Well, well, well....It appears I have a most insistent alien trying to catch me at home!
Here's the scoop: I was out in the yard a couple of weekends ago pulling up all the weeds that grew from the seedlings of the weeds in my neighbor's yard that happened to blow into my yard. (Was that really a sentence?;-) ) I got done with the yard and BOY, did my back hurt! I looked over at the flowerbed in front of my house that I still had to de-weed, and thought, "Forget THIS! I'll leave THAT for another day!"
So, long story short, I never did get back to the flowerbed that weekend.
I came home late on a wednesday night week-before-last, and found that half of my flowerbed had been weeded, and the weeds thrown off to the side of the flowerbed.
If you're doing someone a favor, who does a half job? ;-) That was the first indicator it was my XW. I confirmed it by asking my family, neighbors, etc., if they had done me the favor of weeding my flowerbed. "No" was the predictable answer from all those fronts.
Which only leaves you-know-who.
She has pruned a rose and a small section from my rosebush in that flowerbed before (wound up killing the plant because she did it at the wrong time of the season, but that's a different story altogether), so her doing something else in the flowerbed was a mild surprise. What REALLY caught me off guard, is that I found another section weeded again when I came home today!
I've had some time to think about the rationale behind the visits and think I have it figured out. She's still trying to get her Social Security card and Birth Certificate back from me.........the stuff that I told her the last time she asked for them so long ago that she could pick up from me at my work, which would save her a 30-minute drive to my place.
She probably doesn't even remember that conversation....
Oh well, she'll figure it out soon enough when she finally catches me at home. Which won't be easy, now that I've GAL!
Catch me, catch me, if you can, little alien!!!!
(Oh, and many, many thanks for the yardwork help! ;-) )
PATIENCE AND FORTITUDE CONQUER ALL THINGS. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
DBing and MLC take their toll....Please provide exact CHANGE. -Jimbo
What does it mean to me? It is nothing.....except a passing curiosity that I file away in my mental attic, just like all the other observations I make about other people and their psychological idiosyncracies.
You and I have both been at this long enough to know that MLCers say and do all sorts of crazy stuff...this was just one of those times.
No, she has said absolutely nothing to me, which is par for the course...nothing new there. Which is why it struck me so oddly.
After all, if an old flame that you hadn't had contact with for years just showed up one day out of nowhere and, without saying a word, just started cleaning your pool, wouldn't you be the slightest bit curious as to what was going through their head?
I just made a speculation about the why of it all, based on the focus of her interactions with me in the past.
Distraction of my life? Hmmmmmmm........
Yeah, I suppose you could consider it a distraction.......in the same way that one might be distracted by why someone chooses one word over another in a conversation, or why one person's button gets pushed about a particular topic, while the same topic has no effect on someone else.
You observe it...then consider it....maybe speculate about it a bit....
...and then you file it away, and move forward with other things.
Are you seeing something more significant in her actions?
PATIENCE AND FORTITUDE CONQUER ALL THINGS. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
DBing and MLC take their toll....Please provide exact CHANGE. -Jimbo
Today is Sunday, April 10, 2022. I have been D for a little over 12 ½ years. Not a word from my XW for a little less than that. A true L.O.S. (Loss Of Signal).
But just because you have gone through a D, it does not mean that you have to stop loving your ex-spouse.
Call me crazy…. Call me nuts…. But yes. Even after “all this time”….
I AM STILL STANDING!!!!!!!
If we never reconcile, so be it. If, by the grace of God, she DOES wake up one day. Then I will be a better man than the one she left. Because I followed the wise guidance of my fellow travelers and mentors. And focused on me.
Whatever happens, I will be better. Better because of GAL. Better because of the knowledge I have gleaned about MLC. Better because of this whole experience. All of it.
STILL moving forward…...not on.
PATIENCE AND FORTITUDE CONQUER ALL THINGS. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
DBing and MLC take their toll....Please provide exact CHANGE. -Jimbo
I haven't read your threads, but see you're back after a 10 year hiatus.
What does "I Am Still Standing" mean from a practical perspective? If you haven't heard from your ExW in over a decade...have you reached out to her? have you dated other people?
