The only way I'll stay is if he's sticking to whatever agreement we might come up with. Otherwise, I have the means to move at any time and I've moved so many times over the years, I can make it happen in under a week.
I am still preparing to move to Florida as I don't expect him to agree to my terms. But I'm going to give him a couple days before I start taking things to Goodwill and listing things on Craigslist and have a hitch installed on my car. Packing is already happening, though. I have a couple weeks before I have to give notice at my apartment, so... We shall see.
One of the things that's been making me really mad lately is H's accusation that I haven't been consistent. If ONLY I'd be consistent. I journal about this mess. I haven't missed a single IC session the entire time. I've been pretty consistent. He just tends to accuse me of being inconsistent when he's done something that triggers a boundary I have that he doesn't like. Anyone else encounter this? How did you deal with it?
I've tried to operate within a list of if/then's and reasonable boundaries, kept my overall message consistent, offered friendship and empathy as much as I can, and let him know when I feel like being emotionally available for him would be inappropriate or damaging to us rebuilding respect and rapport between us. I've tried to remind myself that this is a man who was going through a major emotional break down for about a year and a half before he left and I've tried to be patient. We've gone through phases where it seemed very strongly like he was trying to date me - since we never did that before moving in together (we'd been friends for years) - and I've tried to be a great "girlfriend" while attempting to maintain my self-respect... which admittedly falls apart when he starts backing off... thus why I'm finally fed up and most likely moving 3,000 miles away. I've consistently tried to empower him to be a good parent... but I draw the d@mn line at him asking me to decorate his apartment he wants to get. I'm not going to be his homemaker unless he's living in my home! And now that I'm trying to get back to school, I need certain things from him or I just cannot do it here.
I don't know. I'm really upset with him. This whole thing is bullsh!t. I didn't do a d@mn thing to deserve him running out on me - not that I was perfect but I sure didn't deserve THIS - and I've bent over backwards to keep reconciliation an option for him all this time. I fully expected that he'd be moving in with me by the end of this month and now I'm packing for a 3,000 mile move. And he still owes me a ferris wheel ride, dang it. He promised me one at this year's fall fair. We were going to take a road trip this summer. Now I'm moving. This is cr@p.
Im sorry, but I have read your situation and didnt want to say anything, but your H is a piece of [censored]. No matter how hard it is for you to move you need to do so. He is using you like Ive never seen and has been doing it for years. Move and dont look back, maybe he will come crawling down to Florida for you but if youre lucky he wont. You are still young no matter what you think right now and you will find someone that wont dream of treating you like that. Im sure that isnt what you want to hear, but this is the first thread that Ive read that actually made me angry. And it has nothing to do with me. F*ck him and everything that he wants. Dont buy into his crap. Im gonna repost something that I found from a vet on here named gucci loafer for you:
I know. The majority of men on here struggling just can't seem to let go. It is nothing more than low self esteem and lack of confidence. To top it off, I don't see much of a success rate with the tactics and methods the men are using on this site a working very well. We have men who have been on here from 2 weeks to over two years. Same methods being used by most all and same results happening to most all..
I guess the men who have been on here for so long just need a "little more patience" and understanding before she wakes up...
Maybe tomorrow huh? Maybe three years is the key......
All the while the simple facts and reality that the men who usually have the most succes getting the woman to come back are the ones who let them go the fastest and leave the woman alone the quickest. The men who go out and start getting a life, having fun, mingling and flirting with the opposite sex and living and loving life to the fullest. They stop whining, stop complaining, stop venting, stop journaling and START DOING..
Those are the men who succeed. The evidence is all around these men struggling, but they fail to see....
M:33 W:30 T:10 M:2 B/D: 5/27/14 S: 5/28/14 Wife moved back in 7/18/14
Ben2010, success has a lot to do with how you ended up in your sitch to begin with. My H and I went through phases - before the separation - where I was the one with one foot out the door because he was dishonest and disloyal in my eyes. If he'd gotten a life and flirted and cr@p back then... I probably would have chopped his b@lls off with my car keys before walking out permanently. The tactics that work for someone all depend on how they got in their situation to begin with. There are plenty of guys on here who have done those things and fallen flat on their faces because their WAWs didn't trust them before... and definitely weren't going to trust them once they started mingling with the opposite sex. I'm half tempted to just say f-ck it simply because I found out that there are women on my H's Google+ circles. I'm not even in his d@mn circles so how do you like that?
