Oops, sorry. I totally read that wrong!!

Hi Seeking,

Well, I wanted to post someting encouraging to you, but all I can say is that I will just say some prayers, because I honestly cannot figure where you are at this moment or what you need. I am not a neophyte at marriage, but you would be a challenge!

Seriously Seeking, I think Hitch said something that strikes home to me - maybe you are overboard in terms of the A and the aftermath. You can kick yourself if you have done something wrong, but if you continue to kick yourself you probably will stay down. The other thing I am thinking is maybe depression. Have you looked into this for yourself? Guilt is a necessary tool to help us change. It can be devastating tho if we let it bring us down and think ill of ourselves.

Just please take care. I do not know what elee to say honestly.

Tom

Seeking

I just believe you need a kick up the booty. You have a H who loves you and is willing to work things through, you lucky lucky thing.

Please tell us what is the problem. You were there when I needed you, please share it with US.

Hitch.

Yes, I am referring to self-defense mechanisms, not to posters on MB.


SB, have your read over How the Co-Dependency Movement is Ruining Marriages? I think that based on some of your background, that this is something that could be very eye-opening to you.

As a person who grew up around 12-step programs, I lived my marriage encouraging as much independence for my FWW as I could. I thought I was helping her, but in retrospect, I was dooming my marriage to fail.

Cut away your professional attitudes. They didn't prevent you from falling as far as you did, so how could they possibly help you recover?

HHH -- I can't say I have read every single word published by Dr. H on this website and in his books, but I've come damn close, and much of it twice.


I don't know what this means.


I don�t know what this means either. I have tried to be resolute in telling my truth here. What princessmeggy characterized as pages of BS, which is her right, was my enormous pain and confusion. It was my truth at that time. I�m still in enormous pain and confusion. That's my truth now. Maybe it�s still BS. I have no way of knowing.


I don't know how much more I can feel. At some point, the psyche shuts down and says "no more feeling anything" but everything I read says "yes, there is more horribleness you need to feel".


Which start with me being unable to forgive myself. Perfection is the standard.

When have I punished myself enough? Or is that even possible? What is remorse anyway?

I have done every single thing that has been suggested both here and in the books. I may have argued about it but I did it. I deeply regret cutting out all of my friends who knew about the A but didn't tell my H -- I think that was a really bad decision for me --but what's done is done. The resulting isolation has been painful, but I figured it was the cost of admission.

It all goes fine as long as I am cheerful and pleasant and attentive and apologetic. Even being withdrawn is occasionally OK. I�ve done that for three months.

When I move into conflict -- not with him so much as within myself -- he moves to another state.

He abandons me. He always has.

All us WW's don't get BH's like Wheels. Some of us get H's who want to work it out until it gets hard. I've made the last three months easy, or as easy as I could figure out how to make them. I hit a bad slump, which I knew was coming and even posted about, and he played the A card then the D card then he left then he calls me once to put the D card back in his hand and tells me I need to "learn faster and better". What am I supposed to do with that?

He leaves. That's what he does. I guess that means he trusts me.

So no, MB isn�t working for me so far. I need to learn faster and better. I only wish I knew how.

You've been misreading.

The problem is not what you need to feel. The problem is what you need to DO and who you need to do it FOR.

Some posters emphasize feelings of remorse because that helps motivate some people to do the right thing.

It's not about what you need to feel, and most importantly it's not about YOU.

It's about your husband.

You can feel horrible for a million years and it won't help anything at all.

Then help me. Please. I don't know what else I am supposed to do.

What I think you need to do is stop trying to tell your BH what he needs to do. Also, I think, only from your posts, that there may be some DJ's in your actions. You feel the need to sacrifice and then that leads to resentment and yet your BH didn't even ask for that in the first place. Maybe if your BH sees you DOING more things the MB way, not Seeking way, maybe then he will get on board with your marriage. You need to be honest with him. You need to tell him what you want in a marriage, what you can bring to a marriage and that you know some things that can help you tremendously.

Do you have any of DrH's books? If you do, you could leave them out. You could just talk about MB in a casual way and not try to seem like you are teaching. Have you asked him about checking out the site? Maybe even about reading on the forums(although, I would suggest that he not read this thread, yet).

As far as what you are feeling, you are absolutely feeling this way, NOW. The thing about feelings is, they can CHANGE. You didn't always feel this way about your BH. Remember that you once felt much differently, and with the help of MB, you CAN feel that way again.

It's been a few days since you posted the above, but did you forget what y'all talked about and, from all indications, how you seemed to have found yourself in a better place in life?


Time to open up again. Maybe print out part of your recent threads and read him your thoughts. If you don't want him to try to fix it, comment or interject, preface it by saying that you just want him to listen, that it's important that you get out what you need to say.

Good or bad, honesty and openness is a great thing and makes for a perfect opportunity to better understand your spouse, spark conversation, get on the same page, etc. What do you have to lose, you know you cannot keep it bottled in like this and, from what you've written, it sounds as though he's reasonably in touch with his feelings.

Not trying to hound you, but if there was resentment before all this and y'all didn't talk, then you're on a path to repeating history. Kind of like invading Russia in the winter, ha ha. It doesn't work too well.


