Just journalling. The weather is horrid today, I have a mountain of work to do and don't feel very motivated to do it! I'm going to list some positives.
1. My alcohol control is going VERY well, I'm impressed with myself! It helps that drinking too much (especially wine) interferes significantly with my sleep and gives me horrible hot flushes, so whenever I feel like drinking a little bit too much I remind myself how much better life is with better sleep. I can still enjoy a few pints of beer or a cocktail if I'm out somewhere, but my drinking at home is very moderate now, if I fancy a drink I will just buy something small and that's my limit. Last night was the first night for a while when I didn't think 'I would really like a drink right now'. Drinking in the evening had become a bad habit for me, and I'm glad to have broken it at least partially. 2. My emotional control is going ok (subject to hormonal swings, I think I might go to my GP to see if there's anything I can do to help this, because I might have years of this stuff going on yet). I don't feel too on edge when I see H (he might be though judging by his behaviour at the weekend). I don't find myself desperately wondering where he is, what he's up to or who he's with. There's certainly an element of detachment there even if it's only partial. 3. I need to work harder, I still have a lot of deadlines coming up and my focus has slipped a bit since my last one. More consistency needed here 4. My GAL has stalled a little, I haven't seen so much of my friends recently as they have been busy with work. However now the kids are back to school properly I will resume weekly lunch with ds1, I have some social activities planned for the future, and I have this trip to Europe. Trying to balance GAL with all my domestic duties and ferrying kids round and working as much as I can is tricky.
The R talk at the weekend was hurtful and disappointing, every time he mentions D it poisons my feelings towards him a little. If he does it too many more times it will push me over the edge. I think maybe I will try to shut down R talks in future, they are just not very productive. I need some sort of wording for this which doesn't dismiss his feelings but similarly doesn't give him a licence to rant on and on about how awful our M was and what a dreadful W I was and how unhappy he was and how confused he is without taking one bit of responsibility for the MR or his part in it or acknowledging that we have something worth saving and worth making an effort for. Maybe I even need to discuss with him whether this should be a new ground rule. We were supposed to review our ground rules at Christmas but he has refused to do so.
It feels like whenever things warm up a bit between us he shoves back with an R talk. I haven't put any pressure on him for a long time now. I don't ask to see his flat. I don't get victim-y and upset about the situation. I don't give him deadlines or tell him there's a limit to how long I'll wait. I don't talk about the future much unless it's unavoidable. During the R talk he told me to book a nice summer holiday for me and the boys but not to expect him to come. To tell him where we're going and 'maybe' he'll join us. Seriously? Ugh. Maybe we'd prefer not to have him there with that attitude. And I resent being bossed around and told to book a holiday (an expensive one is what he means) when it's actually none of his business. But talk about mixed messages and cake eating. 'I don't want any cake but just bake me one and leave it on the side and MAYBE I might feel like eating some, but probably not'. I don't even enjoy expensive holidays, my favourite holiday is camping.
Anyway, I will stop procrastinating and get some work done
This is a positive post, Dilly - even though you're feeling a bit unmotivated. You're moving forwards and on the right track, I think.
I've been thinking about summer holidays too. I'd like to go away somewhere sunny for a week. We were away in Europe last year, all together, and the weather was amazing and the kids were happy and it was nearly idyllic. It was peaceful with H and I had the sense we were getting through the worst of our difficulties. Until the last night - he's very afraid of flying and got really irritable with Youngest, then left to go and sit in a bar and get drunk on his own while I did all the packing and getting ready for the flight the next morning. I tried to be generous and overlook it - he probably did just need some time to himself after an intense week - but the fact that he never really acknowledged the fact he'd been unreasonable soured it for me.
I could just go ahead and book something for this summer. I have the money and our passports are all present and correct. I have no qualms about taking them away abroad. It just seems a pretty incendiary move - booking a family holiday without discussing it with H and without seeing if he wants to come. But I don't think we're in the right place for me to be asking things like that. And the reality is, I don't think we'd be able to spend a week with each other and the kids in close quarters and it be okay right now.
