[Inanna]

I posted my question in the Facebook group, and there was an interesting comment someone made:

There's a concept called projective identification. The theory is that during childhood when a child is a baby, the parent (usually the mother but any caregiver) takes the baby's negative emotions - anger, frustration, fear, etc - internalizes them, soothes them, and then gives the soothed emotion back to the baby. This is how babies learn to process and begin to recognize and deal with their emotions. However, if the caregiver can't fulfill this function for their child because of their own trauma, fear, emotional immaturity, etc., the child grows up and doesn't learn how to emotionally regulate and they continue to project their emotions onto others around them (usually people who are very empathetic or experienced emotionally reactive parents). As a result, they will go through life looking for people who help them emotionally regulate by allowing them to project their unwanted emotions onto them, in order to help them deal – much as they did as babies with their mother.

That is absolutely recognizable to me, not only when H went in MLC but in all the years we had together. And I was willing to take on that job, subconsciously. I'm starting to believe that a lot of my anxiety, which I never had before I met him and haven't had since he left, was due to what he projected onto me and what I internalized and tried to soothe. This is truly eye-opening to me. I'm now doing a bit more research into this phenomenon.

I also got a whole lot of comments in that thread. Our stories and experiences are so similar. It's mindblowing.

—

H is now pushing again for the divorce. He's been planning appointments with an accountant for a second opinion (because our accountant is his best friend) to vet the business, with our business attorney, and an insurance agent, all in favor of figuring things out to come to a divorce agreement. He hasn't mentioned meditation just yet, but I'm expecting it... soon.
So, in the next couple of weeks, I'll have to drag myself to those appointments... pfff... Fortunately, my father wants to be there for at least two of the three appointments to support me and play buffer, lol. My father has been a great support.

I'm really dreading those appointments. But he's doing the work. He obviously wants to move forward with the divorce. He seems adamant and very sure of himself. The PA must go well, I guess. And the AP is in the middle of a divorce as well, although I recently learned her H doesn't want the divorce. Her H put up a new profile picture on Facebook last October: a wedding picture with the kids. I don't know how far they are in their divorce process.

I'm mostly dreading those appointments because I don't feel like meeting my H. I just don't. I'm doing okay with GAL and don't need his presence in my life right now. Not in the way he is, the MLC persona. I know it's going to be hard because these are tests to see how much I've detached. But also, I know it's going to be exhausting to be in the same room with him.

He's just not my H anymore. At all. I haven't seen any clear moments anymore. He seems to be fully immersed in this new persona. He's not really monstering (I make sure I don't push him) but he's just indifferent, it seems. The only moments I see a little bit of "care" (?) is when it's about our animals. He wants to still see them, and he also wants me to send pictures. That's it. Nothing more. Everything else just seemed to have dropped away. Like I'm a very distant relative or something that he still needs to deal with probably mostly out of guilt and to protect his "Mr. Nice Guy" image. Plus, it's convenient to him that I still do the books, I guess. So even when he's "nice" it's just all about him. It doesn't have to do anything with me.

On the one hand, it's easier to detach this way, because nothing he shows me reminds me of the person he was and our marriage. That's all in the past now. But having to deal with a person I don't like, don't want in my life, living in the same body of the person I knew and was married to (still am!), is so hard! I just hate it. I just wish I could just disappear, cut him out of my life, but I need to take care of myself financially as well, and with two big dogs in the house, I don't have much choice. The only reason I'm still living in this house and staying in the business is because I need to be able to take care of them, especially because our youngest dog isn't socialized with people and has severe anxiety. So moving is not an option, and getting a job somewhere is not an option either. I run my business from home and that's why we took in the animals, because I'm always at home, but I don't earn enough to survive, let alone pay for their care. H will have to contribute and make sure their lives get the stability they deserve until they pass away (our youngest is now almost 7, our oldest just went 10). And it seems that he's willing (for now).

I'm grateful though that my H didn't fully go into monstering and still wants to come to an agreement for the sake of the animals, and that he didn't just vanish. And he hasn't spent like a lot of MLCers do (yet), on the contrary, it seems like he's spending less than usual.

So, in that sense, the divorce is helping, because now he's still willing to contribute, and if it's all settled, he won't be able to back out. I think the AP will get demanding over time, so even though I hate to get divorced, and I don't want to go through mediation, it's better I do to protect myself and my animals.

