Do you not think that it is possible that a LBS can have respect and confidence while still not condoning the A and still offering friendship - without being a doormat of course!?
Yes I think what you suggest has merit. The boundaries and self-respect would be key to maintaining your own well being. The friendship you are describing is kinda of how I imagine you would deal with a family member get thru a addiction. Non-enabling, consistent, patient, confronting bad behavior, let them deal with consequences, detached and there to offer appropiate help when asked. This would be a very one-sided R for a while. Magnifies the need to take care of yourself plus that would modeling great self-care. When you love like that be prepared for some push back from friends and relatives. Knowing what you want, what you can handle and willing to give is a powerful statement. Cheers
I agree! As long as we respect ourselves and have good boundaries, why not hold out the olive branch and work on the friendship? Most of us would have more empathy for S if it involved addiction or illness... something about just walking away from a M without adequate explanation is much tougher to understand and empathize with. But there are reasons (sometimes unknown to us) for the walk-away and I believe the WAS must have moments of sadness, guilt, and remorse.
I'm trying to really live out 1 Cor 13 - if I really love H, I will be patient and kind, not envious, boastful, keep a record of wrongs, etc. I'm still struggling, but living out those verses are my desire and goal.
And I also agree that it is a one-sided R, and there has been quiet push back in my sitch from family and friends. But if we are committed to the R, then we persevere despite the lopsidedness or contrary advice from well-meaning friends/family.
MD--
Ahhhh--1 Cor. 13. This is the scripture I have been living my life by for about a year now. It is so hard some days, especially when the mind meanies throw up memories and bring thoughts of DH and the OW to my mind. My family did a lot of pushing in the beginning, but over time, with the changes they have seen in me, they have started to understand why I am still believing in reconciliation. The biggest turn around has been my mother. She helps me pull it back together when I start to fall apart.
If you cannot lean on your family, find a strong supportive friend or a prayer partner through church. Speak with your pastor or priest and they should be able to recommend someone. I do not know if you have found Rejoice Marriage Ministries online, but they are a wonderful resource for people standing for their marriage. And, of course, you have all of us.
Living God's blessings with grace and dignity~ SMW
M40/H36 T16/M14 4K B2/08 S4/08 current
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. I Corinthians 13:7
1 Corinthians 13 (13th Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians in the Bible) describes the concept of agape (selfless love)
(verses 4-8)
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love Never Fails.
Wait a minute.... What's in it for me?
M22,H45,W45 S21/18D12 Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
1 Corinthians 13 (13th Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians in the Bible) describes the concept of agape (selfless love)
(verses 4-8)
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love Never Fails.
Wait a minute.... What's in it for me?
Spoken like a confused LBS, which I KNOW you are not. God's love and grace are sufficient, as well you know. We get a closer walk with Him and our faithfulness is rewarded.
Living God's blessings with grace and dignity~ SMW
M40/H36 T16/M14 4K B2/08 S4/08 current
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. I Corinthians 13:7
Of course it's not about what's in it for us, it's about doing the right thing regardless. Regardless of how we're being treated, how we feel we've been wronged, etc. and demonstrating the agape love as much as we humanly can. I know for myself that I continually struggle with this unconditional love, but I do agree with others that commented this is an important part of rebuilding the R with our S (WHETHER OR NOT the actual M reconciles).
I think it is really important to acknowledge that one can always love another from a distance. Some relationships are abusive, toxic, unhealthy and I don't think anyone should feel inferior or guilty about creating healthy distance. That has to be a caveat.
Agreed. We can't be doormats! But interactions from that distance can still be 'loving'.
I think sometimes that in these situations, it's a lot like the Love and Logic philosophy (if anyone's familiar with that). We won't always agree with our children or S's behavior, and sometimes there are natural consequences for their actions, but we can and should still try to be loving when we respond. Sometime that means tough love.
This half of Coach's question has been much harder for me to get my head around because, as I asked earlier, it actually has 2 parts -- the mechanical and the emotional/psychological.
Mechanically -- that is, the "literal" how -- seems to me to be the easier of the two pieces. You extend the olive branch, however it is that you do that -- email, texts, waving at the service station, what-have-you. Start small.
I'll use a historical example. Even at the height of the Cold War, when @Coach's forefathers in Strategic Air Command were flying racetracks in the sky just outside Soviet airspace (Purity of Essence!), and @Thinker's forefathers were playing hide-and-seek with boats full of Polaris missiles, we and the Sovs were still "exchanging" jazz musicians and ballerinas; you could still buy the propaganda magazine "Soviet Life" at the newsstand; the Russians could still tune into Voice of America. The idea was, basically, that as long as there was some contact, relations would eventually stabilize, if not thaw completely.
