Reflecting back on the days, weeks, and months following d-day....
It was as if I were living more inside my XH's head and heart than my own.
Everything weighed on what he did, what he said, what he thought, and what he felt. I was in reaction mode and hyper-sensitive. It was an awful feeling. The adultery caused me to become very insecure, lose my identity, and that in turn resulted in some serious damage.
Everything is entirely different now 6 years later and divorced.
I can't remember exactly when things shifted into my own center.
Looking back on that time, I really don't know what to think of it. It was like passing through a war zone full of land mines and chaos.
Also, it seems that there is nothing I can tell somebody just entering into this nightmare. There is compassion and empathy, but probably very little that can be done to make things easier.
I wonder what someone could have told me differently back then that would have helped lessen the damage of that experience.
Maybe nothing.
This message has been edited by Red--Wolf on Mar 23, 2005 1:03 PM
Well, I know that, for me, I needed to hear that the betrayals were not my fault. I needed to hear that over and over again.
And I would have been better off if I had learned earlier that trying to make someone love you can do very, very bad things to your self-esteem and your health. Trying to earn someone's love never works.....
But now the issue before me is learning why I felt I had to do that, so I don't do it again.
Jean,
What you wrote reminds me of this Bonnie Raitt song.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Turn down the lights, turn down the bed
Turn down these voices inside my head
Lay down with me, tell me no lies
Just hold me close, don't patronize - don't patronize me
CHORUS: Cause I can't make you love me if you don't
You can't make your heart feel something it won't
Here in the dark, in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power
But you won't, no you won't
'Cause I can't make you love me, if you don't
I'll close my eyes, then I won't see
The love you don't feel when you're holding me
Morning will come and I'll do what's right
Just give me till then to give up this fight
And I will give up this fight
CHORUS: Cause I can't make you love me if you don't
You can't make your heart feel something it won't
Here in the dark, in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power
But you won't, no you won't
'Cause I can't make you love me, if you don't
This message has been edited by Red--Wolf on Mar 23, 2005 4:49 PM
RW
there is so very much that you do and can do for others arriving here, the most important of all is the hand outstretched!
No, I don't suppose looking back over your 6 years, or me looking back over the past year of my own hell, that there is anything anyone could have said that would have made it any easier, save for maybe "I have a time machine to whisk you forward past all the pain and the fresh betrayals", and maybe to the point in the future when either H wakes up and says can I come home, or H wakes up and says can I come home and I say No. At either point I just need to know the pain will stop. That I will one day stop waking up and immediately feeling like I have been shot as the thoughts crowd back into my brain, and the torture starts up it's machine in my heart. That's what you and the others here can do for me and many, many (unfortunately too many) more poeple who will arrive. You can keep on telling me it will stop.
Jean UK
Jean (and Jean), I share RW's sense of all this. A year or two before D-day, my older brother-in-law tried to tell me "you can't make 'em do anything", referring to our spouses. (Of course, I already KNEW I couldn't make my sister do anything...I'd known her almost 40 years at that point.)
A fixture on these boards used to be the oldtimers telling newbies "focus on (your name here)".
I can safely report, all this time later, they were right. I just didn't know what they meant, exactly, or how to do it. Like RW, I was hypersensitive and reactive for a long time after d-day. Years, I mean.
Here's the thing: some spouses are so good at externalizing their problems, that we INTERNALIZE them and try to fight their battles for them. So naturally we think we can "make" them change since we've been entrusted with their battles.
Wrong answer. And it takes some of us a long, long time to see that entanglement for what it is.
Yeah, I liked that song too, RW. Don't like to hear it much anymore, though. It's like a funeral song. Good and needed at the time.
And JeanUK, as Kat says, you will find your own way of making it stop...you'll find your own healing....
Jean
P.S. Chris, I found that I was good at "interalizing" (feeling responsibile for) other people's "stuff" no matter their degree of "externalizing." I think that my work on myself over the past several years has diminished that tendency. My sister has said that I respond better to conflicts and interpersonal issues.... Let's hope....It's been a long ride.
This message has been edited by Jean150 on Mar 24, 2005 8:23 AM
I am completely new at this and I can honestly say that it is not just what you have say, but the fact that there is a place like this that I can come to where other people really do know what I am going through. I can't think of anything right now that could be said that will make this situation better, but I know that when others tell me it will get easier, it gives me hope. Talking with all of you allows me to see that I will get through this and that all of my fears and feelings of pain are normal. Sometimes just having someone to relate to is enough. I find that there is not too much that my friends and family can do for me, but just being part of this fourm has given me more hope in such a short time. I look forward to turning on my computer to see what others have written to me and to each other. I am not alone - This is a good feeling. I am so thankful for finding this place!
Julie
"Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain."
- Helen Keller
Julie, when people ask me why I continue to do this so many years after discovery (six years plus a few days), it is because I remember the (almost) joy of finding others who really UNDERSTAND and can relate. I mean, this isn't exactly a "joyful" reason to assemble a virtual community, but nonetheless, we're all here for each other.
