Re: my journey Mart: Great story. It gave me hope.
Re: my journey alonewith2: It's really great that you two were able to look at yourselves and work on your own issues and that ultimately brought you back together. This was very inspirational to me and gives me hope for the future!
Re: my journey scubaj: Wow, you are so inciteful, I have learned more by reading you'r posts. I want you two know I feel like we are living parallel lives. I now know what space my wife is talking about thank you thank you....
Re: my journey painfulopportunity: mate, what an inspirational story. My wife left for same reasons - space - no longer in love etc. She too is completely resolved although still she resides in horrible turmoil. We are no longer speaking about "us" all we do is talk about the kids. It was too hurtful for me to have constant reminders of her resolve. When i showed strength - she weakened to the point that it introduced hope for me. I can't live in hope. I have started my growth journey although am still terribly sad everyday at the loss. I find it hard to talk with her at all as it hurts so much. She wants to be best friends. I can't do it. I don't want to see her at all - although I love her. i don;t want to talk with her at all and hear of any doubt - although i think I miss it. I want to move on. I too believe this marriage will end and we will both move on - albeit unnecessary in the forst place. How did you keep the contact up with your wife as you travelled on your journeys - weren't you hurting just so much???? I want to grow - I don't blame her for anything. She has recognised her pain and acted on it. She has had little therapy but has remained resolved - albeit she is so sad.
I am destroyed - all is I want to do is fell better within myself and I am finding it so hard to get through the pain of the loss.
Re: my journey bikefan: Yes, it was a very painful time. I found it very difficult to decide how much to try to keep relating to her, and how much to avoid and pull away. We were still living in the same house and seeing each other daily.
Long term, if we had continued that way, I don't think there was any way she and I could have remained friends - at least not the kind of friends who talk to each other in other than random or planned-for-other-reasons ways.
In fact, when I did start to feel stronger and talk about more aspects of separation, was when (in retrospect) the turning began. At first, I was really against any separation. Then she moved into the other bedroom, a very difficult time, which prompted me to look within my self for strength.
Then I found it too difficult, like you state, to stay in that limbo of are-we-separating-whats-going-on-here. I started to talk about the next steps: separating our finances and budget, limiting casual conversation, avoiding each other except for 'official business'.
At this point, in our counseling sessions (weekly), she started talking about wanting to stay at this point, staying in limbo, seeing where it leads.
One major theme I got from my wife at that point was that she began to realize that the turmoil, pain and confusion she felt at that time was not all attributable to our relationship, but existed there already. Our relationship (which had its own problems, don't get me wrong) just kind of rubbed the right places to bring this about - leaving our relationship without working through these things would miss the opportunity to work through them at all. Notice that the possibility of exiting our relationship was still there....
Check out Harville Hendrix' 'Getting the love you want' and the related stuff about Imago for some more insight.
Tough stuff. It very easily could have gone the other way.
