Thanks Ali, Bruce and Tree. Well, I made it through the day...that was tough. I flipped through a few pages of a local real estate paper, but I got nauseas (?sp) so I left it alone. I've cycled through lots of emotions today: sad/weepy, ticked off, flat/numb, resigned.
Bruce, after reading one of your posts on another thread, I ordered Susan Anderson's books and they just arrived today! I haven't started on them yet, but I hope it will help a bit. I hope that it is not prophetic somehow that the books on getting through an ended relationship arrived today. So far, I was reading lots on MLC/WAW/DB and keeping the relationship alive.
Well, anyway thanks for your ideas and support guys. I'm sorry I haven't made it around to your threads recently...just pretty taxed right now, but I will visit you soon.
Keep us posted on how you work through Anderson's stuff. It has really helped me understand myself and the process of grieving and ultimately healing from loss. She doesn't sugarcoat things, but she offers some good practical suggestions for how to acknowledge the pain and work through it. This is a long road. There doesn't seem to be much out there specifically targeted at how to cope with abandonment. It's useful to learn about our childhoods, and how to be a better spouse, but we also need to cope with the immediate pain of loss. I wish you well with this. You will grow into a better person, no matter what happens with your M. The loss of love is severe, but it strikes me as even worse to suffer that loss and not come through it without greater self-awareness and insight into what it means to be a loving person.
Keep us posted on how you work through Anderson's stuff. It has really helped me understand myself and the process of grieving and ultimately healing from loss. She doesn't sugarcoat things, but she offers some good practical suggestions for how to acknowledge the pain and work through it. This is a long road. There doesn't seem to be much out there specifically targeted at how to cope with abandonment. It's useful to learn about our childhoods, and how to be a better spouse, but we also need to cope with the immediate pain of loss. I wish you well with this. You will grow into a better person, no matter what happens with your M. The loss of love is severe, but it strikes me as even worse to suffer that loss and not come through it without greater self-awareness and insight into what it means to be a loving person.
Keep us posted on how you work through Anderson's stuff. It has really helped me understand myself and the process of grieving and ultimately healing from loss. She doesn't sugarcoat things, but she offers some good practical suggestions for how to acknowledge the pain and work through it. This is a long road. There doesn't seem to be much out there specifically targeted at how to cope with abandonment. It's useful to learn about our childhoods, and how to be a better spouse, but we also need to cope with the immediate pain of loss. I wish you well with this. You will grow into a better person, no matter what happens with your M. The loss of love is severe, but it strikes me as even worse to suffer that loss and not come through it without greater self-awareness and insight into what it means to be a loving person.
Thanks for this. I read the preface and it was really good. This is a very painful process but at least the books can serve as some guidance along the way. Thank you for recommending it.
Yesterday, my W. sent a one line email. She was saying that she saw an ad for something related to work and acknowledging my name was in it as a key person. It was like "hey, look who's name is in this that just came across my desk!!"
I don't get it. What am I supposed to do with that? I don't even want to respond, but I don't want to give the message that I'm unresponsive. I feel mad today, looking over the situation of the last several months and feeling that in one sense it is ridiculous for someone to not share concerns until it is "too late". What do I do when we have a MC session where she says "I think there's just nothing left to hold on to and I left the relationship emotionally long ago"...and then then next day this one liner?
I feel angry about what seems to be a real disparity in our levels of commitment to the relationship. I agree that there are some areas that weren't strong, but it seems ridiculous to think that there could be a perfect relationship. She is not able to articulate what she does want, just that she feels "trapped". I feel like crap about that--especially since I have been so supportive of her emotionally and career wise in so many ways.
Should I reply to this message? I'm feeling triggered and still in a messed up space (my back is getting all tensed up in knots) so I want to get some perspective on this first. My guess at this point would be to respond but just with a polite one line back or something. Don't know what I'd say.
I'm trying to clean the house today to keep occupied. I feel really angry and bitter right now--I'm so tired of not having a partner who--even in the slightest--wants to work on the relationship. How do you throw away something that is gold (even though imperfect)???? How can something--from HER perspective--be so wonderful and intolerable simultaneously?!!!!
Off to scrub toilets...perhaps a relevant metaphor for what my life presently feels like. Am I crazy?
Gosh, this was a tough day...another one. I felt really agitated all day, just couldn't settle myself down on anything. I was obsessing about...well, everything. The past, the present, the future. Feels like my W. is going to be riding off into the sunset and somehow getting all that she wants, and I'm left feeling abandoned and holding the bag, so to speak. I know that's pretty "victim-like" thinking, but it is how I feel right now...the unfairness of it all.
Well, I did loads of laundry, some cleaning, lots of obsessing (which got me really worked up). Tonight I decided I was going nuts so I went for a run and workout to burn off some energy. Just got back and talked to a friend for awhile, venting mainly.
W. emailed a short message re: bills, small talk. Friendly, polite as usual. I will respond to this one tomorrow. I've not got good PMA right now. My attitude is bitter, more like "what's the point of responding to anything anymore?". No, she hasn't said "it's over" but it feels like she's said everything but that.
This is unquestionably the most difficult and frankly, traumatic, experience I have ever had to navigate in my life.
Off to get something to eat, then off to bed. I'm sorry for my negativity in all my writings; I just am so disappointed and angry about all this. I could never have imagined that things would unfold this way.
