More big hugs and kudos for you practicing what you believe. You stayed calm, quieter (if you really want to be heard, whisper), and combating yourself, your usual assumptions which cause you pain.

A reminder only: "I don't want to try to force him or scare him away (which it is his tendency to take flight rather than fight)." This quote isn't about the nobility of not trying to force or scare...it is that you can't do either of these. Get it set in your mind firmly that his reaction/action is his own. He may feel forced--your part is only to insure you are not demanding or threatening. He may feel scared--you don't have the power to frighten him, unless you are threatening or blackmailing him.

You asked. You asked very well. You are still hooked on the dependency of the outcome. That's your belief. May not be his. This will feel more difficult and critical depending on you--the bigger the belief that it is essential to recovery and that there will not be recovery without it, the bigger the effects of not being in counseling right now will feel.

Go yourself. Set up an appt to interview. Share what you find. If you decide on a counselor, set up an appt for you, with an open invitation to him to attend. "I recognize this is your choice, WH. I am going for myself and the marriage I really desire to have...new, clean slate, with lots of great tools. I love you."

See where there is no pressure, manipulation? You can lead by example, but not if you expect to be followed. You must have the intent of your belief solid in your mind and not dependent on him.

Tough stuff. You're doing really well. The more you change you, for you, the safer you become for him. That dependency feels like a microscopic examination and judgment. Getting used to the freedom of not being responsible for all your thoughts, feelings and beliefs takes a little time. The respect of his choice by sharing your own opens those prison walls.

I wrote all that knowing you chose to go yourself. To check to see if this is your intent, if you feel the power and goodness of it. See, you didn't let go anything but your own assumptions, mindreading and the responsibility you put onto WH. You kept what is yours and reality that you are within your own circle. Free from all that work (another poster gave me that...respecting is a lot less work!) and all that false security. You feel more free fall, but in reality, you're more powerful.

You still judged his "yes" to think about it as sluggish. I know you know this, I'm just highlighting. When someone agrees to think about it, that they don't know what they believe right then, it is their truth. No feelings in you result from that. The frustration (crying) anger and feeling unimportant you generate when you decide that...he doesn't mean, should know it now, should care more, do more, demonstrate more remorse...and the list is endless, kinda, right?

You're doing that to you. What is reasonable is reasonable. Didn't help my fear of inaction (passive aggression from my H), so it is not reasonable to then say, "I hear you will consider MC and find out what you believe and let me know. Would two weeks be comfortable for you? I'm uncomfortable with open-ended decisions...I fear that I'm being told no instead of right now. That's my issue and I'm working on it. A time frame helps me to believe you. I respect your choices."

Have you done the control mea culpa yet? When you list out all that you have done to control others...for their own good, I understand...a good step is to cop to what you did, why you did it and how you are not going to choose to act that way anymore. Accountability helps in our commitment to change. It is ownership and sharing. You are not doing it to bash yourself, submit to your WH or get him to own anything of his...you are doing it because O&H is important to you, for you to do. You get the good stuff from executing your intent...and God's byproducts could be showing your WH a way to do so, too. Not within your control or intent...positive side effects happen.

You're repairing your part of the marriage. I think you are really beginning to see it for what it was, less in light of what his part is...and that is worth dancing for.

I rejoice with you, RC. Thank you very much for sharing, doing, feeling, being...

LA

Post deleted by reallyconcerned

Just read your posts to CGU...shows how much you're really getting this and are contributing. Very honored to watch.

Hey, don't ingest my posts. Could be toxic and have ill effects.

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

LA

Post deleted by reallyconcerned

Didn't know we worked opposite shifts! I cry at work, too...from these boards especially. You really aren't alone!!

Hey, the pre-Plan A me was just like you. I was bent on believing that if only he could see how annihilated I was, he would stop...I would prove to him what he was doing then he would own it.

:::: See how much I relate to your control freakiness? Been there, RC. Lived that. Beliefs sound funny now, but I know some of them remain.

Picture the A as small as a large stone, in a creekbed with several others, some bigger or smaller. You have to walk over them to get to the other side. Don't forget to feel the cool water, enjoy the sound of it and the sunlight bouncing all around you. What you want to save is beautiful. Only you allow the A to loom and give what you're going through a distorted, shadowed and empty landscape. Choose your images. They have meaning to you. They influence and affect your feelings.

There for you and proud to know you.

LA

Post deleted by reallyconcerned

Happy to hear about the relief as you are choosing to believe differently than before. I could feel it physically inside of me as well as emotionally.

You are injecting respect back into your life, RC. I'm delighted you are already see his boundaries as well. We all have them, often unidentified and unenforced...we have them.