Oh well, there is always the option of long weekends and shorter breaks rather than long holidays away, right Alison? There's more than one way round these things. One thing I will avoid is going anywhere we've been before, if we go anywhere it will be somewhere brand new because our Easter trip was hard going with all those memories.
Discussed the R talk with my IC, his view seemed to be that I was saying what I needed and wasn't listening to my H. Well, I was but I don't feel it was productive to dump all that resentment on me and take no responsibility himself, and it is super hard to listen to someone basically telling you they don't know if they want to be married to you and that you were a deficient wife. I'm sure there is something to be learnt in there, but it is all wrapped up in such a painful package that I'm not sure I'm capable of the strength to go there. I also only said very briefly what I want and need from a marriage, but he pointed out there wasn't much about what our marriage needed, just two individuals and their needs and feelings. I'm not sure how to change that. I feel like we both need some honesty and for H to acknowledge that he would like to work on our MR before we even get to that point.
We also discussed alcohol and dh's abuse of it and my feelings about that. I think that half the negativity in H's R talk was because I had raised the issue of alcohol and he was reacting towards that, I don't know.
We talked about H not wanting to lose me as a friend, I was reflecting on how few decent friends he has and how I'm probably the only person he can confide in about a lot of things, IC pointed out that no wonder he doesn't want to lose me. Maybe he has even more to lose if we D than I do. We talked about whether friendship is a good enough start for rebuilding a marriage or building a new one. We started off as friends, but that was a very long time ago. Somewhere along the way we did kind of lose that friendship I feel. We have been better friends to each other during the last few months, but I do want more than friendship, that's for sure. I said I wasn't sure I could be friends if we D'ed. In fact I'm pretty sure we can't. But I don't want H back just because I'm all he's got, that's not deciding to work on our MR from a position of strength is it?
Finally, I mentioned that I'd stopped hugging H even though I had asked him for hugs. IC wondered if this was lack of assertiveness on my part and came across as rejection to H. I hadn't thought about that before, I don't know why I even stopped hugging him, it wasn't really conscious but maybe I was feeling rejected and so started behaving in a rejecting way towards him. Interesting, maybe I'm sending mixed signals as well as H? Maybe when things warm up between us it's me who also cools things down and not just him? That wouldn't be surprising, I've been the cold one in the marriage...
Anyway, I have decided I will meet H on Friday, just because I'm feeling hurt by his R talk and by some bad behaviour by him at the weekend isn't good enough reason to break our commitment to meet up once a week. I'm not being particularly chatty this week though. And I would like to discuss our ground rules when we meet up, somehow without it descending into an R talk.
I feel knackered, even though I had so much to discuss I could have stayed another hour!
I know nothing about ICs so probably can't post in the appropriate terminology or with a fair and balanced view, but this is what immediately occurred to me when I read your posts.
At times the IC is making you question your interactions and communication style as if you were piecing. I think you're doing all the hard work as if you were piecing. I'm not totally convinced your IC is doing you any favours by this over analysis. Prepare for a future R yes, but at the moment it seems to cause a bit of headspinning.
The facts suggest that you aren't piecing. You can't piece because he's not taking part. You are owning your part and working on it, to some extent trying to second guess what you think you need to be in order for him to come back. He's doing the bare minimum.
You can't piece because 1 party doesn't even know whether they want to be in the marriage. Your IC is almost doing some mind reading when actually we don't know what he wants. Telling you what you did wrong and criticising you is not designed to build or repair a marriage, just tear it down.
You can't mediate and psychoanalyse this relationship back together because he's not sitting at the table. So, I'm sorry IC, but until he does it is all about Dilly. It's not about what Dilly can do to improve her chances of H coming back, it's about Dilly being Dilly no matter what happens. Dilly should not be thinking about every interaction and action from H because she should be detached until he wants to do the hard graft and then she can work on that attachment. If she chooses to. She won't be talking about the implications and wider meaning of to hug or not to hug because she is so busy being detached and getting on with her life.
So, that leads to my question. Why did you send him a text about the value of the car? And then ignore the response. There are many other ways in which you could have found out the value of the car.
