Re: Moving past the WAW to a stronger me Pt. 3

[Davide]

Thanks folks! I appreciate all the feedback here from different perspectives. It is important to hear that this is a normal part of the process. I was just reading an article which basically espoused the idea of trusting the process and not getting hung up on the results, i.e. it's the journey that matters not the destination. Right now I need to just trust this process. It really s@cks most of the time, but avoiding it, denying it or running from it are not real solutions.

LoneWlf, I got out for a 20 mile bike ride this afternoon after I arrived and that really did seem to help. Now that my driving is more limited I'm going to try to make scheduling in daily exercise a priority. It really functions like a form of meditation for me in that I can become completely lost in the moment, mindful of all the sensations in my body, the scents, the images in front of me, the wind in my face.

Hongaku, I hear you about the unhealthiness of self-loathing. I thought I had kicked that habit, but it came back with a vengeance with this kick of reality. It's not a place I want to stay in. I need to keep structures in place that keep me from dwelling there too long.

Benito, I certainly hope you are right. You certainly grab the silver linings of my posts.

Ste7e, I hear you. I don't see my W as toxic. I just don't think seeing her will help me on my journey right now.

Joseph, what exactly do you mean by "what Sandi has laid out?" I have followed the rules to a T (except for 33 - giving up hope, and 35 - backsliding from hard-earned changes)

Helena, thanks for checking in! Yeah, it feels like I have been on the road forever as well. The novelty of driving long distances and eating out every night had long since worn out. The final weeks I was really only enjoying the time that I spent reconnecting with old friends. The depression is definitely not linked to my parents' place as I have been in a low place for the past week and only arrived here today. I think my upcoming return to my house plays a part, my W's email about what she was taking from the house, and just the kick of the reality of my situation in general. I hope you are right about getting in the routine of returning to work and the exercise routine and social life that I had established post BD. I will definitely be relying on them to carry me through.

[Davide]

Good evening,

Some journaling:

I have been a bit more disconnected from the internet since I returned to my parent's home. It has been a bit of a shelter from the storm. I have been able to recuperate from all the time on the road, to relax a bit, to spend time with my parents, to visit some friends in xxxxxx. Importantly for my mental well-being I have also been able to resume my exercise regime. I have been able to start every morning except today (I spent the night at a cousin's house in xxxxxxx) with an hour of yoga. I have also been going out for 20 mile bike rides every day but one. Yesterday I did a long 42 mile bike ride with a close high school friend along the xxxxxx river out to xxxxxxxxxxx I have still been practicing mindfulness, and spending at least a short amount of time each day meditating. I have been journaling a bit and writing in a gratitude journal as well as trying to start each day with a few thoughts of gratitude. All of this has contributed greatly to a broad sense of calm. I do worry that this is a calm before the storm of returning home at the end of the week, but I also feel like I should take advantage of it and enjoy it while I can. I was having trouble sleeping and needing to take NyQuill almost every night, but the last two or three nights I abstained and was still able to sleep in relatively short order.

I feel like I am more capable of taking my emotions and thoughts and handling them gently, looking at them almost from an outside perspective without getting caught up in them. Of course, they aren't very strong emotions. I worry whether I am repressing them just so I can claim to have a better handle on them. I do feel sadness, nostalgia, longing, resentment, anger, but they are more fleeting emotions, not the raw, jagged things that have so wounded me before. I don't try to banish them from my mind, but I do allow them to pass and float away. I feel like surrendering to them and allowing them to either pass or stay with me is healthier than either forcefully trying to deny them or attempting to grip them strongly in my mind and mire myself in them.

Last night I had dinner and drinks with my cousins and it was a great night. I can't remember laughing so hard in a long time. It was pure, unadulterated joy in the moment. It was great to experience that again. The last time I felt that good was 6 weeks ago when I met with my former students. It was a great reminder of what it felt like, and what I need to keep myself open to.