It is dripping snow here...sluggish plops landing on soaked concrete. It isn't gray--there is enough light off the winter blonde grass to reflect false sunshine, from the ground up. The cars on the boulevard are in a hurry of Sunday dining and shopping, splashing one another in their way.

A simple Sunday. I'm enjoying it. Hope you are as well.

LA

Post deleted by LLG

Hi reallyconcerned. IMHO:
Wrong-> cut your losses and move on.
Right-> work with him, meet his needs, love him, dedicate yourself wholeheartedly to him, so that he can't help but to do the same for you. Make it emotionally impossible for him to have an A because you love him and he loves you so deeply he couldn't bear to hurt you again.

I hear you, RC...but I can't use dummy as an example. Only myself.

Your WH discovered a pill he can take to ease his huge fears...abandonment, wrongness, never being enough for anyone. He can choose to swallow this pill...it has a short duration, numbs and gives him breathing room. Once it wears off, he has side effects...nauseating side effects. He feels worse than before taking the pill, anger from his wishful side that it isn't a permanent cure, and his emotions give him a hangover which makes him doubt the ride, but not abstain. Feeling worse, he craves it more, believes in the pill more, desires it more. He can not focus on feeling this bad...he is triggered to feel better as fast as possible.

The pill is costly...it demands others to pay for it because he already gave all he had; he feels empty. His very pain, what he wanted to stop in the first place, becomes a breathing, living entity, one that says, "You have no choice."

He chooses to believe, to continue the addictive cycle, which includes needing these ingredients...guilt, shame, acknowledgement of others' pain to increase his guilt, shame...to justify the cost of the pill.

His own personal recovery is the path out of the addiction to escaping pain (and he has many, not just an affair...that is the biggest, most costly pill). To personally recover, you must begin with knowing you are a person, I believe, and have something to recover. You must believe you have a lint-size piece of your self worth it to do it. I believe that seperates addicts from recovered addicts. Their belief...in themself.

Does that help in your evaluation? My H knew fear and pain, also, so hidden he couldn't remember his upbringing. The safer I became, the better I held to acting from my code and not reacting to his choices (which others had done in his life), the less I DJ'd...the less guilt I fed him...the more I respected, the less shame he felt...the less need to escape from pain, and the more he could slip it out to me.

When I made myself my own responsibility, he stopped carrying both of us. I had to refuse to carry his feelings, thoughts and beliefs. I made it my respectful boundary.

Safety...being safe is more important than feeling safe. You get both when you make the first your priority.

Like first, strive to understand, then be understood. Huge power, all within your control, dependent on your beliefs, which you choose.

Lovely way God made humans. Complex, dangerous, magnificent, limited and salvageable...all by themselves.

My choice was to believe in my H more than he could do himself, at a time when he felt most unworthy, valueless. What did I really risk? Embarrassment? Wasting time? Having a lot of time to be present with him and the opportunity to do differently what I had repeatedly chosen before?

Call it pain--because pain is fear, anger, wishful (magical thinking), expectations and desires in conflict. We look at pain like a dentist doing it to us...when it is our mouth, our nerves, our belief in it and that we can't handle pain which creates a rodent of unusual size of it...to be run from.

Yet we endure it in reasonable quantities every day. From the local news, stories from coworkers and friends, feeling the poke of a needle, a little invaded by reality. If we embrace, feel and know this pain as part of our expected reality, it shrinks, like the little man behind the curtain. Relevant size, reasonable. When we unconsciously struggle against it, fear it, allow it to seize us, we do not even examine that we live with outlandish pain, because we do live through it.

How tough or large of a pain, is partially our choice. How much we struggle, extend or refuse reality is our choice. Knowing those choices is the first step, changing our beliefs which give us only those options is our second step, and feeling the peace, getting comfortable to relevant and reasonable pain is the last.

Then we start over. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Anyone can walk away from anything...human choice. That we take our pain in unlearned lessons, regrets, remorse, guilt, shame with us, well, is God's choice. I lean on him to know why. I'm beginning to understand.

LA

Post deleted by LLG

"But then I begin to wonder if I was dealing with him not being attracted to me and wanting to be with OW." Good to know that you know you are doing this, not him.

"Afterall, if the two of them are telling the truth this was interrupted (SF). Also,I restarted SF with him against my better judgement after exposure when he hasn't met a good bit of my ENs and I haven't gotten to express what I expect of him."

I am confused by what you mean "this was interrupted (SF)"?

That you chose to have SF before he met a good bit of your ENs...RC? Are you saying that your choices are conditional on his actions? Again, I'm confused.

Are you in Plan A? Has no contact been firmly established, with no contact letter and no long working together? Are you in recovery because those conditions have been met? Has he fully expressed remorse and recommitment to the marriage?

