OOHC: Making a safe plan. Surgery and a lot of physical therapy.  Insurance.  Not wanting to connect big announcements to a kid birthday. Not wanting to sabotage high stakes work events for spouse. Not wanting to sabotage extended family events that have meaning for kids and cousins. Looking for a time when all my kids can be together.  The surgery and PT is the big one.  Need to be physically strong.

Also, the usual: some fear, and grief beyond measure.

Last edited by OnMyOwnTwoFeet (June 30, 2019 10:42 pm)

  Surgery and recovery, plus insurance--these are enormous challenges.  You do want to be well and strong when you leave, and with the security that insurance ensures.  

   Wanting to find an optimal time with the least disruption is admirable.  I wanted that as well, although as events transpired, I couldn't hold out until the date I'd decided to tell him I wanted to divorce.  Oddly enough, for various reasons my having jumped the gun by about two months worked out in the end to have been a positive thing.  

   I also wanted to avoid charged times, but what I discovered is that there was always some reason--another birthday, another big work event, another upcoming family event--not to tell.  The fact is, I suppose, there is no good time.  I suppose there are better times and worse times, but separation and divorce are disruptive, and they will and do disrupt, and there's just no getting around that. 

      That disruption is painful. All "the firsts," especially: all the first holidays and birthdays and anniversaries of various events that you commemorated as a family or couple.  But that pain diminishes with time and with rebuilding; new traditions and patterns are made, even though the past and the pain do inevitably return when evoked.  I've lived through all "the firsts" now, and now I'm into the new "firsts," of "my first holiday since the first time I moved out."   The difference is heartening, and allows me to reflect on how much and how my life has changed for the better since I left.  In fact, I shudder to think of the toll an additional year and a half of living in my ex's closet and with his disorder would have taken on me had I not left.  

    I hope your recovery from surgery is proceeding without setbacks.  It's been clear that while you've been post-surgery, you've been doing the important psychological work. 

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 1, 2019 7:57 am)

   Well, yes, Walkby, I take the criticism, but it's not as if I haven't gone through the process myself.  Sometimes I needed a little prodding, or, in the midst of the processing, for someone to ask me to clarify exactly where I was at.  Sorry if my post came through as critical.  
   And, yes, all circumstances are different, although I was 64 when I left, and I, too, had worked all my adult life for a retirement and a financially secure future, that I had to contemplate as halved, because I didn't have the time to recoup it, either.  And then I chose to retire two years before I'd planned because I found it so painful to continue to work with my closeted spouse; it was like participating and supporting his lie, and although that was my choice, the circumstances surrounding my choice were of his making.  


  

Last edited by OutofHisCloset (July 1, 2019 12:25 pm)