Can we try a "should-free" week for you? Shoulding on yourself is messy and detrimental to accepting yourself...think of what I'm implying in light of that popular bumper sticker..."Should Happens"...

I'm such a potty mouth.

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"I know how I should be and often I'm not there."

Your own measuring of yourself...judgment with a crowbar, IMO...setting yourself up to be more rejected by yourself when you don't do or be what you are shoulding yourself into...

Stop. Let that go. Let that be the word you do not allow yourself to think, speak or react to all week.

"The pay is that others perhaps won't see the mess I feel that I am. Or how I really think and act. I know that no one wants to read the post of someone who seems like a loser or like the unideal, back and forward in making choices like a maniac."

The pay is that others perhaps won't accept you for the mess you feel you are...how controlling and disrespectful is that? To them and to yourself? You are barricading them from accepting you because you won't...more poison?

How many have read your words and wept with gratitude? You may never know. You are judging others and it is kicking your own butt...always does. What a relief it was to read others in my situation when I came on here...sure that I was the biggest loser...my reverse ego in high gear...and I remember touching my monitor, stroking those words of others tangled in pain, frustration, and sharing it all over the screen...for me. For me.

Do you want to protect your image of yourself (which is strangling your life) or do you want to live your life, full-bodied?

"As a result I've lost friends, jobs, and many other things. It is usually around about this time that a person decideds not to be around me or bothered with me antymore." So you believe you can drive people away? Powerful woman. Ever considered that in your super manipulative way, you didn't drive them away...but abandoned them? Yanking back in a different way...cutting communication in a different way because you BELIEVED that you were driving them away?

You have that power...you're half of our friendship. You can't drive me away...try it. Give it your all. Do it. Find out how you really operate and see...because it stays my choice. You can abandon me (you KNOW that's my issue)...your choice. You can say, "Get off my thread" and I will, to honor you (not without a long post of goodbye, of course...so ya miss me)...but those are your choices.

Hiding who you are, your words, your thoughts, feeling and beliefs isn't about what others will do to you...it is you fearing being known. Your choice. Own it. You are guaranteed human...100%. Nothing in you will drive others away, because we have it in us, also.

I promise, if you spew pea soup while your head is revolving, I'll get a paper towel and clean it up...while I run around you, to maintain to eye contact, so we can continue our journey, 'k?

"It seems like if I could try a little harder that maybe just beneath the surface a change is in transformation but I dont make it." This is God's way of showing that you cannot earn love or acceptance...they are given. Period. Chosen. As your choice is to do so, also. Choose to love yourself, without evidence, a measuring stick or a report card. Choose this, LLG...no effort required.

I KNOW what effort...trying harder...is...I lived it until my death...the one that finally got me to where I'm supporting you to...and it may take that death of effort...which meant love, acceptance, respect...loving harder, longer, better...which are all untruths I held as my proof of being. Until you really change that belief, you won't know you're human.

Yep...you yanked your post without a DJ, AO or anything in it...just sweet LLG stuff. May I post it?

"Most people don't see it like you do. I think they see it like ongoing angry posturing." Here is your DJ to yourself and those intangible others...you don't know how they see it because you won't really show yourself. You predict and hide. Would you rather get it right, or get it?

I choose to believe you accept your promise. I choose to trust you. There was a purpose, I believe in my post going into nowhere...as close to God as I felt, as much as I believed in it, there's a reason I don't know for it not to be here. I trust in him. I know when you need the words and my heart is open, they will come. Later, we'll see the reason, 'k?

Be sure to point it out to me...I'm nearsighted.

LA

Post deleted by LLG

Happy to see you, LLG!

"I don't understand this part. I have driven people away. So are you saying it is what is wihtin them responding to me that caused them to leave?"

You have not driven anyone away ever. The same things in you are in the rest of us...all of them. As we grow, we choose not to act on them...revoke permissions...but they are within us...the desire to control, be safe, beat ourselves into stopping our own hurt...the frustration, heartbreak, desperation...with ourselves.

People choose to disconnect...and it can be from something in THEIR lives, not you. It can be seeing in you what is in them and they run from both.

