Well...the good news is that my team won our division in our tournament. The bad news is my H brought the kids home and then wanted to talk. Ugh. Not good. He was all emotional and basically told me that he wants me to give up on him. He wants me to love the kids, love myself but not love him. In other words, please give up all hope that we will get back together. Damn my expressive face. It was a very long conversation. Probably did not handle it the way I should have. I didn’t get super emotional but we did talk about a lot of things and I was honest with him without being desperate. He wants to be free of the guilt he feels when he looks at me, I guess. He referred to himself as a broken man. Says he is not interested in dating other people but would be okay if I did (uh...no thanks). He sees me as a “friend” and gave me the whole ILYBNILWY speech... would like us to be friends. Weird coincidence but when he launched into his speech about how I should let him go (umm...you don’t live here anymore), the song “I Can’t Make You Love Me” by Bonnie Raitt was on. WTF?!? That was so not how I thought the rest of my evening was going to go. Turned a great weekend into a pretty crappy one. So I guess not much has changed except that he basically said everything that I already knew only it feels more ominous now. Like I really should give up hope and accept that he isn’t coming back. Surprisingly...I am not as shattered as I thought I would be. Sad but not coming apart. Really sad for my kids...that they have to settle for a part-time dad. They deserve better. We all do. Going to try to distract myself with a good tv show. Love and hugs to you all.
So put my energy to good use after my H left and emptied the rest of our closet of his clothes. There is now a large box and four large garbage bags filled with his stuff in the garage. I have been staring at his side of the closet for two months and decided i should just get it over with and accept he is likely not coming back.He seems pretty determined. Wants me to give up on him so I guess that is what I am going to do...as hard as that is. I realized tonight as he was talking and I was feeling like I was going to throw up that although I have been living my life as if, I have been holding on to a bit too much hope. Time to really drop the rope. Man that is hard to do. But my kids deserve to have a happy mom. They were both so glad to see me and happy to be home. They said they missed me and were homesick and that they don’t really want to stay at dad’s for more than two days. Of course, my H will blame that on me...he seems to conveniently forget that I’m the only real parent they have had for the last four years and that he has been largely absent. He keeps telling himself that he was running away from me but even when I was away, he was still running away and leaving his mom to look after the kids. But...it’s his world, the rest of us are just visiting.
Oh DjV, I am so sorry that you had to go through that.
Think of it objectively - as hard as it is to separate yourself - you are a therapist. You know what depression sounds and looks like. He is seeing everything from a point of hopelessness at the moment. Like a black cloud he can’t shake. At least he can see the. Cloud, even if he can’t yet see his way through it. He has discovered his escape is not really an escape. He brings that cloud with him. My H is still trying to search for his happiness in other things and until he realises that it is in him he is never going to want to come home. Hang in there. It is not yet without hope. Keep doing what you’ve been doing.
Also - the fact that you did not feel as bad as you feared you would means that in some ways, if it does not end in R, you know deep down you will be ok.
Thanks FS. It is 3:42 a.m. My body fell asleep for awhile but my mind has not shut off as I woke up at 3:00 and have pretty much given up on sleeping. Ugh...why couldn’t we have had this conversation on a Friday instead of a Sunday? I keep telling myself that nothing has really changed. He has just made audible what was previously unspoken...at least between him and I. Still, it feels different. My H has completely shut down his heart when it comes to me. He feels guilty and “sorry”but that’s it. I told him to stop saying that word because it means nothing to me. That’s like stabbing someone and leaving them lying on the ground bleeding and saying...”Oops didn’t mean to. It just happened.” Nope, not interested in his sorry’s. Those words are meaningless.
