Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Page 3 of 11 1 2 3 4 5 10 11
Joined: Jun 2015
Posts: 6,119
Likes: 408
B
Member
Offline
Member
B
Joined: Jun 2015
Posts: 6,119
Likes: 408
See my signature.
BD 4/6/15
D 12/23/16 Merry Christmas. RME

Yep. Divorced.

From a religious perspective (Catholic), if I slept with another man that is considered adultery, even if I legally married him first.

Kinda strange, coming from an organization that has covered up so many horrific scandals in the past 20 years, but priests are people too, and fallible.

I think the best course of action regarding standing and for how long, is to sit with your own personal sitch, do a deep dive and decide what does and does not make sense to you, as an individual.

It's between you, your conscious and the God of your understanding.

That's my take.


M 20+ T25+
S ~15.5 (BD)
BD 4/6/15
D 12/23/16

"Someone I loved once gave me
A box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand,
That this too, was a gift."
~ Mary Oliver
1 member likes this: MikeP
Joined: Jan 2000
Posts: 28,295
Likes: 112
job Offline
Member
Offline
Member
Joined: Jan 2000
Posts: 28,295
Likes: 112
Mike,

So, the one year anniversary is coming up....what are you planning to do on that day? I would suggest that you have something planned and make sure it is something that you are going to enjoy doing. Toss the calendar out...you are watching it too closely.

As for temperature checks...leave them at the door. Do not sit there watching and waiting to see if she'll wake up. The old saying "a watched pot never boils" is so very true when it comes to situations such as ours. The best thing you can do is just leave them be and continue moving forward. Standing and moving forward is not sitting there and waiting. You've made a lot of progress and I know that this is frustrating as heck because she treats you like a friend at times.

Also, continue to make changes in your life. The changes have to be for you and must become permanent. If you are making the changes just because of something she has said, it will not work.

You, and only you, will know when you have had enough and want to file. For now, I don't think you are ready to do so. I think you still have a lot of hope and determination to continue standing. Do not allow others to sway you from your path.

Continue moving forward. Live your life to the fullest and enjoy today for it is a present. The future will be revealed when it is ready. No one can change the past. All we can do is learn from the past and continue to move forward.


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.
1 member likes this: MikeP
Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 13,533
Likes: 78
C
Member
Offline
Member
C
Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 13,533
Likes: 78
Originally Posted by MikeP
You’re correct in that I need to stand for myself.
Never quite thought about it that way. Maybe it’s been said by others but didn’t click.
YES

DnJ did not invent that idea but he is absolutely correct that this is the thing to do.

How you make all that look is really up to you.

One of my friends that used to post here was divorced for quite a while and I just learned the he has now remarried his ex-w. I have to say that really surprised me.
So you never know how the story is going to turn out.

Keep moving forward for you.


Me-70, D37,S36
2 members like this: job, MikeP
Joined: Jun 2015
Posts: 6,119
Likes: 408
B
Member
Offline
Member
B
Joined: Jun 2015
Posts: 6,119
Likes: 408
So in my family, no divorces until the 1980s.

Mom's side: 5 divorces, all my generation. One cousin is divorced twice and on wife #3.

Dad's side:

Divorce #1: My Uncle's wife had a MLC and kicked him out 2 weeks before their 25th wedding anniversary. They remained apart for about 15 years. Attended my wedding together in '94. Ended up living together the last decade of their lives. Go figure.

Divorce #2: my cousin's husband cheated on her - divorced at 11 months. annulled actually

Divorce #3: My cousin. This is interesting. He and wife #1 divorced. He much later married wife #2 ... and they also divorced in due course. And married wife #3 (Who is actually wife #1) ... and divorced her a second time. And married wife #4 (who again, is now wife #1 and 3) only to have that blow up some years later and they are now divorced. Yes. He married the same woman 3x. Turns out she had a problem with alcohol. Couldn't stay sober for the long haul. Really sad. If she maintained her sobriety, I'd bet $$$ they'd still be together


Divorce #4: Another cousin ... elder brother to the one who married the same woman 3x

Divorce #5: Another cousin, their sister ...

