Morning all,

Well – have made it safely from Cambodia into Vietnam!  Feels practically “chilly” being back at a slightly more sane high 20’s low 30’s instead of the high 30’s we’ve gotten used to – well, survived would be more accurate – must’ve lost half a stone in sweat cycling back from Angkor Wat! Fortunately plenty of great food and just amazing fresh fruit shakes more than made up for that….  Haven’t had too much time to explore here as yet as arrived pretty late yesterday but got out for dinner by the river in the local village – very entertaining as they seem to love having tiny chairs ( think primary school kid size… ) which I can do ok at my  5′ 6″ but my other half who is  6′ 4″ practically had his knees up to ears…..but the food was great, cheap, fresh, what more do you want…

Kkasxo – proud of you, well done. Being able to be that honest with yourself, recognising and sharing the reality of how you feel and where you are at is huge. It would have been much easier to pretend it was great than to be able to admit you can see he’s draining you, that you will be looking after him too.  Doesn’t have mean the time is right to action on it, absolutely, with all the change and shared history and still working through dealing with this shared trauma you have it’s not surprising at all you still some of your security wrapped up with him. But being able to be honest with yourself about it, accepting it as it is for now without hiding from it – that’s powerful. As you continue to become aware and stronger, then is the time to consider again what’s best for you again, naturally.

And I’m so pleased to hear you have taken that head out of the sand and getting into action on the flat finding – you are welcome for the pep talk, knew you could do it.  Did have to smile at the idea of you now frantically searching to find the alleged wonderful place – let us know how it goes! Yep, actions always speak louder than words. I’m sure this guy has every good intention but it’ll be interesting to see what happens when push comes to shove and it’s commitment time as to if he has the strength to go through with it. If I understand correctly the concern on his part of moving out from his parents is that they are very anti him doing so?  I hope you don’t become his replacement mother though……he’d better be expecting to help out with the cleaning and laundry… 😉

Shelby – all ok? Know you were having a very full on time of it. How did it go at the weekend – hopefully a bit of relaxing in there somewhere?  Are you back from being away with your ex ( is he still ex?? ), hope you got what you wanted from it at least.

Griff – hang in there. Yep, the first time of doing major things without your long-time support system is scary. But each first gets easier and you learn how to be able to make yourself feel better, not need someone else to do so. Which is an incredibly powerful thing for future inter-dependent relations, not dependent ones, big difference I learned very slowly the very hard way… how did the first day go?

I’m totally with Kkasxo on the as irritating/unhelpful as it is – there is no “why” or magic reason you can understand, it’s why it’s the toughest lesson in just accepting it just is. I think we all look for such an explanation as then there is something tangible to either “fix” or else be able to accept as something we can’t change and therefore it’s not such a total rejection of us, ourselves. It really is just like trying to handle the unexpected death of a loved one at the same time as trying to keep your self esteem up to handle the added perceived rejection. The first part is about adapting to life without them in it, dealing with the change, which if you aren’t used to be able to be dealing with being outside your comfort zone is even harder.  The rejection part is likewise much harder to deal with if you tend to have lower self-esteem. It’s why a lot of the advice on how to get through this is really about improving your own self-esteem and ability to handle change – increasing your own natural resilience. It’s why some people seem able to bounce back faster than others – it’s not that they feel it less but that they’ve either got or developed healthier coping mechanisms.  Which is also why you will hear a lot of people, including myself, saying they are so much stronger for surviving the experience.

All – hope that helps – I know how much it hurts – keep moving forwards, one step at a time. It does get easier and it does get a whole heap better.