But yeah... the next couple of weeks will be rough, I think.
Fortunately, I also have a lot of great things planned, like meet-ups with old friends I haven't seen in years, my education and studying (three nights a week), I've been able to book a few new clients (and I didn't even do any promotion; plus the website is still offline), and I also still have regular family visits and church every week. I'm also starting refugee aid relief volunteering work as of February, something I always did in the past but somehow didn't do for a number of years, and now I was invited by someone in the church to help out. The fun thing is also that I used to blog about my volunteering work, so now I can also revive that blog.

I have a lot of good things going... but still... ugh!  Whish me luck!

[Inanna]

I shared this in the Facebook group today...
A little LBS peptalk just poured out of me.

—

I went over every EA he had (3 that I know of).
I thought about the friends he attracted in his life.
I see who the AP is.

They are all broken people.
They need(ed) each other and fe(e)d on each other's egos.
Some of them grew and moved away. Most of them didn't and just kept on living their same old life.

With every cycle, suffering deepens.
Until we grow and go through the process of dying and rebirthing, which is always uncomfortable and often painful.
It takes courage to surrender to these cycles. And yet, there isn't any choice. The question is: how much are you willing to suffer?

This is probably the biggest insight from all this:
I've outgrown him. I've outgrown the people he attracts.
I was willing to die and be reborn, no matter how much discomfort and pain I needed to experience. I had my rock bottom, and that rock bottom taught me that life is always good to me if I allow it to be. I wasn't willing to suffer anymore.

I was definitely broken when I met him.
We needed each other and fed on each other's egos.

But I've grown. I dealt with most of my stuff. And I'm still dealing with my stuff. It's a way of life. I've always been someone who worked on myself. I'm always a work in progress. And my tolerance for discomfort and pain is growing with me. With my tolerance for discomfort and pain, I learn to hold space for difficult emotions, not only for myself but also to hold others in theirs.

In my brokenness, I was willing to live with someone broken. And that's not an issue if one wants to grow. But it is an issue if one cannot let go of the brokenness because growing is too scary.

And because of this, I rather doubt that he will ever come back. The AP might be exactly the level of brokenness he needs to maintain his status quo. Of course, life will always challenge us toward healing, but he has a lot of strength and willpower to resist that natural movement.

I can see that being so attached to one's brokenness prolongs MLC. MLC is like this huge wake-up call, a chance to start growing, to let go of resistance, even though it seems that MLCers need to go into the ultimate resistance first (Escape & Avoid / Replay).

Shocks Sis shared that she believes while being in MLC, the inner child is healing. I think Hearts Blessing described something similar in her work: re-visiting "the children" so that those parts can be addressed and integrated.

But that would mean that this is maybe the very first time my H is really growing in adulthood, and it probably has to be through MLC because, without the brain changes, limerence chemicals, and the emotional cycling and craziness, he probably would keep on resisting to heal and grow.

Can we say that MLC is actually a kind of mechanism of life to force someone to grow? Is life trying to overpower our spouses' resistance so that they have no choice but to grow, to surrender to the cycle of death and rebirth?

I can see that if they still resist, they can become very ill or even die. Life just doesn't support anything other than cycles of birth, growing, dying, and rebirthing. There isn't something like a standstill to just keep what you think you have. That's unnatural.

There's so much beauty in being able to hold more discomfort and pain. It allows us to hold that space for others, so that they can learn to be with these difficult emotions, too. And so everyone can pay it forward. But foremost, we learn how to BE with ourselves. LOVE ourselves and our own perfectly imperfect humanness.

But if you're running away from it, you run away from your own innate nature, the very being that you are. You deny yourself that inner strength and power, that self-love. You reject what makes you human, your sensitivity and your empathy.
And so you will reject others before they reject you.

In my case, it was only a matter of time before I would start rejecting my H. Because I've outgrown him and he wasn't willing to grow. And he must have felt that, deep inside, that anxiety and nervousness, that resentment that was building up inside because I changed the game by growing so much, and he wasn't willing to play. It might not have been part of our initial "deal," our trauma bond.

It was inevitable.
I was willing to give him more time than he was willing to give me.
But time would've run out anyway. His process would've continued anyway. His process started long before MLC, as was mine. Life always steers us toward healing through these cycles of growing, dying, and rebirthing.

He hates me for it, but it's all on him. It's his personal relationship with life itself, that he's resisting here. I have nothing to do with it. If I had anything to do with it, it's that life challenged him through me to surrender. And he didn't take it. He ran away.

