[SteelSpine]

Your post is as breathtaking as your impossible blue sky.

[LearningIamOk]

What an impossibly beautiful post HT. The advice to the Newbies is spot on. And yes, our healing will be a life's work. The good part is that we are working it.

[3Boys4Me]

Thank you for your comforting words

[Reinventing]

I was always a bit confused by the concept of Mirror Work. I wasn’t/am not perfect. My M wasn’t perfect. But what was I supposed to be improving when I couldn’t sleep more than 2 hours at a time, threw perfectly good food in the trash because I couldn’t stand the sight of it, & paced my house at night howling & clutching the stomach that felt like it had been gut-punched?

Great description of the nightmare we go through.

I see that the mirror work comes later as we rise from the ashes of our burnt-to-the-ground marriage, ideas of the future, and identity. In learning about MLC, we learn that some of our tendencies to "help" are really about control, how we react when we could respond, how our inner hurt child lashes out at perceived injuries instead of developing into an adult, how our thoughts control our emotions, how we have a choice to jump off the victim triangle.....

This is the mirror work that for me happens--and is a continued journey--only after the pure survival mode of post-BD lifted and I became a human being again.

[readytofixmyselffirst]

Hello,

E-mail received today, something like “I’m going to need cataract surgery (because I’m an old f@rt & actually had an elder-crisis). I need records from previous eye surgery I had (about 20 years ago) & my drs no longer have them. Do you have any records of it?”

This is a gem. I would have responded, "Oh, yes. I transferred all of your important documents to the Etch a Sketch. Let me check, oops. They are gone."

Stand for your marriage if you like & do no further damage, but this is all up to you now. Navigate contact/no contact, whatever your situation requires, but this is about saving you now. Saving your marriage is only a distant glimmer of possibility. Save your own self first. Find your impossibly blue skies.

Great words and advice. I used to believe that saving my marriage was the only success. Now I realized that I saved myself and my children. I did find my impossibly blue skies. It can really happen.

(((Hugs))) and more (((Hugs)))

Ready

[HeartTattoo]

The seventh anniversary of BD has come & gone with little fanfare. Oh, the time building up to it & the build-up to the holidays still has its melancholy. Winter is dark & dreary here & the memories of Christmas past intrude, especially the last one, three weeks before BD, when we were completely clueless (except for H, of course, who was plotting his escape).

So, seven years, the far side of the 2-7 year time frame MLC has been said to last. Counted from BD, not from H’s long-ago obsession with buying a motorboat (that I was to pilot, Yikes!) so that he could once again take up his teenage try at water-skiing again at age 55. Not counted from the five years before BD H said he had been “seeing” the OW. How long an EA, telling her of his “unhappiness in his M”? How long a PA? I didn’t ask. But they had become so “emotionally close”, had been “falling in love” & “wanting to be together” for 2 years or so. Whatever. All very crazy & unbelievable.

For two years, through the shocked & crazy world of the LBS, I believed he would come home. He let the separation agreement stand for two years while I said I was “making decisions” & he said I would have time to “re-establish myself”. When I said I didn’t want a D, he sent the court papers through the mail with no warning. When the D was final, he M’ed the OW within 2 weeks.
 
That, at least, was a clear wake-up call. For two years I had been hoping, but also preparing. Preparing to move, preparing to sell my beloved home, preparing to re-enter a long-dormant profession, preparing to live the rest of my life without my friend, companion, lover, husband of 40 years. And that’s what I did, moved 200 miles, sold the home in the woods I had designed, worked again as a nurse, & will live the rest of my life without the man I have loved since I was 18 & the last man on earth I would have expected to have hurt me like this.
 
Once you’ve been on HS for any length of time, you begin to see that, yes, there are returns. RCR’s own inspiring story. Others, some very slow & sloggy returns. But the number seven holds no magic. Most of the MLCers still seem to be lost in space five, seven, ten years or more. Clinging & boomeranging in puzzling & hurtful ways. Or, vanishing into new lives with their long-time infidelity partner who may now be their legally & socially acknowledged spouse.

