How I am doing now…

I’m great. A repost of a comment I made on this post.

’m doing great now. I still live in the spare room, but it’s really nice having my family so close. We’re so tight, and that has helped a lot.

I can’t say I have a new outlook on life, just a re-focused one. The goals and plans that I had put aside are back in full stride. I feel freer to do what I want to do. Be more myself.

The positive experience out of the whole thing is more self clarity. I know that I’m an obsessive type of person, I gotta make something work, or finish a specific task. I was obsessed with trying to make my relationship work. I put all my energy into that and largely ignored everything else.

Without that, I re focused, and put my energy into my life and my career. I’m much happier now, simply because there is less need to fix something unfixable.

I’ve mostly (not completely) forgiven my ex. It feels like a lifetime ago now, even though it’s only been a little more than a year. Overall life is better.

An Update

I’ve largely ignored this blog. I started it last year when I was going through separation with my wife. It was difficult being rejected like that. There were weeks where I felt like a zombie, where all mt senses were fogged over, distant and disconnected. 

There were times when I caught myself just stopping and thinking, saddened and afraid. It took me a while for the pain and suffering to ebb away. To go at least a day without feeling sad and alone. Now, at the other side I can confidently say I am doing much better. 

I look back at the journey that got me here. I wished for things to be different. I wish things would have turned out according to my expectations. I’m not so mad anymore, sometimes you just have to quit. Let go of expectations that leave you unhappy, that leave you unfulfilled. Get rid of the expectation that you won’t find happiness or that you’ll be lonely forever. 

I am my greatest ally and my greatest foe. I have grown more in the last 6 months than I have in the past 5 years. I have had my comforts pulled from me, my dreams destroyed. I went through loss, through remorse, through heart break and crippling emotional suffering. I now believe in a Higher power. I have placed myself in the hands of that Higher power. 

I have given up many childish thoughts. I no longer believe there are criteria for happiness. I do not fear being unhappy. I do not fear being lonely. I do not fear suffering or sadness. I have learned that you can either worry about being unhappy or go about being happy. Doing more to cultivate happiness is a dead end. Happiness can not be cultivated. There is an infinite amount already inside you. 

Work on reducing and minimizing the things that make you unhappy. There is no right way or wrong way to live. Do not be a victim to your own self pity or self loathing. The truth is that we always have choice. Maybe not to our situation but always to our reaction. Cultivate maturity, strength and kindness to make good choices. The strong are always kind. 

While you still have a breath in your body you have opportunity to choose. Just go, try out something new. Your worst enemy is yourself. Your greatest ally is yourself. I am happy to report that I’m ok.

Just remember, worrying about unhappiness is a luxury of the privileged. 

An Apology To My Heart

My dear heart, I apologize to you. I didn’t value you. I was weak and I sacrificed you for my addiction. You are the greatest victim, you suffer the most. I’m so sorry that your love and your caring turned into your worst nightmare. I’m so sorry that your love turned toxic when it should have turned off.  It is a blessing and a curse that you are built to love. I should have cared for you the most. I should have set boundaries.

I’m ashamed that I neglected you until your love turned toxic. I’m so sorry I didn’t cherish you. Together we’ll learn to trust again. We’ll learn to love again. We’ll understand that everything is transient especially that which we hold onto the tightest. We’ll be more careful next time.

My heart, I finally learned how valuable you are.

Never again shall I give you all away.

Never again.

Moving Forward

I love having a relationship. The euphoria of having somebody there that wants to be with you. Somebody that enjoys your company, conversation and your touch. When I’m in a happy relationship and my needs are met I am more creative and I have more clarity. I surrounded my life around my relationship. It was the most important thing to me. She was more important than anything. She was my happiness. I didn’t realize how dangerous that was.

I was happy for a few years before things started falling apart.  I don’t know what caused it, at what point she started losing interest in me in our life together. Perhaps it was my shitty behavior? Perhaps I wasn’t fun enough, made enough money, perhaps I didn’t treated her well enough. Likely she was never that happy and I was too delusional and preoccupied with my own happiness to see it.

She wasn’t happy and she has the right to be happy. I only have power over myself and my response. I wish I learned this sooner. We could have avoided that emotionally exhausting tug of war.    

