SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

InkHulk, post #38

Fuck, dude, I genuinely never know what is coming with you. I like that. And I wasn’t expecting this. And it’s jolting, but acceptably somehow. I’m actually not quite sure how to respond to this right now. I’ll say that I’m losing more than just her, but that doesn’t seem adequate. All models are wrong, you may be pointing out an important ending point of my "this feels like a death" model.

I am honoured to be of service.

If I may, I would challenge your thinking that your marriage was a union from God that must always be preserved. I mean, God gives us cancer and diabetes and IBS but is it wrong for us to try to get rid of them as they are so harmful? I mean, yes, marriage is very serious and it is to be cherished and fought for. But you more than did that. You kept your vows and even tried to get past your STBX-WW not keeping hers. You honourably ran the race that was required of you and then some.

You were the one who made the decision to get married anyway (with God standing by and allowing it), with the very best of intentions yes indeed, but still, you only had the perspective you had when you were 20-something years old. You CAN use the lessons you learned from this to build something much better in the future.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 5:07 PM, Friday, June 28th]

I'm out of my wheelhouse, but I will always advocate for prioritizing stuff that makes you stronger, smarter, feel better about yourself (in a healthy way) when you're going through a tough time.

Anyone have a "marriage funeral"? Some kind of somber ritual to mark the end?

What if you planned or arranged some sort of new tradition/ritual with you and your kids? A solo dad/kids thing. Maybe a weekend away or a camping trip or a visit to a waterpark or something. A good memory that will fill all of your cups that you can do year after year together.

And because I missed the day when people were quoting Taylor Swift lyrics:

We gather here, we line up

Weepin' in a sunlit room, and

If I'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too

Even on my worst day, did I deserve, babe

All the hell you gave me?

'Cause I loved you, I swear I loved you

'Til my dying day

[This message edited by emergent8 at 5:30 PM, Friday, June 28th]

If I may, I would challenge your thinking that your marriage was a union from God that must always be preserved. I mean, God gives us cancer and diabetes and IBS but is it wrong for us to try to get rid of them as they are so harmful?

I have some things to wrestle with about how I understand marriage going forward. I don’t think the meaty philosophical and theological rebuilding can fit inside the community guidelines here, and that’s ok, I’ll take the conversation elsewhere.

You were the one who made the decision to get married anyway (with God standing by and allowing it), with the very best of intentions yes indeed, but still, you only had the perspective you had when you were 20-something years old. You CAN use the lessons you learned from this to build something much better in the future.

It’s a short life, and this has certainly woke me up. I had what I thought was a pretty straight line to a good prosperous life. I think I new for a while that that quiet life wasn’t really what I wanted that much but was too afraid to risk, had too many people counting on me, I over valued money and legacy. I want to live a good, authentic life going forward. It’s exciting and scary to think about.

The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps" (Proverbs 16:9)

What if you planned or arranged some sort of new tradition/ritual with you and your kids? A solo dad/kids thing.

I love this idea, I’ve had some thoughts about it before, intentionally creating new Christmas traditions and the like. I think this is a place where I can really step up and create a new sense of family and identity.

Also, I got you, emergent.

I wish it wasn't 4AM, standin’ in the mirror

Saying to myself, "You know you had to do it"

I know the bravest thing I ever did was run

[This message edited by InkHulk at 5:57 PM, Friday, June 28th]

I have a bit of a different take than Wint be fooled.

I think at some point you will realize what you are grieving is the loss of a dream. A loss of who you hoped she would become and the ways you hoped she would bless your life moving forward. She has blessed you with your children and many other things that you might be able to look at after the grief, but in the end you have been waiting for two years for signs that never came, wounds that were never nurtured.

You are grieving for what could have been and part of that is the family unit.

I don’t think you can see it now but speaking from experience, you five will always be a family. You will share many events in the lives of your children until one of you pass from this earth. We have been with my girls mom at all the same sporting events, birthdays, graduations, school functions, weddings, grandchildren births, grandchildren events, it never ends. And despite our differences we have never failed to add to the happiness of their day.

It’s just hard to envision that sense of giving your kids a family even though you no longer have a marriage or romantic relationship with their mom. Over time you will find ways of getting along and making it work, there will be tougher things to navigate as you both are young enough that I assume there will be future romantic partners.

But your kids will always have two parent who love them. Who show up for them. As they age the most annoying thing for them will be having different houses for holidays. That typically hits when they get a significant other because it makes their time be divided between 3. We have found ways to help with that and we are even past that now.

