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Hi Renee - I often think of you.

You know, this period of time when your boyfriend is out of state is a great time to you to really, really, really get a life!

Get out there girl! Go, meet some new people, join a club, join a charity ...

sit down quietly and ask yourself "Renee - what would you really like to do?" LIsten in the stillness in your centre for the answer .... and listen carefully to the essential, authentic, true Renee Sunshinelewis - and what she wants to make her life into.

Listen carefully - because you have this amazing opportunity now, while your having an LDR to really do whatever you want to do. You don't have to worry about anyone. Not a H. Not little kids. No lover.

YOU ARE COMPLETELY FREE RENEE!!! What have you always wanted to do?

No more excuses. You can do it.

all my thoughts to you, you amazing woman.

V


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Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
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Thanks Brookie and Renee--you know Renee I have the same mindset--I know that it's probably somewhat likely I'll "find" someone someday, but I'm really growing to accept the concept of not having someone romantically in my life. I don't honestly think I'll get married again and it's darn near impossible for me to visualize living with someone. It would have to be someone who really didn't threaten my growth and need to be self-sufficient/independent/do my own thing. It's funny I've met a lot of women who ended up becoming my friend in bars/restaurants, but not men. I met this guy in a very different venue and he is a friend of a friend, and most people tell me that's how they ended up meeting a significant other.

I think one of the tragedies of losing your spouse in the way we've lost ours is that it really does kill your belief in the long-term. I mean, I have no problem seeing that friendships come and go as people change, and I used to think marriages/romantic relationships were bound to be very different, but I don't believe that anymore. It seems like a romantic relationship that's going to last "forever" is one where the two people have to be very willing to grow and change alongside one another and I know few if any couples where that has been the case. The thing is, it's not like I'm still friends with those I was close to 10, 20, 30, or more years ago. People just seem to drift apart. So my concept of a relationship now pretty much assumes that whatever happens, it's not going to last.


M45
Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11
Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy
"Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
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PS That all sounds depressing but I don't mean for it to be...more accepting of the inevitable and not fighting it...and I suppose that it means that if you think things are not bound to last, you'll embrace more what you have when you have it...


M45
Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11
Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy
"Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
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You know, I was so looking forward to seeing my bf. We only see each other about every four mths or so. Before i would have not thought I could deal with that at all, and sometimes i hate it, but thats ONLY sometimes.
He has been here almost two weeks and I find that ai am missing my space!
My....I will cook when I feel like it....My I will sleep as late as I want.
My fear is getting so use to my independence that it will be hard for me to enjoy living with someone perm again.
I Love companionship and company from the girls and so forth.
I dont want to become my mother. She never remarried and lived a lonely life and died alone. I dont want that.
I want family vacations and Holidays again. I have no family here except my son and nephew and my aunt. My son of course is,still angry. My aunt has her own family gathering and that leaves me and nephew. We try to make the best of it. BUT its,sad to me.
I gueas thats why I wish xh would be at least civil for our sons sake.
I think my son would like that. I feel like son feels pressured.
I dont know why they have to continue to be so angry. Everyone has went one with their lives.
What is wrong with me wanting a good rel with my sons dad?

Thanks Walking for thinking of me. Three yrs into this and its still a mess.

Antonia I befriended u on the alt. wink

Renee


_________________________________________
M:42
H:40
S:18
M:20yrs/together 21yrs
Bomb:9/08 ILYBNILWY
Sep:9/18/08 "ow" :25
Filed:11/18/08
D:12/8/08
M:Different 26 yr. old 7/09.
Newborn 4/10
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Ha Renee I just put two and two together to figure out who you were on the alt ;-)

I understand exactly what you're saying about fearing that you won't be able to live with someone again because you don't want to lose your independence and the choice to do what you want when you want.

A friend of mine (male) is divorced now 14 years and the most he will do is have a group of friends with benefits women in his life. He is very guarded about his emotions and will not allow any vulnerability and has this huge list of things he won't tolerate (like he won't even consider living with someone who has a pet of any type) and it's all really just a way he can avoid being with anyone in a real commitment. I think he's afraid of being hurt, and so he finds reasons to stay alone.

I worry too that I won't be able to give up certain things (or that I will do it and live with someone only to then find I hate it and feel like I need to be the WAS or whatever). I don't want to hurt someone ELSE.

I just tell myself that it's still kind of "new" for me, only just coming up on 2 years post-bomb, and that in time I'll probably relax a bit and not be so fearful that I can't make compromises. I also figure that "the right person" will make me want to make compromises...

The "all or nothing" thinking is a problem I struggle with, the idea that if I feel now like "I can never get married or live with anyone again" is overwhelming as then I think "Oh no, I'll be alone and struggling the rest of my life." But I think we have to tell ourselves that just as things so rapidly changed to put us alone once that it can also swing in the opposite direction and our life can rapidly change to accomodate someone else if the time is right.