The level of discomfort and pain he ran from, he just amplified it with a load of suffering instead. And that is his choice. All his choice. And yet, it might not have been a choice at all. It might have been exactly what needed to happen, because there wasn't any other way — many MCLers talk about this overwhelming compulsion that they cannot fight. It was meant to be.

So now I'm here, and he is there. Our lives run different paths now, and I don't know if they will ever cross again.
This is the big tragedy of being human 💔

The good thing is: that I'm still growing. And I was listening to a podcast of Jeremie Lotemo hearing him say: you attract your same level of emotional maturity. So I guess, no matter if my H will come back or not, I'm not lost. There's a life ahead of me in which I will attract the same level of emotional maturity, and it's already happening, the moment I was willing to shift my focus from my H's crisis to my own life, my own being.

So, who knows what life has in store for me. It might be more beautiful than I could ever imagine. Because, if you continue to grow and go through these cycles of death and rebirth, that is exactly what you reap: a rich and full life, filled with experiences of what it is to be human, becoming a more emotionally mature and authentic version of you, meeting more emotionally mature and authentic versions of others 🙏🏻

Life is not against us; life is FOR us.
It's not about the destination; it's about the journey itself.

By the way, the destination is always death, so who would want that if there's still so much more to live for? We just don't know what that is yet or what that looks like!
Some of us do know, though, and can talk to us from that place — let's listen to them!

The journey might really suck at times but that, too, shall pass and we will learn from it and grow ♥️ It's through the hardships in life that we learn what it is to enjoy life, otherwise we wouldn't value anything and take everything for granted. If we cannot learn to enjoy life in the difficult moments, we will never really be able to treasure the beautiful moments.

Don't give up. We can do this 💪🏻

[amazinglove]

What a beautiful and insightful post! Reading this many, many times. Your wisdom here is breathtaking.

[xyzcf]

Thank you for sharing your insightful post. It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes by Anais Nin, and there are a few others which express similar thoughts:

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat."

In my healing and growth journey, I resonated with the first quote. 

Thanks again. We all are here to learn and support one another.

[MadLuv]

Thank you for sharing and that is what we call doing your own work.  You are well on your way to healing and surviving the craziness that is the MLC crisis.  In my opinion the more you cab see yourself and your MLCer  with clear vision you can move forward in the most healthy way in the most unhealthiest situation.

[Inanna]

Thank you, guys 
And beautiful quote, xyzcf!

—

Posted this in the Facebook group this morning:

I'm not convinced it is MLC anymore (but it could).
I think he is Avoidant and always was. I just didn't recognize the signs. But now, it's all becoming clear. The more I move through my grieving process, the more clarity comes.

1. he cheated on his girlfriend to be with me, 23 years ago. I kinda suppressed those memories but recently re-read our letters from the first year we were together, and it's all in there.

2. he's never been good at setting boundaries, expressing his feelings, and asking for what he needs. I did all the work, and he just manipulated me to get what he wanted, mostly passive-aggressively, by adding stress and anger, until I learned coping strategies to prevent him from getting stressed and angry.

3. his fear of rejection is out of this world. He will always reject others before they can reject him. It's like a sixth sense for him.

4. the better I do, the worse he does. The moment I started taking greater care of myself and stopped accommodating his comfort zone, he started withdrawing and he withheld his affection for me. That's abuse.

5. our dynamic was also one of projective identification. I just internalized whatever he couldn't deal with, and so I dealt with it for him, so that he could be comfortable, while I was going through hell. Everything always became my problem, and he's now using it to blame me for all the "drama" in our relationship. It cost me a lot.

6. in the 23 years we've been together, I've grown so much, and that was our downfall. Because he couldn't play out the same dynamics anymore, he was "forced" to look for another person to play this game with. He had at least 3 EAs that I know of before he got into a PA that led to BD. He hasn't grown in those years. He avoided growing because it was too scary and uncomfortable for him.

7. I never really knew what was going through his head and heart. He was always a master in keeping that for me. I'm convinced I don't even know half of his story. I hardly know anything about his teenage years and the years before he met me. If I'd known, I probably would've noticed this pattern a lot sooner. This is what he does best, all to protect that comfort zone and repeat the pattern, because this is his way of surviving. No one is allowed to come in between him and this survival mechanism. It's all he knows since he was a child. And he suffered severe traumas that reinforced these mechanisms.