While my heart bleeds my head ponders. I am grateful for my head. Ignore my heart it says. It is time to let it heal. Let your head make the decisions. All you can do, all you could ever truely do is move forward for yourself. Move forward with integrity and maturity. Learn to truely love. Let go of toxic love.  Move forward.

Toxic Love

Some food for thought of Toxic Love in contrast to True Love. The love I was giving was toxic. On my path of recovery I own my Toxic Love. I need to do an honest moral inventory of myself. I need to nurture my inner child so that the love I give is True.

I rather suffer withdrawal from my addiction than subject the one I want to more of my Toxic Love.

Healthy Love	Unhealthy or Toxic Love
Development of self first.	Obsession with relationship.
Room to grow, expand; desire for other to grow.	Security, comfort in sameness; intensity of need seen as proof of love (may really be fear, insecurity, loneliness)
Separate interests; other friends; maintain other meaningful relationships.	Total involvement; limited social life; neglect old friends, interests.
Encouragement of each other’s expanding; secure in own worth.	Preoccupation with other’s behavior; fear of other changing.
Appropriate Trust (i.e. trusting partner to behave according to fundamental nature.)	Jealousy; possessiveness; fear of competition; protects “supply.”
Compromise, negotiation or taking turns at leading. Problem solving together.	Power plays for control; blaming; passive or aggressive manipulation.
Embracing of each other’s individuality.	Trying to change other to own image.
Relationship deals with all aspects of reality.	Relationship is based on delusion and avoidance of the unpleasant.
Self-care by both partners; emotional state not dependent on other’s mood.	Expectation that one partner will fix and rescue the other.
Loving detachment (healthy concern about partner, while letting go.)	Fusion (being obsessed with each other’s problems and feelings.)
Sex is free choice growing out of caring & friendship.	Pressure around sex due to insecurity, fear & need for immediate gratification.
Ability to enjoy being alone.	Unable to endure separation; clinging.
Cycle of comfort and contentment.	Cycle of pain and despair.

Source: http://www.crescentlife.com/psychissues/healthy_vs_toxic_love.htm

The list above is from Joy2MeU.com. The original article on Toxic Love is available and well worth the read.  Here are some excerpts from the article:

True Love is not a painful obsession. It is not taking a hostage or being a hostage. It is not all-consuming, isolating, or constricting. Unfortunately the type of love most of us learned about as children is in fact an addiction, a form of toxic love.

If we can start seeing relationships not as the goal but as opportunities for growth then we can start having more functional relationships. A relationship that ends is not a failure or a punishment – it is a lesson.

As long as we believe that we have to have the other in our life to be happy, we are really just an addict trying to protect our supply – using another person as our drug of choice. That is not True Love – nor is it Loving.

Symptoms of Love Addiction

Source: http://www.recovery-man.com/loveaddict.htm

• Lack of nurturing and attention when young
• Feeling isolated, detached from parents and family
• Compartmentalization of relationships from other areas of life
• Outer facade of “having it all together” to hide internal disintegration
• Mistake intensity for intimacy (drama driven relationships)
• Hidden Pain
• Seek to avoid rejection and abandonment at any cost
• Afraid to trust anyone in a relationship
• Inner rage over lack of nurturing, early abandonment
• Depressed
• Highly manipulative and controlling of others
• Perceive attraction, attachment, and sex as basic human needs, on a par with food and water
• Sense of worthlessness without a relationship or partner
• Feelings that a relationship makes one whole, or more of a man or woman
• Escalating tolerance for high-risk behavior
• Intense need to control self, others, circumstances
• Presence of other addictive or compulsive problems
• Insatiable appetite in area of difficulty (sex, love or attachment / need.)
• Using others, sex & relationships to alter mood or relieve emotional pain
• Continual questioning of values and lifestyle
• Driven, desperate, frantic personality
• Confusion of sexual attraction with love (“Love” at first sight.)
• Tendency to trade sexual activity for “love” or attachment
• Existence of a secret “double life”
• Refusal to acknowledge existence of problem
• Defining out-of-control behavior as normal
• Defining “wants” as “needs”
• Tendency to leave one relationship for another. (Inability to be without a relationship.)
• Attempts to replace lost relationships with a new one immediately

Morning Panic Attack

I woke up this morning in a panic. A small anxiety attack about work of all things. I don’t know if all the feelings of separation are getting my wires cross upstairs. My blood feels cold as I write this. I’m scared. I want to call my wife but I can’t. I want somebody to hold me and somebody that I can talk to.