No idea what was going on there - three of the four kids got divorced. My uncle and aunt were very happily married for 50 years ending in his passing from cancer/stroke and complications due to chemo.

For context, I have 29 first cousins, all but two married.

I had 12 aunts and uncles ...

Last edited by bttrfly; 03/23/23 08:26 PM.

M 20+ T25+
S ~15.5 (BD)
BD 4/6/15
D 12/23/16

"Someone I loved once gave me
A box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand,
That this too, was a gift."
~ Mary Oliver
Joined: Jun 2015
Posts: 6,119
Likes: 408
B
Member
Offline
Member
B
Joined: Jun 2015
Posts: 6,119
Likes: 408
For clarification: I'm not advocating you stop standing. (and really, is it necessary for me to have to clarify this? And yes, taken from the passive aggressive tone of previous posters, it apparently is. Getting really very tired of that. No need to wonder why I and others choose NOT to post here as much any more).

So Mike, I am saying that it's an individual choice when and if to stop standing. And yes, you stand because that's what makes sense to you. You do something else when standing no longer makes sense to you. The decision to stand is about you, but I don't understand standing when the ex is married to someone else. I don't need to understand it, but I'll still say it again, that makes zero sense to me, so I'm not doing it. If someone feels otherwise, more power to them. It's a free country, for the time being at least.

Your sitch has a lot of positives. The date on the calendar is just a number. Again, take yourself to a movie or out to dinner or do something fun. Keep the focus on you. Make the changes for you. Anything you get from w is a bonus.

Others will tell you their stories about when they decided to stop standing or if they still are standing, but in all cases, it's a very personal decision. The only advice I give you or anyone else is to do a very deep dive into your own belief system and into how you want to spend the rest of your life before you make a decision to stay or go. You will absolutely know the right answer for yourself.


M 20+ T25+
S ~15.5 (BD)
BD 4/6/15
D 12/23/16

"Someone I loved once gave me
A box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand,
That this too, was a gift."
~ Mary Oliver
Joined: Oct 2022
Posts: 312
Likes: 59
M
MikeP Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
M
Joined: Oct 2022
Posts: 312
Likes: 59
Originally Posted by bttrfly
For clarification: I'm not advocating you stop standing. (and really, is it necessary for me to have to clarify this? And yes, taken from the passive aggressive tone of previous posters, it apparently is. Getting really very tired of that. No need to wonder why I and others choose NOT to post here as much any more).

So Mike, I am saying that it's an individual choice when and if to stop standing. And yes, you stand because that's what makes sense to you. You do something else when standing no longer makes sense to you. The decision to stand is about you, but I don't understand standing when the ex is married to someone else. I don't need to understand it, but I'll still say it again, that makes zero sense to me, so I'm not doing it. If someone feels otherwise, more power to them. It's a free country, for the time being at least.

Your sitch has a lot of positives. The date on the calendar is just a number. Again, take yourself to a movie or out to dinner or do something fun. Keep the focus on you. Make the changes for you. Anything you get from w is a bonus.

Others will tell you their stories about when they decided to stop standing or if they still are standing, but in all cases, it's a very personal decision. The only advice I give you or anyone else is to do a very deep dive into your own belief system and into how you want to spend the rest of your life before you make a decision to stay or go. You will absolutely know the right answer for yourself.

Thanks bttrfly. No need to clarify, I understood what you were saying. Please feel free to post on my thread no matter what you have to say. I like honesty, period. I don't have to like the message, just know that I will always appreciate it. I miss LH and Mach, they were usually blunt and to the point as well. I appreciate everyone's input no matter the delivery. My heart says that I will stand for a long, long time provided there is no evidence of another A. You are correct in that my sitch does have a lot of positives. I feel stupid sometimes posting about my sitch when others have it so much worse. It doesn't change what I've gone through though. Need to count my blessings and remain positive. My plan for BD is to spend the day hiking. There's a local place I've been visiting since I was a little kid, it's my fav place in the world to be honest. Thousands of acres of beautiful forest and trails. I go there a lot. Thanks for your help and please keep steering me in the right direction, I appreciate it.


