OH!  OH!  ME FIRST!!!

Three things top of my mind today!

1. Feelingz #1. I sure am overwhelmed by such a crazy mix of so many feelings.  I guess that is not new!  But it seems different lately, like it is worse than before maybe?  Or I am just feeling-fatigued at a new level? Last night for the first time since discovery, I had this feeling of "being bad."  This is an old, generalized feeling I know from when I was a teen and young adult, and sometimes when post-partum or under stress.  It is not a feeling I've had for a long time.  I used to think this feeling was a reason to explore and think, why am I feeling this way? What have I done wrong? Now I try to just let the feeling move through me, and I recognize it as part of a kind of depression or physical fatigue.  But it still is icky when it hits.  I'm thinking maybe I'm feeling it again because I am not in shock anymore?  Who knows.

2.  Feelingz #2.  Crazy mix of feelings again.  Trying to remember that maybe, as I read somewhere I think on the SSN, maybe I am feeling whatever I need to feel at that moment.  Allow all the feelings.  Work 'em.

3.  Showing up for things.  Maybe this is Feelings #3!  I do pretty well when I have an appointment to keep.  What I struggle with is when I have to impose my own structure on my brain.  My work is contract work from home, and it involves a lot of thinking.  Hoo-boy, is that hard.  Ideas?
 

I'll play!

1.  The difference between "taking responsibility" and "taking the blame."
   I have only recently begun to see the degree to which I minimized my needs during my marriage, and to understand that I did this because I was subconsciously "taking the blame" for the problems in our marriage for which I was not, in fact, responsible. 
     My ex projected the aura--and sometimes outright stated--that I was at fault for whatever in his life wasn't going the way he thought it should.  He was fat?  My fault (though I cooked healthy meals every night, and didn't control either how much he ate or what and how much he ate the rest of the day).  He wasn't publishing?  My fault (although i was not the one who determined how he divided his time between teaching, service, and research).  Why were these things my fault?   Because he wasn't happy.  And why wasn't he happy?  Because of me.  I was "difficult," hard to live with, he said.  He must love me, he said, because he "was willing to put up with me."  And on and on and on. 
     He, for his part, didn't take responsibility for his own unhappiness (or his own happiness); in pop psych terms, he blameshifted his unhappiness and the responsibility for his happiness onto me. These accusations, this blameshifting, created what I now think of as a kind of Dickensian fog that permeated our marriage, obscuring the real outlines of things, and to use another pop psych term, it was a form of gaslighting--not a specific denial of a specific fact or the rewriting of a particular incident, but a pervasive atmosphere in which his version of reality, one in which I was constitutionally and behaviorally at fault and he the long-suffering put-upon spouse, prevailed.  
   The problem, that is, wasn't his unhappiness with himself and his inability to live his truth, to take responsibility for his own unhappiness and his own happiness; no, the problem was that I prevented his happiness.  For my part, I was only too willing to take the blame for his unhappiness, because his accusation contained a grain of truth.  After our son was born, I suffered from postpartum depression (a largely invisible and unacknowledged phenomenon in 1989), and, not three years later, my father committed suicide, which unleashed in me the ability to finally grapple with my father's sexual abuse.  He blamed me, and I took the blame, which, as I saw it, was "taking responsibility" for my faults and shortcomings. (I also, I want to say, took responsibility for my depression, and got on medication.)
   The truth, however, the real truth, not the gaslit one, was that I was never responsible for his happiness, I wasn't responsible for his unhappiness, and I shouldn't have taken upon myself the blame he dished out.  The problem was and remains his inability to accept himself--so he blamed and still blames me instead.  Yes, even after a year of living apart and six months after our divorce, he's still in the closet, refusing to take responsibility for his own happiness (and unhappiness), and still blaming me.  Except now I'm not taking the blame for his unhappiness, nor am I taking responsibility for it, either.

2  Feelings. I saw a useful phrase about feelings this morning in a comment over at Chump Lady: "Feel, deal, heal."  I took this to mean, feel what you feel, deal with the reality in front of you, and when you do those two things, you will begin to heal.  
   I confess that I often upbraid myself for my feelings.  I "shouldn't" feel bad but should just get on with my own new single life.  I "shouldn't" harbor mean thoughts about my ex.   But I've decided that maybe I should just be ok with feeling what I feel.  I can understand that resentment and anger is not in the long run a healthy motivation for getting on with my life, and that working for my future instead of out of a "I'll show you" attitude is far healthier, but it's ok if I have moments of thinking, "I hope you get to experience consequences for what you've done." 

Okay.  Them's my two...
 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (May 10, 2019 1:16 pm)

Thanks for starting this, OMOTF!

I know I come here almost daily to read and reflect but I hardly post.  A lot of times, I feel like I would just be posting the same old thing, asking the same old questions, feeling the same old feelings.  We talk a lot about how long it takes to process all this pain and I wonder if a lot of people are just busy processing and it's hard to get that out or maybe they also feel a bit like a broken record?  Just my thoughts on the relative lull of the board...

Jumping on adsj's comment about being generous in the divorce.  This has actually slowed my progress down immensely.  For the sake of the children (and honestly, a little bit because I don't want to move) I would like to keep the marital home.  STBXGIDH thinks he should be entitled to a hefty sum buy-out.  And dare I admit state law is in his favor and clearly states how that payout works.  We are extremely fortunate and have great equity in our home so theoretically I could owe him a lot.  I have serious heartburn about that though!  He cheats on me for half our marriage and I've got to PAY him?!?  I know life isn't fair but damn, that's really unfair!  I still feel like the right thing/nice thing is to just be upfront and offer the max per state laws but I don't know if I can swing it financially.  Plus my lawyer and everyone I know says don't do that.  So I'm left feeling like I'm being "mean".  Mean because I don't want to strap myself financially.  Mean because I want the kids to be able to keep some part of their life pre-divorce.  Ridiculous, isn't it??

My other thought is why is it so hard for them to share details about TGT?  He cheated on me for six freaking years and all he can tell me about that time period can fit into about a 15 second blurb?  And nothing else to say about his "bisexuality" other than the fact that that is what he identifies as?  WTF ever.
 

Great idea and I’d like to play too

Some thoughts on my mind on a daily basis

1- when I start dating again in the future, what do I tell the next guy? Why did my marriage end? My husband was gay and I was clueless until 18 years in? Or just say “we grew apart”?

2-  I’m still very angry at him. For shaming me. Making me feel bad about my own body. For years he made me feel I’m not desired or there’s something wrong with my body. (Not to brag but I’m very fit). For our entire marriage he made me feel that I’m too sexual and should just be content with the passionless mechanical sex we had once every great moon. Dealing with this anger is something I deal with daily. 

And everything else you guys have mentioned above

Mimi, All,

Its a busy time of the year for me.   I also don't write here as often as sometimes it dredged up memories.   Im so much better now though..and the quality of the folks here and how helpful SSN was for me....

1. When people ask and want details i tell them the basic she cheated ..   Others that press and really want to know i say the phrase from here;  We had irreconcilable similarities.  Your right that  people cant handle it but the quality people really do.

2.  I don't have as much anger as I should..  One thing I've worked on in the pure physical fear of my GX..much better now...