Thank you so much for this post, DnJ. The distinction you make between hope and expectation is one I hadn't been able to make in such a clear way before. I need to work on letting go of expectations while holding on to hope. I logged in because I thought I had more to say in response to your words, but now I'm feeling overwhelmed.
I'm returning home tomorrow, and I'm not ready to face H again, to face the situation. This trip was filled with memories of old H and old R, and I don't want to see new H—it feels like I'm foolishly returning to an environment that just opens me up to be hurt by him over and over again, which, I suppose, is why detachment on my part is so necessary. I was able to let my guard down a little while I've been away, and now I have to put it back up. I don't remember what detachment from H feels like in this moment, but I suppose re-entry will be h*ll and then I'll slowly remember how to feel a kind of compassionate numbness toward him again.
I am also thinking I wish I could be anything but numb with him. I think we had two different experiences of our SSM over time, but we didn't really talk about it, and when, during/right around BD, I told him how much I did desire him, it made him angry. It's too late, etc. I worry he doesn't see me as a person who is capable of desire now, and that's a 180 I can't enact with him, which is hard for me to accept. Is the idea that, in observing other changes I make in myself (becoming the best version of me for me), he might eventually believe there would be possibilities for change in that area of the R as well? I wish I could do more than truly apologize for my part in this aspect of our M, which I did.
Happy New Year, all. I'm back in H-world again. Two things became clear to me when I walked in the door to our house yesterday afternoon (H was out, didn't show up until an hour ago.):
1. It's hard detaching when you're still sharing a small space with the person, and I need to be kind and patient with myself as a I strive for that.
2. The holiday vacation was so difficult because I was grieving the version of H I've known for 16 years, for not quite half of my life--I was in his hometown, and all the memories of him were so present, so real, I think I forgot temporarily that H does not exist anymore. He was there on the trip with me. I could summon him doing all the old H things I loved and admired.
Back in our home yesterday, I was reminded again that H is gone--I don't know if this new H is WH or MLCH or some combination, but he feels like a stranger most of the time. I wonder what the old H would say about him. Sometimes I think he is purposely trying to be the opposite of the H he was with me. He associates old H with unhappiness, therefore he must become new H, and it must be an H I wouldn't like (in his eyes, anyway). More justifying his decision? She wouldn't like me now because XYZ. But I don't think XYZ is going to make H happy in the long run either.
I was taking down the Christmas tree I'd decorated when H did get home. He walked through the room on his way to the bathroom and seemed uncomfortable talking to me--nervous maybe.
He asked how my parents were, barely pausing on his way, and I simply said, "They're good." I guess there's no need to give him full family updates like I normally would. I let him know I'd left a souvenir for him in the kitchen, a bottle of hot sauce from the restaurant he's been going to for 20+ years. He saw it and seemed appreciative.
I'm still struggling to find what it feels like to be compassionate and detached--what it feels like in my body. I'm left with questions after our brief exchange: Should I have said more? Should I have asked him how his holiday was? Should I have asked how his mom was, even though he didn't see his family? Is he spinning a story in his head that I don't care about him because I didn't ask? I'm sure he spins lots of untrue stories, so I know I shouldn't worry about that. I can't control the way he interprets things. But what is the level of engagement that leaves me feeling compassionate and not cold, that leaves me feeling secure in my own story, no matter how he spins it?
HaWho had a live in h for a long time. She is a very good example of having a live in who lived in the basement in his "dorm room" for quite some time. He eventually moved out and they are now divorced, but she is a survivor. Her threads are well worth the time to read them.
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
If I did this or that? would it make a difference probably not-
some things may help you: being patient, kind and compassionate living your life gal, being upbeat and fun may when appropriate.. being mysterious ect, making a new life friends activities, staying busy and being available at times when it appears he is doing the leading...when he wants to engage and letting go of him finding support, grieving and healing
We do these to adjust to our new normal and we can watch from a distance to see where our H land You will get clues and you watch his actions
and it is definitely harder to live with them
married 14 years H 42 bomb 2/07 IDLYA D final 3 /09 M ow D ow
Thank you for these words of support, peace. I can imagine in the future I will be proud of myself if I can overall maintain patience, kindness, and compassion for H, even as I distance from him.
Job, thank you for pointing me to HaWho's threads. I've been reading them and thinking about the similarities and differences. My H hasn't proposed any activities together since BD or shown any kind of affection, but I think it's in his personality to block out all old life and focus on new life/new friends in order to do make that compartmentalizing easier, and in order to move forward with his decision. He did offer me a piece of candy, which, considering how much we used to enjoy buying/eating candy together, is the kind of tiny positive gesture I note from time to time—that, or initiating some small convo with me. I wish there was more, but that would probably only make detaching harder on my end.
