When reading your posting, I was shaking my head because you are living what I went through 21 years ago right down to needing space and time to think, working on the marriage, and finding a receipt, etc.
Your h never left replay. He will be in replay for quite some time and this business about needing time and space to think is a bunch of BS. It's his way of smoothing things over and while doing so, he's trying to figure out a way to be w/the OW. Many of them say this stuff and at first, we truly believe that they need to the space to actually think about our relationship. As for the words "working on the relationship/marriage", when they have fallen down into the rabbit hole, they may attempt to work on it, but truly, they don't. I am sure many of us have heard those words and thought that they would make an attempt to work on the marriage.
As for the receipt in the car, he may have forgotten to take the receipt out of the car or he may have left it there hoping you would find it. Whatever the reason, now you are aware of where his mind is at and now you need to drop the rope completely. Treat him as a roommate and do not attempt to get him to see the error of his ways. The more you attempt this, the more he's going to pull away.
Since he's thinking of getting a place of his own, be sure you protect yourself and your bank accounts. He may talk for quite some time about getting a place or he could very well go out and find a place in the next couple of weeks. It will most likely depend upon how much pressure you put or him, as well as how much pressure the ow applies as well. I am sorry that he's still in the rabbit hole, but you've got to step back, no more discussions about the relationship and just drop the rope.
Try to remember that actions speak louder than words. Keep the focus on you!
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.
You have received excellent advice from three wise gals here.
You do need to drop the rope and find indifference. (((Believe6)))
I found standing really starts when the LBS becomes healed enough to stand down. While healing and sorting out our lives, standing is pretty much the default option. We start standing for our marriage, then our relationship, then our spouse, and then ourselves. Slowly, one by one those are lost and our “stand focus” shifts until it finds ourselves. Of course, M, R, and spouse were lost long ago - it’s our perception that finally sees this and we create the loss. Thus dropping the rope.
Some LBS don’t get divorced and may have a more difficult time seeing their marriage torn asunder. My own M was destroyed rather quickly and I still took time to realize it.
As our focus shifts to us, as we start standing for us, you discover your beliefs, your values, your convictions. Here we make the ones we want stronger and those we don’t want we alter or discard. It’s a time of discovery and investment into yourself.
I am standing for myself. Right or wrong, good or bad, I am currently still honouring my vows. I keep my word. It’s who I am. It’s something that really matters to me.
I’m not married. I am divorced. This standing is not some ploy to win XW back. It’s following and living my beliefs. I don’t even like XW right now, and I’m not even sure I’d want her back.
However, standing, at its heart, at its root, has a hope and desire of reconciliation. And yes, with everything that’s happened and happening, I still hope, love, care and not. Indifference and compassion is a strange landscape until you get used to it.
Focus on you. Dropping the rope is difficult. Think about picking up a different rope - your’s.
H needs to, he is driven to, traverse his path. He is still running from his torment. You need to focus on yourself; two paths - healing and the business side of this.
Currently with H revealing where his emotions are at, you need to ensure your financial protection and security. He wants to get an apartment, is ok being with a married woman and having her cheat on and break up her marriage. To me it looks like he is working up to making a leap, another BD type of scenario.
Let him. You cannot stop him. Focus on you and protect you. As others have said, H’s journey is not about you, it’s about him. It’s not about letting him walk it, he’s going to do that anyhow. Letting him walk his path is for you, and how you approach this.
You cannot reach him, nor rationalize with him, nor explain this to him. He is completely driven by irrational emotional forces. He needs to do whatever he is going to do. He needs to see that his problems followed him to OW. That you were not the cause, that they are from within.
Focusing on you heals you and gives the best chance at H getting through his journey. If you are still around and interested when he exits the land of fantasy, and he does inner work, etc. Well you can worry about that then. For right now you have a life to live. A good life. Believe it.
DnJ
Last edited by DnJ; 05/29/2001:09 PM.
