Gaslighting or selfish, naive and blind...

[Coly23]

Your post resonated with my Cil, esiecialky the part about being fed up of trying to not think about H. Sometimes our energies are misplaced and cause us more pain.

I'm with you on the dating front to. I'm not divorced yet but my friends keep telling me it's been long enough so I should start dating. In my heart I have not let H go so I don't feel I can but I can't tell them that. I have coped on my own for two years so I definitely don't need a man to take care of me. Maybe some male companionship for outings etc. but in this world I realise that this often comes with strings soI steer well away!

Take care. X

[bttrfly]

Hi Cil, yes labels can often cause more problems. I hate the pigeonholing that labels often bring. What I'm about to say will seem odd coming from someone who has always needed to figure it out/understand it before I could move on, but maybe this is the gift of being left: acceptance of what is. The whys and wherefores don't really matter. Knowing the answer to the why question doesn't change the situation, nor does it invest anyone with the ability to change it. Only the person going through the trauma can truly pull themselves out of it.

I hope that made sense - it's really really early here so this is more soc than well thought out observations.

I guess I'd say try not to analyze your relationship with exh and just accept it. The connection is deep and obvious to anyone reading your posts. reciprocated.

Plant your roses. Visit with your friends. Do you. If he's meant to be part of your life it will be revealed at the right time.

I always love reading your posts. xoxoxo hugs

[job]

bttrfly,

Very well said.

[AndrewP]

Indeed. Bttrfly - you always have the right words at the right time.

[ciluzen]

Hi DnJ,Job, bttrfly,AndrewP...thank you for stopping by and the input and support. I did plant my roses. I also dug up more of the lawn that goes around my house in order to transition it to more of an "english garden" feel. Planted iris, delphiniums, hollyhocks, geraniums, phlox, ornamental grasses...lots of stuff. I now have some own-root climbing roses (better in our cold winter climate) and clematis growing up my arches and trellises. Its shaping up to be very pretty. I really enjoy the comments and short talks with neighbors and park visitors as they walk by while I'm in the yard. I chose a color scheme when painting the house that was a little out of the ordinary, but with the flowers and plants growing in, it is unique and I often get "wow"s from people. Its a very dark greyish-brown with cornflower blue trim, shutters and window boxes and purple door, gate and trellises. White accents near the trim (inside window areas and such). I'm all about that kind of attention from passers-by and and people keep offering me plant starts and transplants from their gardens. I'm grateful for all of this and I really do believe that if you put good out, it comes back to you. This week I'm spreading bark mulch around everything and expanding my vegetable garden. For that, I borrowed XH's truck. Yep, there's a story that I'll get to later.

I also now have a cat that somehow adopted me and my dog. He just walked in my house when I opened the door one morning. I threw him back out and he circled around and came back in immediately, walked over and rubbed on my dog purring, so I let him stay. I'm not a cat person, but he never left. He fits our little family and seems very attached to me and the dog. He's now been here for a month and a half so, after advertising and placing a "found cat" sign on my gate and checking him for a microchip, he got vaccinated and neutered. He still chose to hang here even after that, lol. I love watching he and the dog wrestle/fight/play with each other and then snuggle together.

I am accepting of my life at the moment. Let me stress that..."at the moment". I am trying to be more fully present in what I am doing and dwell less on perceived losses from the past or what may happen in the future. I can plan..I should plan. But I can't pretend I know what other factors may pop up to change those plans.So I guess I'm still just concentrating on getting better at keeping my knees bent while travelling in the direction I want to go, in case I need to pivot,jump, or fly. I'm becoming more selfish, in a way, about my time...not trying to bend over backwards to meet everyone's needs all of the time. But I do try to be here when there is a need and enjoy the company of those who appreciate my wierdness. There are enough of those peeps, I'm finding, to make me happy. I also guard my private time quite well. I realize now that my need to carve out my own time alone was something that baffled my XH who needed more time with large amounts of people. We really never found the right balance there, or understanding of each other's needs ...or even our own.