One of the questions that has been pressing upon my consciousness is that of having a family with children. I spent Sunday afternoon at a friend's beach house surrounded by his large extended family, with over a half-dozen children under 10 years old, and then last night I spent the night with my younger cousin, his girlfriend and their 2 year old. That was always something that I thought I wanted, something that I thought was part of being a complete adult, or complete family. My thinking changed with W, since she didn't want children, but I wonder if that was pressing on my subconscious and contributing to my unhappiness or neediness. At the same time, I wonder how much of that desire comes from a place of emotional neediness, that I felt the need for a child as yet another form of external validation to make up for the lack of internal validation. My parents have made numerous references to that, and are very clear in their desire for grandchildren. I had a good conversation with my father on a bike ride about this, and I expressed my concerns about the need for external validation. He sort of pooh-poohed those concerns as he said that my brothers and I brought him and my mother a great deal of happiness. However, I am still unconvinced. I think I need to sit with that question some more.

I return home in 4 days. Hopefully, I can bring the practices and perspectives that I have worked on back with me.

[Vapo]

Embrace the feelings, whatever they might be. Embrace them, process them and you will gain new insight from them. This new insight will set another layer in your personality in these layers will add up over time and make the NEW YOU. Your feelings will continue to be up and down, but over time the downs will begin to be less severe and less frequent. What you are experiencing is completely normal.

You have to take care of yourself and stop worrying about other people's feelings. You matter. First and foremost.

[Davide]

Thanks Vapo. However, I don't understand where you are coming from when you tell me to take care of myself and stop worrying about other people's feelings. Is that a reference to the advice my father gave me? It just seems strange to me, not wrong but strange, since I have been doing exactly what you prescribe for the past two months.

[Davide]

So, I'm back in the house.

I spent last night at a friend's house which was great. I slept really well and had a good time hanging out with him, his wife and their baby. The 6 hour drive back home was remarkably normal as I listened to a book on tape. I was calm, and in a good place. WAW had asked me to text with my ETA so I did and she told me to be safe and let me know that I got in. But I didn't respond.

However, the house is a different matter. It's about as I expected. Hard. I haven't seen the place in 2 months. I haven't spent a night here in 4 months. The master bedroom is half empty, a single pillow lying on it, the closet vacant, the bureau half-empty. The second bedroom/her office is completely vacant. The walls are mainly bare. All photos of the two of us, and there were many, are gone. I was going to take them down anyway, but it still stings. There was a fire smoldering in the fire-pit out back with paper burning, it makes me wonder if that is where the photos ended up.

I have been reading the Little Book of Letting Go, and one of the exercises is to stop all worrying thoughts in their tracks by focusing on a positive thought, something that connects me to someone/something. I don't know how that works with leaning in to emotions and letting myself feel them. So far I haven't been able to find tears, but it is hard to be in this house, in this condition, half-undone but yet still full of memories of our life together. I think it is normal to have these struggles and nostalgia as I first come back. I just wonder if I will be able to move past it as I live in it.

On the bright side, my beautiful dog is lying at my side, and I can still tell her that I love her. Tomorrow I'm off to exercise, unpack fully, and get ready to teach a class on Monday.

[hongaku]

Welcome home, Davide. Stay strong my friend. You're going to be just fine.

[Davide]

What a rough night. I couldn't sleep and eventually had to take a bunch (3) of NyQuill. I finally faded off after 3:30 a.m.
Hopefully that was just first day jitters, plus an upset stomach. I need to sleep better than that if I want to function and be positive going forward.

I never responded to W's text yesterday but woke up this morning to an email asking to talk in person and to let her know what would be a good time for that. I don't really want to meet right now. I don't think seeing her will help my headspace, but at the same time I know we will have to see each other eventually. I also think I need some time to adjust to being back in the house and the city. I feel pretty far from a lighthouse right now. Is it worth asking what she wants to talk about? We need to set up some kind of schedule for her to see the dog, so that might be part of it.

[Benito]

What a rough night. I couldn't sleep and eventually had to take a bunch (3) of NyQuill. I finally faded off after 3:30 a.m.
Hopefully that was just first day jitters, plus an upset stomach. I need to sleep better than that if I want to function and be positive going forward.

