[KayDee]

My mom would always make fun of me because I would always believe in the best in people and the best in situations and she said my hope will die last. I have always been one to never stop hoping and to always think miracles do happen.

Well, I for one think this is not such a bad way to be. But is it possible there is more than one' miracle' available?  When we put considerable energies into one thing, it is always at the expense of other potential opportunities. It's just how it is, we only have so much energy to deploy. I guess what I am saying is, who knows what miracles or opportunities will bloom when you deploy your positive attitude elsewhere 

[MadLuv]

So rather than concentrating on the detaching and the accepting that seems to work for others, I’m focussed on ‘accepting that I’m not gonna accept it’. I’m not going to magically stop loving him and wishing he’d wake the F’ up!! This is how it’s going to be for quite a while yet

This is good to bring up, because accepting doesn't have to mean you accept the situation and are ok with it, but that you do accept that this is the situation. Right now they choose not to be in a partnership with us, so accepting that they have a choice and you cant force someone to love you, or be with you. Acceptance of it is what it is,
Not it is what you want. That was always the hardest thing to grasp. Accepting the situation , because frankly you dont have a choice. The choice was made for us. I do think it becomes easier once you also accept they aren't ( for now at least) who you love. I never thought I could let go. It’s not what I would have hoped for, but I do understand it is my reality.

[JohnnyBravo]

Yep, everything MadLuv said. Sorry to see you going through all of this, Schratz.

[Schratz66]

Thanks Johnny, Kaydee, Mad and Ever...

It truly feels like fresh out of BD.....today's accomplishment is that I have not cried. Since that dark dark cliff I was standing on last week I will focus on little victories and not crying is today's victory for me. Just like 6 years ago I will have to stop asking why.......I thought I had stopped all the whys and realized we will never understand and yet, here I am cycling with the Whys all over again. Why be consistent for 9 months, why insist there is hope, why call me....when in the end nothing changed and he is not ready to follow through. I was on my knees last night confessing to God that I am so lost, that I need his help and guidance and I apologized for thinking life was not worth it any longer.

It’s gonna feel sh*t. It’s gonna be exhausting. I’m gonna be sad and miserable and f’ing YEARN for what I can’t have. Those feelings aren’t honing to go away. So I’m not going to wait for that to happen. I’m carrying on regardless. I know you can carry on regardless too.

Oh - Evermore - you do know exactly how I feel - somehow we are the odd ducks out - always believing and always hoping and not being able to accept. You truly are my long lost twin in this MLC mess and I appreciate you always putting into words what is in my mind, Yearning for what I can't have - that's pretty much t and carrying on regardless. So true. I thought yesterday there is not a single thing I can do to change any of this but somehow the sun keeps coming up regardless and I keep waking up regardless and I have to carry on regardless. It is all we can do. Carry on and fumble through and yearn and hope. You know, our husbands surely lost some fabulously loyal women.

But is it possible there is more than one' miracle' available?

Kaydee, what a wonderful idea. Yes, hope and miracles can come in a variety of forms and shapes and maybe rather than just hoping for him, I could just hope for a wonderful life regardless what he decides. Thank you for that.

Slowly but surely I am getting back up. You know when we build with legos as kids and then someone breaks it, we cry....then we build it again and then when it gets broken again we become inconsolable and never want to touch another lego. Right now I do not even want to think about him or the situation. I will carry on regardless because there is no choice. But a life without physical touch and knowing someone cares and gets you is a very lonesome life despite many friends. Will there be joy again ? I don't know, but I am hoping there will be. Until then I will just put one foot in front of the other.

It takes a village to raise a child they say, but I found it takes a village to protect a soul and I found my village right here on this forum. I would not have lived to see this day had it not been for all of you on here supporting and caring and reaching out and propping me back up to where I can function again. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for catching me.