Using MLC as an explanation, for me, was just my coping mechanism to be able to survive post-BD. It kept me going. I needed to "ease into" the realization that I was married to an Avoidant who couldn't seem to deal with his own stuff, and I was the perfect person for him to take that on and carry it for him.

I developed an anxiety disorder because I carried way more than my system and my body could handle. It was a subconscious drive and dynamic in our relationship, but now, I've woken up from it.

He's now going to play out the same dynamics with the AP. She is who I was when I met my H. It's what he needs to do to survive because he's not handling and working through his childhood traumas. It will go on until he's ready to finally allow himself to feel his own pain, but he's definitely not there yet, and a lot of people never get to that point.

The AP, his parents, and his close friends (and not many are left) are all enabling this. The AP doesn't know better. She will learn over time. She will be in the same position as I was.

His parents and friends are attached to their own comfort zones and thus they need him to continue this pattern so that they can also continue their patterns. I was always the one threatening that. And so they needed to reject me, too, but they couldn't as long as my H was with me. Now they have a free pass to fully reject me, and they all feel relieved.

I'm proud of myself that I can live a different life now. I have learned and am still learning about this. I will never stop growing and learning. I'm the eternal student and I always was. I'm surrounding myself with people who match my level of emotional maturity, and I'm breaking this pattern for myself.

I still have a lot of healing to do, but I'm on the right path.
I think, though, that I'm no longer Standing. I will go through the divorce that he wants and will make sure I can thrive again (I already do when I don't have to deal with H). I have a wonderful support network and wonderful friends. I get a lot of fulfillment and satisfaction out of my work.

Since BD, I never had a moment of anxiety again. Fear of the future, yes, which is normal when you're shocked into a new existence. But no anxiety whatsoever.
I feel so much more myself now. I feel so much better. I feel free.

I still love my H, but I can't be with him. And I don't see how he will change into a person who can have healthy relationships. A miracle would have to happen. He was able to protect his comfort zone for 46 years. He can do this for another 30 or 40 years if he wants to.

His life will get worse with every day he's repeating this pattern. But he has a lot of energy, willpower, and stubbornness to make sure his comfort zone is protected, even if life will make him sick and make him lose the people around him who truly care for him. He knows how to make people work for him — he's a hot-shot consultant/manager — so I'm not going to wait for him to wake up because that might never happen.

I'm 44 years old. I have the second half of my life still before me. And I will enjoy this second half. I will live it to the fullest, reaping the fruits of my inner labor. My life will be totally different from his.

Of course, I wish him to wake up. I wish him to be able to experience true love. It starts with beginning to love himself. I would wish that for everyone because the world would be a better place. But life is short and needs to be lived. If we are meant to be together, then we will find each other again, but that is totally out of my hands.

It could still be MLC on top of the whole Avoidant thing; it doesn't matter. What matters is that I learn what I need to learn so that I can break the pattern I was in for 23 years. Because I deserve better. That's all I care about now. That's why all this happened. It didn't happen to me; it happened FOR me so that I could learn and grow into the person I need to be.

I would rather think it is me who went through a Midlife Transition. He's still the same old person. I've woken up from that and transitioned into the second half of my life.

—

I also added in the comments:

I believe this happened to me because I have something really essential to learn about myself and why I was with such a person. If I want to be treated better in the future, I also need to put in the work to avoid a repetition of my own patterns.

I can't tell if he is suffering from MLC. He did cheat on his girlfriend with me 23 years ago, and is now doing it to me with his AP. I think he's been suffering all his life. I don't think this is different. It's just that I was willing to accommodate and please him until I didn't anymore. That changed our dynamics. If that dynamic would've changed 10 years ago, he would've dropped the bomb on me 10 years ago. If I would've kept up my own patterns, then it would've happened in the future. It doesn't matter. The only thing I know is that I'm probably going through my own midlife transition, and this is part of what I need to learn to make this transition. He might still go through his midlife, I don't know, but I don't see him doing anything different than he always did. I'm the one who changed, not him.

—

This really feels like a breakthrough for me. It puts so much in perspective, like I can now really grieve also for what was but isn't anymore (and probably never was, because I was also blinded by my own patterns). It sets me free in a way and at the same time, I can look at my H and see him for who he was/is and have compassion. This is not a man I want to spend the second half of my life with. And I cannot expect him to change just because I did. I need to let go. My life is good as it is without him now. I can just be myself, express the person I am today. I can't do that when he's around. He can't manage it. He can't hold space for that.

