(Hex 23.6 to 2) About my estranged wife

[Trojina]

One of those big gurus, I forget which one, Osho or someone, once said "People talk about the past as though it's filled with endless possibilities and the future as though it's inexorable fate and set in stone. When in fact, it's exactly the other way around.

That's me, I do that.

 

[Enqquery]

I didn't intend to participate in this thread but some points really bother me.

You are calling your wife immoral for leaving you but no one is forced to remain in a relationship.

The way you talk about her scares me to be honest. I don't know why she has taken the deeds, but I would do the same if I felt in danger.

You talk about your need for a companion, but no one is responsible to stay with someone for so. OK, she's been aware of your condition. Then what? Many people have no special condition, start with love... then separate someday. It's part of the life.

You emphasize on your suffering but frankly, we don't know how much she has suffered during the relationship.

@marybluesky
I have said repeatedly that she had the right to leave. I have said repeatedly that I even helped her pack. I have said tepeatedly that I had been to counseling sessions with her since before the marriage began in an effort to avoid miscommunication. I have said repeatedly that I had undergone 10K worth of procedures on my brain to please her, which have left me a person I no longer know, AND I have said repeatedly that she was the abuser in the relationship.

I had even provided links to the type of abuse she caused and explainations of how it occurred in our relationship.

BUT that is all to be forgiven, or glossed over because you can not dream of a world where a woman would abuse a man.

That is the long and short of your argument isn’t it? We don’t know how she was suffering? “What was the poor abuser going through that caused her to abuse that dreadful man”

I had provided a link but here is the short version. You want to know what the effects of gaslighting are? Suicide, difficulty telling what is real and what isn’t, anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder or chronic post traumatic stress disorder.

You know what scares me? You would forgive all of that to demonize someone who did absolutely none of the things you said.

I said I felt it was wrong, not that it was immoral. Immoral was your interpretation of wrong. Wrong can also mean incorrect, inappropriate, unjust, or dishonest. However, you chose that interpretation. Maybe that makes sense because I said from my Morality point of view.

Maybe that was the reason, although that requires overlooking everything else I said, or maybe it would allow you to build the argument that the victim was the victimizer because that made you more comfortable and allow you to rail against me.

It is similar to a technique called DARVO and is commonly used by victimizers to justify their actions.

So my question is why?

Whatever is happening now it doesn't mean nothing between you was ever true and you only hurt yourself more by demonising her perhaps. I don't know enough to say of course and I hadn't read the thread well enough to see about her taking the papers but she seemed reasonable enough initially, she said she wanted a break. She didn't cheat on you or go off with anyone else

@Trojina I had talked to you before about her cheating. There is a lot of evidence, albeit circumstantial, that she was cheating on me.

As far as demonizing her: How should one portray their abuser? I know you have glossed over this fact a number of times. She committed what is legally considered domestic violence. The difficulty is in proving that it occurred. It does not leave bruises so I guess it does not count.

Once again when she wanted a break, I helped her pack to leave. I did not try to stop her or demand she stay. We had pizza on moving day. Watched movies as we packed.

However at some point everything she was saying was a lie, and lies intended to cause me to doubt my own senses. Which is easier to do, and in fact more harmful, to an autist. So how can you tell when the lies started? How do you know? With such an insidious type of abuse you don’t know. You can’t. So everything is suspect whether or not it is true.

 

[Enqquery]

The only thing I have been asking about is the cart and the seed and the field. I want something to focus on that is not darkness. Because dark thoughts lay in dark places.

I want something actionable, not something that is effectively “Move on”. That is like telling a drowning person to “just swim” or a choking person to “just breathe”. Technically true but in this situation unhelpful.

This has nothing to do with my soon to be ex wife. Save that she was the cause of 23.

I have even asked Yi about what the cart and the seed were and put that in this thread yet everyone goes back to me saying I see no hope without her and that I feel that breaking a promise is incorrect, inappropriate, unjust, or dishonest. Without addressing my questions about those casts.