[Evermore]

I can already feel in your writing that you are recovering from this bout of the cycle. That’s how I think about it these days. There will always be waves, it’s just sometimes the waves are very big and they smash us down. But the thing we get very good at is learning how to right ourselves. More quickly each time. Your H being around consistently for 9 months meant this wave was bloody huge! Hardly surprising you got smashed flat. But look at you getting back up. And hardly surprising that such a smashing would give you a few cuts and grazes. They’ll heal. And the waves will die down again and be more doable. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming! For now it feels (for me and I suspect for you) like swimming away from him is the best direction to head for me. It’s a large ocean and I can change the direction and head where I want. And I can change and swim back towards him if he ever swims towards me one day. For now swimming for those calmer distant waters is the safest bet. So don’t think of it like a doorway (which implies a complete division if you ‘close the door’). It’s an ocean and you’re in it, and he’s in it. All swimming around lost. There’s still connection but for now you need to head to the Caribbean. Leave him in the Antarctic!

[Dragonfly33]

I agree with what Evermore said. Maybe for now you could swim away from your H and find those calm waters. Good to hear you're feeling better. I know how it feels like when your H gives you hope and then withdraws. It's horrible. But one day you'll get there.

Even though I have no more contact with my exh, I still have those tearful moments. Because we truly  love our spouses, I believe it takes a long while to heal from what we had to go through. Like what everyone said here, our healing is not linear but one thing is for sure, we are heading towards that direction.

[xyzcf]

I am very happy to see other people writing here and sharing their own grief and sadness about the loss of their loved partner. Those of us who still have these deep feelings are not an anomaly and we need never feel that something is wrong with us because we still feel such pain.

Each person is different and sometimes it seems like many HS members have been able to shut the door and walk away quickly, some express that they are happier now then when they were married, others have gone on the find a "better" partner...often the idea of no contact is pushed because it is felt that somehow that will alleviate the pain and destruction in our lives, and that is also true for some.

You cannot "blame" yourself for still getting shook by his contact with you....Evermore has explained it very well,  each time we get smacked, it takes less time for us to "recover" albeit there is still pain and can be for several years.

My therapist explained it like a slinky that is going in reverse but it never goes back as far as the first time.

So thanks for all who have shared .....sometimes if I may say this Schartz you are quite hard on yourself for still having these feelings for him. Others have similar experiences. With a great amount of time, we heal. Perhaps those of us who take "longer" (and I learned a long time ago dealing with death) there is no time table for grief.

You said:

I thought I had stopped all the whys and realized we will never understand and yet, here I am cycling with the Whys all over again. Why be consistent for 9 months, why insist there is hope, why call me....

I am smiling because when I would ask so many "why's" DGU (DontGiveUp for those who are not familiar with him) would look me straight in the eye and say "xyzcf, what part of the word crisis don't you understand". or as Ursa puts it, trying to understand is like trying to taste the color green with your elbow.

The only minuscule explanation that I can give you is that he is a "clinging boomeranger" and that is what they do. I am 13 1/2 years post BD...you would think that by this time he would not initiate contact with me ..yet he does quite regularly. There could be 1,000 reasons why and then 1,000 more and there is a pattern...after some contact (and that includes going on vacation for 9 days just recently) he will disappear and I won't hear from him and then he'll contact me again...almost weekly text messages..jokes mainly...nothing of sustenance....it is a pattern he has repeated for years.

Of course years ago I thought each contact meant he was coming back, that he was missing me, that he still loved me but those were my dreams and desires, not his......

And the only rationale to me really is that something happened to the man I loved so deeply, they call it "mid-life crisis" and whatever he does/doesn't do has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Well of course you have heard this before ...spending time with him allows me to observe him in the flesh and photos taken are even more telling...he is still running and may always do so.

He has the ability to compartmentalize extremely well, he has bragged to me about how well he can compartmentalize and perhaps that is why they can say or do something that makes us think they are waking up...when in reality, they continue to pushdown any feeling or emotion that might cause them some distress.

Your husband cancelling the dinner might have been from fear of being in your company and so blocking contact with you for him might have been his protective mechanism not to have to feel anything at all. Or maybe not, just a loose theory.

Because I feel everything very strongly ( I would say I am an empath) both good and bad feelings are experienced but they are also dealt with...not so for the MLCer who compartmentalizes anything that has a semblance of "feelings".

I went back to therapy 8 years after BD because I could not seem to feel "JOY"....I felt like I was just going through the motions of life, life was flat and I missed having an intimate partner, being touched, feeling loved.....and I am grateful that that is now in my past and joy has become a natural part of my life.

The switch back to our feeling calmer and more content does not happen quickly unfortunately after these major disappointments....I do see a change in your writing and hope that you will soon find even ground again.