I remember that dreadful feeling of waking up every morning thinking 'was it a nightmare, or is it real' and then that stone in the stomach when you realise it is real. I remember crying and crying and sobbing and wanting to be dead. I remember that ALL my thoughts and actions were about getting him to stop and wanting him to come home - but he denied he was doing anything and just said he was leaving because he'd suddenly decided after 10 happy years that our marriage was crap. It didn't make sense and I KNEW there was a HER out there. I didn't stop to think about what getting him back would do to me, my thoughts were just 'I have to get him back'. How I wish I'd had the foresight then to realise that all the lies and cruelty and, well, everything, just can't be erased and you can't turn the clock back - which is what he seems to want to be able to do. How I wish I'd known that then. I wish I'd had the courage to say 'right, off you go and don't bother even asking to come back when she dumps you'
I have lots of wishes.....
Sandy said
<<I remember that dreadful feeling of waking up every morning thinking 'was it a nightmare, or is it real' and then that stone in the stomach when you realise it is real. I remember crying and crying and sobbing and wanting to be dead. I remember that ALL my thoughts and actions were about getting him to stop and wanting him to come home.>>
Oh I can so relate. Thats me right here, right now, but it is not going to continue to be me of that I am determined I just need to find a way to stop it. I am working on it.
Jean UK
Good on you. Don't make my mistakes. That's a really strange thing for me to say, because my husband says it to me all the time, and I hate it!! When he say I'm not trying, and I say he was the one who gave up trying, he tells me to learn from his mistakes. And I just laugh at him, and here I am telling you the same....
But think really deeply about what you would be doing to yourself. For me, its that I feel I'm second best, he couldn't have her, so he's back here with me, his second best option.
Put your story on members!!!!
xxxxxxx
RW, I know exactly when things seemed to visibly shift for you and that was right after you X physically abused you. That is when you really saw that he was an alcoholic and things were not going to get any better and in fact things were getting worse. Well that is what I noticed. You grounded yourself and decided enough was enough and you got you and your son the hell out of that situation, just like a mother wolf protecting her cub.
It could not have been any sooner because your wolf instincts were trying to keep the family together for a long time. You were trying to ground a family and one of the wires would not stay connected and you did not have the power to keep it connected. It took as long as it took to realize that and you should be proud of all the effort you gave it and there is nothing lost. All of it contributed to the strong and wonderful person you are.
jbean
I remember that too, RW. I know what I saw in your eyes in a short meeting over coffee one day. It was as your actions played out later that I realized I could trust my own gift of intuition a whole lot more. I've never thanked you for that. Thank you.
How fitting that you chose "eyes" pictures to express it here.
Are those eyes your eyes? I was wondering if that was a photo of you.
The eyes have it all, I've always been an eye person. I truly believe that eyes are the reflection of the soul. Some of you will remember my saying that I had a baby that died at birth (23 years ago) and even now, people say they can see it in my eyes, that my eyes carry a kind of sorrow. And yet I've often been told that I have sexy eyes (before the baggy eyelids started covering them up!) and that my eyes twinkle and shine when I'm happy - that seems like a long time ago, too.
Anyway, just wondered if they're your eyes, and if you need a scanner to get them on here, which I haven't got but even if I did, I probably wouldn't be able to figure it out, since I can only type and do
SO FAR............!!!!!!!!!!!
As my knowledge progresses, you guys might wish you'd never clapped eyes one me!!!
Before my d-day I remember noting the distinct look a woman gets--in her eyes--after her H betrays. I suppose it happens to men a lot too.
I'm working on getting rid of that although it might not be possible. It's so much of who you become through the experience. However, I don't like the 'mark' showing. It's deep. In the soul.
Wow, RW- You do have beautiful eyes: intense, expressive and your eyes look like they have the ability to absorb a lot of information, more than the eye can see. Know what I mean?
The more I look at that picture, the more beauty I see in those eyes. So thoughtful, so sad, so intelligent. Was it taken 'before' or 'after'. I feel its after, because of the sadness I see.
xx
Edit cos of ANOTHER spelling error
This message has been edited by sandy6957 on Apr 1, 2005 1:47 PM
It was 4 years after d-day. The shift had already happened although the marriage wasn't over yet, the household wasn't dissolved, and that house wasn't sold.
Some of the worst times happened during the next year.
The eye talk is interesting. For both of us we see different looks in each other's eyes. Right now we are in a stage where we both are trying to read the other's. Is that ever tense when you catch that gaze?
They say they are the window to the soul and when the soul changes the view does too.
Yes, the eyes have it!! 'They' say that my eyes are very readable, that people can almost see my thoughts through my eyes. Well, certainly, my H is often saying to me 'What are you thinking, I can see you're thinking something'. I used to answer him honestly, maybe by saying 'Oh I was just remembering that day when you .....' whatever it was. It always ended up in an argument. I can't read his eyes but I would ask him what he was thinking, when he had that 'off in space' look on, and he'd make up some garbage about how he was thinking about his next golf game, so I gave up asking. A bit like his memories, he once said I could throw away all the material things but I can't throw away his memories. Nice one. And so true. So now when he asks what I'm thinking, I either lie and say I'm thinking something trivial, like he would, or I tell him he doesn't want to know what I'm thinking (he hates that one!!) or I tell him it'd be no good talking about what I'm thinking cos we'd end up arguing and I don't want any more gravy wasted.....
I'll get the *********
Current Topic - I suppose it couldn't have been different.