And if we really value our being alone now, we just have to work with that and not project far into the future and make assumptions that it will always be this way.


M45
Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11
Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy
"Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
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This is some good insight ^^^^^^.

I sometimes fear I would be like your male friend if W and I don't make it hrough this (except the pets part....gotta have pets).

Thank you... smile


In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. - Albert Camus

Uncertainty is the very condition which impels people to unfold their powers.-Eric Fromm

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Antonia,
I wanted to let you know your posts are just what the doctor ordered for me! Oh my, this is just what I needed to hear! You are a role model for me, and thanks to your insights, I feel more confident in going on through the next stages in my life. I will continue to read them, because I need to hear it over and over!

Though I know it's ok for someone to be alone, it's hard to not feel like the oddball given someone always has someone, or is looking for someone. Yet Im in the same boat as you, as far as what type of person I'd like to date or even marry again if I ever did. I have made friends with someone online. It was nice to talk to a man that appears to have some emotional availablity, who is kind and caring, but I can tell he's not the one for me. Friends for sure, but nothing more. I sense bit intiamacy issues with him.

I can completely identify with the "all or nothing" thinking, because that's all I tend to do. I've found it's causing me much more pain and suffering emotionally than I need it to. It's twisting my perspective and the perspective looks very dark, dim, and so sad.

See Im very hard on myself and I have very high expectations of myself. Im very disappointed in myself that I've allowed this divorce and separtion from my husband to emotionally pummell me like no tomorrow. Im a proud woman. Im intelligent, and liked by many people. Im good at what I do, and am always up to become all I can be. Yet this sitch has brought me down lower in ways I didn't think was possible for me. I find myself getting frustrated with myself for allowing this to make me such an emotional wreck. GAL has been pretty damn hard. Truthfully I have no life. My life was about my family, which really was no problem for me, up until it all fell apart. Now I literally don't know what to do with myself.

Which brings me to say that I think what you did with your rings is an excellent idea. You know I had the thought over the last months that I'd like to get a ring to wear on my wedding ring finger as a symbol of committment to myself, and the best I can do for myself. Maybe I could have the old wedding set melted down and re designed into a new ring.

I started to GAL for a while, and then communication started up with xh and it's just brought up all LOVING feelings I have towards him. Since then all it's done is put me in an emotional state of anxiety, because I had just begun detatchement, but not enough I can see. I see he still cares about me, and misses our family unit. Things he says or does shows that the kids are on his mind all the time and that our past history has not be erased in his mind. The way he acted in the past I felt like maybe that's what he did. Erased our good times ( and there were alot)and they were never to be thought of again.

But in light of all this, I can see that I've lost myself in trying to figure out what I could ever do to fix the things I did wrong and contributed to in the downfall of our marriage. This isn't healthy and I know it. It's very hard to let go.
All I know to do is to keep as little contact with him as possible in order for me to move on. We've been very friendly for a week now, but it was called for, our daughter needed surgery.

I think what hurts so much is that it was like seeing my old friend again, and having a reunion doing the one thing we have the most passion for which is our kids.See xh was very gung ho on being friends when he left, he pushed it and pursued it. It drove me to the brink of insanity and I ended up doing backslides in the worst way...I hadn't discovered DB yet. This last week, It was so nice to see him, so nice to joke with him again, so nice to just work together for the girls, and not worry about our fights, divorce, or hurt feelings.At this point in time, xh seems to be just fine in keeping up the consistent friendly exchanges and I want to do that as well. But at the same time I guess you could say I feel guilty for feeling that way. I almost feel like Im the other woman now, given he's living with OW. I guess it gets down to the post divorce rules you were talking about. I don't know what inappropriate and appropriate. I figure the least amount of exchange is whats needed, but at times it's not possible due to whatever is going on with the kids.

I feel it's best for everyone's sanity to stay friendly for the kids sake, yet what is that costing me? Can I handle it? Adjusting to having a partial relationship with him is just the most confusing thing for me. I still love him, but I can't love him the way that I want. Maybe it's me. I don't know how to have a deep love for a man and then let it just stay at friendship and leave it that way forever. I can make friends with a man and keep it at friends, but to love someone deeply, and then just say " ok we're friends now" and keep it at that I just can't do right away. In 10 years, yes maybe. But not in less than a year.


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XH marries OW 6/2014.
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Kimmerz I'm really happy if my posts help you in any way :-)

I think your idea about the ring for yourself is really good. If you are doing it for you, every time you look at it you will see it as symbolic and meaningful.

I had a rough time adjusting to the aloneness for a long time--because I kept seeing XH as "my world." What I eventually realized is that I was doing certain things during the marriage that were more "me" and I had just sort of downplayed them all along, certain hobbies or activities or interests outside my job, and when I started to feel more normal again I started doing them again but with more intensity, if that makes sense.

