Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Well I have been both slow to remove the bandaid and the quick pull. Probably more quick pull the older I get. Let me ask this. Can I move on and let go without me initiating the divorce? It’s simply something I am morally and emotionally against. He will have to file, but I can still keep living as though we have divorced. I am really doing that now, but still holding hope or would consider a reconciliation if the time came. I feel I have faced the shock pain of the affair, the shock and pain of him not accepting my forgiveness and moving in with affair partner and living through the pain of my new life without him. I think I have faced 99.9% of the pain. I know divorce is a technicality that will also be painful, but as I’ve stated I am unwilling to file. I am willing to forgive him (for myself) and to start living my new life. Is there any tips on doing this that you can share? I do have some pain, but I have more good days than bad days. I am not vindictive, but see husband as someone rather lost trying to find external circumstances/people to make him happy. I try to find gratitude daily in the life I have. I am making plans for what I want to do with my life, as I don’t have anyone to answer to, and that is rather nice. If I am missing any self help pieces to moving on please share. Thank you!
Yes, he has a pattern when things get tough for him he looks for external sources and never looks inside to fix the issues. Since we can never control or fix someone else I feel you are saying he is a lost cause and I need to move on. I do not want a divorce. I am learning to live my life like we are divorced yet holding on to hope. Is that wrong? Is that what is keeping me sad? I really want to be able to do both. It goes against my very fiber to give up and divorce. My boundries I don’t feel are appropriate until he would want to come back. Anything done now would be a sure turn off and a push to move to divorce faster than ever. To answer your question what I would need would be him to understand his pattern for starters. He can’t begin to do internal work unless he realizes what he is doing. Then he has to be the one to decide whether to work on himself or continue his patterns. I would only go back with someone who attempts to work on themselves. The other option is just a bandaid and I cannot live in that fear again. I am stumped by the time frames of his escaping. His first wife was 7 years and two kids. The children were ages 6 months and 2 years when he left. My guess is the stress of children coupled with their relationship was the hard times he could not face. I was single when we met no children and we did not have any children together other than fur children. I wonder if that is why I lasted twenty some years. His affair partner has a fare amount things that should be an issue in time so I can’t help but wonder when he will need to cut and run again. This is all very depressing. I wish I didn’t love someone with this pattern. I am not sure but think you are advising for me to divorce and move on, but I feel I am throwing the baby out with the bath water. 🙁
Yes I believe that’s where the “I love you, but I’m not in love with you” explains he was after the new relationship passionate high. I told him once that I can never be new again and sadly someday she won’t be either. He said I know. How I feel now and how I felt before are different. Before D day I had also slipped into the complacency and non exciting but very comfortable life together. Secure love for lack of words. When I found out it awakened my deep desires of the passion I thought had died out. So sad it took a tragedy to find that feeling again and then it’s too late as only I am the one feeling it. You ask about history. We had a very passionate start with great sex in the beginning. But I think a majority of people feel that in the beginning. It naturally calms and you move into the secure phase of love after so many years. You hope that your partner goes there with you as well, but mine chose to start over with the highs with someone else. I cannot even show my inner awakening to him as he does not live here and does not care to know that my wake up call would probably be what he was seeking but never shared that he was seeking elsewhere when stumbled upon the opportunity with another person. I do want to share my new apsirations, but I worry he would feel I don’t need half support anymore if I shared that I’m trying to help myself. Should I be vulnerable and do it anyway? Should I somewhat act like we are a couple in that we used to share everything and now I am afraid as I see him as the enemy if he does pursue divorce. Can my vulnerability and strength be a plus to share and hope he does not use it against me? Almost like me going back to being independent and exciting to him when we first met. He sees me now as someone who kinda gave up my life and depends on him.
Your last point is the one that scares me the most. I believe my internal wake up is so strong that I am now leaps and bounds emotionally ahead of him and he needs to do the tough internal work or it would never be good again. I always tell myself I will deal with that if he comes back. I guess I hope that coming back means he has started the internal work to get to that point of returning but maybe not. Most new relationships or limerence have a shelf life and I do believe he might be out of it or nearing the end. His total time with her secret and now openly together is 3 years and 3 months. The research shows most end by 3-4 year mark. I guess if limerence is ending he is moving into a stable relationship with her like he did me and it may take years for that to be mundane and not worth the cost. I try to continue to move on, but I do have sadness each day despite my efforts.I forgot to answer your question about dating. No dating and no desire, but with covid I feel it will be awhile before that would be smart anyway. I have a masters in counseling psychology that I never put to use and I am trying to get licensed and do that. I am afraid to show or share too much of the positive things I am doing as he might screw me during divorce time. I had not worked in 20 years to spend more time with him and he has offered splitting his income for now and attorney advised me that is way more than courts would allow me so I lay low on sharing my aspirations as I feel he could use those against me. Sometimes I think I need to take that chance to show my new directions in life to appear more attractive that I can live without you and be happy, I just prefer to do it with you.