NOT A SINGLE PEEP from my H all day about our "negotiations".
I am not pleased. Sent follow up message emphasizing to him that I'm not exactly a fan of him lately, that all my "be awesome and shiny" patience has worn off, and that the sooner I hear something from him the better or I'm just going to freaking leave. Didn't get a response.
So, I finally just f-in called him. He was actually nice for a change... but I'm not falling for it. He said he needs a little more time since I am actually asking a lot from him. I told him I expect to hear something in the next couple days or he can expect a credit card bill in a couple weeks that includes the hitch for my car. I told him that at this point, I'm emotionally exhausted, that I've been warning him for months now that I was at the point where he'd have to start giving back or I was quickly getting to the point where I was going to have to give up on him and move at the end of my lease. And here we are. I told him that at this point, I really don't care anymore; I just need to move forward in one direction or another. I told him that I'm not highly motivated to negotiate sh-t with him after three years and three months of this limbo BS so keeping me waiting was not going to help anything. I didn't yell or anything, I was just very curt. He sounded understanding and said he'd get back to me soon. He said he'd watch the kids for an appointment I have Wednesday. Whatever. I'm so sick of this situation. Losing him is like losing a gangrenous limb at this point. I've slathered all the honey on it I'm going to to try to save it. What a waste of good honey.
My H is a proud Leo. Leo's don't do competition. They just leave.
I have gone through periods over the past three years of trying to date. I was never interested in anyone. But my H certainly noticed. The extra attention never lasted and never translated to anything really substantial from him.
More packing and sorting today. Found a little lakeside cottage under gorgeous Spanish moss strung oaks my parents are going to go look at for me down in Florida. Looks adorable online. Very affordable, but small. Hoping to get lots of pictures from my parents. It's actually TWO little cottages sold as one property. So I'd be able to rent one out. That would be fantastic and could really make my financial picture much more tolerable and stable. Real estate is so cheap down there, my parents have kept some money set aside for a down payment for me for a long time, and it's enough to put a good chunk down on this place. This place is even cheap enough that if I liked it, my dad would even be totally comfortable co-signing the loan if I needed since it'd be for an amount he could pay off in cash, easy. The ad describes it as move in ready but it'd be so cheap I could afford to make some improvements on it and have lots of very handy friends - including a union carpenter, a roofer, and a former general contractor - and family members down there who could help. We shall see. It's perfect for a little funky chic like me. I actually feel really happy about the idea of moving to Florida. I can finally get a dog! and maybe even a couple chickens!
H is going to have to be super freaking crazy generous with his offer if I'm going to pass this up.
That's great. Sounds like you really have some motivation now and it looks promising. I was really just saying that you can leave him the same way he is leaving you. It sounds like he still wants you around but isnt willing to give up his lifestyle. Maybe when you move he will follow or maybe not and you can have a great life anyway with the kids. Either way I wish you the best of luck with it and keep us updated as to what kind of offer he makes.
M:33 W:30 T:10 M:2 B/D: 5/27/14 S: 5/28/14 Wife moved back in 7/18/14
Go for it. Regardless of what the H does. Reread what you wrote when you described this place, and your future life in Florida. You came across as HAPPY! Ultimately that is what you need. If your H wakes up, he will follow. It would be the ultimate sign he is ready.
Me I just moved up from Florida, and would not mind getting back there someday.
Best of luck.
Me: 42 W: 32 Married 7 years together 8.5 S1: 7 S2:7 Bomb #1: 09-16-13 Recon #1: 11/13 A discovered 04-03-2014 W filed D 05-19-14 but never served me I filed D 12-02-2014 S 05-31-14 Divorced 5-19-16
I wonder... some times... if we really are as similar as we seem sometimes.
