quote: I asked him why he did it...what was he looking for? He looked at me with shame and fear in his eyes and said one of the most truthful things I think he'd said in a while: "I just wanted to get laid."
This is an interesting line of thought for me, ntl. Thank you for your input. The one thing that appears to me to be a huge obstacle to the repair of my marriage -- many other LBS have written about this, as has Shirley Glass in "Not Just Friends" -- is persistent H guilt over EMA. H holds himself entirely responsible for EMA, sees affair partner as virtuous, feels he needs to somehow assuage OW hurt. In the beginning I actually went along with this -- I knew OW, I accepted H story about how it was all him, how he had to talk her into EMA. Later, thanks in part to hearing the stories of other LBS, I of course changed my mind about that. But H didn't. It took him a long time to break off contact with OW -- she had moved on to another man (as, I've found out, OW eventually do when they get tired of waiting for WS to leave the marriage) -- but H felt compelled to stay in email & phone contact with her: "I want to make sure she's happy" was his explanation. He did finally give that up a few weeks into reconciliation when I made it clear how distressing this was for me.
After reading a lot of other LBS accounts of EMA, I did finally come to a glimmering of understanding about the H guilty/OW virtuous script. I found out it's a common script. I'm beginning to think it really was sex, pure and simple, that led to EMA. H wanted sex/OW sexually & emotionally needy. H hits on a longtime friend & co-worker for sex. There's a lot there for H to feel guilty about when you come to think on it (that doesn't diminish whorish qualities of OW, but that's another story, not so much part of ours anymore if she's out of the picture)
We learn so much from one another's stories.
So, reporting on the progression of the appleroad/H reconciliation -- it's going well, steadily forward. I visited H yesterday/overnight/this morning for our regular Wednesday get-together. I brought him some print-outs of various Retrouville information culled from the 'net. One item was a print-out from a DBer, Sara, posting on Cat03's current thread -- it contained a typical Retrouville Question, "What do like most about yourself, what do you like most about your partner?". H glommed right onto that! He gave me a piece of paper and said let's get started. So we did that, and it led to such sharing! Talk about getting a glimpse of what's behind the Mask! H feeling quite comfortable about going to Retrouville for the Feb. 8/9/10 weekend.
Thank you, Sara. Isn't it amazing where sharing our stories leads to!
