OK my friends. As you know I'm very hesitant to post this, because I'm not so sure about these ideas....but here has been my experience. This is my "detaching" post. Feel free to disagree, even to (respectfully) discuss in the comments. I trust you to be kind.
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In draft from October 2013 - just at the beginning of trying to get him "in my middle".
I'm not one to tell anybody what to do (which might be the best thing I've ever [not] done) because nobody can make any big decisions for anybody else.
But I'm a talker and I have to "talk" through this. So please don't take this as advice for you because this post is primarily for me to remember. I know I know...get a journal.
Detaching was hard. Damn hard. I was emotionally invested in this relationship and I loved Husband and I wanted desperately to fix everything.
So I started doing what I could. I asked him to do things which I knew would help. I did things that would obviously change his behaviors (and then his heart). I looked into what we could do together when we were done with the first things. I made a list. I did the stuff on the list. I insisted that he do the stuff on the list.
But then I failed.
Again and again I failed. And He failed. So of course we failed together.
We fought and I cried.
He acted out and my heart broke.
I was exhausted from trying so hard.
But when people told me to just detach it hurt.
"You can be happy without him" they said.
"Live your life no matter what he does or says" they told me.
"Be happy regardless of his choices" they encouraged me.
"You are worthy of living life no matter what he does".
I heard it enough times that I finally decided it was true. I don't need him to be happy. I can heal with or without him. I can't count on him to fix things so if I want it fixed I'll do it myself.
So I headed out to the wilderness to Kill My Own Damn Buffalo.
But I still live with him. I'm still married to him. We still have children together.
I think I'm learning that I can only go so far without him. I think I misunderstood all that advice.
It wasn't about living my life alone or doing everything without help. It wasn't about cutting off the human connection or even the marital relationship. It wasn't about being my own person and leaving him to work it out on his own.
It was about learning to be happy. To cope. To adjust to my circumstance.
It was about stepping off the crazy train before it leaves the station.
It was about being me.
But now I'm still confused because part of "me" is him. We are married and we agreed to be one.
When I pulled away so "I could work on me while he worked on him" we created scary habits. I filled my life with other people, hobbies and interests. I was perfectly capable of being happy and let him come home and sleep in "our" house because he paid "our" bills. But we had very little relationship. Our conversations (even the ones about porn) were surface level. Even when we were so hurt we'd cry or shout or isolate, there was a wall between us. Though it took conscious effort to put that wall up, it turned out to be thicker and higher and more impenetrable than I ever imagined it would be.
After working so hard to detach, it's hell trying to reattach appropriately. Allowing him in has become such a terrifying thing for me that I cry just writing the words. To let him see the hurt, the fear and the hope seems impossible. Trusting him to be kind with my emotions is paralyzing. The thought that he would be the person I'd call if something exciting or fun happened in my life is strange.
So while I suppose it's possible that detaching was an important part of my journey (was it really? could I have done this without it?) it isn't the destination. I am left wondering if the journey back from Detached is really worth any benefit it might have had.