I, of course, answer those questions which derails the thread.

Well I do see no hope without her and I do feel that breaking a promise is incorrect, inappropriate, unjust, or dishonest. I am also certain of a number of other things such as @diamanda has been one of the few people outside of my family, close friends, and medical professionals, that believes that I was abused and everyone else glosses over it at best or outright denies it occurring.

I have never wished ill upon her. I have taken every action to undo the harm she has caused medically, and to protect my assets legally. Neither of those things can give me hope or perspective.

I have made promises not to do anything until the legal actions are complete. That will give me time and with time comes perspective.

That leaves only hope. Which in this case lie in a cart and a seed and a field. I am trying to figure out what those are and how to use them.

I now have a good idea of what the seed is, I don’t know what to do with it other than plat it, as you do.

I don’t understand the cart or the field. Which is why I keep asking about the seed the cart and the field. In those three things lies hope. I want to understand it so I have a light to focus on, not darkness.

Because as I said in the darkness lay dark thoughts. Dark thoughts can’t exist in the light. Medicine and the law can not give me the light. Faith can give me strength to struggle toward a goal. I need the light to struggle towards.

Which once again brings us back to the Cart, the seed, and the field.

 

[Enqquery]

You sometimes talk about the future as though it's a grim, pre-determined thing bearing down on you. All of these irrevocable, eternal vows, all these statements about "I'll never feel this or that again ... I'll never meet anyone again ... I feel like Algernon ..." It's not set in stone. Just survive it day by day and get through it and things will change. They can't do anything else.

@irfan Things that will change, that does not mean for the better and the math supports things changing for the worse. The I Ching seemed to indicate something contrary to that. Which is why I want to understand the Seed, the Cart, and the Field.

One of those big gurus, I forget which one, Osho or someone, once said "People talk about the past as though it's filled with endless possibilities and the future as though it's inexorable fate and set in stone. When in fact, it's exactly the other way around."

This is absolutely true.

The Vow

When the lover goes,
the vow though broken remains,
that trace of eternity love
brings down among us stays,
to give dignity to the suffering
and to intensify it.

- Galway Kinnell

This just makes me even more sad. It does, in fact, intensify the suffering.

 

[Enqquery]

The way you talk about her scares me to be honest. I don't know why she has taken the deeds, but I would do the same if I felt in danger.

Once again I was the one in danger. My doctors have concerns about me facing my abuser in court. I was the one that was being abused.

The way you accuse your wife to ruin your dreams make me wonder if you've ever taken her needs, emotions, view of life into account.

I took her needs into account so much that I underwent heavy and intense medical treatments in an effort to meet her needs. I did everything she asked of me. Everything. I listened to everything she said, I paid attention to her moods to the best of my ability and asked when I was unsure.

So please tell me how was I not paying attention to her needs? Her view of life? Or is this, simply more of it being impossible for her to actually be a toxic person.

 

[bologna_tendra]

Hexagram 23, Line 6: The highest fruit uneaten = the good are carried and the evil lose a home. Changes to (2) Receptive. The uneaten fruit of a tree has the opportunity to become a new tree. When we have no agenda life leads us where we need to be. Those who let go find reward, while those clinging to their attachments become lost. Difficulty is stripped away but the generous and open spirit is the remaining Yang at the top after all else is removed. At such times the spirit becomes visible allowing you to reach the fruit that hadn’t been considered close enough to reach. Through sacrifice the spirit becomes manifest as fruit. Through generosity you obtain the love and respect of others.

https://cafeausoul.com/iching/po-split-apart

 

[Enqquery]

When we have no agenda life leads us where we need to be. Those who let go find reward,

@bologna_tendra this is the part that does not make sense to me. I understand everything else it is talking about generosity during adversity. After the dross is burned away a purer metal is formed. Allowing your spirit to flourish in a place better suited. That all makes sense.

How do you have no agenda, no direction?