Me:39 Ex-W:37 M:7 T: 9 S:6 D:3 BD/IHS/Confirm EA/PA: Feb '20 OM1 affair ends: May '20 W/OM2 & moves out: June-July '20 W files for D: Jul20 OM2 confirmed: 9/2020 Divorced: May '21
I haven't read your threads, but see you're back after a 10 year hiatus.
Call it "snooping", if you will. 😁 But unlike snooping on an ex, this is the good kind.
I was talking with a guy at my church who had asked me if I had ever been married. One thing led to another, and I found myself sharing DB/MLC knowledge with a guy that had most likely had a MLC spouse, and that that had most likely been, at least, a contributing factor in his D. Which led me to think about all the LBS guys I had run across in my time post D. Which led me to a realization the other day about just how far I had come in my life, compared to the days of my postings here. Which naturally brought me back here to the start of it all.
Lots of positive changes to the board since I was last here. Back then, the mods didn't have the "welcome information pack and required reading list" like they do now. They were a little less "hands on" with newbies, and we had to muddle through and really dig through the posts to discover the things that we didn't even know we didn't know. MUCH easier now to get up to speed quickly. Which is a REALLY good thing, since newbies come here during an overwhelming time in their lives, and the last thing they need is to be overwhelmed by trying to figure out by themselves what they need to know in a time of great crisis.
Originally Posted by BL42
What does "I Am Still Standing" mean from a practical perspective?
It means leaving the door open to reconciliation, but recognizing that you will be ok whether it happens or not, because you did (and are doing!) the work on yourself.
It means learning to apply the idea of Wu Wei: the concept of "action through non-action"...at least when it comes to actions directed toward your MLC spouse/ex.
It means moving from a victim mentality to a victor mentally, by recognizing that you have no control over others and their actions, but you DO have control over YOUR decisions and YOUR actions. YOU decide the boundaries of recognizing when it's over FOR YOU, and when you're done with leaving the door to reconciliation open. And, for me, today is not the day.
It does NOT mean plotting and scheming how you can make your loved one come back or sitting around waiting, hoping, praying your ex-spouse will finally contact you.
You have been on the board long enough to notice the theme here, yes?
The practical aspect of standing is focused on working on yourself...not to "get her back", but for you.
In a sense, my XW and I are on the same journey, just using different roads. Mine is smooth and requires planning. Hers is rough, jostling, and haphazard. I have a GPS, she doesn't. But even with the differences, the objective and methodology are still the same:
"It's all about ME, ME, ME!!!" 😁
Originally Posted by BL42
If you haven't heard from your ExW in over a decade...have you reached out to her?
Nope. I will continue to give her the gift that she has given me - the gift of time to find herself on her own terms, without distraction. When/if she is ready, she knows where I am.
I will not contact her unless absolutely necessary. I thought that time was here, when I found out recently that the folder containing my vital records (Birth card, Social security card, etc.) that ALWAYS gets placed back in the back of the drawer in the roll top desk promptly after being used, wasn't there when it should have been. But it turns out that replacements are much easier to get than expected if you still have your passport.
No, in recognizing that situations like the one above might require me to know where she is able to be contacted, that is the only "checking", or "snooping" I do. And, by extension, that is the only sort of "contact" I have with her. It's strange how, purely as an unintended byproduct, just that one little piece of info has the potential to speak volumes about where she is in her journey.
Originally Posted by BL42
have you dated other people?
Yes...but a qualified yes.
MLC is such a foreign concept to most people. It seems like they can't grasp the idea unless they have experienced it for themselves. It's just too far out there for them to wrap their heads around. "What did YOU do to make her leave?", "People don't just leave for no reason!", etc. etc. etc. My friends and family were pestering me about the whole "you just need to get back on the horse" thing. I couldn't seem to make them understand, no matter how much I explained to them. They ultimately wore me down to the point that, against my better judgement, I listened to their logic and dated one woman for a while. It was forced from the start- a sort of "fake it til you make it". And it just went downhill from there. The blessing in disguise was that I had the skill set to recognize over time that SHE was at the very beginnings of having a MLC! Which made it simpler to extract myself from the situation when she eventually told me, "I'm just not into you anymore". It made it much easier to get the hell out of there without hurting feelings, AND had the added benefit of FINALLY getting friends and family off my back. "Well, at least you tried".
