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Originally Posted by RandomDude  Hey fellas... it's over, she doesn't want to reconcile, and me either. I know I'm the one who said the D word but the fact is she is the one now walking away from me. And I'm not chasing her, I love her, but I'm not what she wants or needs, and I won't really care anymore after a few more nights anyway. We're done. Love sux, whatever, time to move on and deal with whatever other BS comes next... |
You’ve both been trashing each others boundaries. It is immensely disrespectful and it is also abusive. So within your relationship and therefore your marriage you have both disrespect and abuse.
A lot of people don’t really know what personal boundaries are. In essence boundaries are our “rules of behaviour”. Our own personal and unique set of rules that “govern” our behaviour. In a way our rules make us what we are, define our personality, our character.
On top of not knowing what personal boundaries are, let alone the importance of them in their lives, a lot of people simply don’t know that boundaries are two way things. Our boundaries are there not only to protect ourselves from others’ abusive behaviours, they are also there to protect others from our own potentially abusive behaviours.
So our boundaries form our rules of behaviour that in this case prevent our wife from abusing our self and our self abusing our wife. For example your wife trashed your boundary that said “Please do not post on TAM”. You asserted that boundary because you were getting things useful to you here and it was a place you could safely vent. But your wife abused your boundary and in doing so she abused you. You no longer felt safe here.
For me people who trash another’s boundaries are abusers. It’s the very reason I left my wife and I will not get back with her because I know she will just repeat her abuse.
But. But we are all creatures of habit and it’s yours and your wife’s habitual behaviour that have got you to where you are now. And neither of you are any the wiser or even more knowledgeable than you were before.
And so it would go on if the two of you were to get back together again. That habitual dysfunctional behaviour would reassert itself when things got a bit tough again and stress is in the mix.
It takes massive dedication and concentration to change habitual behaviour. The two of you, both of you are driven by your individual impulses. In a way you are like two animals just responding without thought to whatever instincts and urges come into your mind driven by how you feel at the time, your emotions. You are both letting your emotions rule you, your behaviours.
To change habitual behaviour you have to be aware of your “impulses”. The things you are driven to do without even thinking of them, the habits and instincts.
But neither of you have actually achieved that, controlling your impulses. Impulse control is one of the most basic features of a successful, healthy and peaceful person. If you didn’t have it as a child then you have to do an immense amount of work to have impulse control as an adult. The really good thing is once you have your lives will change very much for the better.
Even if the two of you stay apart you will both greatly benefit from reading (1) Awareness (Anthony de Mello), he will teach you how to become aware of your impulse that drive you to do what you do and the effect your impulses have on yourself and those around you. (2) Buy books on boundaries. Both of you have really bad, very weak boundaries. (3) Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman). His book has a great section on impulse control and the importance of it.
You two would be crazy not to take something positive out of your relationship. The wise person ensures that something is “personal growth”. These are painful lessons and again the wise person looks to learn from their pain and grow with it. If you don’t do that then your life is oh so predictable in that the two of you will just repeat the same mistakes over and over again no matter where you are, who you are with or how old you are.
Of course it goes without saying that if you do stay together unless you learn and grow from all this sometime in the future you will go through the whole lot again.
Take it from me. Love like you have between the two of you does not grow on trees. You will never find another love like the one you have right now. It will never happen because there is not another Mr RD or Mrs RD on the planet. Those people just don’t exist. Plus separation and divorce is by no means a walk through the park most especially when that love is still there in you but you’ve left it behind because it hurt too much. Read those books and learn how to respect and not abuse one another and most of all learn how not to hurt one another.
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Re: Getting worse... 
