-5 months I have been going through a big transition. Over the summer I was anticipating the 3 year anniversary of the bomb, which actually occurred last week. I was preparing myself for this anniversary because to me it seemed that if XH hadn’t made significant movement forward and toward me by then (September), it would be time to move on. ………and since my emotions were in flux during that time, I needed some time away from posting on the boards. The abridged version is in the next paragraph. The detailed version (including Jody’s comments) is below (WARNING ----- it’s long!).
• XH’s mother passed away 6 months ago
• In April – June I initiated more contact, thinking that XH would have a void in his life with his mother gone
• XH accepted about half of my invitations, but I never knew if he would be moody or more like his old self (Jeckyl or Hyde). In retrospect I think XH WAS actually making some forward progress during the first 3 months after his mother’s death. He suggested we start playing online board games and we played every night for 30-90 minutes before bedtime, IM’ing back and forth. I felt pretty certain there wasn’t anyone special in his life.
• I was grieving X-MIL too and had increasing financial pressures. I was frustrated, anticipating the 3 year bomb anniversary, and not DB’ing very well. Jody was telling me that XH saw me as someone always waiting outside his front door whom he can “let in” whenever he decides to.
• I think XH may have seen this website when he and his sister visited my house in mid-June for an impromptu dinner and drinks. Not sure. Another reason I’ve been laying low.
• XH and I had a heated discussion while playing TT in late June (more details below). I set some boundaries………didn’t do a good job of it, but over the past few months XH has not been taking me for granted as much.
• Contact really cooled off for about 6-7 weeks, although we played TT a couple times during that period. I always left quickly and didn’t linger to chat (we didn’t chat much during the games either), even though XH seemed to want to chat afterward.
• I felt some relief. Felt that I had made “the break” and focused on GAL, repairing things around the house (stuff that needed to be fixed before XH walked), and invited a fella to go biking with me (kinda sorta “date”). He had phoned to ask me on a date 2 years earlier but I wasn’t anywhere near ready then. It was enjoyable, but we haven’t seen each other again.
• During July and August I did not initiate at all. I waited days to respond to XH’s board game plays. I told XH I wasn’t able to play TT at times, and he had plans at other times, so weeks went by with minimal or no contact.
• In mid-August, when XH wanted to play TT but the room we needed wasn’t available, I told XH I’d take a rain check for the following week. XH then kicked it into high gear and found a place to play (more details below). Over the last month XH has begun initiating a lot more (more details below).
• XH told me in mid-August that he is having a biopsy for pro$t8 cancer (he is also having other annoying health problems at the same time). The biopsy was rescheduled from early Sept to later this week. XH should know the results in ~1 ½ weeks. Even if he doesn’t have cancer, his condition has probably progressed to the point where he will need surgery anyway, and that will have a big impact on the way that he relates to women.
• Over the past few months I’ve also had short, frank convos with X-SIL and a long-time friend of XH’s. They both know that X-MIL’s alcoholism has impacted him more deeply than XH realizes. XH’s friend (good guy) agreed with me that XH needs to find the happiness he is looking for within himself.
• In summary, I can tell that events in XH’s life have caused him to think about where he is in his life. He seems to treat me as a trusted friend but not someone with romantic potential. However, I’m not sure if he sees anyone as a romantic object right now and frankly I’m not certain I have romantic feelings for HIM either, even though I do still miss my H VERY, VERY much! I feel like a widow. XH seems depressed. He is NOT his former self, but the conversations that we have had over the summer have been very real. No posturing. I would be very surprised if XH was dating anyone special right now. I don’t get that sense. He’s too depressed.
• I have become VERY detached as the result of this summer’s events. I look at XH in the same way I look at one of my patients who doesn’t do what they need to do to get healthy. XH even said once that he wonders if his compulsion to not follow medical advice for non-surgical management (e.g. withhold fluids before bedtime) is like an alcoholic compulsion.
• Right now XH is not anywhere near the man I knew before. In some ways he is becoming more “real”, but his walls are still very high. This fall I am focusing on finishing the home repairs, doing some marketing for my work, doing some very nice things for myself, and socializing more…………….Moving forward. Not initiating with XH but not burning that bridge either.