M:50 W:48
T:33 M:25
D23, S17, D13
BD:4/2/22
1 member likes this: Dats000
Joined: Oct 2022
Posts: 312
Likes: 59
M
MikeP Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
M
Joined: Oct 2022
Posts: 312
Likes: 59
Originally Posted by job
Mike,

So, the one year anniversary is coming up....what are you planning to do on that day? I would suggest that you have something planned and make sure it is something that you are going to enjoy doing. Toss the calendar out...you are watching it too closely.

As for temperature checks...leave them at the door. Do not sit there watching and waiting to see if she'll wake up. The old saying "a watched pot never boils" is so very true when it comes to situations such as ours. The best thing you can do is just leave them be and continue moving forward. Standing and moving forward is not sitting there and waiting. You've made a lot of progress and I know that this is frustrating as heck because she treats you like a friend at times.

Also, continue to make changes in your life. The changes have to be for you and must become permanent. If you are making the changes just because of something she has said, it will not work.

You, and only you, will know when you have had enough and want to file. For now, I don't think you are ready to do so. I think you still have a lot of hope and determination to continue standing. Do not allow others to sway you from your path.

Continue moving forward. Live your life to the fullest and enjoy today for it is a present. The future will be revealed when it is ready. No one can change the past. All we can do is learn from the past and continue to move forward.

Thanks Job. The friend thing is annoying at times, better than being enemies though. You are correct, I'm not ready to file. I will continue on and see where it goes. The only changes I've made because of things she has said are related to how I interact with her. I'm trying to make the changes now that should have been made years ago for me to be a better, happier person. Thanks again.


M:50 W:48
T:33 M:25
D23, S17, D13
BD:4/2/22
Joined: Oct 2022
Posts: 312
Likes: 59
M
MikeP Offline OP
Member
OP Offline
Member
M
Joined: Oct 2022
Posts: 312
Likes: 59
Originally Posted by Cadet
Originally Posted by MikeP
You’re correct in that I need to stand for myself.
Never quite thought about it that way. Maybe it’s been said by others but didn’t click.
YES

DnJ did not invent that idea but he is absolutely correct that this is the thing to do.

How you make all that look is really up to you.

One of my friends that used to post here was divorced for quite a while and I just learned the he has now remarried his ex-w. I have to say that really surprised me.
So you never know how the story is going to turn out.

Keep moving forward for you.

Thanks Cadet. Moving forward and staying positive. Making changes for me. Seems pretty straight forward, easy to get off track though. Thanks again.


M:50 W:48
T:33 M:25
D23, S17, D13
BD:4/2/22
2 members like this: Rockon, Dats000
Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 4,687
Likes: 236
M
Member
Offline
Member
M
Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 4,687
Likes: 236
Hey Mike....

Some good points raised, and things YOU should be thinking about.....

Standing VS. waiting....


For me, standing was about taking that hard look into the mirror and figuring out what I didn't like about myself....

De-constructing and defining who I was when the lights went out, and making strides to never be that old asshat again...

Taking the time to actually care about who I was as a Father, Friend, Husband, Partner, Son, Lover, and Man.

Working through the hardest time of my life, while NEVER let it define who I was. Learning what Love meant to me, how I felt loved, how I show love, how to communicate, and defining what my vows meant to me. Eventually embracing that my vows actually had zero to do with my (then) wife.