We have been there, it's horrible the somatic response that occurs, that we cannot control. I think that our spouses are seen as "danger" and so the body responds as it has been made to do...our job is to learn how to mitigate those responses and bring ourself back into a calmer state...easier said than done.

[WHY]

I’m listening to this audio book by Robert Greene, The Art of Seduction (shocker, I need to figure out how the opposite sex works after two decades, I’m a little rusty!).

However, I heard something today that resonated when I read your story and it seems like too much of a coincidence. 

I’m really not sure if this helps at all.  But Greene talks about the Coquette seduction type.  Which I’ll be damned sounds just like a clinging boomerang and I’ve just put two and two together.  The Coquette often leads to the ruin of the victim (think Napoleon and Josephine). 

Gosh this is interesting.  Perhaps understanding what affect a Coquette has on LBS can help to break dependency/addition.  It’s more about the victim understanding what’s occurring and perhaps using that to break the cycle and detach.  Coquettes also have weaknesses which could be useful. 

It’s very interesting stuff RCR.  It may prove helpful in our quest for survival here. 

https://unearnedwisdom.com/part-1-the-coquette-the-art-of-seduction/

Page 67:
https://ia800708.us.archive.org/29/items/the-art-of-seduction-robert-greene/the-art-of-seduction-robert-greene.pdf

[Treasur]

As you said, most of us have found that it takes a village during those hardest of times. I’m not sure why it can be so comforting to feel that others ‘get’ it and want to provide comfort and support, but it can be, can’t it? It’s a privilege really to be part of that village and to offer back what we were given.

Imho acceptance includes accepting that, at the moment, you feel how you feel. Learning to temper the usually inner voice (more than the voices of others) that says you shouldn’t feel how you feel. I never found that this voice made any difference at all to how I actually felt. It just left me feeling ‘less than’ in some way - so a sort of double whammy. 

I also think that it is worth unpicking the difference between love and attachment bc I have come to see them as not quite the same thing. Seeing my mother (who has advanced dementia) reminds me of that - she is no longer present enough to be my mother and my life is lived without one now....I don’t expect mother-ness from her or much daughter-ness from me even (and when I still did, it hurt me a great deal to see her). But there is love. A different kind of love in practice, but I find the fact that love remains is a tremendous thing, a treasure really bc it says so much about me and her and my past family. I am grateful for the love even though the object of the love and much of my opportunity to show it or receive it is lost if that makes sense. The attachment, and the grief, is more self-centred, I think, more about my pain and my loss....the love is not.

Again jmo but I think the ‘addiction’ element is more about the attachment, or what it represents to us, than our love for the person. Which is why it’s complicated perhaps.

I don’t know if I agree with xyzcf about how LBS here perceive any love for their former spouse. It’s complicated, I think. I don’t think I know the answer myself about my own situation....it’s a thing but I don’t know how to describe it or define it. It’s not the same as it is was, but it’s not nothing either. And my life is not better for what happened, just different. What changed, I think - and it took a long time - is that I came to accept that he chose to go and that he is no longer a presence in my normal day to day life bc that is what he chose in how he left. And that this means that some of my own thoughts about him and my role in his life or his in mine were no longer appropriate or indeed loving even. That perhaps the most loving thing to do for both of us was to accept a changed reality in the most constructive way I could. So, for instance, it was my choice not to hate my xh or wish him harm....that never made sense to me having loved him as I did.....which did not mean I was not angry, resentful, hurt or bewildered or that I wanted to say what he did was ok or excusable.....or that I needed to interact with him bc it brought nothing good for me when I did......I just decided not to convert it to hate. Regardless of what he felt/feels and that it might make no difference at all to how he is living his life now bc he doesn’t know (or perhaps care) What I think or feel. It was a choice for me bc it made sense for me. . I know it sounds bizarre, but I really did find it helpful to think of it as if he died....although to be fair, it is years since he did any pop up boomeranging 

These issues and feelings are almost existential imho....they are about who we are and how we approach living....not surprisingly they take a bit of time to work through. And different folks come to rest in different spots.