Feelings are fleeting. Be better, not bitter. Love the person, forgive the sin.
Reading DnJ's wise words, I remembered something. When I was on the operating table for my mastectomy, my H was texting the OW about how freaked out he was, and worried. I found the text when we got home. Her screen name for him was, "My secret other wife." You can imagine my feelings finding that with all these bags and bandages hanging off of me. His response was so similar to your H's Wingy Windchime-gate response. He admitted it was wrong and said they hadn't been in contact but that he was so panicked and sad and had no other friend to go to. I told him he couldn't help me in anyway while I was recovering unless he ended it and he said he would. Her responses to him were about how I was going to be okay, etc. It was so confusing and horrible but I actually believed him at the time and had empathy for him. I remember thinking that he was so confused he thought that was okay to contact her and that he maybe did think of her as a friend, so it was innocent. That was 2014. She kept trying not to leave her husband but recently they got matching tatoos and she announced her divorce intention. Not sure how Covid has or hasn't changed things. He's still trying to force a sale of my home though I live in an epicenter of covid with two special-needs kids. I hope you can look at my sitch clearly and apply that to yours.
I know how you are feeling. You think we are not seeing things in your sitch because we aren't there. But we have all been there. If we are wrong, it won't change anything. Detaching and letting him go and finding your new normal is for you. If we are wrong, I assure you he will come back no matter what you do. He did wrong to a good woman, to his wife, against his vows, and until he can see that, he won't come back.
Last edited by Gerda; 05/29/2003:44 PM.
I believe I will see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord with courage. Be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.
Hi, Believe—you are receiving so much good advice from everyone (as always, it is helpful for me too!) and I just want to add something that I think may22 posted to HopeCA (and that others have echoed) that really stuck with me, something I needed to read at the time: dropping the rope doesn’t mean giving up hope for future R. It means letting go and turning the focus to you. You are a wonderful person. What does B6 need right now, this minute? What kind thing can you do for yourself? Also, for me, there was a time when I was reading “drop the rope” and “let go” over and over and over and concentrating so hard to try to do it as fast as possible. I wanted it to happen and tried to will it but, like many things in this process, have found that it happens at the pace it needs to happen. Keep reading the advice that helps; keep nudging this focus back to you. Is there a book you want to read or podcast you can listen to in order to help re-focus? I spent some time listening to the “Hope in Uncertain Times” meditations when they were streaming for free on Oprah and Deepak’s 21 Day Meditation Experience. I don’t know if they’re available for free anymore, but they usually have some meditations available to stream. May also suggested a YouTube video (sorry—I can’t remember which thread now!) by Ryan Holiday, “You control how you play,” and I found it helpful in shifting focus back to myself and dropping the rope...
Believe - Just started reading your thread and devoured it - we are in exactly the same situation on every point, I understand what you write, I am there. I also appreciate reading all the excellent advice that is being posted so I am going to follow this thread and you.
All the advice is so good - drop the rope, I too am working on that! Going to check out that Youtube video as I just don't really know how to do it. I too fear letting him go. I too believe in my heart its a step closer to an end I dont want. It was just a few months ago that I thought all was great - so still in shock as to where I am at right now.
I REALLY dont think any of this is going to amount to a hill of beans in the end . Oh, I would love for him to work this out - but this guy has other things going on in his head - and having a OW whispering sweet nothings and sheer adorations - is not helping. What I have learned on this board (just recently), is that you could do everything right per DB rules - and they still leave you. The wisdom being taught here is to detach detach detach so when it does happen, your just a bit more prepared.
Even if you do everything 100% perfectly starting today, this is still a months/years-long turnaround.
When you live with someone, there is a huge motivation to keep the peace. Everyone wants peace in their lives. If you blew up over every little thing that happened between you, you would both be miserable.
As such, you push things down and gloss over them as you live together, and the consequence of that is that resentment builds.
