Replying to Coconut's thread just now got me thinking briefly about the whole, very slow, breakdown of my M.
My gran died in 2007. Dealing with the fallout from that was hugely upsetting for me (I'd even go so far as to say it was traumatic).
I tried to take steps to deal with it, and in fact, took some pretty major, life changing ones. But it took a lot of courage on my part, and progress was slow. Cutting myself some slack, I would say that these things take time to process.
For the first time since I had met my XH, which had been 10 years previously, my focus was on myself and not on him. I believed he would be there to support me.
I was coming up to my 40th birthday as well. This didn't bother me, but it might have troubled him. Who knows?
I think he started to feel ignored, resentful even, that he wasn't the focus of all of my attention, as he had been previously.
By summer 2009, he had already started engaging in behaviour that was destructive to our M. Just two years after my gran had died, and in the middle of me trying to process and deal with the consequences of her death, he was inciting other women and getting emotionally involved with them.
In fact, the first time I noticed something was wrong was when I met one of his colleagues in 2007. I knew straight away, when I shook her hand, there was something strange. And then I caught him talking to her on the phone, late one night, in his car, which was parked right underneath our house. He said that she had needed someone to confide in as she was having a hard time with her boyfriend. This was female work colleague who he had just met. I remember asking him if he didn't think it was strange that she was talking to him about it and not to her best friend, mum or even another girlfriend. He refused to answer, just stonewalled me.
So, just a handful of months after my gran had died, he was already set on the path that five years later led to PA1, and then PA2.
Maybe there were other PA's before then? I don't know. I don't have any evidence or proof, and it doesn't really matter.
Wow, how could someone behave that way? So selfish. And how could I have put up with that for so long? I just didn't know what was happening. I knew something wasn't right, but I never would have imagined what was actually going on. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, for sure.
Yesterday...what a day! Three meetings in different places, with different people, to do with three totally different projects. All incredibly positive.
And then some freelance work, where one of my colleagues said: 'I wish everyone was like you' and 'you make people feel special'. That really blew me away. All the hard work I've put into seeing the positive side of things and being on that positive and grateful wavelength is really paying off big time.
I think it comes down to hope. I really need to feel the hope that the future is going to be better than 2007-2015. I also really need to feel that I have the capacity to shape the future, my future, into what I want (and increasingly feel and know, into what I deserve).
It was a beautiful, sunny day, so I walked everywhere.
Talking finances, I think I did enough groundwork in the first part of the year to have enough work to get through to the end of the year. It's varied work, good for my CV and well paid (as far as my world goes).
So I will also be able to live a little too, and not just have to go with the very basics in life. And it means I can have the headspace to focus on my own creative work as well, now that I'm sure that I have things in the pipeline which will give me chunks of money at set times.
I'm feeling a lot more secure in the working world now. These are all contacts and work that came after BD and after XH left, so they are all new for me. None of them know about my past life. Well, I'm sure one of them would know my XH if I mentioned his name to them, but I don't need to. I got this far (which is almost at the point of an offer of work and a contract for this work) without his name coming into the conversation.
I'm also really enjoying making new friends without having XH's shadow hanging over things.
I am **constantly** meeting people in this field of work who know him, knew of our M, knew me as his XW. But now I really feel like I'm starting to be able to stand on my own two feet in this industry. The feedback I've had from people when I've shown them my CV has been so incredibly validating and ago boosting, I can hardly believe it.
I always felt like I was standing on my own two feet in this industry. But I'm so low key and quietly spoken about it and what I've achieved that I don't think anyone in the industry really noticed or paid me much attention in that regard. Maybe only really the people that I was working with?
This industry is full of larger than life people with big egos (and matching insecurities), and it's not my style to be like that, so I guess I was treated in the way I presented myself?
I've really understood, to the very core of my being, in this whole process, that I have worth and value. I think for the first time ever in my life that I feel very solid inside, in the core of my being.
I always knew that was there, like the tiniest fragment of steel, but I guess I never gave that the chance to grow and get bigger and stronger, and I just didn't put up a boundary when someone disrespected me (not just XH, but I remember a few conversations with XMIL that were a little lacking in respect on her part). I would **say** and call someone's words/behaviour out, for sure, but I guess I didn't follow those words up with actions?
I think it's probably been everything that I've done that brought me to this point: sorting my house, finding new friends, trying new things, taking control of my finances and capacity to earn money, planning my future work more, upping my work life in XH's industry and in my own creative work, going out on dates, changing my clothes, exploring what works best for me in terms of mindsets and ways of thinking...
It's all very much a work in progress, and I can see that I must never stop the forward momentum of all of this, as it's taking me places and giving me back so much more than the effort I'm putting in. It's not been easy and it still isn't easy. I'm absolutely exhausted from the effort of it most of the time.
Yes, I guess there is some fear there. Fear of finding myself in the black hole that I was 2007-2015. Of that diminishing me again and eating away at the potential to live my life and to carry to on enjoying life. I never want to find myself in that place again, ever.
External circumstances triggered it, and it was perpetuated and compounded to the most awful degree. I'll say it was my fear and inability to communicate and share what I was going through, and XH's inability to deal with it and reaction to it. Which meant it dragged on for years and years. And instead of being a glitch (albeit a pretty major one) that could have been overcome with support and compassion, and something that we both could have come out the other side from stronger and more loving towards each other, it became even more destructive.
In the end, I feel betrayed. Not by the OW (plural), but by the person that should have been there to love and support me, and who wasn't. They promised to be there to love and support me in times of hardship when we M, and I believed that promise, wholeheartedly. But when it came down to it, they didn't honour that. Their actions were lacking.