Nothing causes, cures or controls, LLG. Please get this really well. People choose. It is in every moment of our lives. Choice.

Even if they say, "You drove me away from you!" they are lying to themselves. They are choosing. It's inherent in being human.

Well, unless they said it over their shoulders as you both were running down the street and you had a large club in your hand. Then I'll buy that.

"May I say that I laughed at this thought though?" You'd better! That's why they pay me the BIG bucks for stand up.

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"Which really maybe a false type of love." Cut the maybe out and really state it...loving by earning is false. Has to be. People love infants who can't earn...dead people who can't meet a single need...and God loves us with a single good act. Follow God, not the way you were taught.

And you're not alone in this...my H is struggling the same way you are. Lemme ask you what I asked him...Why would God make some of us better than others? We're all his children...Would you make one of your children lovable and whole and the other defective?

"He told the OW he had nohtng but good feelings for her. As if he only had bad feelings for me." This is a killer DJ to yourself...I did this. Stop this. The more you change, the surer you get that you are worth not ripping to shreds, because you SEE yourself doing this to you, not him, the better you will experience loving and being loved. You're stopping it. I know. I did that. You are in the book you have, Boundaries in Marriage...read it right away...you're in it...and now that the boundaries you violate moment to moment are yours for you.

Then stop.

"And as if he was doing anyting to give me good feelings of him." Okay, how did this bit of DJ profit you? Feel superior after owning your own stuff? Feel a little pumped up by tearing his throat out in your head? He CAN'T give you good feelings. You do that. Your feelings are yours alone. Yours. Not his. Stop demanding from others what you won't give yourself.

"I mean look at what we are told to do to reconcile the M. Be all dolled up for your WH who has cheated on you and isn't doing what you want him to. Have his meals and slippers waiting. Have your house clean. Don't disappoint him and POJA by yourself though he/she has committed the biggest no POJA one can ever even think of, caused the most pain." You are intentionally choosing the worst perspective to cause yourself the most pain about Plan A. Your judgment is coming from a 3-year-old in you...don't choose from that tike's knowledge. It is limited. It is dangerous to your adult marriage.

You've both been children in your marriage...you're here and wanting to mature, to grow into the person God designed you for. You have to choose to do that. To recognize your own beauty, accept it, and choose your perspectives, thoughts and actions from your standards. You have to do that. If you don't, here's your life: Divorce, remarriage, betrayed. Divorce, remarriage, betrayed. I guarantee it.

And you can be "right" and not be married. You can have your justice...who caused the most pain, cured the least and controlled the most...and at the end of your life, what do you win?

Here is your great and good Do Over chance, LLG. Where you can look at yourself, in pain, torment, at what you've feared most...betrayal, rejection, being verified you're defective...because it takes something this HUGE to get your awareness for you...or you can keep that poisonous perspective of him owing you, and continue to die by your own hand.

Know that your desire/urge is coming from your most child-like self, not your adult experiences.

Being inconsistent will not erode your H's entitlement...each time you rage against your beliefs, you start over again. You are building a base to be safe for him, for yourself, where you own your life, your choices...and that includes your choice to love. Love does not punish and you are a punisher, LLG. I was, also. That's not love...it is the same entitlement your H feels...will you please know that for all the pain you feel, he has felt just as much? You believe it is coming from him; he believes it is coming from you...and the river of pain won't stop until YOU stop it. You own your own stuff.

Please, please, please do this for you.

"I find it hard to allow him to be my motivation to do it."

He cannot be your motivation...this is between you and God. Stop using your H to charter your life. That is too much for any human to bear. Divorce him as a kind act, please, rather than use him as a motivation.

"accepting that I can be disappointed with him and still choose to love him, show him love, and acceptance not make him worthy of punishment. But these are all things that take work for me to stay on top of." Here is where REBT bites, if that is what they profess. Accept your disappointment comes from YOU...your expectation, your focus on living through another human being. You choose to love and act on it for YOU...for you are made a loving creature, separate from all others, to grow intimate and connect to others with respect.