Below is a more detailed overview of what has happened in my situation.
My last real update was in May. XH’s mother passed away at the end of March. After her death I felt that there was an opportunity to grow closer to XH because I knew that his schedule would be much less full (he wouldn’t be visiting his mother) and I thought he would be lonely. I invited XH to do several things and he turned down about 50% and accepted about 50% of my invitations (i.e. movie, going out to eat together) but was very withdrawn at times when he DID accept. He was very much like Jeckyl and Hyde during this time. I never knew who I was going to see when we got together. I acted “as if”. I’m not sure if XH knew he was being so moody. We played TT almost every week.
In early June XH stored his kayaks at my house and told me I could use them. XH was very friendly with me at our health club, giving me tips on my weight training form. I asked him about a broken latch on my garden gate and he fixed it a couple days later while I was at work, even though he only had about 4-5 hours’ sleep the night before. That was significant because XH hadn’t done many AoS for me since the bomb. When we were together pre-bomb he did AoS all the time. In early May, XH invited me to play online board games and we played every night for 30-90 minutes before bed, chatting online as we played. This routine went on for about 6-7 weeks. I felt pretty certain XH wasn’t dating anyone then because he wouldn’t be online chatting and playing games with me before bedtime if he had an overnight guest.
In early June I loaned XH my bike so he could go riding with a close childhood friend who was visiting from out of state. I met and chatted with his friend (male) a bit. X-SIL also visited from out of state. She, XH, and I played TT. They came to my house afterward for drinks and an impromptu dinner.
Encouraged by this forward movement I continued to initiate, trying to take advantage of the opportunity I perceived. XH began canceling our weekly TT game on short notice because he had made plans with various people. I became frustrated because I felt that he was not treating me with consideration when he canceled on relatively short notice. At the same time I was frustrated because GAL plans I had made were falling through (other friends canceled plans) and I was spending a
fair amount of time maintaining and fixing things around my home. When XH left I knew that I would face 2 big financial hurdles in the subsequent few years: I would need a new roof on my home and I would need to replace my car. I was dealing with these financial stresses at the same time that XH withdrew from me. I am happy to report now that my insurance company will be replacing my roof in the next couple weeks. (That was divine intervention once again.)
In retrospect now, I see that pushed too hard at that time. If I had just let things develop naturally, they may have returned to the forward movement that seemed to have developed……….Instead, when XH canceled TT on little notice to attend the concert of an musician he dislikes with a female friend, I got very frustrated. This frustration led to a pretty heated discussion between XH and me in late June during TT. I told him I thought he had been inconsiderate to cancel on such late notice. He apologized, but I kept jabbing at him (not normal behavior for me). He asked me why I was jabbing at him and I told him “I’ve been frustrated that your walls are so high. I have made invitations to you to do things and you have just blown me off. I really don’t have any interest in just playing TT with you. I can do that with anyone. I can play with someone in the TT league or find someone online to have that kind of casual interaction with. Friends to me are people that you share with and do things with.” Not good DB’ing. I was losing my patience…………At one point in the convo XH asked me if I wanted to just stop playing then. I said “Fine! That’s fine with me.”……..but then XH said “Why don’t we just keep playing a bit longer”. ……..XH and I have rarely ever raised our voices to one another, so this exchange was a big departure for us. At one point XH said in reference to our pre-bomb R “We both made mistakes”. That caught my attention because it’s the closest he’s come to admitting any culpability in the last 3 years, but I thought “Geez. It’s been 3 years since the bomb and THIS is the closest you have gotten to taking any responsibility for YOUR part of this?” I just thought to myself, “He is SO far from seeing HIS part in this. Why should I continue to DB?” XH said that his walls are up because he is still angry with me because of all the money he spent to get a D even though we had a pre*nup. There was more conversation and then I said “I wouldn’t want that old M. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good that my H couldn’t tell me he was unhappy but instead told his best friend”. XH looked VERY surprised at that truth dart since I had always avoided R talks post-bomb. I told him “You’ve been so moody and depressed and I’ve tried really hard to be understanding and supportive.” Bad DB’ing again! Afterward, when we walked out to our cars I said, “Thanks for raising the issue that I was being cranky. I have been frustrated about this issue (canceling on short notice) and I appreciate being able to talk to you about it. You were right. I was cranky and I am sorry for that. When your walls are so high it’s just not fun for me”.