I don't remember what detachment from H feels like in this moment, but I suppose re-entry will be h*ll and then I'll slowly remember how to feel a kind of compassionate numbness toward him again.
I am also thinking I wish I could be anything but numb with him.
Originally Posted by cardinal
I'm still struggling to find what it feels like to be compassionate and detached--what it feels like in my body. I'm left with questions after our brief exchange: Should I have said more? Should I have asked him how his holiday was? Should I have asked how his mom was, even though he didn't see his family? Is he spinning a story in his head that I don't care about him because I didn't ask? I'm sure he spins lots of untrue stories, so I know I shouldn't worry about that. I can't control the way he interprets things. But what is the level of engagement that leaves me feeling compassionate and not cold, that leaves me feeling secure in my own story, no matter how he spins it?
Compassionate and detached.
Detached is your emotional response being under your control, as opposed to an uncontrolled reaction from his behaviours and emotional state. You emotional uncouple from him. It is similar to how one is intellectually detached.
We control our thoughts much easier than emotions. Our thoughts do get influenced by our emotions and even get away from us. However, one can get control back, and train one’s self to accomplish that quicker and more often. This, and time, helps gain detachment.
Once your emotions are not dragged about by H’s actions, you are on your way to finding indifference. The place of numbness towards H; the feeling of numb or more accurately the absence of feelings.
Indifference is weird and perfectly ok. The void created by one’s once so strong emotions for their spouse does take some getting use to. Other emotions, will seem much larger than they really are when next to this void. Flirtatious feelings will be amplified when contrasted to the numbness that now exists. Guard yourself against this - for the void is only temporary.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and this emotional vacuum is no exception. Vengeance, anger, hatred, attraction, will fill the empty space if one is not aware. And they loom large. Make the choice to fill the void with kindness, compassion, and empathy.
Your feelings towards H will be numb or placed away for safe keeping. Choosing compassionate detachment is harder, and so worth it.
With compassion and empathy, along with the understanding you gain from all you experience and see, letting go happens naturally and is less forced. Realizing one’s fears and finding acceptance are further steps along the path.
With such a compassionate and empathic start - that time of the emotional void - forgiveness is more imaginable and achievable.
And those stored away feelings for our spouse do/will return. They no longer haunt nor hurt. They exist, they are realized, they are felt, and they are ok.
I hope my map helps you, even though I did share much further of it than I original intended. However, it might answer your question.
My level of engagement with XW is nil. I am compassionate and not cold. And proud and secure in my story and life.
Compassionate detachment and forgiveness. Both are very worthy and achievable goals.
DnJ
Feelings are fleeting. Be better, not bitter. Love the person, forgive the sin.
After reading more posts and thinking more about my H, I find myself trying to understand what I now see as my H's NGS and how that maybe intersects with MLC. Is what's happening with him a somewhat inevitable result of a lifetime of NGS or a combo of MLC/NGS? If anyone has any experience or insight with this in a partner or themselves, I would love to hear your thoughts.
I suspect this would have happened to him eventually no matter who he was married to. I can definitely see how confronting NGS in oneself could lead to MLC (though I don't think H knows about NGS or thinks of his own behavior in these terms, I think his crisis in part involves recognizing his behaviors have not actually made him happy, as he always believed himself to be the happiest person in the world).
I've found myself nodding along with aspects of various other posts: my H tended to avoid conflict because he said he didn't want to upset me and interfere with my work; he prided himself on being different than stereotypical guys and often discussed their behavior in a negative light; he was raised by a single mother who he's always focused on pleasing; most of his close friends have been women, etc.
I can see how he didn't have the skills to process feelings of sadness or anger or resentment, that he only knew to cope by hiding these feelings and by not acknowledging them, and how that probably contributed to the increase in outbursts of anger. To me, the anger seemed disproportionate to whatever was going on, and I think this attitude of mine made him feel like I was dismissing his anger. I thought he was making progress when, at one point a few years ago, he told me he realized he only grew more angry at himself when he expressed anger--that he felt he shouldn't ever be angry at me, or angry/sad in general, as he had a happy life. Of course, I now recognize how I started working to avoid conflict as well, because I didn't want to make him angry, since I couldn't understand the anger and didn't know how to resolve it.
