Doug suggested that I write a post about my New Year’s Resolution’s and I told him I am not really a resolution kind of girl.  I avoid making New Year’s resolutions because they often become more of a failure than an accomplishment, and I end up feeling bad about myself.

So I thought about what I wanted for the New Year and decided that instead of resolutions, I would make a list of practices that I would like to incorporate in order to improve my level of happiness and to better myself in the process.

I thought about what was lacking in my life and what I felt I needed to move on from Doug’s emotional affair, and I came up with three goals that I would like to implement throughout the year:

Goal #1: Practice having fun every day. I know this may sound silly, but I realized in the last several years I have forgotten how to have fun.  Prior to the affair, most of my days consisted of working from the time I woke up to the time I collapsed in bed.  I was doing many jobs: wife, mother, teacher, taxi driver, maid, etc. and life had become very stressful and   mundane for me.

On the days that I did get a break, I was either too tired, too poor, or too frustrated to enjoy life.  The truth was I forgot what made me happy and how to enjoy myself.

This reality was also confirmed by Doug during his emotional affair.  He told me I wasn’t any fun anymore, and he compared me to the fun he was having with Tanya.

I began to believe that I wasn’t capable of being a fun person and often questioned Doug if he had a good time when he was with me.  I realized I had lost all my enjoyment in life, and therefore is something I want to bring back.  I want to make it a habit everyday to do something fun; something that brings back the child in me.  I want to completely let myself go and fully enjoy the moment.

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Goal #2-Learn to tune out my brain. I know that I am a deep thinker and spend most of my day consumed in my thoughts. I know that most of my thinking is probably unproductive because it does focus on the past and the future, and is restricting my ability to enjoy the present.

So my goal is to learn how to turn off my brain several times a day and learn to focus on the present.  I am hoping this will be something that I will learn from my therapist, as he appears competent in methods that allow a person to control their mind and focus on the here and now.

Goal #3- Work on my self esteem. When I found out about Doug’s emotional affair I stopped doing many of the things that brought me confidence and pleasure.  I believed that these activities occupied too much of my time and energy and stopping them would enable me to be the kind of wife Doug wanted me to be.

I stopped focusing on my job, spending as much time with my children and taking on projects around the house.  I spent every minute trying to save our marriage and unfortunately I lost a part of Linda in the process.

I was afraid that Doug wouldn’t love me for who I was.  I discovered that those activities and behaviors make up who I am, and by not engaging in them I am taking away part of myself and my own happiness.

I have learned that there needs to be a balance.  I know that our marriage is our number one priority, and I love every minute Doug and I are together…however, I also have to put forth effort in other aspects of my life for the sake of my own happiness, personal growth and self-esteem.

See also  Affair Recovery and My First Experience With a Therapist

My objective is to be confident that I can be who I am and also continue to have the marriage we have created.   I always believed that I could do it all, but that came crashing down on me two years ago.  I want to have it all again, and I want to be happy, I just need to learn to have a balance and not expect perfection.

Well, there you have it, those are the three areas of my life that I’m going to work on in 2011.  I suggest that all of you, whether the betrayed or the betrayer, take stock in your life and really figure out ways that you can improve yourself and your life, so that 2011 can be a fabulously happy and fulfilling year.

    4 replies to "My Top 3 Goals for 2011"

    • Yuki

      Wow, this fits me to a T. I would love to move on this way. However, I am two and a half months out from D-Day, and maybe it’s still too fresh for me, but I am having difficulties in allowing myself to move on. If I really learn to control my thoughts and focus on being happy, and if things at home become peaceful and happy, then it feels to me like it will have been too easy for my husband. Justice will not have been served. On the one hand, I don’t want revenge, but on the other hand, I don’t want him to get off scott-free. I don’t know what to do with these feelings. How can I just let it go when he told her he would love her forever and that they had to keep their dream of being together alive? And he told her that almost daily for four years, and still kept the relationship going after that for another two years. All the while he often made me miserable at home with his angry outbursts or cool disregard for my feelings.

      Their breakup had little to do with me. From what I can gather from him, the affair just fizzled out. I found after the fact when I found hundreds of emails on his computer. But now that they have broken up, now he wants to be all nice and mend our relationship? I am torn.

    • Almostthere

      Hi Linda
      Loved your ideas for goals for the year, I feel that I could benefit from these three things myself, particularly having fun and working on self esteem.

    • Jenn

      Great resolutions, Linda! Thank you for sharing them.

    • melissa

      Thanks, Linda. A great way to think about the year ahead. I think resolutions should always be achieveable (‘winning the lottery’ is nice but not that realistic) so I’ll give your three a go, particularly about doing something that makes me happy every day, however small. Letting go of my thoughts (often negative ones) might be hard but I’ll try. I’d love to know what resolutions my H has but when I asked, it seemed it all had to do with working less for the same money, nothing with being a better person and husband. Maybe he hasn’t thought about it…

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