Or are you still in Plan A?

Could it be your fear raised itself up and swallowed you, causing you to want to ditch for your own good...no use hanging around if it won't work out?

I understand. Look at AdrianC's thread...I quoted a novel I'm reading about fear. It was an ephiphany to me. Maybe you'll find it useful?

Name why you shift perspective...find what changes in you, how you go from clarity to confusion and that netherland inbetween. You're doing this. Not him.

When your WH didn't accept your SF initiation, did you state your thoughts and feelings. Did you say out loud your fears, not as an attack, but as your truth?

"I've just grown weary of thinking about how he is and that he doesn't change." You are growing weary from the burden of your own expectations and desires. He's not doing that. You are. I know you know that. Maybe God is giving you the final bad taste in your mouth to leave his creation alone...stop thinking about him, how he is and judging him. I think your own self is pulling you down to get some much needed attention and focus...we can be jealous of ourselves and our obsessions.

I will solve your dilemma for how do you know if WS is a serial cheater...pretend he is. Just is. Like me. Now you know. Then what? Just like me, exactly. What would change in you with that knowledge?

"How do I know that no matter how much I love him it isn't enough?" Are you believing that my WH loved me enough to get me to change? Stop me from choosing to cheat? He did something miraculous so that I came to my senses? Is his love more than yours for your WH?

Enough?

RC, unreservedly, your love is not enough to change anyone...not the fly on the wall, your children or your H, your parents or a stranger. Your love doesn't change people...it is your choice to love as an act of celebration. God's love doesn't change us...it is with us from before we are born. Our awakening to it...our choice, our experience, in accepting it changes our lives fully and permanently. Until we stop accepting it. Our choice.

That is the total, absolute and complete choice of God, utter respect. Our choice.

Believe your power includes your love is a corrupting and damaging belief. Measuring your love is also. Measuring others corrupts you. Believing love is your power and not a choice damages you.

I hear it...the sliding down, the little girl who felt fear again, strike her when she thought she was safe...I hear her, RC. She is lovable, safe in your arms, a fully intelligent, wise and loving woman. Hold her gently, sing to her. Do not give her the control of your choices or perspective. It is her beliefs where you slide down to when you fear, feel anger and hurt. That is what I meant by sitting with the pain, with the fear, but not acting from it.

Deep breaths and long praises for a God who will not leave you, knows you are wonderfully made by him, even when you don't. He guarantees us a full journey here on earth, if we chose. He blocks shortcuts (human fantasy), and since there is no real time, he doesn't say you are ever wasting it...you're alive. You're living your journey of choice.

Tell me what you fear. Share all of them and know them. Say them outloud and break the curse they have over you--they are what drive you to crave control like air.

LA

Post deleted by LLG

Post deleted by LLG

Post deleted by LLG

RC, you can't push me away...you can ask me to leave your thread. Short of that, I'm here.

I am pondering more your other posts, your deleting, bumping, deleting thingie. This isn't hard work...it is concern. You are worth it.

I also triggered on the event that you will attend (because you are his wife) with your WH where OW will be.

I feared our OW showing up at an annual one for two years running. This last one in December, well, DH said, "We don't have to go at all. I don't believe she'll be there, but you said you fear it and I don't mind missing it if it will help your fear."

He really meant it. We went. She wasn't there. We had a plan, though...if she was, we would leave. Instantly.

How about an agreement for boundaries. Does she have to attend? If OW is required to be there, being anywhere near her would be off limits. You both would have to leave. Pick your limits...you are agreeing to feel fearful, pained and ashamed. What is WH willing to do? Talk it out. No demands, instructions or threats. Just talk it out.

Same with NC...see, in your WH's situation, he can't quit the job. That isn't in his choices because of his military commitment. However, he can request transfers, etc. He can be proactive, but doesn't bear what other WS's do in that choice.

His choice to be transparent. Your choice to say how fearful you are. His choice to own his choices got you there, but you to own you were fearful to begin with--of losing him. Now you fear staying with him.

Be honest.

I feel respected. You choose your life. Period. You don't have to do what I say for me to stay here. I will respect your reasons, but request you give them.

No pardon required. At all. I got distracted with my own stuff...didn't see this post. Your other posts kept popping up, not this one. You bumped the wrong threads!

LOL

Why was it foolish to have SF with your WH after his bout with anger? Have you asked him what SF means to him? Have you shared what it means to you? Your fears of why he turned you down the last time? Shared that you are trying with all your might to stay present and how difficult that is for you?

You can do this, toots. You've got all that it takes and more...you don't see it, so it doesn't exist in you, so you believe. It does. You're human. You can do this.

LA

Post deleted by reallyconcerned

Post deleted by reallyconcerned

bump97876

bumping