II am in limbo land. What should I do?

Thank you for your support.  My timeline shows I will be divorced in 2009.  Cannot get anything started before Holidays and my daughters birthday.  Also, my Dad died 11 years ago and his died 3 years ago on the 10th. 

I am not sure I even want to be with a man that can have another relationship at the same time as he is married.  I do need to move on and stop grieving over the man that I married.

You are not pathetic...

You stated to him what your feelings were at the time. There is no shame in that (in a perfect world, of course), & if you needed him & begged for him, it is NOT something to consider as a flaw - you spoke pure honesty to him, & it was up to him as to how he dealt with it, by either retreating or coming closer to you (even if it wasn't as close as you would like).

I understand the push-pull of relationships & how what you (or me, for that matter) do to push a relationship away even though you want it to pull together...it's a very hard middle ground to find.

My counselor put a rubber band on his 2 index fingers one day & said that in my relationship with my husband, we both played the part of the agressor & the deflector...

As one of us tried to get closer & close the tension between us that had built over the years (stretching the rubber band between us in opposite directions), the other person kept running away, which kept us both at a full tension band, not bringing us closer together, but in effect, pushing further to one opposite pole or the other.

I learned, through many sessions, that there is a way to stand firm in what your needs/wants are, without chasing after and therefore, pushing the other person into running away the opposite direction. It's soooo very hard to find that ground where you are still standing up for what you need/want, without begging/pleading and not feel guilt for not 'doing enough to try'.

Your counselor will help you with this and I will admit that it is very hard...but if he's saying basically what my counselor said, he's a pretty smart cookie in my book. It's not a game, but standing your ground without pushing him away or running towards him, will help you determine your timeline and what your own boundaries are - there is NO shame in that. You need to be proud that you can stand your ground...and know that if he feels you are worthy to be his wife, he will meet you there, in the middle!

Oh 123, you are in a very tight spot.  Much tighter than mine.

First, I'll say your hope isn't false.  But that's the problem with hope--it's neither true nor false, so it isn't something one can build upon.  That's why we can hope for the best and prepare for the worst; hope is what we wish would happen, and your hope is not impossible--some people do realize what they're throwing away and turn around.  But unfortunately, hope is not something one can take to the bank.

Second, the only advice I can give is this: keep tabs on when the pain of limbo-land outweighs the joy of potential restoration.  In other words, my guess is that while the daily grind of your situation won't destroy your hope, it will eventually tarnish your vision of a relationship with him.  When that vision is so tarnsihed that it matches the ugliness of limbo-land, you'll be done.

But of course, consider the source here.  :)

Aimless, you are right that the choice needs to come from me.  My counselor said the same thing that I need a timeline and I should tell him I saw an attorney.  It might make him realize what he has done.

I feel like during this separation I have done everything wrong to stop a pending divorce.  I was needy, I begged, and now I am just silent about what is happening and nice to him when I talk to him.

Yuck I am so pathetic! Not only that i need to remember that he is not the man I married anymore.

The timeline should be yours. It does help to take control but it is hard to do that when you have hope. I hope you have a temp order for child support and home maintenance. If not, consider filing for that at least. Maybe it will wake him up or it won't but at least you will know whether your hope is false or not. That is just my opinion but right now, you can't heal and you are not working on your marriage. (you truly are in limbo)  Something will have to give sooner or later. Just one person's opinion, maybe not the right one because my opinions are colored through my experience with my own situation.

I wish I could give you some advice, though I don't think I can, as I haven't actually gone through a true separation (he and I lived together when/after I decided a divorce was the only last option to our situation).

I feel, honestly, that if I had moved out for an extended period, I would have gotten used to the idea of me not caring/worrying about how my decisions would affect my husband and our marriage. I feel that I would have enjoyed the 'freedom' just a little too much and I would never look back to wanting to be married again...

I do not mean that to scare you, but I am trying to state, that as a woman who has been through a lot in her marriage when others would have walked (on both sides), an extended separation will probably make thing worse, rather than make them better.

Keep a timeline for yourself, not for him, on when YOU feel that there is no hope left. I did this in my situation (even though we still lived together) and believe that when I got too run down and frustrated, that it was time to finally let go and make the move towards divorce.

My husband hates confrontation, yet in an emotional marriage, so many things are tied to emotions and confrontation. If you are too afraid of confrontation, you live your life in total limbo and rely on others to make the decisions...if YOU make the decision that YOU can't wait in limbo anymore, it may leave him to finally and honestly evaluate what he wants.

Of course, I speak that from my situation, where my husband refused any outside help or acknowledgment that he was contributing to the problems between us until I finally got to the point where it was either I filed for divorce, or ended up hating the man I had loved enough to marry and want to live the rest of my life with in companionship and support.

I can't give you a timeline - nobody answered that question when I posed it earlier - and it's a personal choice...

Keep us posted and I wish you the best!!!