I'm doubtless not explaining myself very well, but why are you going on a date with a man who can't decide if he'll stay married because he doesn't want to lose a friend?
Does this man truly know what it would feel like to not have you in his life?
I know that 1 of my many faults is to look at life as black and white, but I just get the impression that at times you are putting the cart before the horse.
Hmm, I've been reflecting and you have some valid points Yorkie. The text was so I knew his vague price for the car so I have something to compare it with. In the past he has over-valued cars we've sold and I've ended up taking less, so I will need his baseline in order to moderate his expectations. Not getting back to him on it was a bit childish though. Friday night: we made a commitment to meet up once a week and I don't want to break that commitment right now. If we don't see each other in a low pressure environment then I don't feel like we'll make any progress. Maybe I'm completely wrong and I need to just go dark, but I'm not ready for that yet. In May and June we have a couple of weeks when we won't see each other due to pre-arranged stuff, so he might or might not feel the loss of me then, in the meantime I'm ok with being friendly and having no expectations, that might change.
So this morning I rang him. He was hungover. Hmm. Anyway, I said I wanted to discuss his behaviour on Saturday and I said that it wasn't acceptable to behave like that. I said that if he thought we were friends that I would never allow a friend to treat me like that, and that if he had worked himself into a tizzy about spending the weekend with me that was his problem and he needed to get over himself and behave better. I said that it was HIS suggestion to spend the weekend together, not mine, and that I had no expectations other than going and having fun together. He said he found it 'stressful' seeing me, and I said I didn't find it particularly stressful, I am fairly calm about things now and don't want to think about the future or the past but just want to get on with my life and my very busy work and see him occasionally and enjoy spending time together. He apologised for his behaviour on Saturday and made some excuses about needing a holiday. I said I couldn't talk to him about his behaviour on Saturday because he was clearly in a rage and then drunk. He said when he was like that that he probably didn't want to talk. I said if he needed space in that situation then he needed to tell me and not just take out his mood on me, that wasn't fair. He agreed with that.
Anyway, I feel much better now I've got that out. It took me some time to think about how I felt about the whole situation on Saturday, and how I'm no longer willing to tolerate his anger or misinterpretations of me being 'upset'. I don't feel like I could have productively tackled it on Saturday, but I feel good about not letting it slide. Our marriage was full of his critical, angry behaviour, and I definitely do not want that angry critical husband back. When he left he said he wanted to be a better person, and for a couple of months I did see a better person, but he has backslid big time since the end of March. I don't expect him to be perfect, he is entitled to his feelings, but he is not entitled to treat me badly. I have made far too many allowances for him and his stressful job. He chooses to stay in his stressful job, and he chooses to drink too much, but he can also choose to treat me with respect and care.
I feel quite calm, I don't feel frightened of him or of the future right now. What will be will be, I don't feel the need to push anything or be impatient for change because he is not in that place and might not be. I will keep working on myself. I've made some really fun GAL plans for the next few months and am looking forward to those. He can move to the backburner. Maybe he's my plan B now, lol.
I'm not sure you're going to make much progress with H or yourself until you go dark on him. I think his main relationships are with his work and booze, and he is using you to comfort himself against the loneliness and dissatisfaction those choices have given him. And when the comfort isn't comforting enough, then he blames you for that. I don't think anything will change at all until he gets a really strong experience of what life is like alone with his bottle and his job and without a wife who is content to be picked up and put down as it suits him. I think it's great you called him out on his behaviour and everything you said to him is fair and reasonable but the words are kind of hollow without action. There's no real boundary or consequence for him, is there? He treats you abysmally then says he wants to see you on Friday, and there you are.
Yes I can see truth in all of that, but I'm not quite prepared to go dark yet. I might be ready after his trip away and then my trip to Europe because we will have time apart anyway then, I'll see how it goes.
