8, I don't give out much advice on these boards because I don't feel qualified given the mess that I am in. I know you follow my thread and know how close I have been to divorce ( two cancelled hearings ). All I can say is that I have had all the same thoughts and feelings. I am still hanging on but sometimes feel crazy for doing so. I can relate. I wish you all the best.
Me: 45 WAW: 45 | M22 | T25 | No Kids Nov 09 W Filed | Dec 09 Separation Mar 17 2010 Divorce Papers Signed | Divorce Hearing Cancelled Moved back home May 2010 PA Confirmed June 2010 | W left Dec 7 2010
Kara put it the best! Hope is ok as long as its within the paramenters of a sensible expectation.. Its ok to hope youre prince will find you, but its not ok to waste a perfectly good life waiting for him!
My H came home, its been the hardest six months I have ever survived and believe me we have had some other testing times! Just to put your expectations in perspective, it WONT EVER BE THE SAME! It COULD be better but it will be months/year before it gets to that..
You are a lovely lady and your H is a plonker not seeing what a fantastic woman he has under his nose and he is stupidily letting go! Having said that why keep such a fantastic woman under lock and key of unrequited hope... I can hear Mindfull screaming NOOOOOOOOOOOOO from this side of the ocean! Hope is fine, sensible expectation fine if you can keep it sensible but the key word as always on this board is DETACH, you will need if he doesnt come back and its really needed twice as much if they do come back!
So thats the sum of my wisdom, your probably sat there going WHAT LOL! (())
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W 47 H 47 M 24 T 30
Once lost but now found and happily married again!
TEN - You are letting us down here. No updates in weeks! You have to have that house completely redone by now!
Ha! So sorry! I had told you that I would do an update a few days ago, and time got away from me AGAIN!
My whole house SHOULD be done by now, but I work at a different pace. I've made some progress, but now I'm losing steam. I've fallen asleep on my couch every night for two weeks.
Oh, so many updates, but none of them interesting or exciting. I just may have some special family time updates to share, too. I'd better get started on all this.
Thanks, CityGirl, for your response. I took a break from here to do some long overdue home renovations. I also think I just needed a little time away from the boards. I guess everyone needs some time away every now and then.
Originally Posted By: CityGirl
I don't think you are crazy (and trust me, I know crazy 'cause I am crazy, lol!).
Love this! I think I know crazy, too, as it turns out!
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Without hope or optimism what do we really have? IMO the best thing to do is find a healthy balance between hope/optimism and reality. And the reality is at this time your H is divorcing you and the two of you are in the legal phase to dissolve your marriage. It is painful, it is adverse and a million other things that are hard to articulate in one single post.
Extremely well put. A healthy balance between hope and reality is important. I think I vacillate between the two on a regular basis.
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I don't think WAS simply wake up one day and change their mind. It is a very, very slow progression if it happens at all. And really, it takes so much time that if it does happen the LBS is in a much different head space. But the changing of the mind does not equal the changing that needs to take place and that is the key issue.
After several months, I finally have begun to accept that it's REALLY not all fault that this happened. On an intellectual level, I knew this, but it's hard to accept on an emotional level. H would have to do a lot of work, too, and I realize that I've changed and grown a great deal since he's been gone.
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My H could come back right now and I can promise you that we would have a ball doing the stuff we used to do. But when it came down to the brass tacks of communication and such, I don't think much would be different with him. This is not speculation as it is apparent when we do have exchanges he still views things the same way.
Yes. I could foresee this in my situation as well.
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Our 11 yr. wedding anniversary just passed and my H texted me on that day. This is the 3rd anniversary we have been apart and he has been with OW. To him he was being nice and thoughtful. To me it was very insensitive and when I told him that I got the usual "nothing I do is good enough". IMO when you cheat on somebody, divorce them and remain in a R with the mistress for THERE years you don't text your exW on the wedding anniversary. It is cruel. To him he was being a good guy. Sure, it's nice to be thought of but it never dawned on him how it would make me feel.
Yikes. What a misguided thought he had. And of course, he turned it around to be about HIM. Ugh.
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If you let go or not your H has already moved on to a much higher degree than you have. It is painful but true.
So, no, you are not crazy. You are human and all humans need hope. Sometimes though we have to adjust what we hope for based on reality.