I’m letting go of my soon-to-be-ex? I have as much as I am able until this is over. I am actively trying to burn those 7 years from my mind, you don’t get more let go than that. Someone told me I needed to let go of the idea of having children.

I get the impression letting go is talking about more than that. I am not sure what it is though.

So there we have isolated the whole thing don’t understand. No agenda and letting go of something.

@Trojina As an aside today she said I should get tested because she picked something up, and may have passed it on. Which confirms the cheating.

 

[angelatlantis14]

Hello Enqquery,

there has a lot been written on this thread already, so I try and not repeat everything!

A couple of points though: You are absolutely correct in refusing any contact with your soon-to-be ex-wife. Nothing good can come out of it. You have NO obligation to respond to her contact. As for any ncessary divorce proceedings, imaginary car accidents or other pretexts, I assume you have a lawyer and she has a lawyer - let them negotiate it. There is nothing that she needs you personally for. Refer her to your lawyer.

As for your question about having "no agenda" I do not htink it means having no direction. You have your wishes and goals in life, and they should not be denied (would not be possible anyway, we want what we want) I take having no aganda as more to let go of your firm ideas about how to reach these goals. For example, a goal would be to have a family and children. An agenda would be to have one particular partner as the way to achieve this goal.
Instead try and be open to what goes on in your life apart from this person, and apart from this idea. Things more often than not come about in unexpected, seemingly impossible ways.
Also you may want to let go of the plan of "actively burning the last 7 years" from your life. It will take as long as it takes. There will be pain and loss feelings for a while from now, nothing can change that. Try and be compassionate with your own suffering, that will not speed the process up, but will it make less painful after a while.

Finally, this is something, I recommend to pretty much anyone who is in a difficult situation and seeks help
You may want to take a look at the book "Self Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself" by Kristin Neff. It helped me a lot.

Best wishes. Things WILL get better.

Angelatlantis

 

[bologna_tendra]

The I Ching is suggestive and also sometimes paradoxical in the way poetry can be - it's not like a manual to erect a chair from IKEA with each step laid out; and sometimes the way for something to be done is to not do something, or to take ourselves out of the equation a bit more so that the world can enter a bit more and fill a bit more of the space we have vacated.

You speak of being gaslit. In such cases a person's perceptual and decision-making instruments have been damaged. If you set very detailed agendas at this time you will be doing so with damaged instruments. Go easy on yourself. Take time to calibrate the instruments. Do this between yourself and the world, a back and forth unmediated by your soon to be ex-wife. You don't know necessarily what it is that you are going to find - that's the adventure of life - and at the moment you can't imagine it - what it is potentially inside yourself and inside the world - but you can take faith from Yi and hexagram 23.6 that the seeds of it exist, and there is a harvest in the future.

Here is a poem by W.S. Merwin, published 50 years ago; I think it's a good one; I just happened to read it this morning, and it seemed to me in some way related to these things;


Little Horse

You come from some other forest
do you
little horse
think how long I have known these
deep dead leaves
without meeting you

I belong to no one
I would have wished for you if I had known how
what a long time the place was empty
even in my sleep
and loving it as I did
I could not have told what was missing

what can I show you
I will not ask if you will stay
or if you will come again
I will not try to hold you
I hope you will come with me to where I stand
often sleeping and waking
by the patient water
that has no father nor mother

 

[marybluesky]

Enqquery;

I don't imagine that only men can abuse women; and didn't intend to accuse you of being an abuser or anything else.

The point was how much your wife really is guilty for all that. You explained.

I agree that my comment was too emotional. Sorry.

 

[Enqquery]

As for your question about having "no agenda" I do not htink it means having no direction. You have your wishes and goals in life, and they should not be denied (would not be possible anyway, we want what we want) I take having no aganda as more to let go of your firm ideas about how to reach these goals.

You speak of being gaslit. In such cases a person's perceptual and decision-making instruments have been damaged. If you set very detailed agendas at this time you will be doing so with damaged instruments.