I don’t have anybody that I feel like I can talk to. I feel like a teenager again, with all my problems and nobody to talk to. Is this another wounded inner child? One that is terrified of intimacy? Oh god, I feel like I’m going mental.

I feel like I’m sinking further and further. I want to cry out HELP! but I’m too scared of anybody knowing how fucked up I am inside.

Things I don’t like about my life

• Living in my sister’s spare room
• Scared to take risks and make a decision
• Scared to direct my own life
• Feeling alone and sad
• Trying to make my wife want me like I want her
• Feeling powerless
• Feeling like I’m stuck here while trying to make a decision
• Feeling like other people are controlling my life
• Not knowing what I want
• Feeling like I don’t understand anything
• Feeling lost because I don’t understand Truth
• Confused because I can’t seem to grow up and be a man
• Being in limbo because I don’t know if my wife wants me or I’m her plan B
• Feeling so dependent on my wife for love
• Mom, that she doesn’t even call and ask how I am when I’m going through the toughest time of my life
• Myself, for beliving that people will help me with my problems
• That I struggle so hard with my problems
• That I can’t stop obsessing about my wife
• That I am beginning to resent my mother
• That deep down, I’m angry at my father too
• That I can’t get past my past
• That I am too scared to move forward
• That I don’t know how to love
• That I was never shown how to love
• That love doesn’t come naturally to me
• That I was never really loved, that I grew up knowing, and trying only to please my mom rather than myself.
• That I grew up trying to please everybody else. Meet my sister’s expectations, my mom’s expectations. That I never really figured out that I need to set my own expectations.
• That I let other people’s good intentions run my life.

I need to get out of here. I’m scared of coming home to an empty house. Being alone, having nobody to talk to, having no support. I’m scared of flying because I don’t have my own ground. I’m scared. I’m terrified to take my own steps, to make my own decisions.

Why? Because my mother doesn’t even think I even know how to use chopsticks. That she has always told me that I don’t know how to do anything. That she has emotionally abused me my whole life. Told me that I wasn’t good enough. Gave me so much responsibility yet no credit. Took away my childhood. That she did that and is totally oblivious to how difficult it was.

I can’t forgive her. I don’t know why I blame her for everything. Maybe it is easier to just blame her than to look inside myself.

I need to get out. I need to get into a place where everything around me is mine. I don’t care if I have to rent a place for a few years. I don’t really care about the money all that much. I’m tired of feeling responsibility to fulfill the needs of others. To please others.

I am happy with my job because I have the opportunity to accept responsiblity for making things happen. That I have some power to choose my destiny. I realize that I haven’t exercised my power in my relationships.

I feel like I do the heavy lifting without any of the power. I’m always the worker and never the leader. I want to be the leader. To start, I need take control of my own life. To take risks. To live like how I want to live.

How will I really know how it is to live on my own and be responsible for my own decisions until I do it?

Feeling Withdrawal Again

Those feelings of withdrawal and abandonment are haunting me again. It seems to come and go with each subsequent wave less and less intense. It brings up memories of what went wrong in our relationship. I question myself, could I have been a better husband, maybe she wouldn’t have wanted to leave.

I remember now that I was a pretty good husband, independent, happy. Until she started separating herself emotionally from me. I wish I was more emotionally mature and sensitive, maybe I could have nipped it in the bud. One day at a time. Breath… this feeling will soon pass. Breath…

Starting To Let Go

This morning I cried. The first time in years where I truly let go and cried. I let my inner child, the one with the repressed rage and anger at my parents for abandoning me as a child. It was really therapeutic. I went through some withdrawal this afternoon, but it was much more manageable.

I can feel my soul and my spirit beginning to heal. When I visualize myself in my internal mirror I don’t see a zombie of my former self. I am beginning to see flesh and bone return. My skin, pink and beginning to fill with life. Today was a great day.