I'm talking about fitting little bits and pieces over the next months, when they fit into a natural conversation, just throwing little things in that will help pave the way home and to forgiveness for him.
Not a bad idea the way you described it right there. Except for the selfish pave his way home part. The help him forgive himself part...truely selfless though...nice.
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
I struggled with that feeling as well. Thanks Jack. I was thinking that friends are trying to see him not hurt - voila, they're telling him to leave me. OF COURSE OW is telling him that. He's being swayed, and I want to let him see that it's not the only option, but then I felt guilty for trying to convince (control) him towards me and our M... darn that old Catholic guilt. LOL. Not supposed to want to win at anything because that means someone else has to lose.
I really do feel so badly right now. He is hurting so much and I've come a long past my own hurt, and now see the pain in his eyes. It's strange because if you asked if I am in love with H, I'd say no. If you asked if I love him like I used to or somewhat like that - I'd still say no. I love him differently now. It's more like I see that he's so lost and truly alone (even though he's with OW - his "soul mate" and such) - he's guilty and in pain. I don't want him to hurt, I wish I could say something to make him stop hurting. That's not going to happen... he has to do it himself. I know now how parents feel watching their children fail and make wrong choices. You have to let them do it, and you know it intellectually but it still hurts to watch them go through it.
I found an old journal from the last time H cheated and I DB. I had put a few quotes on the front cover that I thought I'd post here. Just fun stuff.
"If you're going through hell, keep going." Winston Churchill
"I know God wouldn't give me anything I couldn't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much." Mother Theresa
I was going through old emails looking for something and found this one from H dated 4/6. At the time, I was being given advice to avoid talking to him on his terms and set the time and place myself... which ticked him off and made him take the fuse out of my car and take me hostage during lunch to talk to me.
Quote:
I may have given you the wrong impression with what I said this morning. Allow me to clarify.
If you actually believe that you and I are where we are today because of some recent “outside influence”, then you are completely naive (I don’t mean that in a negative way) as to what’s been going on in our marriage over the past several years and how I feel about it and you. If you continue to dodge me and the talk I seriously need to have with you so you can understand why we are where we are, then what choice do I have?
Our marriage issues are between YOU AND ME alone, it’s OUR MARRIAGE! OW is completely innocent in all of this and does not deserve your harassment. She’s a good person. Her and OWH have their own issues to work out, as do we, and any effort by you towards her or him, or vice versa, is effort taken away from the core problems which reside solely in our respective marriages.
I was just re-reading it and remembering the emotion behind it for both of us. I had been hit with no time to process and he wanted to just tell me it's over and it's up to me to accept it, in a nutshell, and that there was nothing I could do about it... because he didn't love me and therefore never would again. He certainly did not ever tell me anything about why we were where we were or anything of the sort.
It's so hard seeing this to imagine that he will ever come back out of it. I know he will, one day, but this is not my H. (BTW - I called to expose to her H and I wouldn't call it harassment, it was OW who called and emailed me several times getting more and more hysterical... I said nothing further to her or him, so if anyone was harassing, it was her. But she's sweet and innocent, isn't she? LOL)
It helps to remember that he's in a fog.
Getting ready for the summer alone. I was looking forward to it, but now I'm starting to dread it - so much work and doing it all alone. It will feel good to finally have it done, though.
M&H - There is one thing with our Hs that I just have a hard time understanding.... They bring up NOW that they were unhappy before the affair. Why not say something before they start the affair? If they were so unhappy before, why didn't they say anything, why didn't they try to work on what the problem was, didn't we deserve that much? Or if it was that bad, why didn't they leave to be on their own for a while? Instead they ran into the arms of another woman rewriting marriage history as they go. MLC or not...they had a choice...And your H & mine did this 2x to us...there is something broken in these man...could they ever change?
M53 H54 D17 M33Y T38Y Bomb OW 09/09 OUT 10/09 BACK 11/09 OUT 01/10 WANTS TO R 04/10 BACK with OW 05/10 Wants to Reconcile 05/11 I said NO
I know in retrospect my wife did. Many times in fact and I also told her my complaints. However all we did was tell the other one our complaints without adjusting or addressing the other persons issues.
But nothing puts an excalmation point on a sentence like fukcing someone else. : )
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
Mine, too, Mila. And I have the same questions as well. Of course they should have let us know what they were unhappy about! The one time I did ask my H why he hadn't, he said "because I didn't think it could be fixed." He didn't tell me what "it" was, so I don't know whether it was something in him, or something in me. If the latter, he really had no right to judge whether it could be fixed or not, but I didn't pursue it. I suppose it doesn't really matter at this point, anyway, since he is gone, and I'm working on what I want to work on, whether it's "it" or not.
M 65 H 64 T 39 & M 36 @ S 12/08 Two Ds
Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy. ~ The Weather Man
Hi there, I know my husband and I fell into a rut - a really big rut - each one of us would talk about how we felt - we'd agree to do something about it and then our best intentions would fall by the wayside as 'real life' kicked in.
We allowed the 'c' word to slip into our marriage (and by that I mean complacency).....the last year of our marriage was spent entrenched in positions whereby each of us believed we had 'changed and moved and bent enought' to try and accomodate the others' wishes and my husband definitley felt that he ahd bent enough and was at breaking point. Our marriage just wasn't worth it anymore.
I have to say that our marriage was passionate and expressive and full of love and energy - until the last 9 months where he couldn't even look at me - we still did all the soppy stuff (cards, flowers, sex texts, overnights in hotels when we could.....)
My husband would speak in riddles and forget conversations which contributed to my exasperation with him - I understand now it's MLC but at the time I was floundering and didn't understand what was happeneing.
I tried several, what I now know as 180's, in the last 3 months we lived together in an effort to become the person he said I wasn't anymore.
My husband gave me enough clues in retrospect and these are the ones I have searched out, tried to understand the 'why' question in my dark hours and decided to work on. I am not excusing his behaviour - he had choices and he made the wrong ones in my view but what's done is done, I cannot waste anymore of my energy on the 'woulda, coulda, shoulda' type analysis.
All I can do is shape my future from the embers of my past, keeping loving him, keep detached and give myslef a clear head to make choices in my future.
((hugs))
lalxx
Last edited by lalxx; 06/15/1008:40 PM.
Choose Life Me: 45 Him: 44 S:11 D:8 Met in 1992 Married in 1995 Bomb drop September 30th 2009 Divorce final April 16th 2011 exH Marries OW June 17th 2011
Absolutely true, Mila... why don't they mention it. Jack, no, he didn't in my case. He never said anything. I noticed he was withdrawing and I pursued, which caused him to withdraw more, and ultimately I chose the wrong path and became angry at his withdrawal rather than being a good friend and wife, and being compassionate, patient and understanding, I pushed him away. However, to throw away 12 years on 6 months of problems is insane, to my mind. Twink, don't you just want to scream! How will you know if you don't let ME KNOW? So crazy they are. lalxx - that sounds familiar. We had such a great marriage, so much love and passion and friendship and he just withdrew and it was a riddle that I didn't pay enough attention to in time, so by the time I figured it out, it was too late.
I agree, by the time I figured out something was wrong it was too late! But again, the ow came along, if she had not come along mlc or not, we would still be together. There is no doubt in my mind about that one! We would have worked it out if a 2nd party had not been in the picture & pushing him to get D.