Waiting to me, means that we get to a place (this place in many situations) and place the blame on something, be it MLC, WAS, whatever it is, and we soapbox that THAT is the root of all of our problems. We continue on, and simply live a very similar life to what we once had, (and our spouse walked away from) without ever looking at OUR role in this. Because if we blame someone else, then we get to be the victim and eventually a martyr even though we had REAL issues that we dismissed because of our ego/pride/whatever.

It's easy to read a book, read some veteran posters, learn to wax poetically without making any real changes and soapbox your path, IF you only want to be as deep as the shallow end of the kiddie pool. Your quest should be to go deeper in yourself, and accept that the journey of "Mike" is for Mike, and ONLY Mike.

It's easy to sit back and think that this other person is the cause of all of your marital problems, and blame him for them. When in actuality, things probably weren't going well before him, which led her to him....what are THOSE things ? The deeper things that made her think that having an affair was a better choice than Mike ??



It takes real courage to make changes in the face of a battle.....which reminds me of some posts a few years ago from a dear friend ....

He struggled mightily with his stand, and defining what his stand should look like......

I wanna put some of his words out there for you...

What an amazing f%king dude he is......


Quote
I can only say that this journey up to now has been the most difficult thing in my life and the most amazing.

I am to the point where I have battled the questions and doubts.

And have grown a great deal and I start this phase after the six months I have been here with the goal to be

A man in full. The man I aspire to be.

A put this down for me and anyone who may learn from these words.


As always thank you for listening...

Martyr-
1 : a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion
2 : a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle
3.Victim especially : a great or constant sufferer <a martyr to asthma all his life

To be a martyr there has to be someone applying suffering.

Who is this in the LBS's journey?
At first we think it is our spouse.
We suffer because our spouse is doing something to us. Or doing something other than we want them to do.
We have pain and we suffer and we continue this only if we stay. So why be a martyr?

Why not just leave and then we will be a martyr no longer. But the pain remains. We walk away with all those arrows sticking out of us.

But we are no longer a martyr right? Why would we want to be with someone who does not want to be with us?

Only a weak person or a martyr would subject themselves to that. If you take this exit you find a lot of people waiting for you on the off ramp ready to validate that you made the right choice.
You stood up for your own self respect by running away from the person who inflicted the damage to it. And you move on.

BUT

What now? We still hurt. We still have questions. We don't understand why someone who is supposed to love us can treat us this way.

Are we unlovable? We have to find some other person to validate that we are lovable. That we have self respect. So we move on to the next person to trade our love for validation and self respect.

Because we have learned and have confirmed to ourselves that love really doesn't mean what we want it to mean. And our vows really don't hold any value for us because they didn't hold any value to our spouse. If it did then our spouse would have done what they were supposed to do.

So a good idea would to have a card made that you can present to any potential mate

------------------------------------------------------
Originally Posted By: Full Marital Disclosure Card
I am looking for validation from you for all my hopes and fears and if you can't fulfill that then I will move on. And I will only love you as long as you behave the way I think you should and give me what I need. If you get confused and scared and act like you don't love me anymore then I will leave because I measure my self respect based on how you treat me.
--------------------------------------------------------

The longer we stay in our marriage the more people think we are a victim, a doormat, a martyr to the marriage. We believe this because we do not know who we are really. We have lost ourselves in our marriage and in self doubt because of the crisis in our life.

So we run away and confirm to ourselves that we are victims and confirm others assessment of us. We run further away from the path to find ourselves. To know who we are. Because when we choose this who we are is what others perceive us to be and when we believe that then we will always be beholden to others for our SELF. We will be defined by others, and live with self doubt, unless we understand otherwise.

We will understand otherwise because it will happen again and again until we do.

Or

We walk further down the path. We detach. We understand that what our spouse is doing is not to us. It is because of their fears and insecurities. It is because in part the way we have behaved. It is because most of all what THEY feel inside.

We understand that we have no control over this.

We set boundaries to protect ourselves and our family.
We don't fully understand why we are walking down this path. We still doubt why we are since we don't understand why our spouse is still making these choices. And we think we will be validated for all the self doubt we still harbor if our spouse comes back. If we could get that to happen then we would be ok.

