ARGH - HELP - I'm backsliding - don't know why - think maybe it's the time of year - OM's b'day coming up and a few significant anniversary event type things - where has all my resolve gone???
Crap crap crap. Why now. I've been doing so well!

Hello Again!!
Sorry you are having a wave. Hope you can get through it. BE STRONG FOR THE BABY!!!

Hang in there mags. This stuff wells up from time to time but it gets shorter and less severe.

I bet you feel better tomorrow.

It wasn't pretty. I emailed OM, I made conversation (platonic, distant, at least that's a plus), I made roundabout arrangements for a group catchup, he tried calling me so I texted him. Ouch.
I don't know why I went so nuts all of a sudden. He's been on my mind and suddenly I was just doing this stuff - beginning innocuous but opening doors to messy. Thank heavens he didn't really escalate. I didn't even seem to realise I was doing it till part way through, then I felt like I was going crazy. I think Helen Fisher's theory on it being a drive rather than emotion is very true - there seems to be this bypassing of the rational mind until suddenly you turn around and catch yourself, like when you catch a kid midway through something naughty and go "HEY - OY - STOP THAT - I can see you! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING???"

Anyway I guess I shocked myself back into good behaviour (I hope? I'll have to be vigilant this month), but of course there's still the bit about having to tell H what I did. I've been procrastinating on it all day. Will have to bite the bullet tomorrow. It's stressful. Because there is no justification for it. I have to tell him, but I have no explanation for why it happened, so if he's angry I don't know how to react except express that I'm sorry. But that must get a bit tired. Help?

Oh Mags,

I'm not very good with this advice stuff as I feel I have had very little experience myself ie one long term relationship that has ended. Maybe you could talk to H about the temptation to contact OM and ask him for help/suggestions in avoiding it? Then at least you will be working together.

Keep strong, lovie. When that bub arrives it will fill your life!
best wishes, Jules

Hi Mags,

Maybe hormones could cause it? A friend dreamed about an ex bf when she was 7 or 8 months preggo. It confused her a little. Let's blame it on hormones...:-)

So .... what lingering fantastical daydream (which is to say, fantasy based in anything but reality) are you holding onto? Magical thinking is so dangerous and so seductive, isn't it? I rant at my own magical thinking (maybe if I just pretend I didn't eat that cookie, it won't appear on my hips?) all the time.

Still, what you're doing is a bit more dangerous, eh? What are you still holding onto?

Oh, and to tie it back to the baby, are you planning to do paternity testing as soon as the wee one is born?

TJ, maybe it is hormones! Dunno. Or possibly even impending motherhood - I kind of always associated entering motherhood with the end of my youth/attractiveness etc. (kind of ironic considering I'm a beachball on legs right now!) so maybe it's a last ditch panic to be found attractive. I just dunno.
Jules - I did tell H at least. Fortunately his avoidance, once again, made it not too harrowing. I don't know, I'm reluctant to drag him into helping me avoid it, in case it sort of rubs his nose in the fact that I'm still hung up on somebody else, and causes stress that will emerge later, because he's a suppressor. Also, I guess, it's because I know it's just something I need to do - I'm not sure there's much he could do about it.

I just feel stuck. I'm unable to get my head around losing OM as a friend. I've got my head around 'I can never be physically/emotionally close to him again', and around 'I can't be any sort of friends with him while I still have feelings for him', but the 'I can't ever be an acquaintance/friend of his - FULL STOP' just isn't sinking into my head. I don't know if this will just take time or whether there is something additional I can do to reach this point emotionally. The Shirley Glass book did mention that for an affair that started as a friendship, the people will try and rewind it back past the affair stages and into the friendship stages. I wonder if there is some time correlation with this - we were friends for almost 7 years before it happened. Does this mean it's going to take me 7 years to come to terms with giving up the friendship?
I just don't know. There's some part of me not letting go, and I'm struggling with how to get it to. Maybe you're right Jules, and the bub will fill my life and help. Or - and this alternative scares me - maybe I'll be tired and lonely and isolated and I'll be more vulnerable than I was before. Time will tell I guess. All I can cling to is the honesty thing with H and hopefully that will keep me on some kind of track.

I was realising the other day how H is my entire life. I have some depressive tendencies, and I'm not sure I'd have had enough meaning/connection in my life to carry on for the past few years if not for him. Especially now that I've lost my grandmother and my mother in the last 3 years, my father has turned into some kind of paranoid, defensive, irritable and heavily prescriptive person who is impossible to communicate with on any deeper level with, my younger brother has sunk into a helpless depression which he seems quite content to maintain for the rest of his life (enabled by my father), so all my connections and social supports have gone. My best friends have moved interstate/overseas. More and more I realise that H is my best and closest friend and provides most of the meaning in my life. Good in some ways, perhaps, but it's scary to be so vulnerable to just one person.

