Here we go. Too much sleep and rest today, and now it's near midnight and I'm wide awake.

I hate evenings like this when I didn't do enough during the day to be really tired. My body knows I should be asleep, but my head is wide awake. The problem with my head being wide awake, is that my head starts down paths it shouldn't. Add that to being a tad bored, and well, you get the idea.

I watched my favorite show tonight with my daughter. It was one of those shocker episodes that is going to make a lot of people, including me, very angry for awhile. That was a bit of a distraction, but now the hype has died down and I'm bored again, and awake, so my brain wanders.

I hate it when my brain wanders. I think about my husband and what he is doing right now. I wonder if he even misses me. Does he even really care. Will he grow up and want to make right what was done? I doubt it. Its just me still in a bit of denial that he would do this kind of thing. So I am typing out my thoughts in a hope of letting them go.

I'll visualize pushing the bad thoughts out again. Already i feel it working. Maybe I just can't sleep until I blog an entry. Exchanging one addiction for another? I wish I knew if this was helping someone or at least entertaining them. But in lieu of that, I will still imagine some faceless reader out there. Reading and sympathizing with me and maybe saying, "I believe in you to get through this."

I will, I know that is true. It just won't be the way I had imagined it to be.

Today was an awesome day.

I started it by attending bible study and worship services and this time I got my daughter to attend with me. I had lunch out with both my daughter and son and the day couldn't have been better for weather. It was in fact the perfect Sunday.

I finished the day by attending my first meeting of Celebrate Recovery. It is a 12-step organization that caters to a broad range of issues. I will be with other women which will help me to bond with my own gender. I really don't need to be distracting myself by scanning the room looking for men with wedding rings on or not. That is the relationship addict in me trying to find a quick relationship fix. I even did it tonight. I found a table with just women at it and that helped me stay focused. The last thing I need right now is to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.

All in all, this was the best Sunday ever. I feel that I have been taking positive steps for getting my life turned about and hopefully break a major cycle of dependency.

I wish that my husband would do the same for himself. He won't though. He will convince himself that he has no problems. He will be friendly and charming and try to seduce me with his "togetherness" only to drop me and run off again. This time, I'm not alone and I will get through this by the grace of God and the support of those that are going through the same thing right now.

Find a Celebrate Recovery Group in your area.

Today was simply a beautiful day. I got my daughter out to her taekwondo class and I did some snooping and found out where my hair stylist moved too. The weather warmed up a bit as the skies got clearer and the sun shined. So I asked my daughter to mow the lawn.

No turn over of the engine!

Turned out the battery was zapped during the cold winter, so with some help from a neighbor up the road, we got a new battery and my daughter was able to mow the lawn. Now we look like a respectable member of the neighborhood! Of course with everyone mowing the ramps were in full odor. Ramps are effectively wild onion chives. They grow in early spring and become part of the new mowed smell. I sat out on my deck a bit and enjoyed the new mown lawn and was grateful to be here. My husband may have made a mess of our lives for a while, but this place has a way of making everything seem better. I love looking out at the mountains surrounding us and I feel protected. It's no wonder people don't like to move away from here.

I spoke on the phone with my husband a bit and made him realize how important it was for him to call his daughter. He was trying to not "get in the way" you might say with her busy life, but in reality all it was doing was making her depressed. He was quick to change that, and I did appreciate his sincerity. I asked him a bit later in email (after thanking him for calling her) if he intended to keep up with me as well?

He did in fact email me. I hope it will be at least weekly. I don't know what his real intent here is. I don't know if it's just guilt, or maybe he really is thinking he owes me something. I don't know. We'll see. I have to keep my boundaries up though. I don't believe the kindness is anything more then finding out what is going on. I can't let myself believe anything different. Tomorrow I will go to church, have lunch with friends, and later that evening try and meet the Celebrate Recovery group. I want and need to make new friends and especially be around women that have been through this.

Tonight I'll go to bed happy for this beautiful day. Grateful that my daughter and I despite still butting heads, seem to get along better then we have before, and grateful that so far I seem to be on track to help my son raise a deposit on a new bassoon.

Oh..and we got the lawn mowed. :)

The funny thing about not waking up thinking about my husband is waking up and making myself think of him when I don't need to. It's like there is this void where all the delusions and panic and anxiety was that needs to be filled, so I start to obsess about him. I made myself stop it today.

It will be a conscience effort for a while I guess, but I said it again out loud to a small group of my peers. "I don't love him. I can't love a man that doesn't or won't confide in me."

That is really what it comes down too.

He wants to be friends. Twenty-three years of marriage to hear he just wants to be friends. As long as he sees me as someone to play with when he is in town, then we can never be friends.

I'll be nice and cordial. I'll go out and play pool and have dinner with him if he asks, but I don't plan to invest any more effort into him. I've been investing for over two decades and like the stock market right now, there is no return on the investment.

So he can just see my poker face. He showed his cards and he is holding nothing.

Today was the first day that I didn't wake up thinking of my husband. I was actually consciously thinking of him as I was driving to work when it hit me, I HAD to think about him, not that he was present on my mind. That is a huge change for me.

Yesterday I wrote to him a few times in email and I finally said that I didn't think I loved him. I admitted something that I never thought I would say. I honestly don't feel love for him. In fact, I'm thinking its indifference. Much like he said he felt for me. He wants to be friends, but I don't see us ever being good friends.