That work to stay on top of is bunk. Own your own expectations, unreasonable needs, that you live through others, using them as motivation, judges, juries, providers, sustainers for your thoughts, feelings and beliefs...and then know that is evil.

You negate and poop on God's creations, outside and in, when you do this. Believe, LLG, this is true and you won't have to be back and forth, indulging yourself and then living honestly again...you sway back and forth because you won't define yourself or your own code. This is the fight between God and the devil. Choose to indulge your honesty, get IC, read the books brought to us here...and KNOW you are doing this.

You own and then disown it...that's not ownership. When you own your stuff, it stays your stuff. You get it. Then you can't live without owning your stuff...there is joy in it. Such incredible power and joy. They are yours...always were and you shoved them onto someone else.

When you truly believe you only are responsible for yourself..and you aren't hideous...then your focus will remain on you and there will be respect for yourself and others.

Here is the deleted post by LLG:

"I believe that the things that I want my H to do, a need for him to meet my need of feeling cared for protected, and so on isn't unreasonable. He is the one that broke the ties, not me.

It seems unfillable b/c he is wanting to meet my needs the way he wants to and he isn't asking me what is important to me. A show of physical love is nice and has its place, but this begins to mean nothing if he is unwilling to show me by his actions that he is sorry and that he now wants to protect me. He is the idiot that put our bzness out their to OW telling her how yuck of a wife I was and how we were over, not me. SO I feel that I must be missing something."

I am thinking now that you might be feeding me lines...soothing me with reassurance that you truly understand your human condition...which we all share...with the statements like you looking at yourself...and like that little child, you are promising to please, to be loved and accepted, and then do the opposite, because it gives you immediate gratification.

Passive-aggressive.

Think about it. I know you can take a punch...and I know you can give one. I don't intend to punch, but I am thirsting for your focus to remain on you. See you soar. So you can let God in and stop worshipping other gods.

LA

Post deleted by LLG

I read your post earlier today and wanted to think about it. I'm going to read it again tomorrow morning...I believe I've been more reactive to you (like my old self) and want to be active instead.

I was really touched with your truth about getting off the computer and also the SF. I feel trusted and honored by it.

LA

"My expectation doesn't only come from me." I hear you saying that there are true expectations, separate from ourselves...is that correct?

"But there are reasonable ones to." I agree with you we have reasonable expectations in our lives. We make them about the refridgerator running, our doors opening and closing, the ground not disappearing, the sun rising...and yet these things might disappoint us, fail our expectations. That doesn't mean they weren't reasonable ones...correct?

Expectations about people don't apply to this...because you don't have the control as you do in objects. You can't craft life, maintain or fix it. To do so is unreasonable. You can change the light bulb in your fridge, take apart your dryer, change a tire on your care. If taken in the same vein, things fail you and you can come to resent them. They aren't doing it to you...they are things. Some people take things failing them as a sign from God...mostly, they take people failing them more painfully than things.

One you have control over and the other you don't.

You have the desire for a faithful marriage. That is very reasonable. I am asking you to stop clutching that desire into expectation, which is judgment. Know your desire. It's yours.

When you make a desire into an expectation, then you are basing your emotions on someone else's shoulders. When you are complete and whole within yourself and have no control at all...can't really even move, in reality, your burden to their shoulders...but you will experience life as if they do bear responsibility for what is yours, if you do this.

The Law of Sowing and Reaping.

Let's switch. You're your FWH...you make your desire for LLG to stop criticizing, judging, measuring and tearing you down into an expectation. Then you see LLG do this over and over again, whether she is doing it or not, because of your own expectation.

Expectations about people are premeditated resentments. (LH said that.)

"Not that I have to be validated through his eyes or anyone else's." Every time you focus on what your FWH isn't providing you emotionally, you are telling yourself you are not valid, not whole or complete. You are doing this...not him.

I am asking you to validate yourself, by removing your focus from him...by saying you want him to heal you, you are telling yourself you can't heal yourself. That you don't have the power or control over yourself. So you slip back with your focus because you haven't changed your belief.