Five days later XH emailed me “presently, ….our relationship as friends extends to the borders that are now established. If you want more from me in time, conversation, dissection of our past relationship, etc….I don't have that to offer.”
I spoke with Jody shortly after that. She said that it’s scary for me to change gears. It’s very common that between transitions, the LBS has to step back because it creates a disruption of the status quo. It’s necessary for the WAS to pick up the slack. Jody said that if I looked at the whole road map, I was at a T intersection. She said that I needed to slow down in order to turn the corner. If I turned one way, it could lead to the end of the R. If I turned the other way, it could lead to the next stage of the R. She said I could say to XH “Something has come up and I’m not available for TT this week. How about if we play next week?” (I did, in fact, reschedule a few times and once, when the community center wasn’t available I told XH “I’ll take a rain check for next week”. XH then got VERY busy and found a place to play….and when THAT place didn’t pan out, he scramble to fina a 2nd place to play……After we finished playing that night I received an email from XH inviting me to play TT AND to go out to dinner afterward the next week……so it appeared that my pullback resulted in XH pursuing me.)
Jody said that XH may have been using the financial settlement as justification for his distance. She said it is important to XH that he feels he is in charge of the cadence. Let him initiate. At that point, to him it felt like his job was to avoid my overtures.
She said I should pull back because that is part of the process. It disrupts the status quo.
About 7 weeks after our heated discussion and minimal contact, XH began inviting me to do things other than TT. First he invited me to dinner after TT. He told me that he is having a biopsy to test for pro$t8 cancer. XH seems to be thinking about his mortality. My cat got sick and XH offered reassurances and said he was praying for her. That was noteworthy because XH wasn’t religious at all when we were together. Like me, he had a bad experience with religion in his childhood.
XH had also bought a very nice new racing bike in July but never invited me to go biking with him…………… until 2 weeks ago. XH injured his foot and can’t play TT for ~10 weeks but invited me to go biking on our regular TT night. We biked several miles, stopped to have dinner/drinks (his idea), then biked back in the dark under a full moon. Fun evening! We talked over dinner. XH said a friend of his who works in health care had told him about all of the problems that can occur following pro$t8 surgery. I think he is beginning to realize that the way he relates to women will have to change if he has surgery. The conversation turned naturally to a point where I told XH about David $chnarch's work saying we need to push the boundaries of our sexual comfort to keep Rs fresh because $ex is so important to our motivation to work on Rs. XH nodded his head in strong agreement. I then said that $chnarch does 2 day intensive counseling and has also trained therapists in his approach all over the country.” I said “ We should have done that.” XH’s eyes and facial expression at this comment was neutral. He didn’t withdraw and he didn’t affirm.
One week later XH sent me a funny birthday card (on the front were 3 middle-aged women and one of them said “ So I said, “I just don’t see how that trapeze is going to hold both of us……” and it went on from there) and invited me out for cake to celebrate my birthday. I suggested a movie beforehand and XH agreed. We whispered back and forth during the movie. ………XH flirted with the hostess at the restaurant while we were waiting to be seated. Annoying, but our conversation was unguarded over dinner. ……..so this was the 3rd time that we did something outside of TT, in spite of what XH said about not wanting to socialize outside of TT at the end of June. We have had a number of unguarded conversations since X-MIL’s death. At birthday dinner, XH and I talked about looking back at our lives and if there is anything else that we would like to do before leaving this world. We both said that we feel very blessed. XH said he doesn’t have any major goals to accomplish yet in life. I said there are some places in this world I would still like to see.
That’s the update. I am feeling much more detached. XH is making some small movement in processing what has happened, but is nowhere near taking responsibility for his role in what happened. I have continued to see small and big miracles in my life. I am very grateful to feel God's presence in my life during these difficult years. I continue to grow and change through this process.
Thank you all! Any and all feedback is welcomed.
GAG