ummm, when i just read Kimmy's post <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

ok, serious answer, not often enough weaver!!!

i really thought my idea for last night was going to be a good time.

my life is so dang serious all the time.

ok, i'll take that back. i do laugh too.

it's just it all happens WITHOUT DH. i have a blast with the kids, went to a water park with son, bowl with him, bike ride with him, yada yada. Always have fun with DD, Great America this year including doing the Dare Devil Dive (OMG!!!) ok, i pee'd in my pants then, but we laughed about it afterwards.

the 3 of us play games, read books, so much stuff.

just most of the time, DH is not there with us. his choice. he is always welcome. sometimes he joins us, we all went to Starved Rock to hike this summer that was lots of fun.

i am trying to get us to go away for one night for our anniversary next week.

i have this plan. i'm going to send him an email tommorow. make it sound like it is from a resort, confirming his reservation. (i mean it will be my addy, so he will know it is me) (the resort is actually our own lake house)

i am hoping he will agree to go, just he and i for the night, let the kids come the next day on the train. DD is almost 18, DS is 13. They were left alone one other time for a 2 night trip. They are very responsible and get along better when on their own anyway!!!

hey, i have to dash home. we are actually going to see the Bears tonight. that will be fun.

i guess what is missing is "couple" fun. the fun that includes DH is always family fun. WHICH I APPRECIATE EMENSLY. i hold dear all these memeories especially with DD going to college next year.

what is so draining is the contrast between the extreme fun i have with the kids and the fun we have as a family all 4 of us to the LACK of fun just he and I ever share.

90% of the time (which means i am admitting there is a 10% of time when we do have fun) we are serious or just plain distance).

i need that % to increase.

i'm wearing out!!!!


Go Bears. BYE

i just read your follow up post.

good stuff.

i'll be back tommorow, don't want to be late. just wanted to acknowledge your second post.

thanks!!

You do realize that Kimmy is an Idiot, right?

Oh.

Yeah.

You were laughing AT her...

Makes all the difference.

You need something silly.

I recommend Drop Dead Fred.

(did I spell recommend correctly?)

If that doesn't work, I've got a 4 year old who has the cornerstone on silly. I loan her out for parties and such. The only drawback is getting her to be serious....it is seriously difficult to do that.

Work out dear.

It helps.

Now THAT sucks.

Day before yesterday I sent the Wookie a text that said, "I love you more than the Friday night lineup on the SciFi channel."

He came in and kissed me and said, "I love you more than a 1965 GTO." He sold his so we could make the downpayment on our first house.

Last night, while working out I texted him, "I DEFINATELY love you more than our treadmill."

But the treadmill has it's uses...

FLT2H,

Next time you're near Starved Rock (assuming it is the one I am familiar with) take a side trip down US 6 to the East about a mile to The Cajun Connection. Ron has REAL Cajun food including crawfish and 'gator.

He's only open for dinner on Thursday through Sunday, but we make the trip from about 35 miles away once a month or so.

Also try to take a winter weekend at the SR LODGE with your H. Very relaxing.

Mark

PS Ron's toasted pecan pie will make you smile for sure as will his wife's bread pudding with bourbon sauce.

FinallyLrningT2H
I've been reading her for so long that I remember you posts of old under different names, etc.

Not sure if I've ever posted to you before, but If you will allow me, could I make an observation without any judgement or disrespect here?

The last several weeks for you have somehow seemed to produce a heightened sence of anxiety that I have never seen in you before. Are you OK?

This reconciliation stuff is tough stuff, isn't it?

Tonight I will pray for you to have peace, the peace that the Lord intended for for you. Can you stop for just a minute, and let His peace envolope you. Stop grouping for answers that you do not have. They will come in their own time. We will never be able to figure out the answers to all the Questions.

Take a step back and begin to breathe again.

This is not like you. I feel you are going through something that you really don't have to put yourself through. Can you relax for a while?

Time is on your side. Let the Lord's peace envelope you.

Stay strong, but don't become so aggresive. breath and relax. The Lord's timing will come to you.

All Blessings,
Jerry

i love to bike ride. The past two summers i got into the habit of putting the bike on the train and riding the 1.5 miles from the station to my job in the mornings. And then sometimes, when i had the time, i would ride the ~20 miles all the way home after work. I've tried hard all summer to get myself to do it this year, unsuccessfully. This morning I did try, ironically due to the weekend, the metra would not allow me on this morning due to the holiday weekend, they sometimes ban bikes. I absolutely will take my bike out this weekend and go for a ride at least an hour long.

music - i've always loved music and dancing. I could be caught many days dancing in an empty living room. My kids were singing the "No No No (don't pass me over)" song by the BoDeans before they were talking much because of all the dancing i did with them when they were little. Oh, ok, and cuz kids do love to say NO!!! I lost music for a while when we lost our daughter in 1992. Then, after confessing (3yrs ago), I switched to K-Love, all christian station, it felt so much safer, to many songs on other stations became hard to hear for various reasons.