The last two days, I asked my daughter to not contact her dad and see if he would text or call her. He didn't. It was pretty much what I thought was happening. He wasn't making the effort to call or text her even to say good night to her or ask her how her day was. She's been doing it. I think the same is true with my son. He's been the one initiating the contact. Dad is "too busy."

That is pretty much what has been going on for a long time. I stayed and cared for the kids, while he went off to work, or go on trips, and then fly into their lives, cause havoc on our routine and then get mad at me for "spoiling the good time."

I can be very cordial with him, and we may even be friends for the sake of the kids, but we will never be good friends. We aren't going to have that deep friendship that a healthy marriage needs. There can be no intimacy with a man that doesn't want anything more then a superficial relationship.

Maybe his boss did send him out there. Maybe my husband manipulated a bit to get his boss to do so. Either way, he got what he wanted. A free ticket out of town, occasional visits with the kids and do some work on the house, and then off again to enjoy his freedom while I stay and hold all the pieces together.

In time I will find someone that really loves me and in the meantime, I will watch how healthy couples behave and learn from them. I will take my time now, putting my daughter first until she is 18. Hopefully age will bring some wisdom as well as the sting of what can happen when one doesn't really consider what they are getting into.

I don't believe my husband will ever try to be a real friend. He will visit, he will have fun, but he will not put any more investment into a relationship then that. I plan to not email him until I hear from him first. If he wants to build a friendship, let him take the first step.

I'm going to be "too busy" myself making new friends and exploring new options.

I had an email conversation today with my husband who is now at his new location. I finally said it. I told him that I don't believe that I love him, but I loved being in a relationship with him. He was gracious in return and said again how he wanted to work on having a friendship. For him that may mean just a "pat on the back, how'ya doin'" kind of friendship. I really don't know, because as far as I was concerned we were between acquaintance and friends, but not "good friends." I told him that I could be comfortable and happy with him for many years to come, but I could not love someone that would not confide in me.

He did write back to reassure me that he did want to work on being friends. He felt this past weekend was a very good start. I agree with that view.

We also agree that we are pretty much stuck in marriage together until the economy changes and the house can sell for the proper price. That could be up to four years from now when my daughter graduates high school.

So I will continue to work on me and hopefully we might be able to one day be real friends if he wishes and maybe develop a real intimacy together. If not, I'll be okay because I've chosen to no longer suffer and to get on with the business of life. To quote Gloria Gaynor, "I will survive." :)

Seriously, I do have a lot of work to do, but tonight as I was attending a band concert that both my kids were in, I actually knew a few people and spoke with them. I didn't feel so out of the loop as I had before. All of the folks I spoke to attend out at the Methodist church I have been attending. That honestly made me feel like I belonged in the community for a change. I didn't feel overwhelmed to be alone. I was able to relax and just enjoy myself. It still stings to realize that I am becoming a single woman emotionally, but I don't fear it like I did before. I'm almost relieved.

With or with out him, I'll be a better, healthy person.

After a pretty nice weekend, I had a realization today, that I may truly not love my husband. The following is a letter I wrote to my online support group.

I wrote:

"One of the things I have gained the most from this list, is becoming aware of my actions and thoughts. I feel the craving for a new relationship to replace the one I had with my husband, and I recognize it and in so doing, beat it back down a bit. Well, I think I had another awareness moment this weekend.

As I was driving home from work, it dawned on me just how shallow our relationship must have been. What we experienced Saturday night felt normal. We had fun and I was okay. But then I heard it from his lips the next day that he was just "being friendly." It couldn't been any clearer to me. We could have gone to bed together Saturday night, (we didn't) and I would have thought all was okay. He could have said he loved me again and played the role, but it wouldn't have been any different on his part, but I would have felt euphoric that I had my husband back.

That depresses me, but also makes sense to me now. This is how addicted to the IDEA of a relationship I am. I confuse just "being friends" with love because the correct words were spoken, not actually felt. What ever hope I thought I had is gone now.

It really is sad to think that the past 23 years was a delusion. I got some nice things out of it, but the thing I wanted most was never there."

Even now as I ponder what I wrote it occurs to me that I would be very happy to continue with him another 23-years, just the way things were. He would say the right words, then enjoy having all the physical comforts of being home. Again, as I think of the things he said about his company doing so poorly right now, I'm reminded how when he lost his job before, I knew nothing of it, until it was close to him losing it. His "friend" knew all, but he wasn't sharing it with me. This has gone on for many months before he told me what was going on, and again, his "friend" knew it before me I'm sure. She was feeding his ego and being his fully attentive ear, while I was bogged down with school and work.

He really doesn't love me, and I don't think he really is my friend. He doesn't want to be enemies, but yet, I get this feeling that he would sell me out again if it suited his purposes. He was in fact seducing me again this weekend, but this time, he had the decency to at least not try to be physical. It may have crossed his mind, but at least that didn't happen.

The moral of the story in this is, yes I can be nice and enjoy the time out, but I need to keep my guard up fully. He is not to be trusted and certainly does not have my best interests in mind.

So, I guess the writing is officially on the wall. He has no intention of preserving the family. The family is just us three now, and he helps pay the bills.