[MomOfSteel]

Happy belated birthday!  I feel like every time I read any of your posts  they help me to consider things slightly differently or cause me to reflect.  It really is invaluable.  There really is something about autumn mornings that are peaceful.  I find the crisp air and lack of people noise calming so early morning gardening sounds great to me.

I think for most of us trying to wrap our brains around how someone could treat us this way is natural.  In these situations though we really won’t ever have a clear answer.  I know it’s something I struggle with and find myself gradually letting go of needing to fully understand.  I suppose the only way to fully understand would be if I was going to do the same thing and well, I would rather not be that kind of person.  I think you are spot on that we try in order to protect ourselves in the future and I suppose failing to even try to protect ourselves from this type of damage wouldn’t be very smart. 

Your observations on the type of people who do this are also very keen as usual.  At first it seems pretty natural to need something (MLC) to blame.  Nothing is ever really quite that simple though with human behavior.  I know my stbx certainly fits the description of having character traits that allow him to do this.  I suppose he always did but as he aged he stopped fighting those less desirable traits.  Sometimes I wonder if the real lesson in this is truly learning to try and shape ourself and our own character as that’s all We can control anyway.  As people have reached out in love and kindness and support, I find myself wanting to pay that forward.  It makes me think of Darwin.  We’ve all experienced an evolutionary event in our lives that is forcing us to adapt and and change.  How we ultimately do evolve is up to us and what work we put in.  I may always have the shadows of what was lost but I get to chose what those shadows lead me to. Maybe the damage makes it harder to ever love with the same abandon that was once possible but maybe it helps us to be more purposeful and thoughtful and that isn’t nothing is it? MLCers seem to often have an event that sets off their own evolution or regression or whatever you would term it and at some level at least they are responsible for the choices they make too.   

So many more good points as well that I want to think through more fully but have to haul myself out of bed to get kids off to school. 

[Curiosity]

I have to say, Treasur, that I find your form of honestly - gentle but unyielding, loving but firm, to be very appealing. You offer new perspectives to struggling people, all the while showing great respect for their choices and emotional responses.

I have been thinking a lot about the things you describe here. I’m not sure why I have been thinking back on the early part of W’s crisis… maybe it’s that part of my brain that thinks of the perfect comeback an hour after it would have been useful in a debate. But I was thinking about W saying that I was her best friend, even as she was hoping to form new traditions with her limerent object. She was so hurt, so shocked that I was unsure about whether we could be any sort of friends at all after things settled out. And it comes down to the fact that, MLC or not, she still chose to emotionally abandon me and to betray the promises she made to me. She chose to not talk to me about things that affected me. I mean, a lot of people have some version of “unraveling” in their lives - MLC, response to a massive life change, illness, accident - and we change as a result of it. Our commitments are still our commitments, and breaking those will have consequences. And the consequences in this case include a shift in my boundaries - and I don’t know what the new boundaries would have looked like, but my close friends are people whom I trust, and people with whom the relationship is truly reciprocal. So, as you point out, even if there were still some love there, that would in no way preclude my saying No to a friendship with her. I think we have seen that from several of our vets here.

Please know that my description of things looking “a bit different” was intentional understatement and in no way meant to minimize what has changed and what you have built for yourself. I find you to be an incredible example of what it means to thrive after an unforeseen trauma.

[Treasur]

Now, just to share a little oddity - partly bc who gets it other than you guys lol, partly bc I hope it is a little hopeful light for those behind me - this morning I woke up from a dream of my former h. Long time since that has happened, so I can only assume that my thoughts in my last post stirred up some subconscious sludge 

In my dream, we were literally moving into a new house and he announced that he was leaving. All I managed to splutter was why he hadn’t said something before we signed the papers the previous week....he sort of shrugged, packed a small bag and said he didn’t know then. In my dream I felt exactly the same sensation of a huge gut punch. He did a kind of jaunty shrug, said nothing else and off he went, leaving me surrounded by boxes. But when I woke, i wasn’t distressed...the feeling didn’t carry through to waking....it was more a kind of ‘well what a weird and s$itty things to do’ feeling. And on I went with my day  It was just a bit odd bc it really is a very long time since my xh has appeared in my dreams and it was sufficiently vivid that I saw details of his face that I have almost forgotten in real life.

And of course it is incredibly common here that BD coincides with exactly this kind of big life event....holidays, weddings, funerals, house moves. MLCers seem to be have a nose for doing the worst things at the worst times with a jaunty shrug 
But the bit that mattered to me is that the effect on waking was less than a minute.
It wasn’t very different from having a dream where I was having dinner with Mr Trump, say, or a pink elephant 
That wasn’t so in the past so, for any of you feeling distressed by your dreams right now, please be reassured that it won’t always be this way x

[Biscuit]

Treasur,

Reassuring that you have got to a place in your life where dreaming of your xH doesn’t send you spiraling.
I, like I’m sure other Newbies on here, get a lot of comfort in knowing, like all the vets say, it will get better/easier in time. That’s good to know when I’m sure for many of us, a good percentage of our waking hours are spent thinking about the MLCer and their actions, let alone when we are asleep!

