The Pursuer Becomes The Pursued

Several days went by where nothing whatsoever happened between us. No calls, emails, or texts. Then, two days before our friends were coming in, he called, hemmed and hahed for several minutes, and finally asked could he join us? He wanted to go out with all three of us. I was stunned, but of course, I said yes.

Truthfully, even though I was getting slightly better at separating him and the rest of my life just to survive, if I was honest with myself, I loved him and did not want a divorce. I believe marriage is forever. I believed this man was my soul mate. I knew I wanted to start a family with and then grow old with him. At that time, divorce was the worst possible outcome, but I was tired of feeling so out of control.

In the days before our outing, I read and read – trying to shore myself up. I did not want my desperation to show, but I didn’t want to be unapproachable either. And, no matter whether we stayed married or not, I wanted to at least be able to look this man in the eye and maintain a cordial relationship.

I memorized my road map and learned that what I needed to do most probably wouldn’t come naturally, but nothing in the literature was hard or asked me to do something that I wasn’t comfortable with.

Save My Marriage Today by Amy Waterman and now Mend the Marriage too are very big on not giving your power away, yet communicating fully with an open heart, which is what I vowed to do.

The Magic Of Making (and now His Secret Obsession, too) stresses that you should be friendly, light-hearted, and happy with yourself, while using some key phrases. Being happy with yourself is a huge key because you’re not going to attract the relationship you want if you yourself are miserable.  Without really meaning to, I kind of combined these methods with pretty convincing results.

Begging, stalking, making promises, or acting desperate or volatile (which I had been doing) will only make you more unattractive to your spouse and will only make the things which prompted the divorce talk more firm in his mind. I didn’t want this. I also (for about the millionth time) watched The Magic Of Making Up’s video on the website to calm myself down. However, with that not available, you can also watch the Mend the Marriage video as often as you need. The author, Brad Browning, calls himself a geek, but honestly, I find him very soothing and matter-of-fact. He’s very open and honest about the mistakes you are probably making that you must stop. And he knows what he is talking about as he’s a relationship coach and divorce expert.

All of these resources stress ways to methodically work your system without seeming desperate or that you are playing games. Everything you do needs to be genuine or something you are comfortable with. If you just play games, it will eventually come back to haunt you because you can’t maintain a facade that is not really you.

Back to the story – The foursome went extremely well. We had the same fun time we used to when we all lived in the same town. I tried to have no expectations beyond this night and promised myself if all we built was a friendship, I could live with that – somehow.

Believe it or not, the calls started to be initiated by my husband. The new me (who had been hiding somewhere all this time) was apparently pretty appealing.

According to Mend the Marriage, this was EXACTLY what I wanted. Sometimes, I was “busy” when my husband called. I needed him to know that I, too, was a valuable person with goals, hobbies, and interests, which is what he loved about me in the first place.

We started out just talking. I took this very slowly. One day at a time – just repeating what seemed to be working – light-hearted, friendly, but interested. Once that became comfortable and frequent, I moved on to the next steps. Eventually, the talks on the phone became small meetings or outings. Again, I moved as directed and as was now comfortable. I wanted to be happy with where this went because any relationship based on lies or my faking it would fail anyway.

No more desperation. No more giving my power away. I held my head sky high, but my heart was wide open. This process took months. It may have gone quicker, but I was too scared to push.

I had a few setbacks where I got cocky, strayed from what the books were telling me, and royally messed up. These mistakes took serious cleanup, but I took it one day at a time. Still, there was a good bit of delay from this, but I knew there was a lifetime at stake, so I didn’t beat myself up too much.

A few months down the road, I knew the time period of the supposed divorce had come and gone. I certainly didn’t bring it up. I just kept doing what I had been doing, and things kept improving, although, for the longest time, we didn’t specifically discuss it. We just enjoyed the positive changes that began to make the relationship feel much more effortless.

A huge weight was lifted because I knew that even if we were to split up, at least it would be on good terms, where we could respect one another and walk away with good feelings. I didn’t know, though, whether that would mean parting as friends or reconciling as a married couple. Here’s what happened.

 

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