The same is true, in my experience, for those issues about hope and optimism. We are shaded a bit by this experience and it causes most of us to take a hard look at our own take on the world, doesn’t it? My inherent optimism and the way I love left me naive in some ways, that’s true.....but it is also the same part where my gratitude lives, where love for my mother lives, where the flavour of my own resilience lives, where my kindness and joy live. I like what I call my Babe-ishness (after the little sheep pig in the movie  ) - it has some downsides, sure, but I value it too much to let it go just bc my former h didn’t value it and bc it didn’t fix my marriage or my other losses. Again, it took quite a while to work that out and to learn how to do Babe-ish separately from the folks I had loved and lost. Normal, I think.....and I have no doubt that you will find your own way to that too.

As Ever said, I hope you can see that your ‘recovery’ process is different now, that falling over and getting up again thing. I suspect it is a common experience that some kinds of contact with the situation reset the clock a bit....which is why perhaps some of us choose to minimise or reduce contact with them. Bc in reality we are reducing contact with a situation as opposed to the person, if that makes sense. But I think there is some level  of healing that doesn’t really deepen until we accept their absence....and for some of us, little or no contact is the only way to accept their absence. Not for all, but for some. I found thinking of myself as withdrawing from a situation that simply became unlivable with (for me, and I still remember the point in I think 2018 or so when I reached it, when he sent the police to my door bc I had not replied to some bizarre text messages) as opposed to thinking of myself as going NC with him.......I said no inside to the situation, and the effect on me, as opposed to saying no to him if that makes sense....it just happened to be the fact that one brought the other in my case. But I knew myself well enough to know that this was necessary for me bc the situation really was relentless and insane enough that I could not live with it being present in my life one day more.

[Treasur]

PS the other thought that occurs to me about contact with them.....in case it’s useful.
Seems to me that humans contact each other as a kind of ‘opening bid’ bc we want something.....that’s normal in everyday life.....i’ve just sent a small card to a rather depressed friend bc I want her to know she’s in my thoughts and I hope it will encourage her to reach back to meet up with me bc I miss her. Although I understand that she might not, and won’t infer too much about her or what she thinks about me if she doesn’t. My expectations are coloured by my empathy and my experience of her.

I think MLC spouses reach out bc they want something too......different wants perhaps.....to vent, or get reassurance, or feel better in some way. And we respond often bc we want something too....to feel we matter, to keep a connection, to feel ‘right’ or to try to fix something. At one level, that’s normal, isn’t it? But where it gets skewed imho is if we are dealing with someone who doesn’t do ‘normal’ reciprocity, who shows little respect or empathy or who wants something that we no longer want to provide. It’s a tough message, I know, and maybe not a popular one here, but I think they contact us bc they want something at the time....i’m not sure it has anything much to do with us or their feelings about us tbh, more like scratching an itch maybe?

I think we know in our gut when any relationship or friendship has respect and overall reciprocity in it. And when it doesn’t. I still remember in the first year or so post BD how my then h could bang on for hours about his concerns, ailments and woes.....and not ask a single question about me, my mother, our friends or my life. Not one....it was as if I was an inanimate object to talk at rather than talk with. Some of us have had friendships like that, ones that over time just seem too one-sided. That friend who just wants to talk about themselves or is irritated that your troubles get in the way of you listening to them talk about their new shoes 

So, if we see contact from them as being about their wanting something in the moment, we can decide if we want to offer it or not. And if the cost feels ok to us or not. Just bc someone wants something from us does not mean we are under an obligation to provide it, after all. And it doesn’t make us mean or bad or unkind if we decide not to. Conversely, we contact them or respond to their contact for our own wants too imho....and sometimes quiet reflection will lead us to see that they are unable or unwilling to meet those wants, and we are the ones expecting something of them and hurting ourselves bc of our expectations of the contact.

Seems to me, 66, that for reasons beyond my understanding, your h likes to have a notional ‘diary date’ some way out and likes you to respond if he contacts you. Both of those things give him something he wants and his behaviour is not influenced much by what you might want. Is that fair? And how does that stack up against what you want or expect of him in the current circumstances? And if it doesn’t, to remind you that you do have a whole raft of choices between doing the same and NC at all 

Again jmo but I think contact with anyone who is sufficiently dysfunctional to be unable to do basic reciprocity and respect needs to be a thought through choice. And you can probably only do it consistently if the cost is low, if you can accept them as they are and the interaction at face value without inferring or expecting more.