It wasn't really a boundary I suppose, though I did text him first and say 'we need to talk before I agree to meet tomorrow' and he rang me straight up. So if he had disagreed with me or been rude then I would have said I wasn't meeting him. Then at the end of the conversation he said 'well tomorrow is Friday and I'm usually pretty grumpy at the end of the week but we're doing something fun and then going for pizza so that ought to be quite relaxing'. So that might be as close as I get to him saying 'I understand, I agree, and I will do my best'. I'm ok with that for now, though I will be alert for any future bad behaviour like on Saturday and will not be tolerating it in any form. He did something similar a few months back when I met him and was running late due to public transport, and he told me he was grumpy because he had been waiting round in the cold but it wasn't my fault. I can handle someone being grumpy and telling me why, I can't handle being unjustly blamed for it and used as a human punchbag.
In a way his limiting how much he sees me and the kids feels like it is trying to protect us from this negative treatment of us in the past. I'm not sure how much it moves anything forward, but I feel like he's suffering from extreme burnout in his job, an MLC and an alcohol issues. At some stage he might break, but I don't know when that will happen or how it will happen. I don't really want to be in the middle of that if it does happen, I can't fix him and this is something he needs to work through himself. I feel a bit like him moving out was him trying to postpone his breaking, but I suspect it hasn't miraculously solved his problems as he might have thought it would. If he takes too long in this breaking then he'll find there is no dilly and no kids waiting for him.
If he takes too long in this breaking then he'll find there is no dilly and no kids waiting for him.
This is why you need to lovingly detach and give you and him enough space so that the damage you both cause each other is not irreversible. You love your H and are holding on. Constantly chasing, there is only so much rejection you can take before that turns you into something you might not want to become. To protect yourself from that, and to possibly save yourself some headache and heartbreak down the road, leave him for now to break. Let him know that loss.
It's either you leave him now when its so hard for you to do to save your future MR or you go through this madness with him and you leave him in the future when you are truly done and will not want him back if he does figure this out on his own.
How do you see your options? You are still in control of you. ((Dilly))
H 49 , W 47 T 23, M 17 S11, S5 BD: 7/18 IHS: 7/18 - 3/19 Physically Separated: 3/19-4/19 Piecing: 4/19 - Current
Maybe he needs to break so he can hit his rock bottom and piece himself back together in a healthier way. Perhaps the kindest thing you can do for him - the most loving thing - is to stop propping up and let him fall.
I'm not really sure if I am propping him up or not. This is a man who is prouder than a proud thing, he's so burnt out he can't even see it. I can't point it out, that's for sure. Setting up his job as the enemy of his family won't end well, he needs to work this stuff through himself. He said he was up at 3.30am on Thursday answering emails, I'm sure he realises deep down how very unhealthy this is. We had a fun activity last night and went for a pizza, kept it light and fun and I went home early as I wasn't feeling great. He's coming over tomorrow to see the kids, they aren't particularly keen which makes me sad. His kids are going to despise him so much for all this (they already might, I don't know). I'm staying out of it, it's not my job to make the peace between them. And I can imagine they feel pretty abandoned even if they rarely show it.
Last night I met my neighbour whose OH left her for another woman. She has lost 2 stone (she was severely overweight before), has joined a gym and looked happier and healthier than she did before and said her OH is moving in with the OW (who is married). It's only been a few months but she seems (outwardly at least) already in a much better place than me in this limbo. It gave me real pause for thought, I have to say. I have so much disgust for her OH, their daughter just took a 5th overdose (this has been going on for ages) and I think she was sectioned. And yet the dad barely came to see her, and spent the time sitting by the daughter's bedside texting the OW. I can imagine that kind of behaviour would make it an awful lot easier to move on, you might forgive infidelity but I can't see how you could forgive abandoning your kid in hospital. What a repulsive person. My neighbour had very poor self-esteem before this happened, I told her that given her self-esteem was in the toilet already it had nowhere to go but up! It was kind of strange seeing her looking happier even though her daughter is in such a bad place, though hopefully this last overdose might actually get her the help she desperately needs at last.
Anyway, I feel in a fairly calm and accepting place right now, I have lots of work to do this weekend and will make a roast dinner for the kids having taken them to their activities. I feel no need to push for change with dh at the moment, I'm just leaving him to himself.
