SC,
I think I picked a very bad time to start talking about unconditional love with you. It seems I have created confusion during an already very hard time for you. For that I am truly sorry. Please accept my apologies.
In hopes of trying to correct some of the“damage” I may have created, please allow me to attempt to clarify what I was trying to express. Keep in mind that I am very new to all this so I may not have all these theories straight myself yet. This was my experience. I'm not claiming it works for everyone or that you should try to incorporate it into your situation. I just want to try to explain to you what I was trying to say in order to clear up some of the questions I may have created in your mind.
This is a story I created for myself very early in my recovery that helped me to understand the MB concepts better. I substituted murders for affairs in the story to make the concepts clearer in my mind.
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Jack and Jill were married.
One day, Jack does the unbelievable. He encounters someone who triggers an emotion in him and in a fit of anger he attacks them. Unintentionally things get out of control and the other person gets killed.
Jack and Jill’s entire world is shattered to say the least. At first they both feel like they're living outside of reality. Almost like they're experiencing life from a 3rd person point of view.
At the trial, the courts weigh the evidence and find Jack not guilty of manslaughter.
They go home and with time things even out. Jill comes to see that Jack didn’t do anything to intentionally hurt her, himself or the other person. Something triggered an action in him that day that even he couldn’t explain. Jill also came to understand that if Jack didn’t have so much unrest and tension in him before the encounter, he never would have lost his self control. She saw that she did not play a part in the murder itself...none whatsoever. But she also saw that she did play a part that added to the discontentment in Jack’s everyday life and the tensions he felt.
Eventually Jill came to see that, yes, Jack had made a horrible mistake but she still loved him. Even though she “accepted him” as being someone who has taken a life, she still did NOT accept murder as permissible or in any way acceptable.
Unfortunately, Jack continued to show signs of being distant and tense. Jill sees this and starts to worry and get stressed herself that Jack might get out of control again. So she "actively" makes differences in order to try to correct the problem. She does not just ignore the issues. Nor does she just “bite her tongue” around him because she knows that neglecting things will not alleviate any stress or pressure for either of them. She finds resources for both of them to help deal with their issues. She also learns how to, and “actively” engages in, helping them both feel more fully loved and accepted in order to correct the problem. (Plan A.)
Unfortunately Jack continues to not show interest in changing and over time, she sees that things are not improving. He’s still attacking other people and in fact she strongly suspects he’s murdered again but either way the "situation" is not acceptable to her. She makes her concerns clear to him, in a very loving way, and lets him know that she accepts that this is who he is but she is unable to live "happily" under these circumstances. Every time he loses control it scares her and hurts her more and more. Living like this is crushing her. She makes it clear that she loves him as much as ever and would give anything for things to be different but they aren’t. So if he choses to continue to attack then she must leave. She’s clear both with herself and with him that her actions are self-preservation and NOT an attempt to manipulate him to do anything. She realizes that when she takes this step it might cause him to ‘bottom out’ and finally have the strength to change but it is just as possible that he won't. At this point she is prepared for the possibility of him moving on without her. And as a result, she is also prepared to move on without him even though she will always love him. (Plan B)
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Maybe some old-timers can help me fine tune the story if I've got anything wrong as far as MB concepts go.
So how does unconditional love fit into the MB concepts?
You told me once, SC, that you’d stand by your W even if she were a murderer. Would murder be acceptable to you? No. Would you be able to live comfortably with her without knowing if she's still murdering or not? No. Could you stop her from murdering again? No.
Can you still love her unconditionally ? Yes.
You can say “Sweetheart, I love you and I see that being a murderer is a part of who you are. You mean the world to me. I want so much to be in your life but I cannot live happily like this because “murdering is not acceptable” to me. You choose not to change and I will not ask you to. Therefore I am removing myself from the situation, not only for my own well-being but out of love for you and a willingness to let you be who you are.”. Like the old saying "If you love something set it free. If it comes back it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was".
Now here is where I divert into a personal belief of mine. I believe that we all crave unconditional love in our lives so much that we can’t resist it when it’s offered. We feel like we have to be smarter, more successful, more attractive, etc. When we make mistakes, we worry that we didn't (or won't) live up to expectations...either other people's or our own. So we work our entire lives to live up to those "expectations" rather than feeling that we're good enough exactly as we are. When someone does give us unconditional love, even if it's just to some small degree, it is irresistable to us because it's what we've longed for all our lives.
After D-day I was trying to change my H...”I want you to do this and do that...meet this EN for me and that EN, etc.”. Then I had a light bulb moment during Kat's thread on inner child stuff. I stopped asking “him to change”. I realized that the change that I needed was in "my head"'. I started loving him for ‘who he was’ and stopped focusing on what he could ‘give me’ or what I wanted 'from him'. And you know what???? Suddenly the EN’s started being fulfilled! Not because I was asking him to but because he felt genuinely loved and wanted to give those things to me. Was the EN Questionnaire important? You bet! Because he understands me better which allows him to know what I like. And visa versa.
In the end, we found out that we actually are more alike than we thought. For example, conversation is one of my top EN’s but wasn't one of my H’s. Last night in bed, just before falling asleep, “H” started talking about the A. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="images/icons/shocked.gif" /> We talked and we talked and we talked!!! In fact, I couldn’t stay awake anymore and he was still talking about it and how we overcame it.
There were a number of things that all coincidentally happened at roughly the same time for us. It wasn't just reading Kat's thread and everything was fine. But my light bulb moment was a key piece of the puzzle for me. H's key moment was a little different but just as instantaneous as mine. And they both happened so close together that we really don't know which one happened first. But I think that's what unconditional love does...the second you offer it to someone, they can't help but give it back to you.
The A is dealt with and over in our house. We can talk about any part of it and it doesn’t illicit any pain to either one of us. There are no more triggers. Period. As I told H last night, I can only equate it to child birth. At the time I thought I was going to die. I couldn’t bear the pain. (It was the same for him.) But looking back at it now, I don’t remember what the pain felt like. I know it was there, I can describe it, but I can’t feel it anymore. And out of the experience was born an M greater than either of us could have possibly imagined.
Will it last forever? No one can predict the future. H and I described ourselves last night as recovering “affair-aholics”. We’ve conquered the beast. But we are also aware that we will have to actively work to ensure we never fall into that trap again. And the way to do that, for US anyway, is to continue to be as unconditionally loving as we can toward each other. Will we be perfect at it? No...only God can give pure unconditional love. But our experience has been that the more unconditionally loving we are to each other, the more amazing life becomes every day.
I don’t know if that helps you understand “MY” understanding of the MB concepts and how unconditional love fit into them for H and I. I realize there are some weaknesses in the analogy using murder as the replacement for A’s but it was the analogy that worked best to help me understand these very ‘fine lines’.
What I do know, SC, is that you are one amazing man. You have tolerated the intolerable. You have shown courage and stamina above and beyond the call of duty. You have stood out, to me, as a giant amongst men.
I am so sorry if I made your pain and/or confusion worse than it needed to be at this time. That was never my intent but in hindsight I certainly can see how that might have happened.
With greatest apologies,
E_C
P.S. I don’t have an "E" left on my letter E key. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="images/icons/shocked.gif" />
But that’s Ok because I’m pretty sure you don’t even have a "Z" left on yours. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />
<small>[ August 31, 2002, 06:11 PM: Message edited by: Extremely_confused ]</small>