Ex: I was always an avid reader--for work/writing/research but more so for pleasure. I realized that in the context of the marriage I'd all but given up reading. I bought lots of books and just put them on shelves. I think part of it was that XH hated when I'd want to read in bed at night, even if I had just a book light. He was on a different schedule from me and claimed he could never sleep if I had even the merest hint of a light on. Plus he never wanted to talk about fiction--he didn't like to read much other than occasional non-fiction, and so I realized that gradually I just let his view take me over and I stopped reading. Well in the past month I got a kindle and I've got tons of new e-books and real books, joined a book club, and joined goodreads.com, and I feel like I've got a part of myself back that I really let remain hidden.

I wonder if there are any things that you liked to do even just a little that were interesting to you that you can re-explore now in this time alone...because often those things do connect to others. I am reading new books and finding things to talk about with a lot of others as a result. No, it's not a relationship with a mate, but it fills some time in a productive way.

I didn't have the co-parenting thing to deal with, but it seems to me that you're still in too vulnerable a state to negotiate any kind of friendship with him...and need to look at it as business-like as far as your connection with your ex. Like you are new co-workers in an office...it is weird, of course, but I think so much of what happens when we try to forge a friendship in the first few years is that it encourages us to hold out hope that this or that little thing or gesture from them means they are coming back or trying to find their way back, and we really cling to false hope too much. As everyone says if they want to come back, you'll know it, you won't be having to interpret meaning in words and gestures. And I think this is why it is hurting you, when you say you want to have some sort of friendship but at what price to you...

It isn't a bad thing to forego the friendship for now and just protect your heart and stay business-like and detached. Again--don't make the all or nothing mistake...just because you decide to be more detached now doesn't mean things can't change down the line when you are less vulnerable, if you choose for them to change and you two to be more friendly.

The guy I've met that I talk about above is divorced a bit longer than me (not my long-divorced friend but the one I had drinks with the other night) and he said he, too, tried to do the friendship thing and finally they gave up. They have very little contact. It's just too painful otherwise.

I hear about couples being friends but it seems it is VERY far down the road if at all.

But I think I see that a lot of people here go through a pattern--they start the dating probably a little too early--and then they find it's really obnoxious and unfulfilling--and then they walk away from it and try to work with being alone, at which point they realize that the reason the dating didnt' work was because they were probably feeling a bit desperate to plug up the hole of loneliness and still trying to "replace" the ex...and then they "choose" to be alone and work with that, and that seems to be when they start to make really deep friendships or rediscover themselves as individuals.

I also look at people a lot and say "why can't I have what you have" as far as a mate, because it seems like more people have mates than do not...but if I am very critical, I also have to say that most people I know who have a mate seem pretty "meh" about it...everyone talks about compromise and losing themselves and not really being happy as they once were, but unable to walk away either, and you know I don't know that that is so attractive sounding to me anymore...and because of that I kind of would rather just keep on with the single life until a really good person for me comes along, and think well, at least I've got really great friends and family and lots of fulfililng relationships with those people...my XH has ONE person in his life who is close to him. I have a whole PILE of people I can call if I'm in jail (ha ha). I'd rather the many than the one--and that's what this ENTIRE experience has taught me. I sacrificed the many for the sake of the one in my marriage. I won't make that mistake again. I'll either have a marriage/relationship that can encompass all the other people in my life, or I'll not have the marriage/relationship...


M45
Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11
Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy
"Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
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Oh and my paragraph about "a lot of people here go through a pattern", I am speaking from my own experience too on that...that's the pattern I went through.


M45
Bomb 6/09; EA 6/10; Divorced 1/11
Proud single mom of 7 little feline girls and one little feline boy
"Fall down 53 times. Get up 54." -- Zen saying
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It is worth looking around to see if there are any single women or men you admire - I am lucky in that I know several, and so for me the idea of being alone doesn't seem so bad. Being in a relationship is no guarantee of having real companionship. Single people are not necessarily perverts or weird!

Although some friends do come and go - what are sometimes called 'friends of happenstance', the 'friends of the heart' do not, and I have friends I have had all my life, as well as those who have been friends for certain periods.

We know long term relationships are possible. But what about the possibility that we are enhanced as human beings by our ability to love widely as well as deeply. Another poster talked about 'scarcity' on Kimmerz's thread and I also wonder if this desire for an exclusive relationship is born out of that to some extent.

I really want to challenge the idea that relationships other than a one on one significant other are second best. Sometimes these are the best thing for us at certain stages of our lives, teaching us to have wider concerns, and grow parts of ourselves that actually get neglected in an intense one on one. To be fully present for people other than our significant other is a great gift to be given and to receive.

I was lucky, and married to a man from whom I learned a lot, but I have learned many others things being alone, and developing my friendship group to something that is emotionally very sustaining. Just a bit of food for thought here!

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