H is going to therapy, doing mindfulness meditation, reading, on an SSRI...He does talk to me a little about his feelings, including alluding to how bad he feels. One thing that is really hard to know how to react to: He often mentions that he misses the farm, the quiet, the dogs, our nice kitchen (he always liked to cook for friends, which we did pretty often.) He will mention that *if* he comes back, where he would like to relocate the vegetable garden, where he would like to put a wine cellar, even adding a screened porch to the house...(Our house is a small, old farmhouse, that we renovated personally to be really beautiful and functional. We raised our 2 kids here and they love it, too. I could cry to think of losing my husband and my home.)
I try to tell myself that even though he does not say he misses me, that surely must be the case.
However, meanwhile he says he wants to date other women (he hasn't, yet) and insisted that moving out and starting a new life is just a new "chapter" in his life, something he really needs to do...
I have stopped trying to reason with him about these things, and when he tells me he misses some aspect of home I just say something like "I can really understand that..." without inviting him back. Should I use those moments to ask him if he wants to come home? Something tells me to wait until (if) he says he misses me.
As for me, I go every couple of weeks to a counselor who "gets it" on DBing, but her focus is on me. She seems to think that I should see less of my H...
I do have a friend who understands what I am trying to do, and why I would want to, but I try not to abuse the privilege of asking her to listen to me. I do call her when I am fighting the urge to call my husband and say something stupid.
The other thing I have done (I try not to talk much about this with my H) is start to make an alternative plan. I have drawn plans to remodel a small rental house that we own in town, so I would have a new home in the neighborhood where we used to live about 15 years ago, near a number of friends. I know I am in limbo now, but I feel like such a loser if I don't face this reality with some sort of self-respecting alternative.
Here is a thought from Byron Katie: "If you argue with reality, you lose 100% of the time."
