Introducing myself...

[focus22]

Lol...I forgot the other thing that happened!

This morning I was listening to the radio, and OW came on, reading a story. I think she been doing some of that while she was too pregnant to work,

It was really weird. I felt absolutely **nothing** at all. Total and utter indifference. Like I didn't recognise her voice and she was a total stranger to me.

I even hung in there, listening for a while, to see if I was going to be hit by some strong wave of emotion I'd somehow cut myself off from. But nope, nothing.

What on earth is that about?

[focus22]

Popped over to the Newcomers part of the forum. Dipped into a thread. Couldn't bear the pain I felt reading it.

I can only look forward now. I can't bear to look back any more.

[focus22]

I'm just beginning to understand how profoundly I've changed and been changed by this whole experience.

I very much used to be someone who would analyse everything (and overthink a lot), especially if it was someone I was having trouble with, or if it was a difficult situation I was in. I liked having all the loose threads tied up neatly, and felt that I had to before I could move on.

Now? Not so much any more. I find myself going along the lines of 'it is what it is', letting it be, letting all those loose threads hang unfinished, and just striking out on my own.

I'm also finding myself drawn more and more to ideas of 'good health' and of living well and healthily. Physically, yes, definitely. But also emotionally. There's much less room in my life for negative patterns of thought. I know what the cost of these are, to myself, and it's too much (for my own wellbeing, first and foremost).

[doodler]

I very much used to be someone who would analyse everything (and overthink a lot), especially if it was someone I was having trouble with, or if it was a difficult situation I was in. I liked having all the loose threads tied up neatly, and felt that I had to before I could move on.

focus22,

I was exactly the same. I hated conflict. I could analyze for days, and honestly, in hindsight, the analysis didn't make much difference; it just provided more time to stew.

Now, I say what's on my mind and move on. Life is better because of my change in attitude. It's a wonderful gift my XW gave me.

[focus22]

Ha ha..yes, doodler! I was on the verge of writing something along those lines for myself as well: 'It's a wonderful gift my XW gave me'.

And I think I could apply it to the man I'm seeing too. It'll be six months in a few days, and I haven't ever gotten on so well with anyone. It's just so easy being in his company.

[Dawn70]

I know what you mean about overanalyzing everything. I'm bad about that, but I'm trying to make a conscious effort to get better. I know I need to just let stuff go, say what I think and move on. I'm working on it. I think the main thing I learned from my divorce, well, actually I already knew it but the divorce hammered it home, is that I'm a work in progress. When I was married, I was a work in progress unto myself, but also a work in progress as a part of a couple. Now, I'm back to just being a work in progress unto myself and I'm ok with that. I'm happier than I have been in a long time.

I can also identify with what you said about hearing OW on the radio and feeling nothing. In the early days of my divorce, when I would happen across a pic of xh and his ow on facebook, it would just tear me up. Now, don't care. I just feel nothing. It's almost like he's a stranger to me. It's kind of weird but at the same time, kind of nice.

[focus22]

I know what you mean about overanalyzing everything. I'm bad about that, but I'm trying to make a conscious effort to get better. I know I need to just let stuff go, say what I think and move on. I'm working on it. I think the main thing I learned from my divorce, well, actually I already knew it but the divorce hammered it home, is that I'm a work in progress. When I was married, I was a work in progress unto myself, but also a work in progress as a part of a couple. Now, I'm back to just being a work in progress unto myself and I'm ok with that. I'm happier than I have been in a long time.

I can also identify with what you said about hearing OW on the radio and feeling nothing. In the early days of my divorce, when I would happen across a pic of xh and his ow on facebook, it would just tear me up. Now, don't care. I just feel nothing. It's almost like he's a stranger to me. It's kind of weird but at the same time, kind of nice.

Yup, I totally get that, I know how that *feels* in the very core of my being.

I think you were a lot more self aware than me during your M though. I sort of knew that I was a work in progress unto myself, but I didn't realise at all that I was a work in progress as part of a couple as well.

I think that I didn't allow myself to become/be everything that I wanted to be (or would have liked to have been). And yes, that's me taking responsibility for that part of it.

Part of the reason was that it was easier for me to just let H be in the limelight, as it were. For many reasons, including his own personality and his job too.

And part of the reason was that I sensed a little jealousy on his part, if I did a bit *too* well, particularly in the same area that he worked in. So I kept my head down. And worked on other things, mostly unrelated to his own area of work.

I think he started off being proud of what I was doing and achieving (talking about the very early days of our R and M here). And then he just stopped being proud, or better, withdrew slightly to focus on his own life/work. And wasn't really much interested in what I was doing.

