My condolences to your H and you Kelly. I always feel a sudden, painless passing is very fortunate as well. If you've got to go, that is not a bad way at all so I am glad for your H's mom's sake that it was that way.
Going back to the original part of this topic. When I had an emotional flooding experience 10 years ago it was sparked off by encountering an old flame. He was the only person I had 'fallen in love with' as a college student. It was the classic experience - euphoric, intoxicating, mindbending. And it was a complete trainwreck, besides us being young, there were serious personal issues going on with him - cheating, promiscuity, drug using, alcohol using, just general values issues - he was a fool about things, manipulative, deceitful. That was not my lifestyle at all and it was very weird that I would ever be with him, except that I always felt connected to him and like we understood each other. And we did have academic interests in common and found a lot to talk about there. Anyway, nonetheless, the physical sensation of 'in loveness' persisted even after I broke up with him. It was flipping horrible. It was very difficult to not take up with him again, but I didn't. College ended, life went on.
Seven years later - run into the old flame again and he is all solicitous and teary eyed and yearning and blah blah blah! I interacted with him from a place of having a thick, thick hide and lots of mistrust, but completely unexpectedly - I was blindsided by an intense experiential flashback to that earlier time of the 'in loveness' feeling. The key in was his evident pain and hurt in interacting with me. In my mind he was a heartless user. Turned me upside down and inside out and not just for a day or week or month. It was a total hurricane and it seemed that it was all about something much, much, much bigger than that relationship which was, after all, 2 college kids for less than a year.
Anyway, didn't end up with him and I kiss the ground in thanks that I did not. Lord, he is chaos in motion and we were drawn together magnetically, in my opinion, by our own issues and I don't think we ever even saw the other person through the thick delusion of our own issues. See my immediately preceding post about insane drama. This is the relationship I filled up a fat jumbo sized journal about (the huge kind they sell on the bargain tables at the bookstore, with the spiral binding) just processing processing.
It is my assessment that this experience was about everything I didn't get in growing up and thinking that this person held the key, but also the strange chance that he also came to me with the same kind of deprivation and all of that.
I refer to him as a catalyst because he changed my life but not by anything he did or who he was (I don't think). Somehow the whole thing just touched off huge learning for me. In the resultant emotional flooding experience, I just knew I desperately wanted to change and be different and was ready to do whatever I had to do and learn whatever I had to learn and become whatever I was destined to become, be changed however the process of growth and change and learning would change me.
Anyway, it was that experience that led me to therapy and learning about enmeshment, boundaries, realizing I was living out the survival scripts of my past, that it was really FOO issues going on in the present - so much stuff. And ultimately, it led to being able to forge a good relationship with my H, and just be open in whole new ways. But I embraced the change and learning - I guess I embraced life in general, instead of that person in particular.
So I didn't end up with that guy and it is the best thing that could possibly have happened. Ending up with him would be awful and horrible for me. I see he is on myspace seeking relationshps btw, if anyone is interested.
About my H, I did not experience that turned upside down intoxication etc. It's more like happiness and relief and gratitude and feeling like we are doing something together - living life.
Well, that's another data point for crunching anyways.