Don't apologize for your feelings; they are yours, and no one can deny them or criticize you for feeling them. The danger comes in not recognizing them, but you don't seem to have a problem with that. Many people do, so this is actually good for you. It doesn't feel like it, but it is. Time may help you see this. One of the best part of Susan Anderson's work is in mapping out the stages of abandonment, and noting that we cycle back and forth into various stages. It's not a linear process of detachment. More like a cyclone that eventually burns itself down, or out. I find one of her key points to come late in the book when she describes lifting WITH your feelings of pain. We learn to heal and acknowledge the pain at the same time. The alternative, of trying to move on without feeling the hurt, only sets us up for failure in future relationships.
Take this one step at a time. What you are describing sounds very typical. I know that doesn't make your life easier right now, but you seem to be showing common signs of abandonment grief. There is a way through this if you are willing to be patient and do the work on yourself. Right now, you need to take care of yourself both in terms of immediate, day-to-day things like diet, exercise, GAL, etc. but also continue to work on the deeper stuff that Anderson and others suggest needs to happen.
Your W sounds so much like mine. I too don't know what to do with her, except to live my life for me as if she's not coming back. That's hard, but right now it feels like the only way to live. As so many on these boards have noted, we grow when we learn the lessons we need to learn. It's easy to run from them, but try to see this as an opportunity. That's a bit of a cliche, I know, but I feel it's really true. We all have work to do.
I just finished a book by James Hollis, who wrote that one of the best things we can give another person is to work on our own issues. He has this powerful passage where he describes how when we got married each of us was "surrounded" by the issues from our past. Imagine them as clouds, or demons, or whatever image comes to mind, swirling about you and your wife's bodies as you stood at the altar. Neither bride nor groom was probably very aware of them, but they were there. Those clouds then came into the relationship. Growth/freedom, and a better relationship (either with the current spouse or someone else) will come only when we see the demons and work to minimize their impact on our lives. Hard, but necessary.
I also like a bit more upbeat message I read recently online, which talked about how we usually do the best we can with the knowledge we have at the time. Most of us, myself included, simply didn't know another way. No one showed us, or we didn't bother to learn ourselves. So we repeat patterns unconsciously . The key is to become more self-aware, and to learn some of the skills needed to make for a healthy relationship. Forgive her, and forgive yourself.
That takes two, and it sounds like your W isn't there. She sounds confused about you, your relationship, and herself. You can't help her out of that fog. She has to come through it herself, if she ever does. Your choice is how long you are willing to wait around to see if she does come through. Of course, she may walk out before even making the effort. Do you really want to be with that type of person? I know that's a blunt question, one I still have a hard time dealing with. I know the type of person I want and need to be with, and in many ways my W was/is not that person.
Still, the pull of history pulls us back, or makes it hard to walk away, doesn't it? It's as if part of me knows it's time to move on and take what I've learned in search of a better relationship, yet part of me still holds out some hope (naive?) that the old relationship can be transformed. I see transformation in myself, and read a million stories about transformed marriages, and want to believe it's possible with us. But I also know that many situations don't end that happily. Our wives are on their own journeys, and we must continue on ours.
"I was obsessing about...well, everything. The past, the present, the future. Feels like my W. is going to be riding off into the sunset and somehow getting all that she wants, and I'm left feeling abandoned and holding the bag, so to speak. I know that's pretty "victim-like" thinking, but it is how I feel right now...the unfairness of it all."
It is so wierd how we are all going thru the same exact thing. If you need someone to talk to e-mail me your number and I will call you at the suggested time. Thees@Avaya.com
Man Bruce, This is (your below comments) exactly where I am. I could not have said them better. My W is so negative about me right now i can not stand it. Any question I ask her nicely turns into this huge black holed arguement. It is terrible. I feel she hates me so much and I feel I have done nothing to deserve this. She must feel that i am holding her back from doing something that she really wants to do. i don't know anymore, I am very confused and trying to make sence of it all. i need to start thing just about me but that is very hard with three kids in the house and a W that I am very concerned about.
"Do you really want to be with that type of person? I know that's a blunt question, one I still have a hard time dealing with. I know the type of person I want and need to be with, and in many ways my W was/is not that person. Still, the pull of history pulls us back, or makes it hard to walk away, doesn't it? It's as if part of me knows it's time to move on and take what I've learned in search of a better relationship, yet part of me still holds out some hope (naive?) that the old relationship can be transformed. I see transformation in myself, and read a million stories about transformed marriages, and want to believe it's possible with us. But I also know that many situations don't end that happily. Our wives are on their own journeys, and we must continue on ours."
Wow - I have to comment too. Bruce really said some things that hit me in a new way.
Purr - we must have been on the same wavelength. After weeks of doing good I was suddenly hit with a load of doubt and apprehension yesterday. Felt like I could hardly breathe.
My W has also turned into a cold b*tch after a month of almost being ready to reconcile. I'm positive it's guilt over the fact that she's choosing OM, but still ...
But the question Bruce asks - do you really want to be with that type of person? That's the hard one, isn't it. That's where I'm at and the answer is no, so why do we find it so hard to let it go? Just because of the history? Because it's hard to stop loving someone no matter how cruelly they treat you (though that really doesn't seem right - I find it pretty easy to avoid people who are nasty to me)?