I never responded to W's text yesterday but woke up this morning to an email asking to talk in person and to let her know what would be a good time for that. I don't really want to meet right now. I don't think seeing her will help my headspace, but at the same time I know we will have to see each other eventually. I also think I need some time to adjust to being back in the house and the city. I feel pretty far from a lighthouse right now. Is it worth asking what she wants to talk about? We need to set up some kind of schedule for her to see the dog, so that might be part of it.

I would suggest that the only reason you probably do not want to meet is because you want to avoid the potential pain of the injustice and lost (what could of been) feelings when you meet up.

In reality this meeting is what it is.. any emotional attachment you have is what you have manufactured for yourself around it.

I am not downplaying how you feel - I acknowledge its pretty sh%$, however nothing she says in this potential meet is going to make or break your day. You are on a journey and will continue down it regardless.

This could be alot worse. You are only 41 and there are no kids involved.

[Davide]

Of course, Benito. It is all in my head. The actual meeting is what it is, and my W has been amicable and pleasant throughout this process. The desire not to see her is rooted completely in not exacerbating the emotions that have been rubbed raw from moving home. I do wonder if in 5 or 10 days I might not be more accustomed to living in this house and a little less sensitive. I would prefer to be in a place where I can simply wish her well on her journey.

[Davide]

So, I just met with WAW and we talked in person for half an hour in the park (so I could bring the dog) for the first time in 2 months. I didn't sleep well last night, but rode 28 miles on the bike and went to the climbing gym for nearly 2 hours. I also had a first session with a new IC. I had a glass of wine with dinner and did a little light meditation beforehand. I was in a calm, peaceful frame of mind, ready to accept whatever came.

We talked about the dog a bit, since she escaped from the yard yet again today. I let WAW know that I would prefer to have a somewhat set schedule of when she is going to visit the dog rather than texting or emailing me to ask each time. So, we'll set that up. She also paid me back for some of the house bills that she ran up while I was away, which was good because I was going to ask her to anyway. She mentioned coming by to do yard work and I told her that wouldn't be necessary since she isn't living here anymore.

She was tearful throughout. She asked me how I was doing and I was vague but positive, truthfully telling her that I was in a much better space than a year ago and more centered, but I didn't go on much or into details. She told me that she still felt horribly guilty for letting me down when I needed her. I validated as much as I could. She said that she was happy with being on her own. She also let me know that she was seeing someone casually, a common friend of ours, that she had been seeing him for a couple of weeks but that she was not ready for anything serious. I told her that I hoped it made her happy, perhaps that was a mistake, but I don't see it as a an A since in my mind the R has been over for a while now. Of course, it was probably an EA long before it progressed to this.

She reiterated that she loved me "in her way." And she told me that she hoped we could be friends, maybe not now, but in the future. When I replied that we'll just have to see where life leads us, it provoked more tears in her. I asked her if there was anything else she wanted or needed to tell me, and then got up to leave. She asked if she could give me a hug, and I told her that I preferred not, and I left. I didn't do that quickly or coldly, but assertively. For the most part I think that I handled it about as well as could be expected, especially emotionally.

Honestly, I don't really feel crushed because I knew the R was over at this point anyway. The guy she is seeing is sort of irrelevant, he is almost a form of GAL for her. I get why she doesn't want anything serious because her previous relationship (me) had become such an emotional leech. The only downside is that I want to avoid interactions with this guy, who is heavily involved in the cycling community.

I think my days of standing are over at this point. I have no intention of avowing to leave the forum and never come back, because the support I have received on here has been invaluable. I still need help to become the stronger person I want to become. However, I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of my WAW's intentions or pronouncements. She has been steadfast in word and deed since BD that the R is over, despite her obvious guilt. Her actions have been consistent as well. I don't see much point in wasting valuable days, months, or years of my life clinging onto a ship that has already sailed. There are no children to complicate the situation, so making a clean break should be easier.

Thanks again for all the support.