Part of that, I think, is my fault. My own personality is to be extremely low key and modest about my achievements. And other people take their cue from how you behave yourself, right? So a bit of that whole behaviour on his part is my responsibility.

What to do about that in future? I'm learning to be a little bit more 'just let what I do and my achievements speak for themselves' and not downplay them. Not be arrogant about them, for sure, but certainly not downplay them as I probably was doing quite a lot before.

I remember people that I met (mostly H's work colleagues) being really surprised when they found out what else I did in life.

Anyway, I can apply that to everything to do with myself, I think. Learn to inhabit my space a bit more, literally and metaphorically.

[focus22]

So, one of my friends has just had a baby and posted about going to register the birth on FB.

She's been with her partner for 13 years and they already have two children together.

Because they aren't married, she has to say that she was a single mother when she went to register the birth (which has to be done within 21 days of the child being born in this country). Understandably, she was really upset. And she got even more upset when she questioned it, and was told pretty sternly that there was 'no other option'.

It got me thinking...I checked back to when STBXH first got in touch about the D. It goes back to the start of May, a few weeks (or there about) after the birth of his child to OW.

Funnily enough, about a week before STBXH got in touch with me, I'd posted a picture of a short holiday I went on for a few days with the wonderful man I've been seeing, and I tagged him in it too. The picture wasn't of us, just of some blue skies and palm trees. And there wasn't even any sort of 'having an amazing time' type comment.

I originally thought that STBXH had got in touch about the D because he'd seen the post. But now I'm thinking that it may well have been because of the first thing I posted about. I think that I was maybe giving myself too much credit in his eyes, and that my existence is completely and utterly irrelevant to him.

I'll never know. And it doesn't even really matter. It is what it is, as they say. And I'm fine with that.

All in all, and carrying on from my previous post...I feel so much better in myself, so much stronger and more solid. The effort of having to drive my life forwards, my business and my work, feels phenomenal (as it, it's a massive effort). But I'm sure that it will pay off, so I'm not worried about that. I like having the focus it gives me as well.

I feel like I can finally start to lift my head up and look to the future, start making some plans. I don't feel so afraid any more. And any time I start to feel a little frightened I remind myself of all the things I've done to cope over the past couple of years and the journey I've been on...how I felt when I dipped my toe in the water to try and deal with it all, the effect it had, and how I feel about it now, looking back.

Those first few dates I went on? When was it, January 2016? When I was absolutely terrified, and then weirdly elated that I'd managed to actually go through with going out with someone for an evening for a drink, and then also that I'd managed to kiss someone else that hadn't been my H (and I had been one of those totally faithful spouses, that hadn't even cracked a look in the direction of someone else for the entire time I'd been together with my H...18 years). And that I felt OK about it, and also at the same time I remember I felt incredibly disappointed at the dates I was going on...none of the men that I met felt quite good enough for me to contemplate being with: too negative, too needy, or dull, and overweight, smokers, heavy drinkers, closed off, too distant. I managed to navigate all of that OK, and come out not feeling any more bruised and broken than I had been. Better than that, II managed to take all the positives that I could from some of those not very nice experiences.

Possibly so self reflective and introspective because it's coming up for two years...

[focus22]

Sometimes I feel like I've come so far. And sometimes I feel like I haven't travelled far at all.

I don't really want to think about what happened any more. About the hurt and pain and confusion.

Like an amputation, it's done and that part of me has gone forever.

Only way to deal with it all is to look forward. And adapt. And learn a new way of being in a different self.


Anyone else feel like that? Or just me?

[JujuB]

It sounds like you are in a good place. Your ex and the pain is a distant memory and you have a clear plan for the future. Accepting impermanence and change is not easy. You seem to be embracing it, and it is nice to read about.

I still look back and feel the hurt and get angry about that hurt that was put upon me. Phantom limb pain perhaps?

Sometimes I feel like what happened was not really my life. But a alternative path that was never supposed to happen. Or was supposed to happen but not to be actually experienced by me or by my reality. Almost like a bad dream, you wake up from. Or an anxiety that never actually manifests but then it does. I never thought my ex would become the person he did. I am sometimes sad for him.

Is the growth that comes from pain a gift? I don't know. I know I certainly don't sweat the small stuff any more because I know how bad it actually can get. And i know I can survive life when it does get bad. That makes me a much better person to deal with. I still would not want the bar raised any more though. If personal growth only comes through intense pain, at this point I'm ok the way I am !