My H can definitely see the cloud. Unfortunately, he still thinks it has my face on it...that the feelings he has for me, or lack thereof, are what is holding him back from the life he wants and from being the person he wants to be. He has hope, just none for us as a couple. He wants to become H 2.0 - a good 25% dad, nothing else. But, as Bonnie Raitt sang so ironically in the background last night... I can’t make him love me. I have to accept that and move on somehow. I realized this morning that I can actually go weeks without seeing him. If I stay in my room when he picks up our D and he picks the kids up for his weekends after work, I really do not have to see him at all. That realization is comforting and scary all at the same time. The truth is that I miss my friend but I cannot continue to be his friend. Not right now when it hurts like this. Whenever I see him and things are “normal”, it just gives me too much hope and I fear I would be setting myself up for a big fall in the end. So I feel like I have to treat this more like an addiction, quit feeding it with false hope and go as dark as possible. Maybe I’ll feel differently in a few weeks once I’ve gained some perspective. I don’t know.
Things are always blackest at night. Give yourself a few days to morn and then once the emotions have sub-sided, think again about what this means for you.
Personally, I think continue GAL'g, detaching and 180'g. You will, when the time is right, drop the rope, and you will not even realise you have done it. You will just wake up and know that he is no longer what you want. Until then, limit your interactions, but do it kindly.
I read on one of Davides posts (in response to whether he should respond to a text or not) that he had decided against responding because it is easier for him to stay true to his values that way. I read this to mean he does not like the person he is when he is with her. That is true for all of us I think. I am an intelligent, confident and warm person. But when I am with him, those feelings of hurt and abandonment come back and, to counter it, I become cold and uncaring. My H is right, when I am in his company, sometimes my detachment does extend to my kids. I can see they are in pain because of the separation, but I cannot bare talking to him about it, so I shut any conversation down that directly or indirectly, talks about their pain (because their pain is my pain). Sometimes it is easier to just walk away.
You do not miss your friend. He has not been your friend for a long time - 4 years. You miss the memory of him. Question - in those years when he as absent all the time ... did you miss him?
Gosh FS... that is such a hard question to answer. I realized that I had been pretty shut down for those years. I had a lot of stress in my life... work was stressful, I was spending a lot of time in my car, I was just surviving really. When my H was around, we got along well but the connection between us was lacking. We were ships passing in the night. I missed him intensely but at some point, I just went into survival mode and shut that part of me down. I worried about him a lot. I knew there was something really wrong with him... I just thought it was mostly about his chronic physical pain and not his chronic mental pain. I asked him last night if he is happier and he said that sometimes he is. Is that really happiness or is it just relief from all the responsibility that he had grown to resent so much?
So it is apparent to me that the H I loved so much and worried about for all those years is GONE. Sometimes when I look into his eyes, I see him briefly and he looks at me warmly. But it is fleeting and usually replaced by a look of cold determination. He wants this part of his life to be over. It bothers him that I do not. He told me last night that I make him question his beliefs and values. I told him he has yet to be able to tell me what those are. He is upset with me for loving him. It would be easier if I hated him. I could get to that place if I really let myself but there is no good in that. It is just a different side of the same coin. Detachment is the goal. I will continue to strive for that.
He was all emotional and basically told me that he wants me to give up on him. He wants me to love the kids, love myself but not love him. In other words, please give up all hope that we will get back together. Damn my expressive face. It was a very long conversation. Probably did not handle it the way I should have. I didn’t get super emotional but we did talk about a lot of things and I was honest with him without being desperate. He wants to be free of the guilt he feels when he looks at me, I guess. He referred to himself as a broken man. Says he is not interested in dating other people but would be okay if I did (uh...no thanks). He sees me as a “friend” and gave me the whole ILYBNILWY speech... would like us to be friends.
DV very sorry you are going through this mess, but honestly this latest is nothing to be concerned about at all. This happens so frequently with WAH's that it's almost cliche'. I am not sure why walkaway husbands in particular feel the need to constantly remind their LBW about just how "done" they are, but honestly I suspect a lot of it is because they are trying to convince themselves that they are done. And I think they are also fishing around to see if you are still Plan B (especially with that comment about you dating). I really do think the response he was hoping for is you begging and pleading him to give you another chance. I hope you didn't, it sounds like you didn't? But here's the bottom line- he needs to learn to miss you and he hasn't yet. Keep up your detachment!
