Quote:
Choc, I can tell you that you will be going through lots of different emotions in the next few months, as will your W. It's all a test, which is a good thing. I firmly believe that if two people decide they want the relationship to work, it will. My H carries the ball on my weak days, and vice versa.


Thanks for the thoughtful note, NJ. I think part of our problem has been that in most marriages, one partner or the other takes on the role as the "primary caretaker" of the marital relationship. In our case, NEITHER of us ever did, we're BOTH huge conflict-avoiders, and so no one was riding herd over it. We now that that our personalities are what they are, and so we're BOTH just going to have to work at this, and then SPEAK UP when the see the other start to slack. We've made a sort of a little "contract" with each other to do just that, and I honestly think if we had just done that before, we wouldn't be at this place.

Quote:
The other thought I keep in mind is something Corri mentioned on Hairdog's thread, that my behavior in the past has not been stellar, and who am I to judge my H so harshly? ( I'll have to find exactly what she said...I remember really nodding along).


SO true -- see my "knucklehead" thought on that in the post above.


Quote:
I think our marriage will forever be different, but I would never go back to the old ways. And in any new relationship I would carry this baggage. It's been so worth it to me to give him another chance,to learn and grow from this, and I love the payoffs it's having in terms of the kids feeling more settled. I didn't realize how much the tension had been affecting them.


We have already seen a remarkable change in our kids, especially our boys, and especially S14, for whom the change was almost IMMEDIATE. As soon as we reconciled, he was happy, giddy, confident. He is an extraordinarily bright and also very sensitive child, and yet painfully shy, and he'd been keeping a lot of stuff bottled up inside that he's only now begun to talk about a little bit. But I think it was pretty disturbing and shocking for my wife to see how her affair -- and the resulting stress it caused in our home -- affected him.

Thanks for the friendship hug & kiss -- back atcha, Journey.

Choc.