I have a good life & I am very grateful for that. But my heart & soul remain damaged & I try (but don’t always succeed at) not returning to “trying to figure things out”. That way be dragons—no answers, no logic, no solution, & no peace at all.

Make the best of your life & live it as joyfully as you can. That is all there is.

[xyzcf]

There is no "magic" number.

This:

But my heart & soul remain damaged

How could it not be? The life and love we shared was real...for 35 years it was totally real..and I am grateful for those 35 years but not grateful for what this did to me and continues to this day.

Thanks HeartTattoo for acknowledging. How I so often wished that we all lived close by to one another, because unless you have been here, it is hard for anyone to understand..why the love doesn't fade away, why you could still be affected by this loss.

But we survive don't we? And life unfolds and there is beauty and smiles to be had.

And, truly we do not know what lies ahead...it could be something incredible...however, living for today, counting the many blessings I have is what is really important.

Glad to hear things are well for you.

[LearningIamOk]

HT, I am sorry he revealed so much to you. I am sorry you had to listen to it. To have a bucket of cold water thrown at you.

I am glad that my xH kept all of his MLC nonsense to himself. I didn't need to listen to all that BS he would use to damage me and my heart. What happened hurt plenty. And, for a while, I wanted to hear exactly what sent him off the rails. But what good would it do me? I just hit the 9 year mark. He has never looked back, and he wanted no part in talking to me. I used to wish I had some clue into his mind, but now I am glad I don't have to hear his lies and history rewrites in my mind. I am done speculating on them. I don't care.

And, truly we do not know what lies ahead...it could be something incredible...however, living for today, counting the many blessings I have is what is really important.

The quote from XYZ says it perfectly. We truly don't know what lies ahead. I, for one, am open for the gift of it.

[HeartTattoo]

Thanks for following along, Learning & XYZ. I think it helps to get some of this stuff down on “paper” & out of my head. Not that it’s ever completely gone. It’s funny how it goes up & down still, from teary sadness to chuckles at the absurdity.

HT, I am sorry he revealed so much to you. I am sorry you had to listen to it.

Learning, I begged for these bits of explanation, because this was all so sudden & I couldn’t comprehend any of it. Not that any of his “explanations” really helped because it still made no sense. Don’t people that are “unhappy in their M” talk about that with their partner? Don’t they try to work it out with their spouse? They don’t just pretend everything is fine & then one morning tell their partner they are so desperately “unhappy” that they are leaving (10 minutes later) to move it with an OW, do they? Well, yes, we finally accept, in MLC they do.

The life and love we shared was real...for 35 years it was totally real..and I am grateful for those 35 years but not grateful for what this did to me and continues to this day.
Thanks HeartTattoo for acknowledging....because unless you have been here, it is hard for anyone to understand..why the love doesn't fade away, why you could still be affected by this loss.

XYZ, I think you & I are similar in our feelings about our M’s. There are big situational differences—yours a Clinger at times, mine a Vanisher. You a Covenant-Keeper, me moving on from what I see as a destroyed Covenant.
 
But we both deeply grieve (still) the loss of our very long M’s. While I look back & recognize the damages FOO issues inflicted on my H & our M, I still don’t believe I am in any way better off without him. I am a different person now, but not a better person. I have not “blossomed”. I just pulled up the strength that was inside me (with a lot of loving help) & built a new life. It is a good life, but not a better life than I would have expected to have had with my H. And in many ways it is not as good a life.

I feel great sadness at the brokenness of my family, especially for my sons, especially at holiday times, especially when I see older couples contentedly together.

There have been bright silver linings, but they are still the linings of one h#ll of a big dark cloud. One I wish would have passed me by.

Hugs to All,
HT

[xyzcf]

The only thing I will add HeartTattoo, that someday life will take a turn and the fun and excitement that once was will return...I don't know in what way for the years seem to stretch out without much to anticipate or look forward to.

I don't know what it will be, I just think that there is still time to feel fully alive again.

I have to believe that for the "emptiness" still causes great sadness and fatigue.