Again, very well put. Thank you very much for sharing this.
Sheesh. That's a tall order, because you are really asking about how to FEEL. I wish I could tell myself how to feel, let alone someone else. So, I'm not touching that. But I will tell you a story...
I love stories. Go on.
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I have a very young 80 year old bagpipe student. He is super pleasant to talk to and some of our lessons we end up chatting more than actually working on his music. Just after my stbxW dropped the bomb, I was informing him I might be canceling lessons for a while and told him why. We got to talking about my sitch and I asked him for some advice. I figured a guy married 60 years would have some sage advice.
He said "Fergie. If I had some advice to give you, I'd tell you, but to be honest there is nothing I can give you."
He did tell me a story about a fight he and his wife had. He packed a bag, got in his truck, and started driving. When he got to end of his driveway, he stopped, and sat there. He had a choice to go off onto the highway. After a bit of time of sitting there, he turned the truck around and went home.
That really stuck with me, because almost everyone I've met here in the DB world is just like him. People trying really hard to save their marriages, and also just plain super people. And I think that is the difference between the WAS and the DBers; the DBers want to put the work in to fix their marriages and the WAS keeps driving.
Yes! Exactly! I've often wondered how H could just walk away and leave it all. He's wanted to put in NO effort, and he has deluded himself (and others, I'm sure) into believing that he DID work on things. Yeah, right.
I'm often disgusted by how he is such a quitter. Life gets tough, and he bolts. I get really frustrated by how easy it seemed for him to leave and never look back. It's ridiculous.
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Your IC had some excellent questions. Some of them my IC gave me. The best one was: Do you really want to go back to the exact situation with nothing changed? At first I thought it didn't sound too bad, but now it sounds horrible.
That question really helped me, too. I had probably romanticized what a reunion or reconciliation would be like, but that question brought me back to reality. I don't like who H is right now. I don't like that he's put me through this.
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Rob helped with that. Your mantra should be "Don't settle for crumbs."
Good point. I'm better than crumbs.
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Turn that frown upside down now is your time to shine, girl!
Everyone has their limits and my limit was that the stbxW kept driving. I know this is a marriage saving forum, but I have read thread after thread where the LBS is willing to let the WAS drive around the world. I guess I wasn't willing to do that and have her return to settle for crumbs.
Yes, I see your point here. It's been easier and easier to think about life without him, especially as I grow more disgusted by his lack of commitment to me and his disloyalty to our vows--particularly the "for better or for worse" part.
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You are a great looking woman. If you are even half as witty in person as on the threads, you will do fine. Better than fine, if that is what you decide to do.
--Fergie
You're not so bad yourself, handsome. Seriously, thanks for saying this. It's easy to question your attractiveness--physical and social--when your spouse leaves!
I hope that I WILL do fine. The rejection I've felt is hard, but I'm too strong to let this defeat me. He's a fool, and he'll regret his choices one day.
8, it's so weird that your H left you 2 days before mine did, and that they both got the ball rolling in the same week. I guess our Hs are on the same wavelenth :| .
What are the chances? That is nutty.
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I don't think you're crazy to want to reconcile...but I totally agree with CG that even if your H "changed his mind", it doesn't mean that he has what it takes to do the hard work required to reconcile. And it seems like, after separation, WAHs take 1-2 years before they even start to change their minds, when that happens.
Hard work is not H's thing. He quit this relationship just like he's quit his MANY other jobs. It's his way.
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I guess acceptance is the only way forward that I can see for myself. And I envy you that, if the D proceeds and you find acceptance, you'll be able to live a life totally free of your former H. A blank slate could be a good look for your life 8.
(((hugs)))
I suppose I need to start working toward total acceptance, too. It would be the best way forward.
Alice Walker, an author I really love, wrote a book several years ago called The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart. I've never fully understood that title until I started thinking of how I would begin working on moving forward.
8, I don't give out much advice on these boards because I don't feel qualified given the mess that I am in. I know you follow my thread and know how close I have been to divorce ( two cancelled hearings ). All I can say is that I have had all the same thoughts and feelings. I am still hanging on but sometimes feel crazy for doing so. I can relate. I wish you all the best.
Thanks, mrbt. I appreciate your support. I wish you all the best, too. I hope things are going well for you. I'd love to hear an update soon.