Time goes on. Our friends and others who have experienced this question why we are still doing this. Why would you want to be with someone who clearly doesn't want to be with you? It is their choice and not about you but why would you want to stay in this because it still is causing you pain.

Why is it still causing you pain? Because you feel still feel that your worth is dependent on your spouse.
And you are still a doormat.

What are we missing?

We all want to feel loved. We think about it, hope for it, fantasize about it, go to great lengths to achieve it, and feel that our lives are incomplete without it. The lack of unconditional love is the cause of most of our anger and confusion.

We learned that love was conditional, that we had to get it from the people around us with our words and behavior. And that is how we perceive it when it is given. We give when expect to get it.



------------------------------------------------------
Originally Posted By: someone other than me
The instant we do anything at all to win the approval or respect of other people with what we say, what we do, how we look we are paying for the attention and affection we receive, and we can't feel genuinely loved.
--------------------------------------------------------

Isn't our marriage based on this? Isn't this where it derailed? Isn't this why we still feel we have to get our spouse back? Otherwise we ARE what we fear we are UNLOVABLE.

How do we need to be loved?

At this point in your journey it is still about how you need to be treated (loved) and yourself worth and respect is still dependent on your spouse and others.

We may decide to leave at this point because of the long suffering we have endured at the hands of our spouse and predicament. If we leave now we confirm our ignorance of what love means and confirm that to our spouse that your love was not real but dependent and conditional.

You confirm again all the self loathing your spouse feels inside because the person that is supposed to love them hasn't and won't and never will.

We then begin to understand

We yearn for a deeper answer. We crave knowledge that has so far been unattainable.

We want to know the mystery of love. The mystery of our marriage. To know ourselves.

To remove self doubt. To know ourselves. To know who we are at our core.

We start to focus on ourselves. To look inside and know who we are.

Find things we don't like. Endeavor to change them. To learn what and who we aspire to be.

Not as someone our spouse wants us to be. We tried that already.
Who we really are.

When you do that you begin to understand why you are standing for your spouse and your marriage.

And you start to learn what real love is.

Unconditional love is caring about the happiness of another without any thought for what we might get for ourselves. It's also when other people care about our happiness unconditionally.

And what it is not

It is not what we have lived in our life and our marriage up to now. It is not controlling. It does not desire and force. It does not depend on action or inaction from our spouse.

And so as we let this soak and it takes hold we discover an amazing thing and it gives life to us and breaths hope into our spirits and that is

Unconditional love is when we love despite the foolish choices of our spouse, when they fail to do what we desire, regardless of any choice they make. This love alone has the power to heal all wounds, deliver self respect and remove all doubt for you and your spouse. It allows love and healing to flourish.

This is how we need to be loved. And this is the paradox.

That we only get this when we give it.

And now is the opportunity.

There is no GREATER opportunity you will ever have in your life then NOW to express this kind of love.

To do this takes greater courage than most people will ever understand and will ever know.

And you have received this wonderful gift only by going through the experience. By the trial.

By the tragedy.

What greater thing could you aspire to do.

EVER.





Mike....

Standing is YOUR choice....

Limbo is YOUR choice....

NOT growing is your choice....

Whatever that choice....just F-ing own it, and don't do it half way.

You are either committed to you, or you aren't.

I'm pretty sure I know what it is, however YOU need to know it also....

Joined: Sep 2022
Posts: 1,183
Likes: 222
R
Member
Offline
Member
R
Joined: Sep 2022
Posts: 1,183
Likes: 222
Mach this is powerful and cutting. Thank you. Will digest this.


M:52 W: 51
T:27 M:25
D26 S24 S21 D20
BD:2022
Page 3 of 11 1 2 3 4 5 10 11

Moderated by  Cadet, DnJ, job, Michele Weiner-Davis 

Link Copied to Clipboard