[Dragonfly33]

Belated happy birthday Treasur, so sorry for this late post. Thank you for sharing about your dream. It’s very reassuring to know that even though later on you will still have these sort of dreams, you don’t wake up anymore crying or having chest pains. You must have had triggers during the day that you dreamt of him again. I usually have triggers when I dream of him. I’ve been actually dreaming about my h very often nowadays and like your dream, he is also leaving me and just ignoring me. My trigger I think is the upcoming divorce proceedings in November. The closer it gets the more I dream about him. Crazy what they left us with. But hearing from your experience I am hopeful that I’ll get there someday.

[KeepItTogether]

Wonder if that is your sub-conscious reminding you how far you've come. Always amazing considering where we started.  You are right though--it is nearly impossible to see how we will ever find our way through the muck. And yet we all do. One way or another. Life goes on and it can be even better, or just as good but different,  than before.

[Treasur]

It does, KIT. I still remember a time when I couldn’t even begin to see it, you too probably, but you’re right. Different but with good bits too. And the odd thorn tbh.

Lots of Christmas Hoo ha (should that be Ho ha?) in the shops and streets here, now that Halloween is over. Tbh, even all these years on, I notice that I approach Christmas a bit like approaching a large dog of uncertain temperament.....I am never entirely sure how much certain things might hurt, I think. Or how I feel about things I used to love so much. So, each Christmas feels like a kind of experiment.....oh, that’s nice or oooh, that’s weird or oof, that stings. So, for instance, I smiled like a child at the lights on my little high street but cried quietly trying to choose a card for my Mum. I have no plans; i’m not sure what I want to do but it will creep up on me, i’m sure. There are people and places I could ask to go or invite, just not sure what I need. I am also so aware that I am not the only human who finds these family times hard without a family to play with. Easy to forget that until you have personal experience of it, isn’t it?

I think I am going to get a Christmas tree though. Which will be Gracie’s first  and my first since just after BD. As Gracie seems to like scaling curtains when she is the feline equivalent of bored, I have no doubt she will see a tree as a fun challenge! Always used to like a real tree but I find myself reluctant to kill one now, so it will either be a white artificial one or a growing one in a pot. The first is a bit environmentally dubious for my taste perhaps and the second a bit expensive to get a cat proof size and just for me...so I don’t know. But the fact that I am even contemplating these things is a difference from a few years ago in itself. I find nowadays I kind of have to mentally wrestle with what these kinds of rituals actually mean to me and I miss a time when I didn’t.

Miss Gracie passed her vet MOT with flying colours. To all of our surprise, given that we still have no idea what caused her seizures, the medication is doing it’s job even better than me and the young vet hoped it would. And with no noticeable side effects. Now, that’s a thing to feel grateful for, isn’t it! She has not had even a rattle for months. It has started to get a little chilly in the evenings here so Gracie has a new habit, along with mine of going to bed with a hot water bottle and a good book earlier....she flips up the brocade coverlet and creates a nest where she leans on me/the hot water bottle and sleep purrs for hours. There is something very soporific about an invisible cat purr so both of us sleep well 

[Nas]

Lots of Christmas Hoo ha (should that be Ho ha?)

 

Great news about Gracie. I hope you find "your" tree, one that works for you and Miss G.

[xyzcf]

Making new traditions.

These holidays are hard. One thing that helps me is to remember that he is only one part of my life.....I place him to the side and then allow so much more to come into my focus.....

I bought a prelit artifical tree after BD. We always had real trees but I never had to secure it and didn't want that much "work". I also started a new tradition, that everywhere I travelled, I purchased an exquisite Christmas decoration...not the "tacky" ones but a truly beautiful memento from where ever I had been...and so each year, these remind me of the wonderful times and places that I have memories of without him ( because many of the decorations I still have "such as First Christmas together do cause a reaction in me).

It is an intense emotional season, filled with memories including those from  our childhood. Missing loved ones who have passed and sometimes it is such a relief just to get through all the festivities.

But you know, it's not just LBSers who experience this.  My friends also talk to me about how these holidays trigger things in them.....

As with anything else, it is a choice we make...do we delight in the sparkle and music and parties or do we say "bah humbug" and turn away from the possibility that it might hurt us to participate in this time.....

I have learned that turning away from things in the long run was to my own detriment.

So let the festivities begin. I choose to go see a Children's Chorale concert, to bake a variety of cookies (mainly from my mother and mother in laws recipes still written on cards in their handwriting), send Christmas cards, to decorate, find gifts that will be appreciated, have dinner parties here and also find time for long walks and to relax, watch the Christmas specials and surround myself with people who love and care about me.

As with all things related to this loss, it takes years to create a new normal for these special times...each year adding a new tradition, even something small that "amuses" you.....

Let us know how Gracie reacts to the tree!

[Evermore]

I notice that I approach Christmas a bit like approaching a large dog of uncertain temperament.....I am never entirely sure how much certain things might hurt

Yes, this is exactly the feeling! You’ve described it so well. I also feel this way about Christmas (and many other ‘events’ through the year (Father’s Day, birthdays etc). Like you I’ve found it has gotten a little easier as the years go on, but there’s always trepidation.

Such good news about Gracie doing so well. We lost our Maggles-kitty last year and the bedtime cuddles/purs are one of the things I miss the most (we used to laugh that ‘oh Maggie’s is in her spot I see’ (which was my lap) and that I wouldn’t even notice, I was so used to her being there). D21 and I visited her cousin the other day and we were both ridiculously excited because she has a cuddly purry kitty. We spent a lot of the visit in a bedroom cuddling and cooing. I hope as Nas said, that you find ‘your tree’ and that together you create a lovely new tradition.