Thank you for all of that.
I was unaware of International Recovery. I am checking that out now. I have also found SAMHSA just now as well which looks like it has some good resources as well - https://www.samhsa.gov/
I had done some exploration of Rational Recovery / Smart Recovery a while...
Part 3...
Please see my previous statement about compulsive lying behaviors.
Yes I have been fully authentic before. I am not always lying. I can still be honest and vulnerable and authentic, even most of the time. I just have a very hard time doing it when triggered.
Yes, I don’t know that I...
Part 2...
To be clear. I am not advocating for them to be friends. I see why that wouldn’t work. As far as the reason I wanted them to be friends it was two-fold:
1. I think that if I was not poisoning the water they would actually be good friends for each other. Aspen has a lot of sincere...
Magdlyn,
I'm sorry for the long series of responses and the time it took to get them posted but I thought you deserved a thorough and thoughtful response. You raise a lot of important points and wanted to address them as best I could without defensiveness or avoidance. That has taken a while...
Thanks, agreed on pretty much all counts. More detailed responses below.
Right now, Aspen is in the throes of navigating a deconversion that she's not fully ready to commit to or engage fully in. I think that therapy will help her with that as well as with how to engage with me in a way that...
That's an interesting point. I did recognize that I was grieving and I did recognize the need for personal counseling/work/therapy but somehow I hadn't put them together to consider the need for grief-counseling specifically. Thank you for that suggestion. I think that is something I will...
Thanks for the honesty. Sincerely. I will be responding to Magdlyn's post more thoroughly later and I agree she makes good points, not pleasant ones but no, she's not wrong on almost everything she said.
A quick note on my use of the word "infatuation": And apologies in advance for a...
Thanks for the kindness.
I am a little surprised at how surprised I am by your phrasing about me being "torn between two women." I don't feel torn at all. I fell remorse and grief and some resignation but that is the cost of the decisions I've made and actions I've taken. I am also hopeful...
Magdlyn,
Agreed on all counts, especially the unethical dating. You summed it up much more effectively than I did.
We tried couples therapy once so far as we approached the decision to get married. We worked within that process for a little while and earnestly but it was a bad fit with the...
I won't let *that* (repeated attempts) happen at least and neither will Aspen. She understands where I am with ALL of this. If she were to read anything I've written here, and she probably will at some point, the only thing that *might* be new is the intensity of my missing of Cassia as...
Jane,
I think I answered most of those questions in my reply to GG. I am bad at writing clearly and succinctly so I apologize if I the answers are obscured in there. Let me know if you still have questions about the history.
I'll answer a couple more directly here.
1. Was I practicing...
Thanks for the suggestions about pseudonyms. I'll edit or at least start using them from here on out.
And since other responders have asked for clarification, I'll offer a summary timeline.
I was married to my high school crush, "Aspen", and zealously religious (a recent convert) for about 13...
Hello,
I looked for a thread about this already and there are some that are adjacent or touch on similar themes I didn't see any that addressed this specifically, so apologies if this is redundant.
There's nothing to be done with this, at least that I can see, so this is essentially just a...
Poly but living as monogamous -
Looking for safe and healthy ways/outlets for expressing myself and being authentic while also respecting the commitment I made to live monogamously and trying to rebuild and deepen my partner's trust and sense of security.