When he gets back from his trip, which, by the way, I suspect was him just trying to escape all this for a while and think, bring out your bucket list and pick something.

[Insert 2x4 here] or, if not a trip to Italy, then please get the h out of the house and DO SOMETHING FUN!!!! He wants you to do it (see your post above) and, it appears, wants to be included as well.

Trust me, it's so much harder to be melancholy when you're laughing or having a good time. Even if it's only for a brief moment, it's worth getting there and will get better with practice. Key word there, practice and forcing yourself to step out of the box, to change what has never worked, break old habits, fake it 'till you make it, whatever you want to call it.


Hence the hunting trip.

It sounds like you're soooo close but just cannot get over that hill. Remember when y'all were talking about the bucket list?

If someone had asked you at that precise moment...
"Are you in a better place and do you have a better connection than you have had in a very long time?" What would you have said? Go back there.

Repeat what works, quit doing what doesn't work.

Did you tell your husband about what your son's coach said about your MIL? Has your son told you or, particularly, his father his thoughts about his grandmother?

Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner. Scotland hit the nail on the head here.

I used to do the EXACT same thing (my wife isn't one for housework and we have two kids) and I resented the stew out of her for years. When we finally talked about it, she said "Oh, I didn't know it was that important to you, but thanks for telling me because I wondered what was getting to you." Now she's stepping up because she knows how important it is to me.

What a relief it was. Resentment and anger can consume you, and you cannot imagine what a relief it is to know that you have no issues that have not been aired or addressed. The whole openness/honesty thing is potent. No secrets, no harbored complaints or resentments. It's a bizarre feeling, one I don't think I've ever had before with regards to my wife.

Seeking, first off

I havent posted to you before, but I have been following along, because everything you say reminds me so much of myself. I have not had anything of value that I thought might help you until now.

I think I know where you are at. I know that place, very well. I spent of my childhood with a step-father who was physically abusive to my mom, and metally abusive to me. I could do NOTHING right, ever. I was criticized and put down, degraded and humilated for everything. I developed a very serious perfection issue. Any type of criticsm from anyone was devastating to me. I thought I had worked out those issues (mostly because even though I had gotten a great deal of confidence back it was still a joke among everyone who knew me that you could blame me for absolutely anything and I would find a way to convince myself it was my fault).

Then I married my H. He was clean when I met him, and when I married him, but soon after that fell back into a drug and alcohol addiction that I wasnt aware he had. He started cheating almost immediately. He is a champion at blaming others, and I was a champion at accepting blame. Instead of admitting to me or himself that the substance abuse was the problem, he picked at my weaknesses and my insecurities and told me that was why he did it. I wasnt good enough, or pretty enough. All of my confidence was shattered.

When I started contemplating suicide on a regular basis I decided I was done, and I had a revenge ONS on what I believed was my way out the door. When you described your A as rage incarnate I knew exactly what you meant.

Even though my H is starting to get help, and he has mostly stopped blaming me, I still have those moments where I just dont care one bit if I hurt him, like what you posted not long ago.

I dont know if you have family of origin issues like I do, but it sounds like most of your marriage has felt to you like one long and drawn out assault on your self-esteem. You have never felt like you were good enough, you try and try and it never is enough. You had tried everything you knew to try and his assaults just continued until you snapped. Thats exactly what I felt.

What I am learning now is-

The moments that I feel like I dont care if I hurt him are the moments when he reverts to acting like he was before, or I get triggered and reminded of what he was doing before. I go back to feeling like he is the enemy. I feel like because he hurt me its ok for me to have hurt him. Which makes me sound like a little kid on the playground saying "He hit me first!" I dont want to be that person, because reguardless of what he did to me it's still not ok to hit. I tell my children that, and I should know it myself.

My H treated me badly because I ALLOWED him to, the first time I told my H that he could blame me if it helped him feel less guilty but I would no longer listen to it... I felt POWERFUL, much more so than hurting him back had ever made me feel.

I am not, and will never be perfect. This one is hard. Who remembers that their husband criticised them about paper towels months ago? People like you and me do, because even the smallest criticism is painful to us. Your sense of self worth is very low, so it doesnt take much to wound it. What can you do help you feel better about you? Once you start to do that, you wont feel so easily wounded, or defeated, or angered. You wont feel the need to attack your H for every little thing. You will also be able to better uphold your boundaries with him, and everyone else. You will be much better able to control your emotions, and avoid incidents like what just happened, because you will be able to act according to your plan instead of reacting to a situation that makes you feel like you are under attack. If you love yourself more, that criticism wont matter to you as much, and you will be able to let it roll off you.

You will also be able to stop tearing yourself apart, and making yourself miserable, and be able to focus on healing your H and being happy in your M. You are punishing yourself because you feel like it is what you deserve for not being perfect.

I didnt mean to write a novel, sorry for the length, and I could be wrong about all of it. Just take what applies if anything and toss out the rest.

What did you say to your H when he left the state and told you that you needed to learn faster and better?

Yes.

RFA, I have read your post probably 20 times, and I'll bet I will read it 20 times more. I might even get desperate enough to have my H read it-- layer of protection there since it's not from me!

Thank you.