If resentment builds too much over time, eventually it becomes "too much" and people start contemplating an exit from the relationship. During this period, the relationship is really "on trial" but the other party is usually totally unaware of it.
Once the trial is over and the person has more or less resolved to leave, you're on the tail end of a years long process. It goes "things are overall good, but this stuff is annoying" -> "These things are really annoying but not bad enough that I want to leave" -> "These things are really annoying and I don't know if I can stay" -> "These things are really annoying and now I have to get out"
Unfortunately, in many cases the "annoying things" were never even articulated, or if they were, not with enough gravity. Once the "I need to leave" point is reached, whatever those things are get magnified (the coffee incident) and new ones get invented to help convince the departing partner that they are making the right choice, its an act in self-reinforcement which sometimes requires lots of fabrication.
Over time, you have *trained each other* what to expect from the other. He knows how you will react to any given situation, what you will say, how you will act, and he has decided that's not compatible with what he wants.
If you decide you don't want that either, and decide to make a change for yourself, initially he'll think you're just doing it as a gambit to get him back and as soon as he lets her guard down, you'll revert to who you "really are" in terms of who you've trained him that you are.
In order to turn this around he needs to *fully believe* that you've changed, and that you're not doing it just to get him back.
How do you convince him of that?
(1) Repetition, lots and lots of repetition in terms of reacting differently, acting differently, than you have historically.
(2) Acting differently when no one is looking
(3) Finding a life for your new self that doesn't require her. That's the only way you make it credible that your changes are for you. He won't even see them until she believes that you don't need him.
As a WAS, they will often displace blame on the LBS because they need to give themselves some relief, so eventually they are angry at you for what you did, and then they are angry at you again for what they did.
If they are in that state of mind, can you see why pursuing them or having relationship talks is just totally hopeless?
Can you see why if you address their past complaints *now* it just makes them angrier at you?
The three biggest things he's dealing with right now are fear and uncertainty about the future, guilt for what he's doing to you and your children, and anger and resentment over your role in pushing him to this point.
Everything you do right now is going to make him either more resentful, or less resentful.
If you increase his guilt, by blaming, shaming, or making her responsible for your emotional state, he's going to resent you more.
If you pursue him, argue with her, or try to convince him to work with you on the marriage, he's going to resent you for not letting him go and not giving him the space he wants.
If you immediately address all her historic complaints, he's going to resent the fact that you didn't do it sooner, and things had to get this bad for you to take action.
If you give him space, it’s going to make him less resentful.
If you live your own life, and are happy and joyful for your own sake, it’s going to make him less resentful.
If you are respectful in your communications with him, but not intimate, it’s going to make him less resentful.
*Eventually* she will burn through that big pile of resentment.
*Eventually* he will process his anger at you and it will dissipate.
UNTIL he goes through both of those processes, he will not see you as anything other than he believes you to be based on his prior training.
If he thinks you wear blue every day, and you start wearing red, he's still going to think of you as the girl that wears blue, because he literally can't see you right now.
WHILE he is processing his anger and resentment, YOU work on your changes. You do it slowly and methodically *for you*.
If you're a 2 today, you don't focus on being a 10, you focus on being a 3. Then you focus on being a 4. You be kind to yourself.
While his anger and resentment are burning down, your changes are building up.
When eventually he's had enough time and space that he can SEE YOU again, he'll be surprised by what she sees, and he'll question for the first time the assumptions he has held about you.
THAT is the beginning of your opportunity to turn things around, but you CANNOT control how long it will take him to process his anger and resentment, and you CANNOT accelerate it.
Buckle your seatbelt, it’s a marathon and you have to be patient and surrender to the fact that this relationship is NOT something you can control right now.
That's an uncomfortable feeling, but the sooner you own that fact, the better you'll do.
M:50 H:49 D:16 S:13 M:23 T:25 BD: Feb 25th 2020 EA/PA: Dec 2019 - June 11, 2020 Behind every broken woman is a broken man...