I agree I feel she is insecure. To build on this more when I found out my H said I don’t want to divorce you or take away your insurance etc because of my actions. I am not planning on remarrying. Affair partner on the other hand was thrown out of her house when H found out. I feel my H might have stayed in the house with me longer if her H had reacted differently. It’s a pilot flight attendant story where they would for two years try to bid the same 48 hour flight to Hawaii and be together for the layover. It was Paradise in a five star hotel with built in excuse of working and only had time for a lovely dinner and a bit of beach time the next day before flying back all night. I thought when they moved in together the reality would hit and it did as two months into it my H tells me that he is starting to have fights with her about him not starting the divorce. Affair person got totally divorced in six months. Fast forward two more months (notice there is a pattern here of when this comes up every 2-3 months) and he tells me he hopes she comes around as he does not want to loose her over him not divorcing. Another two months and her divorce is final he says to me I really don’t ever see us getting back together so we might as well divorce. He knows I will not file so nothing happened again until Covid and then we both agreed that doing that during the pandemic was not wise (especially changing someones health insurance). Then 4 months later he brings it up again and says he needs to start the process but has no plans of finalizing anything until this pandemic is well under control. I asked is she pushing you as I thought we had an agreement to wait and he said yes. Then he said well I guess I will tell her we talked. It’s now been 3 months and feel the other shoe is coming if he keeps to past patterns. So yes I assumed and have proof she is pushing.
Affair person is not as attractive and is only two years younger than me. We always did many things together that we enjoyed like golf, biking nature, foodies with cooking and new restaurants etc. He is finding out her golf is atrocious and once time he joked that I need to give her lessons as he just doesn’t have it in him to teach someone again at this point in his life. He is an avid fly fisherman and I went along for nature and did not like fishing myself but never denied him going or participating at times. He also found out her fishing abilities were highly exaggerated as well. He makes fun of people who think they are fishing when all they do is put a worm on a hook and tap a nap and let the fish hook itself. Basically I feel they had poor communication of how the future was going to play out and she embellished things she new he liked. He also told me she was very flirty.
Signs I missed. yes hindsight is 20/20, but I trusted him so much I didn’t put it together. While in the secretive affair time he finally got in better shape but I thought he was finally taking the heart issues and doing it for that. He used to call the morning of the trip in Hawaii and then he stopped and called only before leaving. He was with her in hotel room so no wonder that stopped. A lot of little things that one would not really put together but I will say a year before it started we had a whole house renovation that dragged on 9 months while we lived there and also did work ourselves. Then we had one of our cats need a serous surgery removing an ear canal and subsequently she now needs a heart pill every 12 hours and that really kept me home because she is semi feral and I can barely get her to take the pill let alone a stranger. So I could not leave town like normal. Then the final part to the perfect storm was a issue with my parents in another state that landed my dad in a nursing home and I would have to be there to help with the transition for most of 2018 and we would have to do the baton hand off for him home from trip to handle cat pill and I leave for IN to help. Thus not seeing each other much. The other part to this is I am his second wife. My first marriage. He had two small children when I met him and he was relocating states to take an airline job and he was technically separated, but not divorced. We only have fur children together and his children are adults now. My therapist says he has a pattern of things getting rough he bails. His first marriage was for 7 years. Not sure how I lasted as long as I did. He had an abusive aocolhic mother so I am also learning that can fester into adult life if they don’t address. He is a conflict avoider for sure. I have therapy every week and also follow principles of Marriage Helper who believe in Limerence which is the infatuation part that research states can last up to 4 years within the bell curve and some longer but outliers. In the beginning I was so shocked it was like I was having an out of body experience. I did have emotions but didn’t really go crazy on him just a very deep sadness. Before he moved out he continued to fly so I had a few days where I was alone to break down and then could be more calm and strong when he got back. All things that don’t push them out further but he still went. He didn’t do midlife crisis really just plucked me out of his life and inserted her into all the things we liked and did together. In the beginning he would tell me about her and now he is very careful and does not really mention her name at all. It feels like he woke up to realize how hurtful it was and is now careful. He does act kinder to me but is also very distant. He told me that we are really good roommates. So I assume he was after the new passion of a new relationship. The last big talk he told me he cannot look back to us he just has to move forward. I was asking if he could live with the fact that he never came to me to say he was unhappy or give us a chance later. Her husband also said the same thing to her and both had no answer. He said I’m broken in the beginning. I see it as two broken people doing something very selfish and I was hoping the real life living would wake him up from the affair fog and he would see flaws he overlooked and relationship would falter. Affair person is also on an SSRI. He found out by accident. She forgot her pill on their trip and he sad what pill? She finally told him she was on an antidepressant. When pressed he said I have no idea why and I said you have a gun in the house I would want to know why a person went on this medicine. It may be as simple as can’t handle life and pop a pill or there is more to it. Again they have poor communication or at least the real or unattractive parts they seem to hide from each other so they don’t ruin the dream. I don’t know if my rambling has helped paint the picture or not. I am in a way better place now, but still would love to have my husband back but do worry that I have grown so much that he and I might not be ok if he didn’t do the internal work too. I want to take all the good and build not go back. Thank you!Limited talk about what happened. When I first found out he said we were great roommates, He wasn’t looking to meet anyone and it just happened. He could not take my forgiveness and try again as he said I have to see where this relationship goes with her and eluded to the fact he could not control his feelings. He is 57 now. He had a serious health scare a few years before this happened where six doctors told him he should be dead. He had 5 heart stents. Currently we only talk about surface issues of life not relationship talk. In the beginning he did tell me about their relationship and now he has stopped as if he is living alone. He is slowly starting to display more characteristics of my husband in the last few months. He was so cold in the beginning it was like watching a stranger in his body. The only talks of us that come up are periodic when he is being pushed by affair partner to divorce me. This comes up every 2-3 months and then it kinda goes away until the next time. In the beginning I would have said get counseling, but now I am so much wiser and realize it was his issue and counseling with someone who does not want to be there is always a dead end. I want him back, but very afraid if he did not do some internal personal work we would fall back into old patterns and not work again. He said the famous “I love you but I’m not in love with you”. I do feel he loves me still, but not romantically. I hope I got all the questions answered!