Mags,

Sorry your feeling all the emotions and it will get better with time. This situation made me think about when I thought I could be friends with ex finance. He was comfortable to talk to and it was very nice to hear from him occasionally. We would catch up on what's going on in our lives. He is married now so.. that kinda pinches a little but anyway I gave it a try to be friends. He sometimes was a little too friendly and I well I shouldn't have but I enjoyed that. Our conversations were only on the phone. I wasn't dating anyone at the time. I would end it on myside. Tell myself I'll never call again and then he would call. When I started dating this new man I'm seeing now I kinda felt like it bothered him(ex finance). But he talked about his wife so I thought it was ok to talk about my bf. Right? We were friends. The last time he called he out of the blue told me he didn't want to be friends any more. He gave some weird reason that didn't make sense then he asked if I was ok with that. I told him I was okay with not being friends and he ask was I really okay or was I just telling him I was okay. Why did matter, I dunno. He didn't want us to contact each other...So it kinda startled me but I was happy about it afterward because now I can be honest with new man. But I still think about him sometime. I guess I always will think of him a little from time to time. I've replaced him with someone else for now. Maybe you can replace OM with us somehow?

I think I do that a lot already TJ! Replace OM with you guys. And it is helpful. I'm very grateful to you all! And staying close to H helps too. But of course it's not practical to be superclose to someone all the time or you never get anything done. And then when he lets me down or makes me mad I overreact. I need to learn to find more strength within me. I just struggle with it though.

You know what Mags..

Your life is going to change sooooo drastically, very, very soon. All your focus is going to be on bebe, you and H. It will be a huge help in the overcoming those inclinations. (heck, you'll probably be too tired to care )

quote:

I kind of always associated entering motherhood with the end of my youth/attractiveness etc.

oh paleeze don't tell me this. 3 kids.. all in late teens & 20's..one married. I'm just as much of a big kid now as I was when I had them... maybe more so!!!

So... I am curious to what J asked.. what fantastical daydream/need/core hurt was being touched when the demon took over your cell phone?

Loui

quote:

More and more I realise that H is my best and closest friend and provides most of the meaning in my life. Good in some ways, perhaps, but it's scary to be so vulnerable to just one person.

Intimacy can be a scary thing. It feels vulnerable to open up to someone. I can speak only for myself when I say that it took me awhile to realize that it was scary because there are parts of me that I hide from view because...hmmm...because I don't think people would like me if they knew EVERYTHING about me.

And if you're looking for opinions, your pregnancy is probably bringing on many of the same thoughts in you...am I still pretty, will I be a good mom...whoa I'm getting big....whatever. OM is a distraction from that?

Funny thing is - my H already knows everything about me (I think), and I realized just a couple of years ago, he likes me anyway.

LOL - I'm sitting here in my reindeer Christmas pajamas...haven't had a shower yet this morning and I look like I have been hit by the messy-hair bus. He kissed me this morning and made a joke about how I was starting to take after my father. We laughed the the kind of laugh that cames only from inside jokes that no one else shares.

I like that.

But...the shower calls now because well...I can't push this "letting myself go" card too much! I will wear a pretty dress today because I know he likes that better.

Give...take....give, give, give....take, take, take (and no, it doesn't always come out even).

Have a good day (or is it night there now?). Regardless, g'DAY!
GS

quote:

and made a joke about how I was starting to take after my father

Actually its the other way around.

I had no idea your father has a thing for pink flannel PJ's

Ooh odd I didn't see your question JustJ until today - must have posted when I was drafting what I wrote.

Lingering daydream... I don't fully know. If I dig about... seems to be something about being loved by this mentor I admired so much. I think I am clinging to the idea of.... being worthy of that love? Of being special in some way because of it? Maybe the romanticism/passion of it, as I'd never experienced that before (H is no romantic, and of course all my youthful fantasies involved being romanced) ... or maybe all the promises made, love forever and all that, that sort of drag me back and make me feel like a hypocrite if I turn around and go "oops sorry, wrong about that one...". There seems to be some residual loyalty revolving around those promises. I don't know, I can't seem to put my finger on it. When I try and think of the images that go around my head when I think of OM - I guess they are those images of being passionately loved. But that's probably common to all experiences with this set of chemicals?!

As for bub - I have a feeling it'll be pretty evident once she is born, but if there is any doubt (or if H wants it for peace of mind) then we'll do testing. Would just do it a matter of course if it wasn't so $$$! Yowks last estimate was like $1000. But as I said - I believe it'll be fairly unlikely that at the time of birth it won't be pretty obvious.
I wonder if that's part of what I'm holding on to as well. What if I'm supremely unlucky and things go the wrong way. Then I will need some sort of civilised relationship with OM so cutting him out entirely at this stage would be unwise. I still believe H might leave me if that happened, and I guess I fear being entirely abandoned. Perhaps when that remaining drama is over I'll find it easier to let go.