As many people have pointed out here, though, that's unfortunately LBS's unhappy mission. LBS has to take the initiative. But as Coach always says, you can handle it. You can take The High Road and accept Walkaway's decision -- Walkaway is an adult and gets to make decisions, for good or for ill -- without being a doormat or an enabler. "I disapprove of what you did; you hurt me; you hurt our children; perhaps you even hurt yourself. But...."
From my POV that's consistent with what I understand to be the Christian precept of loving the sinner despite the sin. (And my theological quandaries re: same can be set aside for the moment, LOL.) There is a Unitarian writer (and again we can set aside theological and epistemological debates over the UU church!) who notes the following:
Quote:
“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”
So if one wants to set the self free, the self has to be released from the bonds of negativity that maintain a relationship -- pathological though it may be -- with Walkaway.
It's certainly true that one doesn't have to befriend Walkaway to do that; and I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that in some situations -- two childless people, for example -- there's no "real" need to maintain a positive linkage. But for those with children, I think there's near-universal recognition that children in divorce do best (that is, given divorce, children are better off) if the parents get along, at least at some level.
Beyond that, the How really relates to the way we make friends generally. Relations continue at some low level for a while; trust builds; relations "deepen" (and don't take that too literally); trust builds further. Former Walkaway and Former Left-Behind reach some kind of status-quo that works.
The important thing, if only from my POV, is to set the sights low (that doesn't comport with PMA, I guess, but so be it). I'd rather have a small achievement soon rather than put all my eggs in the Big Achievement Someday basket. As General Patton famously told his subordinate commanders, a good plan now is better than a perfect plan 5 minutes late.
The emotional/psychological piece is, naturally, the piece that is most dicey for all of us I suspect. And here I have less of a grasp, I must admit. For me -- perhaps only for me -- this came down to the following line of reasoning, courtesy (largely) of Pink Floyd.
At any given moment of my day, I have a choice. I can be sad or happy (two terms that are much too coarse, by the way, but they're the only ones that come to mind), angry or calm, helpless or empowered. I can hate WAW for what she's doing to me and our children, or I can accept that WAW believes (has convinced herself, however you phrase it) that despite the harm it does to me and our children walking-away is her only viable course of action.
Remember, all behavior is goal-directed behavior. You don't have to agree with / accept the goal to recognize that Walkaway's behavior is still goal-directed. As I read through various threads here, I observe (perhaps mistakenly, owing to the limits of the text-based interface) that some DB'ers seem almost to impart a sense of spite to Walkaway's actions -- as if the "only" reason Walkaway is doing what s/he is doing is to hurt Left-Behind. But as I've listened to WAW, I've heard that she really believes this is about self-preservation.
Now it's certainly true that I can reject that line of thinking -- I can reject the idea that this is WAW's only viable course of action. I, Smiley's Person, can do that. But right now she can't. Just like it's "obvious" to me that Retro or MC or the local pastor or The Work or DB'ing or whatever is "better," it's "obvious" to her that none of those things are as likely to meet her needs (self-defined and self-generated though they may be) as walking-away is.
So every minute, every second, that I spend resenting / hating / reviling / attacking WAW; every minute, every second I spend in a negative space (and here's the Pink Floyd part) is a minute, a second that I'm closer to the grave. My clock is ticking.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun. So you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking; racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Do I really want to spend those minutes, those seconds, in that negative place? Do I really want the time I have left to be spent not only reliving the past, but projecting the past onto the present and into the future? Is there no escape?
How is that good for me? How is it good for my kids?
For me, the only answer is that it's not. The only answer is Letting Go.
And, linking the two pieces, once I've done the Letting Go (and I like it in that gerund form) then there's no reason not to befriend WAW in the mechanical sense if only for the sake of the kids. And doing so is no longer a threat to me in emotional/psychic terms because of the Letting Go.
There also seems to be some concern by some DB'ers that, by befriending Walkaway, one is "losing" because Walkaway gets her/his way -- gets to eat the cake.
I frame it differently. For me, the Letting Go means I win, because Walkaway's bad (from my POV) decision no longer trumps my sense of Self. In fact, one could frame it this way -- if (as I believe) living well is the best revenge, then one is "winning" over Walkaway by denying Walkaway the power to define one's life. Because -- again, from my POV -- in many respects divorce is about resolving a power-struggle within the marriage. When Walkaway walks, s/he is taking power -- ultimate power -- not only over him/herself, but over "our" marital institution and over us as well. The Letting Go takes the power back; it says, "Okay, fine; now watch what I do."
So from my POV "how" you do it is to make befriending Walkaway all about you and not about Walkaway. It's about saying, in essence, "This is the kind of person I am; this is how I roll."