I'm sorry to hear about this latest interaction. It always hurts to hear those words even if we have heard them before or are think we are prepared for them. However you seem to be handling it well. I think you can use this as an impetus to work even more on your attachment. Like others have said you really do just need to let him go, to drop that rope. I know that when my W told me she was dating OM (this was 4 months post BD) that pushed me to let go even more and turn all of my attention and emotional energy to myself. It s@cks but it is a necessary part of the process. Definitely try to limit your interactions as much as possible.
You are right about anger and resentment not being the answer. They are often a part of the process of letting go, but true detachment, loving detachment, is not about either of those. I have had a lot of resentful thoughts over the past few months and am hoping to move past them soon as they seem to hold me back. It's really easy to remain stuck in that phase of the grief process.
Hang in there. You can do this.
W 34 Me 42 Married 7 years together 8 0 kids 1 beloved dog BD 4/6/2018 I moved out 4/7/2018 I moved back in alone 8/05/2018 I file 3/06/2019 D official 5/7/2019
Thank-you AS and Davide. I think I held myself together quite well and I definitely did not beg for another chance. I did, however, toss some truth darts his direction which may or may not have been a good idea. At points in our conversation, we actually laughed a bit... usually because of a sarcastic comment I made or a couple of times because he commented how stubborn I am in that I won’t just look at him and see a lost cause. He hates that I won’t hate him or give him a really good reason to feel the way that he does. I did, at the end of our conversation, tell him that I cannot be his friend. He commented that that really s*cked but he understood. He UNDERSTANDS every bad feeling I have...does not react, does not get angry... just sits there like a scolded child ready to take his punishment. I’m not going to give him that satisfaction. He is just so darn immature in how he just caves to every feeling that he has. He still cannot tell me what his values are. He definitely doesn’t live by any real ones that I can tell. He has literally brainwashed himself into thinking that S and D are the only path to happiness and I think this is the part that really makes me think he is gone. He told his D18 in January that he moved with me and the kids closer to my family so he could get a fresh start. Last night he told me he did it because he thought that I if lived closer to my twin, I would be okay if he left. This from a man who claims he didn’t (and still doesn’t) have a plan. I couldn’t help myself...I told him “congratulations...you have everything you wanted. Destruction of family complete.” Not my finest moment but honestly...it’s been four years of self-indulgent, deceitful behaviour on his part and I am not a perfect person by any means, but he is in a whole different category. I WISH I wanted to date right now or that I could just feel something different than this but I would be as dishonest as he is to bring some unsuspecting person into this mess. I just hate how short-sighted he is and how positive he is that his feelings are unchangable therefore everyone else should just get in line and live their lives according to what he wants or doesn’t want. That’s where resentment creeps in... the unfairness of this situation is hard to accept. But I am endeavouring to get there.
He referred to himself as a broken man. Says he is not interested in dating other people but would be okay if I did (uh...no thanks). He sees me as a “friend” and gave me the whole ILYBNILWY speech... would like us to be friends..
This really resonated with me. My H has said both of these things….broken, beyond repair and he wouldn’t blame me if I dated. The dating comment is projection, I think. They want permission through our actions that it’s o.k. for them to do so. Still not sure if my H is doing so, even though he agreed he wouldn’t for these two months. I told him why would I date? I'm married. Besides, the last complication I need in this mess is to launch into another relationship. I am finding myself first, and I like it.
I do believe they are broken, but whether they have the strength to put themselves together and into a better place for themselves is what the question is. Sometimes finding the next relationship and all the euphoria it brings is easier. Quick fix for a time, but ultimately doesn’t heal the soul. I am assuming “the talk” is imminent for me, since as far as I know H only has a place rented until the end of this month, and we are supposed to reevaluate the situation. I’m anxious about it, for sure. Hugs.
