Leaving it up to God (but still interfering!)

[BluWave]

This is great stuff. Coly, you seem to be making some steps towards detachment. I hope you can enjoy the relief in that :-) And yes, if he will not even tell you his address, won't communicate in general, then by no means should he be her next of kin. You can't even trust him.

My initial thought when you said he didn't tell you his address is that there is an OW. And how is he affording the more expensive area? Maybe it doesn't help to speculate, but I don't want you to be blindsighted later if that comes up. If you read Leahsues threads, she recently learned of OW. It is devastating, but also takes the rug out from under us and helps us LET GO. I know you have struggled with reasons, and so it is something to file in the back of your mind.

Skm, it's so good to read your reply and advice. You have come so far! I think the take home message is that we have to remember that while we are stuck in our daily emotions/struggles, things do and will change. If you look at where I was 3 years go, 2, 1, and then now, they are all so different. Also, my perspective of my H and my M are different. In the beginning we are so hurt, we just want them back. When we have them back, we are forced to look at who they are and what they did, so naturally we will question if we want them at all.

Coly, you will get there too. Even if he doesn't come around, you really don't want a man that can do this to you and D, right?

Hugs,
Blu

[skm0619]

Coly....I hope you know that you are doing much better then you were. This process takes time, and if you are as much like me as I think you are, this process definitely isn't going fast enough

This statement by Blu is so on point:

In the beginning we are so hurt, we just want them back. When we have them back, we are forced to look at who they are and what they did, so naturally we will question if we want them at all.

I can honestly say that I will never be the same person as I was before all of this CRAP happened....but I don't think that is a bad thing. Now I know what I am willing to put up with, and what I'm not willing to put up with from others. My H definitely knows he cant pull anymore BS with me. Sometimes I have days where I think "do I really want him in my life as bad as I think I do?"..... still trying to figure that out

You will get there one day too Coly.....I can feel it

[Coly23]

skm, Job, Blu - thank you all so much for your comments.

skm (my DB twin!), I loved read reading your comments because you seem so strong now compared to where you were when you first started posting and there is such a role reversal with you and your H with him being in the fragile position you were in. I especially like the fact that he has now given you the key to his apartment when before he didn't even want you to know where he lived!

Wrt to having D and going through this crap. I think it has actually helped because I know that there is someone else who depends on me so I have to get up every day and put one foot in front of the other. It has also helped the fact that she is a teenager because if she was younger and didn't understand I might have fallen apart on a more regular basis!

I think at the moments I am in the angry stage! I have fantasies of telling H where to stick his reconciliation if he ever came to me door asking for it! I am so angry that he is treating myself and D so badly when all we have done is love and support him. The anger, I think, is helping me drop that pesky rope!

I agree with you that we start to question if we would want this person back in our lives and it used to be that I would take H back in a heartbeat if he asked but now I am not so sure. I like reading your thread skm because you are showing me that I won't have to sell myself short if I do get to that stage and the fact that you are standing your ground and he isn't running away gives me hope that I shouldn't need to if he is certain that it is what he wants. If my H really wants to come back then he will understand any reluctance on my part.

Job, I'm really trying hard to see that all the issues in our marriage couldn't just be down to me but when I see him make no progress in his life it makes me mad that he probably thinks he has done nothing wrong. If he ever recommits it's going to be so tough for me to put the burden of most the work on him when I have been used to doing all the heavy lifting for such a long time. I guess that is an issue all lbs have when piecing.

Blu, yep in the back of my mind I still wonder if there is OW. Even if there wasn't one at BD I am realistic that there may be one now. Leahsue's post did rock me a bit when I read it so I know I have to prepare myself for that possibility.

Thank you for saying that I have come a long way. I know that you and several others have tried to make me see that what I was doing before was just a cheeseless tunnel because it took me no further towards my goal. I see that now in that H continues to distance himself from us even though we tried to show him that he is still part of the family. Everytime I want to contact him now I stop and think how this will help ME now rather than him and I know that if I do he will probably think that he still has me where he wants me and then I will be back to square one again.

I have a funny story about this when I was on holiday. I had one major blow out when I had way too many cocktails and when I woke up the next morning the first thing I thought was please God don't let me have drunk texted H that I miss him! So when I looked at my text message I could see there was one there that I had written (damn I knew it!) but had not been sent. The message said something like 'I mi,dsf yuuo' and the reason why it hadn't been sent was because in my drunken state not only could I not spell 'I miss you' I also couldn't quite spell H's name so his number didn't come up! Phew, that was close!! Suffice it to say after that I was a little more restrained!!

Thanks all so much for your kind words. I really do feel so much better than even a month ago. I think certain events have put things into perspective for me like H's attitude to D's allowance, his not telling us that he has moved again and his continuing distancing from us. I know now that I am not going to accept anything less that H outright saying he wants to recommit when previously I was happy to build a friendship with him first with a view to seeing if that is what he wanted.. I realise that building our friendship back up should be as a result of recommitting to the marriage.

I'm learning but I realise I have so much further to go in this journey.

Back to work today, boo! Happy Monday everyone!

[AndrewP]

please God don't let me have drunk texted H that I miss him!