In the past, he'd also expressed doubts that I really loved him, or that I was really happy, even when I assured him I did and was. I can see now how our SSM would make him doubt that, despite my other displays of affection, despite the other positives in our R, so I don't want to discount his feeling, but I also see now it might be part of a larger issue of low self esteem for him, as he would often worry about seeming like a "bad" guy, or a "typical" guy.
What else? I noticed his mom was quick to go from warm to cold with him if he disappointed her in some way, so I can see how maybe he's tied his self-worth to keeping the women in his life happy. A few years ago, she had a mental health crisis in her life that I think stemmed from her own people-pleasing issues, and I wonder if H is going through his own version of this now.
I recognized some of these nice guy tendencies in H when we married, but I never thought of them as having a potential downside. At that time, I admired how his mother was so important to him, how kind and loving he was, etc. I guess I'm thinking about all of this because, well, hindsight, but also because if I try to understand H, it helps me have more compassion for what he is going through. Otherwise, I find myself stuck wishing there was some way H could recognize and change these tendencies in himself without ending our M, and without running hard in the other direction, since he seems to have flipped from MNG to "I only think about me now!" mirror/alien H.
Maybe he has to go to this other extreme in order to find a middle ground for himself? That's the journey I hope he can make. That's the journey I can't help him with.
Then there's the fixer part of me wishing I could have known about NGS years ago, because if I'd understood the root of some of his behavior, I would have been able to respond to it myself in a more healthy way, and maybe we could have avoided everything escalating into MLC mode...
A large majority of posters are fixers and trust me when I say this....we couldn't have fixed our situations because we aren't the ones that stunted the spouses who are in crisis. What happened to them happened when they were children and yes, they would have gone through a crisis whether it be w/us, someone else or they were living alone. The crisis was going to happen to them because of being stunted emotionally at an early stage.
What we can do is what you are doing right now, reading and educating yourself on MLC, depression, NGS, etc. It helps us better understand some of what they are going through. The scars of hurt are very deep within them and it takes a very long time for those scars to begin to bubble up at some point when the triggers are set into motion. Again, we couldn't have known that this was going to happen until we were hit w/the BD.
They have to go through the entire crisis to come out the other side. Some will come out more mature and more like the old selves, others will retain some of the quirky behavior and others will be lost forever, i.e., searching and being the old men/women in crisis who never actually grow up. Let's hope and pray that your spouse can navigate his crisis and come out the other side a whole, mature man who is more than ready to reconcile and be a wonderful husband to you once again.
Continue to educate yourself on MLC, depression, NGS, etc., but understand...you didn't break him, therefore you can't fix him. You have to accept the fact that you cannot fix him...he has to do it on his own. You can be a friend to him, listen to what he has to say and only offer up advice if he should ask for it. Right now, the most important lesson is to listen.
Dig deeper for patience and as you travel the path of self discovery for yourself, you will learn how to more patient and compassionate. Yes, there are going to be days when you would like to choke him...but those feelings will pass as you continue to observe from afar as to just how lost he is right now.
Hang in there!
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
Try to avoid the analysis paralysis trap. It all becomes mental masturbation at a certain point. We all did it. We all try to intellectualize the response. To seek to understand. Hard to see it now, but you'd be better off trying to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Until he wants to figure out why he did this and how to fix it, none of it matters, except you of course. You always matter.
DnJ, I so appreciate your taking the time to walk me through these concepts. Compassionate and detached. Sometimes I get lost in threads where compassion for a spouse seems to be lacking (and I understand how easy it is for that to happen—I struggle with it some days too!); your words are centering, grounding. I know I will read and re-read them on this journey, because I am not there yet.
Originally Posted by DnJ
Detached is your emotional response being under your control, as opposed to an uncontrolled reaction from his behaviours and emotional state. You emotional uncouple from him. It is similar to how one is intellectually detached.
[...]
Once your emotions are not dragged about by H’s actions, you are on your way to finding indifference. The place of numbness towards H; the feeling of numb or more accurately the absence of feelings.
I have come a long way in not letting my H's behaviors or moods control my actions. I feel pretty confident about that at the moment. I'm better at managing my emotional responses in that I don't let my emotions dictate my actions. But I haven't reached indifference, though I might sense it from time to time.
This feels especially important to me:
Originally Posted by DnJ
Vengeance, anger, hatred, attraction, will fill the empty space if one is not aware. And they loom large. Make the choice to fill the void with kindness, compassion, and empathy.
Your feelings towards H will be numb or placed away for safe keeping. Choosing compassionate detachment is harder, and so worth it.
I do not have to erase these feelings—I can't right now, anyway. I like the image of tucking them away for safe keeping.
