[calamity]

...I am finding myself...alone..it is very very lonely but I don't think another person will be able to fill that void anyway. MLC or not doesn't really change things for me. I still have to live each day.

The theory of MLC does explain and help me to heal...it removes our marriage as the cause of what has happened so I don't beat myself up that somehow this is my fault.

Thundaar, I am moving on regardless of my marital status. Bit by bit, it's not the life I want really, it's not the life I had planned on but I do not feel stuck. I was in the first 2 years perhaps unable to see a life without him...but reality has a way of hitting you and the memory of life as it used to be is growing dim.

If nothing else, MLC allows me to hope that we may get another chance. So I'd rather have that little bit of hope than have that totally removed. It doesn't stop me from living.

My thoughts exactly altho I am not so far along in the process.

[kikki]

xyzcf - beautifully put.  That is it exactly.

At 2.5 years post BD, I too am finding the memory of the life that we had is very much fading.  The memory of who my H used to be is fading. 

.I am finding myself...alone..it is very very lonely but I don't think another person will be able to fill that void anyway. MLC or not doesn't really change things for me. I still have to live each day.

That is very profound.  I wonder if those of us that have chosen to 'stand for ourselves' intuitively know this.  That trying to get someone else to fill that void would be even more of a colossal disaster at this point that the mess that we find ourselves and our families in. 

[Gallagher]

Yes, and I wonder if this truth gives me the patience to soldier on this exhausting journey of R.  No one else can make me feel better.  My MC said that blended families have a 1 in 4 chance of making it.  I just finished a great book on divorce and the effects on kids (The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce) filling my void with another man is not the best choice for my boys.  It adds so many layers.

So we are all here in different states, one day at a time on a journey we didn't initiate.

I am with my H but I am often lonely too.  I think about how often I have been alone and it unsettles me. 

[dwlh]

I think it would be a huge disaster. Obviously we are ot over our H or W or we woukd not be here. Why in the heck would we want to go on to someone else and later on inflict the pain and suffering we have been through onto someone else. Which lets face it unless its a booty call (I think thats what they call it nowdays lol), We are going to cause someone pain.
  I met a lovely lady the other day who's H of 20 years was having an affair dating back 8 years. She left her H. Her H's best freind then told her he had loved her for many years. She moved on with her H's best freind but told me she will never love him. What she had with her H she said was a dream she would never get back and didn't want that ever again. How sad he will never really move on with the man she really loves

[kikki]

My MC said that blended families have a 1 in 4 chance of making it.  I just finished a great book on divorce and the effects on kids (The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce) filling my void with another man is not the best choice for my boys.  It adds so many layers.

Gallagher - this is my thinking exactly.  Although I haven't read that book - I must look out for it. 

[Gallagher]

Here's the link to the book.  http://www.betweentwoworlds.org/

Its a sobering read.  If only we could get our spouses healthy enough to read and appreciate it.

[kikki]

Thanks Gallagher - very sobering.

Between Two Worlds is illuminating for what it conveys about divorce, but it is equally striking for what it says about marriage: that the couple’s essential task is to make one home from their two conflicting selves, creating an ideal context for a child’s spiritual and emotional growth. In intact families, this struggle goes largely unnoticed by the children. After divorce the conflict no longer rests on the parents’ shoulders but takes root in the heart of the child.

[Gallagher]

Yes, it really is a fantastic read. 

I heard myself bragging about how mature my kids were becoming.  That's a big no-no.  They become mature because they are forced to deal with complex adult issues that they should never have to experience at this age.  They become mature because we adults NEED them to be.  Supports my instinct that having a half way healed H at home is better then having him gone.  I know that won't hold true for all cases or even be an option.  But it helps me to keep plugging away with am MLCer at home.

[kikki]

Supports my instinct that having a half way healed H at home is better then having him gone.  I know that won't hold true for all cases or even be an option.  But it helps me to keep plugging away with am MLCer at home.

If he's not monstering and there's no longer an OW, I too believe this would be for the best for the boys.
Wishing you all the very best Gallagher. 

[Thundarr]

I read your opinion on my thread, Gallagher, and I agree with you that even a broken W would be better at home right now for the kids sake.  It would be more stressful on me but I know what it is like to live with W when she was already well on this road.  As far as "working on the M,"  some things will just work themselves out naturally.  If there is not an OP and no longer Monster then I think it would be for the better for them to come home if there were kids involved (and maybe even if there weren't).