How immature. Because that's life, my friends. S***t happens. It happens to you and to the people you love and care about. And what do you do? Withdraw, and go and try and get your ego boosted in all the ways you can.
I'm starting to feel utterly disgusted with the way I was treated (perhaps also the way I **allowed** myself to be treated).
focus22,
About three weeks after our separation, my fog lifted and I realized what a gullible dumb@ss I'd been. Then came the anger. I wasn't an angry person, but my attitude toward my wife (now XW) changed dramatically.
This time next week is my birthday. I will be 48 years old.
I'm starting to feel utterly disgusted with the way I was treated (perhaps also the way I **allowed** myself to be treated).
I actually feel like I'm going to throw up.
Perhaps I'm finally feeling angry with my XH.
It's taken this long.
I'm so glad I don't have to have anything more to do with him, or any of his drunken family.
Happy birthday!!!!! Treat yourself to a fun day/evening and celebrate all the good things in your life.
Everyone has their own timetable for how they do things, so maybe you are feeling angry. You are entitled to feel however you feel.
Me 52, H53 Bomb drop 9/29/2014 Divorce from XH final 12/17/2014 Marriage #2 12/31/2019 5 adult (step)daughters (3 from XH's first marriage, 2 from current H's previous relationships) 6 grandkids
Just popping by...a really incredible ten days or so, including my birthday, the wedding of a friend of mine and a holiday (the first holiday/break of more than one or two days I've had for over a year, and I'm including Christmas in that).
Pretty much all of it was spent in the company of the wonderful man I'm with. We don't see each other during the week as we live about 2 hours drive from each other. We got on like an absolute house on fire, so relaxed and easy.
I think we're a very good match. There's a gentleness and concern for the other's well being on both sides, respect, an openness to new experiences and learning new things together on both sides, and a certainty of the other on both sides.
I know we're going to have some conversations about the future and how we can make things work for both of us. I feel comfortable with that. He's someone that I feel I can talk calmly with, and actually have a dialogue with, and an evolving dialogue too. And I know that he's someone that would be very happy to help with practical matters.
I didn't ever really feel I could have a dialogue with my XH, and he would certainly never have helped me with the hard graft of sorting the practical things in life. It felt like less of a companionship, more of he was just himself and I was moulded round the edges of him. How much of that would have been to do with me, being less assertive, and how much of it would have been to do with his ego? Who knows?
This feels completely different. I didn't even really know that this kind of companionship existed in life or the world before now.
I've been chatting to one of the other studio tenants I'm friends with (and who works in the same field as XH and the same field that I occasionally wok in as well).
Anyway, he was in a relationship for 2 years, and about 4 months ago his boyfriend split up with him.
They're both very young (early 20s) and from what I'm hearing, the ex boyfriend sounds like he was particularly immature and unaware of other people's feelings.
Today I learnt that the ex boyfriend had split up with the words 'ILYBINILWY'.
I've started working on a job for the same company that XH has done a lot of high profile (and very successful) work for in the past.
When we were M, I felt like I was known more for being his W than for the work I did for them in my own right.
Over the past couple of years, whenever I've worked for them, I've felt his shadow looming over me and the conversations I had with colleagues.
But I feel like I've turned a very small corner this time.
I've just come back from my holiday with the wonderful man and I'm aware that I look better than I ever have done on one of these jobs. We don't really get much sun up here in the summer, and I'm very golden brown at the moment. Obvs I've been enhancing it as well
I've been having lots of very intense dreams related to work and to XH, pretty much every night since I started this job. In one of them the building where we met and in which I later worked for 8 years in, was being taken apart, brick by brick. I think it was going to be rebuilt somewhere else. But I remember feeling devastated in my dream and wanting to let out a very visceral cry, but it getting stuck in my throat. I still feel a little out of sorts from that dream, even though it was a couple of nights ago.
Well, I feel like I'm well into this job, even though it's not been too long yet, and I feel like the team around me is knitting together well, in the way that I like it to. I like to make sure my staff feel comfortable enough to be themselves, and to feel like they have something of value to contribute. It takes a few days for this to kick in, but it's very powerful when it does. One has already described this job as the best she's ever done.
I guess one of the things I've learnt over the past couple of years, and that I'm still learning, is that I have as much a powerful personality as my XH as regards work and working with others. It's maybe not as flashy and in your face as his, because of the nature of what he does and of what I do as much as personality, but it's there nonetheless. I had so many people (very highly regarded industry professionals) come up to me and say they were so happy when they saw that I would be working on this project. It kind of bowled me over, to be honest.
So I feel like I should continue to work on this side of me and allow it to grow some more...see where it takes me and what comes of it.
House wise, I started a tidy up of my jewellery. I have a lot of it. I have some very nice storage but I wanted some smaller opaque plastic boxes for inside the storage. I found some business card boxes with lids (very cheap) and ordered a whole bunch of them. They're a perfect size. It's a work in progress at the moment, I just do a little every day, but hopefully I'll wear some more of my lovely jewellery now.
One question that's come up is what to do with all the jewellery XH gave me over the course of 18 years. And funnily enough, the wonderful man I'm with mentioned the same kind of hing a while back in regard to the photographs he had of his XW, her family and their children.
He has a lot of printed photographs as their M was pre digital (they've been D about 8 years). I think my answer was along the lines of keeping them as they are a part of his past and of who he is now, maybe finding a nice box to keep them in, and storing them away somewhere. That way he'd be honouring them (his past), which I feel is important, in spite of what happened. But they're closed in a box and away.
Maybe that's what I should do with the jewellery XH gave me? Maybe at some point in the future I might feel differently and feel like they're just items of jewellery, rather than jewellery that was a gift from XH?
Who knows. In in the meantime, I have another little drawer of jewellery I bought to explore today and sort out...