On the XH front,there has been an interesting shift. My yougest daughter was recently engaged while on a road trip with friends. She had been texting me often about the events of the trip, plus I am on social media and saw her postings. The day after, XH called me to make sure I was aware that it had happeaned. He does not do social media, but older daughter had texted him to show him a picture of the ring. He claimed that younger daughter was not able to send or receive texts from the event well, so he was checking to see if I knew. I had no problem getting her texts.We talked for a bit, seeming to skirt some sort of issue that he wanted to express but never did. I couldn't get a deeper read than that on what was going on with him. I do know that after our oldest was married was when he dropped the bomb on me and that he had done everything he could to make it so he showed that he did not want to be involved in the wedding (other than to walk her down the aisle). Anyway, I ended up asking at the end of our conversation if I could borrow the truck, which he agreed to.

Fast forward to truck exchange...he communicated with me nicely through text about how he was also communicating with younger daughter to arrange for her to go up and get the truck from the river house with him and that if that fell through, he would do that with me. On her end, she let me know it was going to be difficult and that she would prefer that I do it.I told her I was fine with it, as I'm the one that needed the truck. It ended up with XH telling her he preferred that she do it and that he had a "tone to his voice" and was not acting his "normal" way. When D26 brought the truck back with her boyfriend, they explained that he was strange. He seemed very agitated and was trying very hard to convince her that she neeeded to come up to the river more often and that it was a nice place to be. That he didn't care what other people said, but "he was going to tell her she had to and that it was ok for him to tell her she needed to do it." He also told her he didn't want to have me come to do the truck exchange because it would upset me to go up to the river "like last time" and that he didn't want to ride for an hour and a half in a car with me asking him "how everything made him feel". She said he seemed almost angry. That, to me, is interesting. I actually don't ask people how they feel about things anymore(that's kind of a cliche I now try to avoid), but he is right about the fact that I was upset when I went to the river the last time...when I saw that it suddenly looked like Bubbles'house. Oh, well. I find it interesting because, well...its a different expression of emotion and he is actually expressing it to our daughter. Those are both new things. I don't know if it means anything but it does show a progression of thought and emotion of some sort. And possibly a fear that he wouldn't be able to hide thoughts and emotions that he tries so hard to stuff down. I don't think I'm psychic or that advanced in my therapy skills, but I do understand that he has expressed more around me the last few times and agreed with my new insights and intrpretations of his perceptions on past events. Maybe he fears that he get's too vulnerable around me? Who knows. He can battle his feelings on his own.

Older daughter has brought up more and more that he has been mentioning selling the river house as "all of the kids are growing up and no one has time to go up there anymore". Even when my kids were in highschool, he had a fantasy of renting a house on a lake for an entire summer to have the kids all bring their friends up whenever they wanted. It never happened. Then when we actually got the river house, our kids were working and in college...they almost never went up. But the "social group" had younger kids and they always would bring up all of their friends. However, XH has had to take care of that house all by himself...somehow other than putting up signs and pictures, no one actually does the upkeep. And he pays for it all. Probably not what he had envisioned. And that thing he would get mad at me about...the kids doing sport camps and other activities in the summer...it happens even more with the other kids. They all are very involved in sports and he isn't able to put a limit on their involvement as he did with our kids. So he's there by himself most of the time. Probably not what he imagined, though nothing ever does fit his expectations. I'm easy to be mad at right now, though. I have put myself in a place where he can be angry at me (if he is). My bad.

Still, it is interesting. I don't feel the need to bother him or avoid him. I'm using the truck because its there and he can always say no. I guess I'm daring him to grow a pair and say no or waiting to see what direction he goes next. I'm less personally invested and more fascinated with his reactions and changes. Its been almost three years since bomb drop. I'm actually glad I haven't just dropped out of the picture. Wherever this journey takes me, I'm learning so much.
Just thought I'd share, for what its worth.