Totally human, understandable, and I get you. I do! This isn't bashing at all...what you don't know you're telling yourself, it is unspoken and invisible inside of you...then you can't change it. Here is the whole maddening cycle...and I'm showing you how I did it. Stopped the dance WITHIN, which stopped it in my marriage.

"So this isn't about me just making up some extreme standard of expecting." Are you hearing me say you're doing this?

"So I have to do REBT with more consistency to begin to see changes in my thoughts." I'm quoting this to show you your "have to."

"REBT, doesn't address seeing yourself through another's eyes. To be very honest, this is a philosphy that gets all tangled up for me. It is preoccupied with the thought that others see themselves through someone else's eyes. I do accept that some behaviors demonstrate a tendency for a person to lean toward dependency of another person, thus making expectation of that person high." Again, I don't know REBT. I know how you know REBT...that you are to own your choices and your disappointment...to approach yourself with the reality that others will disappoint you. That's what I got from that post. I was challenging letting go all expectations as the way to not get the emotion of disappointment, being failed, hence, not being loved.

Living externally, looking through others' eyes, having others' as mirrors, is very common. It goes to the belief we earn love, that love is external...if I am good enough, do enough, care enough, BE enough...you will love me. That beliefs says you control other's choices and emotions, their actions...all the things you can't control...

I think your discerning what is an expectation or a preference in yourself for others and you is great self-care.

What I believe you and I are wrestling here is the way to where you want to go, not where you're going. My perspective was I knew my thoughts were mostly in absolutes...so I would identify something in me and do a 180 from it...and 180 from sick is still sick. It was my way of getting to that reasonable 90 degrees, though. My path. Sounds like you are looking at the 180 from where you are and looking at the 90 and trying to go straight to it.

May work for you. May be just what you need. I had so many unreasonable expectations and destructive beliefs, I had to go 180 to feel like what life was without them, and then carefully choose to get to 90.

"I'm working on my issues. But this DOES NOT negate my Hs." I'm sorry you heard me negating your H's issues. They always have been and will continue to be his own. By not joining you in pointing them out, I am not erasing them. I refuse to participate in examining him. He isn't here. He's only here through your filter. When I say what he might believe, feel or think, it is my attempt for you to see him through my filter, doing the Golden Rule...is this how you want to be...and I in know way believe that you are the problem in your marriage, the only one to be "fixed."

"If I lose him, tell me what the heck have I really lost anyway, an infidel? If I took a poll on this site for a show of hands of the people that want this as a charcteristic, I'm sure none would agree, except for those with weary habits like dating prison inmates. So this is where I'm coming from." I hear these statements as coming directly from your pain, and am addressing as them as your truths.

You cannot lose your H. He is not your possession. You may believe you can misplace him, or he can misplace himself. No losing involved. If you choose to leave him, you will be without your life mate, your focus and your breath. That may be a good thing. Your choice. Unless you choose to stop yourself from making him those things and stay, instead, full with the knowledge this is your choice.

You see infidelity as a characteristic...a trait? Something inherently defective in a person?

You are comparing your choices with others who are not you, in your life or have any control over it. You are looking to legitimize your choice and there is now way to do that as a human. Comparison corrupts, humans to humans...when shopping for produce, it assists.

You chose to get off the computer, to comply with your H's request. Your choice. If your intent is to hold to your code and not react to your H's desires, then you did this freely, regardless of his motive. Because you assumed his desire, you felt bumped for himself. Had you not, you would have felt nothing at all, maybe a little swell of power.

Same for SF...your experience is yours. Your perspective is chosen by you, not him. I keep asking you to not base your actions, which are within your choice, on his thoughts, feelings or beliefs.

Which brings us back to me making this all about you. I believe you still hear blame in my advice to self-focus...to become what you see as your H's worst choice...to be self-absorbed, blamed, wrong, THE problem. If you will allow yourself to not see your H as these things, you will give yourself permission to self-focus.

I know these were his words, "He came onto me strong to try to get some." and not an assumption or DJ on your part...yet the way you take his belief to define your reality is still a DJ to yourself. Him getting some...what? Acceptance? Affection? Approval? Extract the physical and what remains? He wanted from you to soothe something in himself. Exactly what you want from him in his actions...to soothe a lot in yourself.