@angelatlantis14 That is really hard to do, but it makes sense in light of what @bologna_tendra said about my perceptual and decision making instruments being damaged.

That is why I have had a desperate need to find order in a world that lacks context. Where I don’t know what is real and what isn’t.

it's not like a manual to erect a chair from IKEA with each step laid out

I was really hoping for IKEA instructions.

I will read the book, and appreciate the poem (even though I found it sad too).

 

[Enqquery]

@marybluesky I reacted emotionally also.

Domestic abuse is a delicate subject for those who have suffered from it, or who are close with someone who has.

It is difficult not to react emotionally.

I apologize as well.

 

[diamanda]

@irfan Things that will change, that does not mean for the better and the math supports things changing for the worse. The I Ching seemed to indicate something contrary to that.

The I Ching does not say everything will change for the better. There are countless casts and combinations auguring misfortune, calamity, and other such stuff. In your cast, the situation in 23.6 is beneficial for 1 person, and not beneficial for the other. Who of the two of you is the most productive person? Who of the two of you is most constructive? And who of the two of you is a temporary destructive person?
Resulting 2 here means it's fertile earth for the one who is productive/constructive; and empty for the one who is destructive. Because the productive one still has the seed. The destructive one has nothing.
Abusers are destructive leeches, parasites.
I believe you'll make it.

 

[breakmov]

​

Enqquery, could you please consider asking Yi something like this ...

"Please Yi, help me the best way to look at this thing I am thinking about/going through?"

breakmov

 

[moss elk]

Reported post.

 

[marybluesky]

Enqquery;

again, sorry if I sounded rude.
Lets imagine that all I've written is the words of a cruel person who doesn't take the others' feelings and conditions into account, as you say.

Why would you harm yourself for that?

 

[Cuddly_Balrog]

You obviously did not read the whole thread,
And are biased due to your own recent circumstances.
Recusal perhaps.

I did read the whole thread. A couple of times because I was going through a divorce myself. I am absolutely, undeniably, biased by my recent circumstances, then again aren’t we all?

I can understand the allure of the void in response to emotional distress. I have also lost a friend due to suicide, so maybe I feel like I could have done more and I am trying to make up for something over which, in the end, I have no control. Does this mean I should not try? Does this mean that we as a community should not try?

Obviously not, and people tried because on the whole this is a very positive community. Not everyone though, some were overtly negative.

All we bring to this community is based upon our experiences. I think recusal is the wrong answer.

I agree at the end he had become toxic, I am not defending that. Was he always toxic? It didn’t seem so to me, maybe it did to you. Regardless banning is appropriate, I agree with that too.

Although I hope he comes back alive and apologizes for his toxicity. Maybe he will find clarity after crisis.

 

[Cuddly_Balrog]

Moss, I think Cuddly was unaware of the post you were responding to as I may have already deleted it.

I did read the quoted part, it was toxic and it was unfair to the people he accused. I agree with Moss Elk on that.

 

[breakmov]

What is the best help for someone who is in turmoil, in exasperating suffering and who cannot, at the moment, see an end to the situation they are in?
What would be the best help that each one of us, in a situation of turmoil and suffering, would like to have received at this moment?
I think anyone, the vast majority, can answer this?-It tends to be a visceral and very direct answer as it is something that affects the foundations of each of us!

In what ways could one embrace the ancient wisdom contained in the yijing, and its DNA of change, and do something about a helpful response in a situation like this?
For me:

Hex29="turmoil,in exasperating pain"

the best help:

Hex30=" ......?????......"

so:

Enqquery, could you please consider asking Yi something like this ...

"Please Yi, help me the best way to look at this thing I am thinking about/going through?"

breakmov

 

[moss elk]

He left in September 2020

I PM'd you.

 

[hilary]

Enqquery wasn't banned, he deleted his own account.

Since he's left, this seems a good moment to close this thread. (If anyone wants to discuss with me how I/we can best respond when someone posts who's suicidal, please do start a private conversation.)