PATIENCE AND FORTITUDE CONQUER ALL THINGS. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
DBing and MLC take their toll....Please provide exact CHANGE. -Jimbo
Have you ever had an idea hit you like a bolt from out of the blue that made all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly drop into place?
That bolt hit me a handful of days after reading through my last response above. I've only now just had a chance to make a post about it.
One of the last things that my (now) XW ever said to me was related to her removing all of her things from the marital home. She said something to the effect of, "Now, if you feel I've taken something that I shouldn't have, just let me know". I had always puzzled over that statement for YEARS, since she never once let herself into our place while I was gone and took anything of mine that I could ever tell.
But she did...I just never realized it until many, many years later.
It was the vital records folder.
It not only had my vital records in it, but hers as well.
...and its removal allowed for plausible deniability that it was a "mistake", but that puzzling statement that I had noodled over off and on for all of this time pointed to it being "an accident on purpose".....and a way for her to try to keep tabs on me, and make me maintain contact with her without her contacting me!
Now it all makes sense. Even the bit about her supposedly needing her Social Security card and Birth Certificate back from me, yet never making arrangements to get them. Because she had the folder all the time! It practically screamed the meta-message, "DID YOU CHECK??? DID YOU EVEN NOTICE THAT IT'S GONE??? DID YOU NOTICE THAT I HAVE SOMETHING OF YOURS.....SOMETHING YOU NEED??? AREN'T YOU GOING TO COME OUT OF THE DARK AND CONTACT MEEEEEEEE??????"
I can only imagine the frustration she must've felt when the unintended meta-message came back, "Nope. Didn't check. Because it must still be here since you're telling me you need the folder. You wouldn't do that if you had it. So if you need it, let me know when you want to come and get it".
It was a bittersweet revelation. Sad that she was trying so hard to maintain what little control she felt she had over her life, and it wasn't working how she wanted. But happy, because of the hidden meaning behind the whole chain of events.
I had the great privilege of knowing the legendary Jack3Beans both on and off this board. He was a truly great man and a wise friend. He once shared with me his belief that, unless you've done something extreme to burn the bridge, "....[T]hey always try to come back. When they do, you may not want them anymore, but they always try to come back". He also shared with me that, when they start piecing their lives back together again, they save the relationships and people that mean the most to them for last.
"The mystery of the missing folder" has been solved. Since this whole chain of events started as one of the last contacts I had with my XW, if there was ever a doubt in my mind as to whether I had burned the bridge or not, it shows me definitively that, in her eyes, I had not.
I'm very much looking forward to testing my good friend's theory.
PATIENCE AND FORTITUDE CONQUER ALL THINGS. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
DBing and MLC take their toll....Please provide exact CHANGE. -Jimbo
I had the great privilege of knowing the legendary Jack3Beans both on and off this board. He was a truly great man and a wise friend. He once shared with me his belief that, unless you've done something extreme to burn the bridge, "....[T]hey always try to come back. When they do, you may not want them anymore, but they always try to come back". He also shared with me that, when they start piecing their lives back together again, they save the relationships and people that mean the most to them for last.
"The mystery of the missing folder" has been solved. Since this whole chain of events started as one of the last contacts I had with my XW, if there was ever a doubt in my mind as to whether I had burned the bridge or not, it shows me definitively that, in her eyes, I had not.
I'm very much looking forward to testing my good friend's theory.
Jack was a great help to me too in a very dark time and did encourage my own optimism about things turning around for me too.
Do they turn around and try to come back? I'm certainly not expecting that in my own case even though I left that door open for far longer than perhaps I should have. There wasn't the acrimony in my situation that there is in many. What anger I felt wasn't spent on blasting her and her anger just rolled off my back.
As far as I can know, my xW has settled into her new life and I'm just someone she used to know. At the time I felt that she was following the MLC playbook right down to getting the obligatory tattoo. Your own case may be different - I can't judge that - and your ex may indeed turn around. I'm glad to see though that you are out there living your life and not putting it on hold for something that may never happen and that perhaps even if the chance of it comes up, you and she may have evolved into people that aren't compatible.
One thing that Jack told me that still sticks to this day was to disregard the odds. Even a 1 in a 1000 chance has a 1 in it.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