I have this loop in my head. The same dozen or so things that play over and over. Memories. There's the time, back when we were just getting to know each other, that I helped my H work on a paper for his college Spanish class. The time he drove me home from a dinner with friends... back when he had a "girlfriend"... and my ring got caught in his hair. Dumping popcorn all over him when we went to see Dungeons and Dragons together. I was so scared he wouldn't show up but so hopeful... I bought his ticket long before he showed up. How he swaggered into my world when he became available.... I know that he was scared to death but it didn't show. How he asked what I would do if he kissed me... that first kiss. I waited so long for that first kiss. The time when he was crying in the rain, when he said he never wanted to hurt me. How I felt when after months of not speaking to me he sent me that poem "anonymously" because he forgot that I knew about that email address - I was so moved, alive... how sad I am that I don't have it anymore. The first time I ever heard him say he loved me... how it felt like the world was spinning. Going to see Finding Neverland together... and finally holding hands. Writing in our journals in the park... how beautiful it was. How content I was just to be near him. How pure things were, how the only expectation I had... was time... that moment and the hope for millions more. The first time he watched The Crow... and we had fantastic sex afterward. Watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind together and crying... because we almost missed out on us. We tried to forget... but couldn't. And this one, really sweet, vulnerable moment... things between us were so bad... I was so checked out after he'd hurt me... I spent most of my days putting together wishlists of things I'd need to set up house if we split up. I felt so... horrible. Ugly. Used. Stupid. Unwanted. And one night... I came out of the bathroom after washing my face. And he looked at me and he said rather wistfully, "Oh... wait... ... Did you... did you just go wash your face?" and I said, "Yeah," and he looked at me... like it was the first time and he said, "Oh, you're so beautiful. I never... You're so beautiful." And he started to cry. And I was so hurt and angry back then... I thought... serves him right. He f-cked up and now he's going to lose the prettiest damn thing he'll ever have. I was so hurt and angry then. But every time I think of that... it makes me so happy, so sad. It's one of the few moments in my life I've ever felt seen. It's one of only three compliments I've ever gotten - the others were from my Grammy and my Auntie when I was younger - that I *feel*... that reached me. That felt authentic and real and honest. And I was so cold. And every time I think of that moment, I want to go back and hold him and smother him in kisses and tell him he's good enough and that I'll never leave.
I'll never understand how we got here. I still don't understand how he could have left. I'm miserable living in limbo. But I really... feel... like this is just... one of those things that will never really go away. I guess, being a poet makes things worse. Because he's been my muse for 14 years now. And I have over a thousand pages of poetry about him, inspired by him... and I can't just... delete them. Because I suppose now they belong to our daughter, someday.... Because it's almost my entire body of work. And a lot of it is really, really, really good. He brings that out in me. I guess... I guess in a weird way... I've been reluctant to let him go because I don't want to let go of so much of what he brings out in me... the good and the bad... He's been so central to my world for so long now... And while I've worked really hard at being ok over the past three years... I haven't had to test it much. I haven't gone more than a few days without seeing him in the past few years.
This is my second night of being up really late and not really sleeping... And tomorrow I have to decide what color to dye my hair. I always really f-cking hated that he couldn't just tell me what color he liked. Compliments were so, so few and far between... I felt like I never knew how to make him happy. I can't tell you the amount of money I've wasted because I didn't get a reaction to a dress or an attempt at decorating our house or a hair cut. *shakes her head* Why are we so stupid when we're young? And why do we sometimes meet the most fantastic people... when we're so young and so stupid and so f-cked up that we're near guaranteed to screw everything up... and lose the one person that no one else could ever, ever compare to?
In a month and a half, I'll be sitting on my mom's couch, eating pudding out of little plastic cups, making margaritas at 3 am, crying and showering too much, and trying to do the final purge of this whole nightmare from my system before painting a little cottage various shades of purple and blue... surrounded by all these places and reminders... where we started.
When I get too... in my head about something... I make a wishlist or a pinterest board about it. I'm already several hundred items in on my lists and board for my FL move... just trying to psych myself up about the whole thing and ignore that little voice... his... that says... "Please don't let me go... Please don't give up on me..." And I just answer back, "You didn't leave me anything to hold on to... and now... I'm being swept out to sea... and there's nothing I can do about it anymore.... I'll always, always love you. But I have to go. I'm sorry."