I don't know if our paths will ever cross again. Maybe a miracle will happen and he will move through his own traumas and break the patterns. He could. But realistically, seeing how much time it took me to move through my own traumas and break my own patterns (more than 10 years, if it's not been longer even), life's too short. I'm letting him go and just trust that God has a plan. I don't need H in my life.

I'm not planning on dating, though. I have no interest in other men. I'm still married and I'm honoring those vows. And it will probably take me a few years to fully move through the grieving process and integrate all these lessons. So, if there's Standing involved, it's just me Standing for myself, Standing for my own integrity. I trust God and follow His guidance. He has heard my prayers and is giving me all these insights. He has opened my eyes to my own part in this marriage and I'm accepting it as my inner work and process.

I wrote an e-mail to H and I don't expect any answer. But I felt I wanted to be honest about what I learned about myself and let him know that I let him go. I'm fully trusting my intuition. This feels like a huge step to me and a breakthrough. I can let go of MLC now and just let it be. I cannot know if this is MLC anyway. Only time will tell.

[amazinglove]

wow. lots of wisdom and insight here. Really smart.

Do you think you will change your mind on any of this?

You seem so healed and so fast! Amazing.

[Inanna]

Hi amazinglove,
I don't think I'm going to change my mind on this.

Today, I had a meeting with our business lawyer and my H to talk about possible scenarios concerning our business in the context of H's divorce.
Yesterday evening, because I felt I needed to clear the air for myself before going to this appointment today, I sent my H an e-mail in which I shared my latest breakthroughs using clear language such as "I let you go" and "I don't expect you to change just because I changed," etc. To let him know where I stand now and that I can see that he needs different things in his life than I do and vice versa. I also set some boundaries such as: "I'm okay with you e-mailing and texting me, preferably for practical stuff, but it's too soon for me to meet you F2F and hear your voice on the phone (unless it's an emergency)", and I explained why (because I need to emotionally detach more first).

I shared with him in that e-mail that I'm now in a place of more acceptance that our marriage is over and that he needs to be with someone else (especially now that I see his patterns). And I confirmed that it's me who changed and not him. That I'm seeing him now with different eyes and that I can see that he is still the same person, but that I have changed and that I can't be the person he needs me to be. I shared a tiny little bit about the patterns I saw in our marriage, both mine and his.

It felt like the air has really cleared up. But I was still a bit nervous to go to the meeting today. My father was with me, that helped, especially in the beginning.

When I walked into the conference room and saw my H sitting at the table, I expected that I would feel triggered like I used to, but I didn't. I felt calm, collected and relatively at ease. I saw him sitting there, and I saw my H like he's always been. And I could also see that this is not a man. This is a boy. He's frozen in time. But he has always been frozen. I just didn't see it. I felt no attraction whatsoever. I felt a strange kind of ... friendship? I don't know. It's not really friendship... a familiar feeling of "this is the man who I spent half of my life with" kind a familiarity which felt safe to me, but is not what I want anymore. Because I know I can't be the person I am today with him. He still wants my old version, from before our relationship dynamic changed, and I can't be that person anymore, not even in friendship. I can only be myself, the person I am today.

And I felt very much like myself, which is a first since BD.
And I could feel compassion for him, the — I don't know — somewhere between 8 and 17 year old boy maybe? That's when his most severe traumas happened on top of the CEN he already suffered. Maybe he's going back and forth between those ages, I don't know. But he has this radiance, boyish, not a man of 46. I believe he always had that. He never changed. I changed. I was that girl who now grew up. I need a man in my life, not a boy. He apparently needs a girl in his life, not a woman.

I felt no physical attraction either. He's not a bad looking man, but because of his boyish radiance, I don't feel that attraction anymore. I think I will feel attraction with men acting like their age in emotional maturation. And I cannot expect this from my H. He never showed me that. I see that now. Maybe one day he will. But I don't think that will happen soon. He can continue like this for many years to come. I don't want that. It's not healthy for me.

We had the meeting and everything went great. We have the right person to guide us through H's divorce. And I still call it H's divorce but I know I will be a divorced woman within x amount of time. I feel that I'm also getting ready to call my H my STBXH. Not right now, but it's coming. And I'm at peace with it.

Then something happened during the meeting. At a certain point we were discussing the financial agreement for me so that I could keep my steady income (payed by our business) for a number of years. But it depends on the lives of our dogs. I need the agreement until the dogs pass away, so that I can finally move to a smaller, more affordable place and get myself a fulltime job. I cannot do that with two big dogs to care for. H knows this.