I realize i have done it again, just like in 1992. I have just stopped enjoying music. I have not turned on the radio in a long time. certainly have not sung or danced to anything. this morning, i tried, it looks like K-love is no longer on that station in my area. But i had bought some WOW worship CDs a few yrs back, i can pull them out.

Other music that makes me smile - Wicked and Suesical the Musical sound tracks, oh yeah and Shrek <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I'll dig one of those out and start listening to music again.

jogging/working out makes me feel very good, Kimmy is right. Makes you feel very alive to use those muscles. I just also feel so unhealthy right now, attempting to jog or work out is intimidating. i start with the long bike rides instead.

weaver, dealan-de, how do i ever find a way to say thanks to the two of you enough.

mark, i'm sure it is the same SR. I have looked at the lodge, we are actually close enough to just drive there and back again in the same day though. So far that is what we have done. My DS and I did go to Bear lodge just recently, as the summer mom/son outing. It actually turned out to be a bit young for him. We were at Kalahari 4 years ago, to repeat that memory is really what he would like. Which will will do in the spring. 4yrs ago it was to celebrate DD's 8th grade accomplishment (her choice). this year he is in 8th grade. He wants the same treatment <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Jerry - i read your post right as i was going to bed last night. I felt your prayer trying to work on me. I was fighting it for a while. Negative thoughts really can make life hard. Not to mention thin skin. The bears game was fun (well not the outcome but oh well) but as a family outing. DS and DD sat next to each other and i kept seeing them talking and laughing. Knowing DD will be at college next year at this time, it's so fun to watch them. it reminds me back when the 3 of us would go roller skating, a couple's song would come on and i'ld always talk them into going with each other with the promise that the next 2 songs i would take each of them on their own. "But first you two skate" I so loved to watch them skate hand in hand.

(So many times i tell them. Friends will come and go. Mom and Dad will go. But you will have each other around for a very long time. See family means everything to me. i.e my siblings. kwim?)

Then at some point near the end of the first half DH got a bit short with me cuz i asked a question. And my thin skin was scrapped, and due to how thin it was it hurt more than it needed to. I mean the evening was still ok, not ruined. DH noticed what had happened a few minutes after it did and he apologized, said the bad performance by the bears was probably bumming him out.

I am just constantly left feeling like he does not like me. I know he loves me. But there is a difference. I don't know if i'm imagining it or not.

"grooping for answers that you do not have"

i've not really got any great ideas as to how to make my thin skin thick again. but last night i just kept saying in my head, breath and relax. it helped.

thanks sounds lame but anyway...

Thanks

i feel like i owe you all an apology for that other thread.

the stuff in here, this is what i should be focusing on.

and to not do so is an insult to you all because you have so kindly given to me here thoughts/ideas to help me with what is going on in my life.

please no one respond to the apology, just quietly accept it.

i just needed to say it.

FL,

You love to bike ride, and you love music. All the time I have been reading your threads, I have not known that. With people who are happy, we see them talking about what they love. They can't help it, it bolts out of them. It's also called passion. You have to find your passion for life once more. And you will now. I know it.

Okay, I have some thoughts that I really want to say to you before I leave for the weekend. Please think about them when you get some time. But don't think about them too much. LOL

Here goes (moved from your other thread) -



Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i am not feeling like a victim. i am feeling annoyed.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



But you are still here, and that is what is important. You are fighting for your place in life and here could be seen as symbolic of that (maybe?). This is a sign of movement, of change, and that is a very good thing considering you have been stuck for a long time in your recovery.

You are at a crossroads. That is what I have thought since your last couple of threads.

You have been so caught up in the minutia (Ark's word) that you are drowning in it. Or were drowning in it, hence your depression. That is not what a marriage, or life for that matter, is about.

I can tell you what needs to change for you to find happiness and joy in this life, as well as in your marriage. Whether or not you will believe me, or be able to accomplish it, is entirely up to you though.

It is simply a change in perspective, FL.

I want to say one more thing, and it comes from a book I read when I first got here. I know it to be true by studying the people who are happy and have happy marriages...

"Who said marriage was supposed to make you happy? Marriage is supposed to make you married."

Look for your happiness within, and then bring it into your marriage.

The entire world will change with simply a change in perception as well as perspective.

Those are my thoughts on what you have posted lately. Have a great weekend, and I hope that shirt comes so you can have some fun with him that way.

thanks weaver. i'm not going to respond to the content. but i will relect on it, let it penetrate my brain, try not to fight it with any "but"s <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

have a great weekend.