And this is why I removed her from my contacts on my phone and computer after doing exactly this back in December / January. For the couple of times that I've actually needed to contact her, I have to go into my older files to look up her email address. I have no clue what her phone number is. It would probably take me 15 or 20 minutes of digging to find that. I also did a purge on the home phones and address book of not only her, but also her relatives and work numbers. If you need to, put the information on a sealed envelope and write on the outside of this "Are you really really sure?" then put that inside another envelope and write on it "Probably a bad idea to open this" and then give it to your D to hide in her room

Much much safer that way. It was tough to do but for me at least, it was necessary. I joke with S22 sometimes that with being "unsupervised" that I will sometimes make stupid choices like signing up for online dating. I think that the more we live together just the 2 of us, the more he understands.

[Coly23]

Hey AP, thanks for the suggestion. I have now removed him from my contacts although I do know his number off by heart but I guess it would be more difficult to punch that in when I can't see straight!!

Journaling: So, not much going on in my sitch at the moment. I haven't heard from/seen or contacted H since D's prom. Since coming back from holiday I have been feeling very restless. Not as calm as I was before. I feel something is changing in me and it's making me scared. I have these conversations in my head all the time about contacting H and then I think about what I put myself through since BD, trying to keep him near us and how much I spun. So then I talk myself out of it. I think unless I have an emergency about D or its financial I won't contact him. That's huge for me because I have a history of letting NC go on for around seven weeks and then I break and ask him to lunch/ coffee or something just so I can see him.

So saying that I did text him this morning as I had asked him to increase the very small amount of money he gives me each month for bills. It doesn't even cover half of the bills I pay and I pay all the mortgage. I asked him to do this at the same time I said he can start giving D a monthly allowance and assumed he would do both as he said yes. But it looks like he hasn't increased my money so I just said I noticed it hadn't increased this month. The reason I am posting this is to keep my expectations low especially as it's been over 40 minutes since I texted him. So just to prepare myself, in my head I am thinking the following:

1. He doesn't respond and just ignores my text;
2. He doesn't respond but increases the money anyway;
3. He responds and apologises for the oversight and increases the money;
4. He responds and says he doesn't have enough money to increase it and believes he gives me enough;
5. He responds and tells me not to contact him again;
6. He responds and declares his undying love! (ha,ha, just joking!)

But really, I'm not sure I care anymore. I was going on the old saying of if you don't ask you don't get so I thought I would give it a shot. He may still be sulking about us not telling him about the holiday or he may be living if up on holiday himself so again trying to keep my expectations super low.

Happy weekend everyone!!

[Coly23]

I heard back from H eventually. He was very upbeat (blegh) asking how our holiday was etc. He said that he had misunderstood my text previously and thought I was asking him to give D an allowance and reduce my money by that amount and he didn't want to do that. Anyway he said he had just received his annual pay increase so was happy to increase my money. I went back and thanked him.

Back to the darkness....

[ForGump]

Coly, wishing you well. Now that I'm ... so far away from DB ... it's just incredible how you (and others) keep it going. Incredible strength.

[Coly23]

Hey FG, great to hear from you! How are you getting on?

No, I don't feel like I am strong. Everything I do is forced and painful! Although I don't have those terrible panicky, sicky feelings anymore I still feel terribly sad about all of this. Going dark has helped to weed out those feelings however I miss my H even more now that we have very little contact and especially as he makes no effort to contact me. It seems the distance and pursuer dynamic doesn't work in my sitch!

I just keep plodding along FG, as do we all, in a sitch that I never asked for nor agreed to.

Hopefully you will pop in and give us an update on his you are getting on?

[Coly23]

Journaling: After my text to H asking if he forgot about increasing my monthly bills money I felt a bit weird like what must he be thinking about me asking for money? So I went back to him and said that even though we have asked for some financial support i don't want him to think that I needed him to be responsible for us in any other way and that me and D are doing good. I did say that although we would still love him to be in our lives again we just want him to be happy. He responded and said that he was glad we were doing good.

I know you will all be rolling your eyes at this but I really just didn't want him to think I was being needy. Me and D really are doing okay and I just wanted him to understand this. I also told him to have a good summer but he didn't say the same back to me :0(. I sometimes get the impression that he feels pressured to see us so by saying this I think I wanted to get across to him that we aren't expecting to see him for a while.

Another thing I don't understand is the whole leaving his stuff here. I don't know if you all remember a couple of months ago I told him that I hoped he didn't think I was holding his stuff hostage. Anyway to cut a long story short he did come by and picked up all his suits but just tidied up the remainder of his clothes in the baskets in the wardrobe. Now I understand Job when she said that some people just don't want their stuff from the past but if that is the case why not just bag them up and chuck them? If he is using me as storage well he just moved to another apartment so should he not have taken this into account? We were away for 10 days and he has a key so he could have come by again and picked a few bits up.

I am now think that maybe he is using me for storage and is waiting until we he has the opportunity to suggest selling the house and then he will move his stuff. It makes me mad!! Sorry, just venting!!

[Coly23]

Sorry, I realise that was a really moany update! IDK, I am just trying to show him that we aren't needy anymore and we can look after ourselves. I know MLC'ers don't like pressure or responsibility so I didn't want him to think we were hounding him to support us. Hohum....