# How long to recovery?



## NostalgicConfusion (Aug 28, 2012)

I do need this divorce and I do believe he does too. I think he realizes it as well. 

No matter how much I can complain about him and no matter what the faults are on either side...we still LOVE each other.

I am not certain we are IN love, but we love one another. The fact is, this marriage is not healthy or productive or supportive for us. 

I told him I want a divorce. He has been looking for an apartment and we are existing in the same home. We sleep in separate rooms, but we exist in the same space. He has told me not to stop talking to him but I am not sure if that is a ploy to try and trick me back. He has said he will be civil and understanding. 

He has been so far.

But I just keep crying. I love him so much but love is not enough. The problems we have outweigh my love. 

I am sure it will be easier when he is out of sight and out of mind...but then again, I will long for him and miss him so terribly. I already miss him and he is on the other side of the wall at this moment.

Has anyone been through something like this before? Leaving the marriage that you know you have to in order to salvage yourself yet you still love your spouse? I also wonder if it is so fresh and new and the realization of leaving him for good is setting in and making me have second thoughts/wanting him back into my bed to hold me. 

I feel so fricking pathetic. I just don't know how to cope. All I want to do is cry all day but I need to try to function with my two jobs being full time and almost full time. I cannot take personal leave at this time so it makes it more difficult too.

Any advice, any anecdotes of those who have been here before?


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## BFGuru (Jan 28, 2013)

If you both still love each other, why not try to fix it? Have you considered therapy?


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## NostalgicConfusion (Aug 28, 2012)

He refuses therapy. This is part of the many reasons we can no longer be together yet love one another.


There are just too many reasons why we are better off apart than together. More than wight of love. And we have both become unhealthy to a fault due to it. For the sake of ourselves, we need to be apart and not united.

Its so stinkin' painful.


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## Ceegee (Sep 9, 2012)

How long have you been married?

Do you have children?

What reasons does he give for denying therapy?

Are you going on your own? If not, you cannot hold it against him for not going. Set the example.

Marriage is not supposed to be supportive of you two. You two are supposed to be supportive of the marriage.

This is, for the most part, a pro-marriage forum. Unless there's abuse or adultery, most of the advice you will get here will be about how to save your marriage.


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## BFGuru (Jan 28, 2013)

Then you do not both love each other. If he refuses to try and repair the marriage, he does not love you in spite of his words. Love tries. Love fights for that which is theirs. It is a harsh thing to hear, I know, but you must realize this so that you can begin to find closure and to move on.


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## frigginlost (Oct 5, 2011)

Love or Convenience?

There is a difference.

Love will work. Convenience will not.

No therapy, is no love.

Put a bow on the marriage, and go find happiness....


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## Nsweet (Mar 3, 2012)

RECOVERY = 2 to 3 years.

At least that's what I was told and for the most part it seems right. It's been over 3 years since my wife left me right after I got out of the Navy, almost a year and half since she divorced me for some loser. Her affair didn't last long and I heard she put on about 60 or 70 pounds and got herself in a bunch of debt. And it's been nearly a year since I dated or had sex, I lost over 62lbs though. 

Personally, I took divorce very hard right up until the end when I saw just how mean spirited and wrong for me she was. I loved being married and fulfilling my end of the bargain but my wife was only in it for herself and made me miserable. So the first 6-8 months after divorce were pretty depressing, but then I just decided to live my life for myself, not worry about love, and go my own way. The suffering I went through only built character and in the end I feel it made me a better man and more empathetic with women. I see my divorce as a good thing.


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## greeneyedlily (Nov 10, 2012)

You will cry every day for awhile, even when you know it is the right thing to do for everyone. I cried better part of two years, off and on. It is a healing process you go through, and it takes time. Just keep focusing on what is working, and working on yourself. For me, working on me for the first time in a long time, and being able to call all the shots was scary but has become in the end both empowering and freeing. take care of you here. He will either get it together or he won't not your worry anymore.


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## KNIFE IN THE HEART (Oct 20, 2011)

Thanks for sharing lily. I thought I was taking too long to move on. It's comforting to know that there's someone else out there who still cried two years into the process.


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## greeneyedlily (Nov 10, 2012)

You are very welcome Knife. It is hard to see so many people in pain here, but the pain is real when things don't work out the way we thought they would, or we are mistreated. Time is needed to do this hard work of the soul.. It is in our own broken states that we find out who we are and what we are able to survive it is our choice each day if we do that with grace, or with bitterness... Tears come when we release our pain and move into and through it, it is excruciating- and exhausting. But in the end we can't detour around it, or avoid it, if we truly want to heal and be able to connect to another person in a healthy way again successfully. I hope peace finds you.


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