You are grieving a picture, but as blue said the more you can picture designing the new, the more you will leave the anxiety behind and find the new picture is easier to accept. And eventually you will find joy in it all again. It takes some time.

But I do think overall you will grieve her, but just recognize you are really grieving the lost opportunities that really were all just hopes, not what actually is.

I’ll help you out with some TS lyrics, hiking. Don’t want to disappoint emergent.

We were something, don't you think so?
Rosé flowing with your chosen family
And it would've been sweet
If it could've been me
In my defense, I have none
For digging up the grave another time
But it would've been fun
If you would've been the one

I have a bit of a different take than Wint be fooled.

Imagine that!

*WontBeFooled

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 7:19 PM, Friday, June 28th]

Eh we weren’t as far apart on this one as we normally are. Mine says feel the feelings, it’s not reality. Yours said it’s not reality, move on. Not that different.

I cross posted with emergent and others, ink. It takes me forever to write a post you are doing great, it’s normal to be sad/devastated and all the other stuff. I think we are just all saying, this is a moment in time and this too shall pass.

Given my posting speed today, I’m either getting better or a lot worse, and I don’t feel worse. Haven’t gotten shit done for work this week, and I’m going to be ok with that.

I guess you never know, never know
And if you wanted me, you really should've showed
And if you never bleed, you're never gonna grow
And it's alright now

IH-

I wonder what her world is like, because it bears no resemblance to the one I live in.

It’s definitely a unique place, wherever it is she lives. There is not getting it and then there is this — someone so inwardly focused, there is not enough room for anyone else.

I understand the feeling of death, I think that happens for all of us at some point, D or R, when there is a time to mourn what was lost.

I hope sadness evolves into catharsis sooner rather than later.

It’s definitely a unique place, wherever it is she lives. There is not getting it and then there is this — someone so inwardly focused, there is not enough room for anyone else.

Good to hear from you, I know D isn’t your speciality, but I’m still happy to hear your thoughts.

At some point, Hellfire told me that some WW’s are crazy jealous for their AP’s, despising the wife and her "brats" as standing in the way of her with her man, and she challenged me why I couldn’t believe that my wife could be like that. And at the time I could not/would not believe it. Now she seems like a special kind of heartless to me. And I feel like my religious training and my professional training kept me from seeing it. Love played a role, but I’ve lived by looking for the good in others, assuming it deeply. That’s another thing to look at in the rebuild.

Half of my heart is a shotgun wedding to a bride with a paper ring
And half of my heart is the part of a man who's never truly loved anything

Here’s my take on the funeral aspect - which I also very much relate to. (I lost a very close friend a few years ago and have had to deal with her husband telling me that my loss through D in no way compares to his loss through death. It’s given me a lot of fertile ground to reconcile my feelings around this.)

Divorce is a loss. Full stop.

This entails processing feelings that are not that much different from those resulting from a death. Having lost both of my parents in the same year as the D, I can say with confidence, all loss is difficult. Much of the distinguishing aspects are just left to the logistics of the specific situation. For example, my friend’s husband didn’t have to split half of everything he owns. He also didn’t have to accept that his wife willingly left him. He didn’t have to watch her go on and marry someone else. Then, of course, there’s not the influx of sympathy cards or meal trains. You’re probably already picking up that I do feel one type of loss is harder than the other - but that’s in degrees.

I do think there are "coping" mechanisms for a D loss that aren’t there for a death loss. It’s not socially acceptable to "speak ill of the dead". In a D, it can be helpful to have people tell you how much better off you are now, how your partner was a horrible person. But tilted too far, it can also push us to mitigate the actual loss…to push us to just "move on".

At the end of the day and in either case, what we are really talking about is the grief process itself.

And I’m a firm believer that we don’t work through it, it works through us. All we really need to do is to decide if we want to allow this process to make us better. If that becomes your intent, then you’re already on the good path. Everything else is just the current scenery.

From where I stand at this point, no one is going to convince me that the total pain that I have been thru in being betrayed and now having to take the action to decouple from her could be topped by a death. Not that it matters (but it sort of feels like it matters, like I want the universe to acknowledge my wounding). It’s like my spouse saying that she chooses to die only to me and she will accomplish it in the most atrocious way possible. How could that not be worse than just chance taking her from me?

I think I feel quite a bit better this morning, like I want to get out and exercise and live.

The three most traumatizing things that happen to people are death of a loved one, divorce and moving. Divorce because it is a death. It does need to be grieved. That takes time.