Hey FLT2H - I haven't read through your entire thread, and it looks like I've missed some "excitement"...

Anyway, just wanted to see how you're doing and let you know that I didn't take offense at your post on Capitan's thread at all...

I hope you have a great weekend! Oh, you can listen to 94.1 KLTY over the internet and they play great Christian music 24/7... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Semper Fi,

RIF

I can't tell you exactly why, but wow I really love this statement right here. I can't even tell you the last time I thought about and shared with others what I love doing, what makes me happy, my sense of purpose, my passion.

I'm not even sure I could tell you right now what I am passionate about or what makes me happy. I suppose I probably could, but it would take a little while. That's a pretty dismal thing to realize.

Thanks Weaver, I like it. Time for me to figure out what I want, what makes me happy, what I have a passion for (outside of introspection and figuring out "what is wrong with me" as I have been doing for far far too long now).

Thanks for letting me know RIF. I appreciate it.

K-love also is on the internet. I looked up the one you suggested and added it to my favorites. thanks

LongWay,

Weaver has a special way about her, and I appreciate her insights very much too....she may not know this, but she has come at just the right moment for me a few times and kept me from feeling completely hopeless.
I think one of, if not THE, most important things in marriage recovery is your personal recovery (in case you didn't know, I am a FWW)...it makes more difference than you know.
But when you find what makes you happy, I'd like to hear it, and am sure many others, would, too!

NOW

Longway, i'm glad you popped in. Want to say a Thanks to you. for the multiple times you have posted. I'm not so sure i have always responded back directly to you.

I also wanted to say, congrats on the newest member of the family!!! kids are so awesome.

Weaver, i know what you are saying but then again, historically, people at work know my passions. MY KIDS are my #1 passion. they have to suffer thru soooo many stories.

they knew when i used to bike ride in.

and theatre, i didn't mention that one before. Been involved in many productions at the community theatre (with the kids of course) i'm always backstage. lately always as the Props chair. I love working with kids. There are 2 productions each year, Christmas time and in the spring. There is no theatre in summer. But people at work hear those stories too.

On the boards there are some here that let that side of life show thru here too. I don't do that so much. I guess cuz this place is about such serious stuff.

even so, i will not deny it. i've been slipping away from everything. i've been keeping to myself a lot at work too.

NOW,

I've said it before, but I'll say it again -- far and away my biggest problem in trying to work on the M and recovery is the lack of hope. Hopelessness, to me, is such an incredibly crippling thing to experience.

I read on another counseling site that the feeling of hopelessness is what drives most A's and D's. If/When hope is lost by one or both people in a relationship -- hope that things will get better, hope that you will ever get the relationship that you want, hope that you will ever be happy again -- THAT is the point where major choices have to be made.

I still struggle with it though, constantly. Looking back, that is what led me to make decisions that turned into an EA, it is what caused me to expose and stop the EA, and is what is constantly hamstringing me in the recovery. I honestly still cannot say that I truly believe that our M can be great, and it makes me feel so utterly hopeless and mournful.

But, I know it is still early, and sometimes I actually do get a glimpse in myself and in my W that things could truly work out to be better. And the little insights like Weaver just gave, and you as well, sure do help with hope. Finding things that make sense (personal recovery, just doing fun things again, being happy about dumb little things) gets me excited again, and brings about a little more hope that hey, maybe I CAN do this.

LongWay,

From what you've written, I would say you understand a lot more than I did at that point in recovery, so I feel confident that you will find your way....Humans have such an incredible capacity for hope...isn't it amazing how a tiny little thing can bring it back, even if only for a while? But it's those tiny little things that will see that the job gets done...they carry a lot of strength.

And you have much more strength and hope than you give yourself credit for!

NOW

LW2G -

Take it from me, when you have been continiously battered and bruised emotionally, you have to WORK for your hope. It becomes an elusive entity that is always just beyond your fingertips, darting away when you attempt to snatch it back up.

And it's VERY tiring.

It was a shock to me when I thought I ran out of hope. I mean, knock my block off, shocker. What was almost worse was the realization that hope was NEVER something GIVEN to me, but something I had to WORK for (even tho before the Wookie's adultry, it was such easy work).

You control your hope. You control the amount of work you put into it and you foster and fertilize it's growth.

And things CAN get better. Believe me. But, it's work, too.

- Kimmy

this stmt hits me like a train!!!

i never used to really work at hope. not when it came to just me being me and me being happy to be alive.

(long, did you see my above post to you?)

I think the hope is always there, it is God-given...but the work is in finding it, and then allowing ourselves to grasp it.