Louie - hope you're right! Thing is I'm weaker and more of an escapist when I'm tired. But hopefully I'll just be in such a different mindset that it won't even occur to me anymore. I think my mum is largely to blame for my 'world ends at motherhood' mindset. She pretty much drummed that into me - even though looking back she was still georgeous and youthful for a good time after - in fact she never really got old. I think she just liked to dramatise, but it's hard to kill associations that are put in place so early.

GS - yes letting someone know you completely is very hard. Especially in a relationship, where a person is invested, and parts of you are so contrary to that. Telling H was the hardest thing, because I knew I'd be hurting him. It's amazing that he's still with me, now that he knows me completely. It's a wonderful feeling... though still not fair on him. I wish I could be the person he deserves.
Yes maybe OM is just a distraction. And a last hurrah before motherhood in some sense. I always planned to start a family when I turned 30, so even when the whole thing happened last year there was probably an element of that - the 'last chance' - in the causality.

Well, it would sure be nice if when bub comes all this stuff magically disappears. I can hope!

When the bub comes, all this stuff will get worse. I'm really sorry about that! And you need to know it, because that "getting worse" part is what finally killed my marriage. Take two people who are already stressed and unhappy, and then throw in the post-partum blues and sleep deprivation? Good god, it was a disaster waiting to happen -- and it did happen to us. I know things are yucky now, and I would give all the dollars in my fast-dwindling investment account to help you cut all ties to OM and just face full-on forward into creating a world that your baby will thrive in.

Oh, and I'm 41 and DD is nearly 6 years old. My mom had her last baby at 45.

And the truckers were STILL honking at her after that.

Youth and beauty last for ridiculously long periods of time.

Hey JustJ - yeah I'm kind of prepared for that eventuality. Or know about it anyway - I've read enough about the impact a new baby has on relationships. Not sure I'm prepared in terms of dealing with it, but I have been aware of the possibility for some time that that's how it could go emotionally. I guess that's part of why I want to keep working on everything in terms of emotional independence from H, figuring out what self nurturing looks like for me (still pretty empty that bag!), RN exercises and the rest, now while I can, and still have all my endorphins running around. It's just too hard to anticipate how things will go, emotionally, after.

That's all good stuff.... and what about building the emotional connection with your husband? What small rituals of connection and love do you have in your day right now? You might want to talk that through.

There will always be times when work or the baby or the common cold will make it difficult for you and your husband to connect. (I am currently Very Unhappy with the common cold!!!) So what can you do to find ways to keep the connection going even if it's on a low level -- and how can you plan to reconnect after those inevitable interruptions?

I'm so miserable. Seems I overexerted myself and my pelvic instability has flared up with a vengeance. I can't walk more than 5 metres! ARGH! And still 6 weeks to go. AND it'll be worse with every pregnancy - in fact there's people out there who have had to avoid future pregnancies, and have ceasars, and stuff because of this. I was hoping mine wouldn't get that dire, but it seems I won't be so lucky.

I hate this! I feel so helpless. What if I can't have more kids? What if I can't look after the one I have? (some people recover after the birth - some not so much)
I can't even lie down in bed without pain. I have a birth skills class tonight on 'active birth' - HAH. Active indeed. And I have a full calendar for the weekend and next week. And I can't move. And I'm still supposed to be working for another 2 1/2 weeks - took today off because I don't think I can make it from the carpark to the lift!

This is really wrecking me. I'm so helpless and full of fear about how much worse it could get and how I'll cope. Can't visit my sis-in-law this evening because she has stairs!!!

I don't know what to do. When this happens it really shakes me.

JustJ - will think about your questions later - just wallowing in self pity right now!

Oh sweetie...

One day at a time here. Don't worry about what may or may not happen in the future.

What does the doc have to say about this. Do you have monthly visits to your OB? Not sure how it works with socialized medicine. Here you would be getting close to weekly visits.

Is H interstate or home? Have him pamper you darn it. Tell him I said so. Feet up and hot tea and lots of attention.

I so wish you were closer.

At this point in your pregnancy you have every right to wallow in self pity!!! I think I was about 6 to 8 weeks out and pulled my back out. I remember the misery. I couldn't get out of the chair for several days.

And even when I could, there was simply no way for me to lay at night and be comfortable. My hips ached so very bad.

6 more weeks sweets...hang on for 6 more weeks. You'd be surprised how things go back to normal once that baby is born