This is when I start looking at behavior through the lens of others’ research. Studies on identical twins separated at birth show remarkable, awesome, realities. Genetics play a HUGE role in our lives. So what could cause your wife to be this way? If her genes make her prone to respond one way, as opposed to another, then she was already this person from childhood. It has nothing to do with you. Your behavior, unless it was vile, never entered into how she thinks and behaves.

You cannot fix, or change, another person. You cannot stop your grief. You will come through it but it will affect you. If your basic nature is to forgive and move on then, at some point, that is exactly what you will do.

I don't think there is any way around this, other than going through all of your feelings.

Meanwhile @InkHulk, I do have to ask this, and of course you don't have to answer here....Do you feel in some ways responsible or at fault for your divorce? Do you feel to blame on some level. I am aware that on the surface this is a ridiculous question with a 'Hell No' answer. But I suspect your subconscious may have a different answer...

In particular, I am thinking something along the lines of what I posted in this thread, Post #36.

https://survivinginfidelity.com/topics/662686/what-percent-leave-after/?ap=21

In particular, I am talking about the subconscious feeling that many of us (I am guessing) have when something bad happens to them, that it represents a personal failure on THEIR part. I went into it in a bit more length in that post.

I feel quite a bit better today, like I was able to grieve and pass thru that. Thanks for all the support. I even feel good enough to banter with WBFA

Do you feel in some ways responsible or at fault for your divorce? Do you feel to blame on some level. I am aware that on the surface this is a ridiculous question with a 'Hell No' answer. But I suspect your subconscious may have a different answer.

This is clearly a different question than am I responsible for the affair. And it is stickier. Let’s say she had an exit affair (and then regretted it and had the worst ever attempt at repair). My marriage was in bad shape before the affair. And she had a big part to play in that. But so did I. And even now it’s hard to see exactly how we each are responsible. I suspect that if/when I get into a new relationship that that will be very enlightening on where I feel similarities and differences as with my marriage relationship. Where there are similarities, I would have to own that I am driving that (either that or have once again fallen into the trap of choosing my subconscious version of toxic, but that again is kind of me). And what is meaningfully different, I could safely assume she was driving. But it won’t do me any good to grow personally out of this to just make my wife the scapegoat of everything. My default in the past has been to over-accept responsibility in relationship turmoil. That is now over, but I don’t want to so over correct that I am blind to my own faults.

To be clear, I am NOT saying that you *should* feel responsible for your divorce, I am instead saying that at times, it often *appears that you *are** still feeling responsible. At least that is the impression I get. Anyway, this may be something worth looking into and working through.

Time for a reframe of early summer. Happy Independence Day from the ball-n-chain!! You are claiming your freedom, writing your own Declaration Of Independence. And THAT is something worth toasting. (I am assuming that you are American and celebrate the July 4th holiday in the USA so these references make sense.)

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 8:46 PM, Friday, July 5th]

I was out fishing with my son today and "Cowboy Take Me Away" by the Chicks (formerly of the Dixie persuasion) came on the radio. This was one of her affair anthems. I didn’t even remember for a while. I just enjoyed listening to the song, even after I remembered. Even made sure it was "liked" on my station so she has a higher likelihood of hearing it around me. Sue me

We’ve picked out an apartment and will begin nesting hopefully the start of next month. I intensely dislike being in the same space as her, that can’t start soon enough.

My relationship with most of my kids has improved and even flourished with my youngest. I was right to think she was interfering, and without her watching over my shoulder it’s such a relief and a joy to be around them.

D process continues moving. Both of us have lawyers, papers are submitted. We’ll have to see if we can agree on a settlement.

I am doing really fucking well. My mind is clear. I’m eating well, working out, dropping some weight I picked up in this debacle. I’m sharp, I’m hopeful, I even dare to say I’m happy. I continue to work thru my trauma, new and old, with EMDR and will be setting a goal of establishing a secure attachment style. I’m nervous about what awaits me regarding the dating market, but that is a problem for another day (but one I think about enough to know I care about it).

Thank you all. I’m just over 2 years, the earlier part of what we quote for healing and doing this well. I have absolutely no doubt that I wouldn’t be doing nearly this well without you. I am forever grateful.

IH

[This message edited by InkHulk at 4:28 PM, Friday, August 9th]

I am thrilled you are happy InkHulk, and that you have cut that ball-n-chain the hell outta your life! Onward and upward!