Both human. Both on their journeys. No blame. Lots of pain and seeking the same things in their own way.

On your side,

LA

Post deleted by LLG

I am happy you did your online Al-Anon yesterday...and are encouraged by it.

I'm saddened to think you want to withhold your reply because it would be negative. You can freely disagree with me, LLG...heck, it is your life and I could be so far off from where you are and want to go. If you are waiting to see if you're perspective changes, I'll respect that.

Do I bite you when you're negative? Do I judge you for being so? Could be you have a lesson for me. I like to learn.

How much longer before OW no longer works with WH?

LA

Post deleted by LLG

I get it. Remember, anger is a secondary emotion...try to get to your primary one...

I was reading your Dr. Phil's thread and loved your analogy to the stepmonster wanting to delete the little girl, like a typo.

I thought that rocked.

Moved until June? Oh, that's angering in itself. :::: I'm so sorry.

LA

Post deleted by LLG

LOL! I love that "I was thinking today just how much I don't think about it as much."

I know this...I remember this...being stunned at what once consumed me, having driveled away when I shifted my focus.

Tracing your emotions, you mean, is what you're working on now?

LA

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"Whereas, I felt that I was hanging on your every word."

Shows great self-care to rebel against that, LLG. My words are sharp and may slice your fingers; and if they are dull, you might slip...either way, you know my words are just words given to you...for you to sort through, try on, like you say, supplement, encourage (if you take them as such) and too many to eat whole, right?

You know what the next level to listen and repeat is? Listen and repeat with filter. That's what you did in your last post. You would say, "I hear you saying I'm wrong to expect anything from my H"...which is summarizing what YOU hear through your human filter and handing it back to me to confirm or clarify.

You're more than ready for that level, LLG...takes guts to stand by your filter...and it teaches us what is in our filter, what it is made up of, which gives us more information about ourselves.

"I apologize for being so clingy and leaning on you so hard when I've needed to play a more active role in my own life and M." This is your perception of your actions and our interactions. Not mine. I see you as choosing your every word (and intent matters), every action, belief, perspective and the totality of which, is your life.

That's my view of you. Nothing clinging and if you were leaning hard, I didn't even feel an ounce of it. I see you very differently than you see you...maybe because we hide stuff, like you say, craft LA-friendly answers...may be you sense I'm the fragile one, the clingy one...our filters have a lot of past judgments and reactions in them...we are prepared to hear a lot that isn't being said...and somethings that aren't said at all...

We're human. I see you as my equal, separate, honest and here. You're pursuing your truth and helping a multitude of others...I'm here for the same thing.

Anytime, LLG...I'll be here. Thank you for a peek at your filter.

LA

Post deleted by LLG

I believe you had all these ideas already in you...as you say, not fully expounded on them. I think you could already see that there had to be another way to live, and fear kept/keeps drawing you back to the known way.

Hey, I remember! Still there in some ways. Please be gentle with your lovely self, going back and forth is human...part of changing...like testing the temperature in two pools before you decide...back and forth. Don't allow yourself to be harsh with you...you're not sliding or being slipped the answers...they are already in you, squirming around...you are the brainy kid in the class.

I am fragile, can be clingy, scared, unsure, desperate to be right, validated, accepted...that is part of my self and my fear, rising and falling...the only difference between us, and I can't see even this as a difference, is that I post, I choose to act, anyway. Now, you, also, are finding your voice, your honesty, your willingness to step out where there are no hiding shadows and be you, more and more. Scary in that sunlight...and warm...and the only way to accept ourselves, entirely. Worth the price of admission, I think.

((((LLG))))

And yes...you get to hop back and forth, without judgment, testing the temperature, until your level of desire rises to match your fear. That's the process.

LA

Post deleted by LLG

I'm doing well, LLG. Thank you for asking. I'm in a contemplative mood...I've come to enjoy these feelings when they come...used to run from them.

How are you doing?

LA