So, I was asking our lawyer that if the dogs would come to pass before the minimum number of years that we were discussing, that the arrangement could be disbanded, etc.
My H suddenly said: "I don't want that. Even if the dogs would come to pass away sooner, I want you to have that money. I want to keep paying for you until that minimum number of years is reached. I'm the one who ended the relationship. Not you. I'm responsible for making sure that you can thrive again and I know you will need the money to build a life for yourself."

Both my father and our lawyer were surprised. But H insisted.
I started to cry because I was so moved by his gesture. I asked what the AP thought of that. My H said: "I don't care. It's my money. And we've been together for 23 years. You deserve it, especially after what I did."

I don't know why he wants it, if it's because of guilt or if it's because he genuinely cares or because limerence is fading or he hopes to one day come back, or something else. This is what I stopped doing: trying to guess or analyze what is going on in my H's head and heart. I just accept it. I'm grateful for it. I thanked him. My father thanked him as well. I don't need to know why. This is helping me and he's willing to. That's all I need to know. I let go.

Our lawyer was positively surprised and informed us that we won't need a mediator to finalize the divorce. He can help us put everything in paper to take to the notary to make it official. He said he was impressed by how we handled things. And that he would help us out to make sure I'm fully protected and that we can live separate lives (practically/financially) so that we would succeed in the years that we still have to "work together."

My H is not a bad guy. He just has these patterns that connected with mine through a trauma bond. And that trauma bond is coming to a resolve now. Or better said: it's coming to a resolve for me, while H is continuing his patterns with someone else.

I feel at peace. There's still grief, of course. Some things still hurt deeply. But I feel this is more closure than I ever had so far. And H is willing to meet me halfway. Maybe my e-mail from yesterday helped. Maybe that has put pressure off of him. It definitely has put the pressure off of me.

When we walked to our cars afterwards, H asked me if it would be okay that he would stay with our animals while I was gone from the house. In that way, I can go out more and I won't have to constantly watch the clock to be home in time. E.g., when I go to church on Sunday and afterwards to my parents. He just wants to stay with the dogs while I'm away, spend time with them, even do some work around the house (which is a rental that's in both our names and for which he's paying half of the costs still).

I said "yes." I won't give him the key permanently, but I'll drop the key in the mailbox, and he has a key of the mailbox.
I'm glad he wants to spend time with the dogs. And again, it takes pressure off of me. I can enjoy my trips and visits to family more this way because I know someone is taking care of the animals.

It seems that, because I stopped trying to put my H in the MLC box and just opened my eyes to who he is now, he can just be who he is now. It's the same man in my sitch, so this might be different for your spouse, of course. And I can be who I am now, and I'm not the same person he was married to. He can't be with the person I am now, because then he would have to deal with his stuff, and for some reason, he can't or won't or isn't able to. So, I move out of the way. I live my life. And apparently, we can still come to arrangements that work for the both of us. So, I guess we're now co-parents of our animals, while, before (after BD until now), it's was just me and he didn't seem interested in the animals.

I think he was always interested in the animals, but the fact that he can only get to the animals through me is what held him back. Because I could not let him go. I couldn't accept him for who he is. Now that I can, the pressure is off. He has a clear path now. No booby traps or unexpected outbursts anymore. He can relax. I won't jump on him. He can just be who he is.

It's so fascinating. I hope we can continue this way.
But this also means that I'm probably no longer Standing. I think it's time to just continue to move forward with my life and leave H to his own life. I don't think he will come back. He has found a "girl" and doesn't want to be with a woman. He will repeat the patterns and that is his right. I cannot change that. And I don't want to be "second choice" or "the only choice" when things fail with the AP or with women in general because he can't find someone who will accommodate his patterns. I think he knows that it won't work with me if he doesn't grow up first. But the latter is not something he will be able to do in a short notice. If it took me more than 10 years to move through my patterns and grow up, and I'm someone who always had a lot of determination to do inner work, I went on and off in therapy since I was 16, he's not like that, so it'll probably take double that amount of years, if not more. Life's too short.

So, I just keep following God's guidance — and God has been good to me lately — and I'll see where I "end up." No way to know. Miracles can still happen. But I let go.

And because of all the above, I don't think I will change my mind. I don't think this is part of cycling like I experienced after BD.
I think this is the new me. I think this is clarity.
But of course, there are no certainties in life other than everything is always moving 
I'm not attached to this story. We'll see what happens next.