Thanks, Lil. I think it's been a turning point for me, and it has come about because of my belief that having a good SL is good for me, too. Once I realized that, things started shifting.
I didn't expect it to happen, either. I believed that my LL was only QT and that if I was feeling loved through QT I then would be interested in loving cac in his way. But that is not how it's happened at all. And it really is very tit for tat now that I think about it.
Honestly, I don't think I'm getting all that much QT. I think I got a lot more straight-up QT before we had S4. We spent a lot of time together then, including about 1.5 - 2 hours a day commuting together. I had cac's ear that whole time. Now we have a lot less time together for potential QT activities. And yet, I am feeling loved anyway. The only thing that's really changed is how I see myself, cac and our R.
Dom (and others I think) have talked about Ws needing to make a choice to have sex with their Hs. I guess I did make that choice, but that alone didn't start these changes in motion. I also made a choice to try to fix our marriage. I made a choice to explore my sexuality. And I made a choice to love cac for who he is and not who I thought he was or who I thought he should be or even who he used to be (or who I thought he used to be).
People talk about wanting to get the spark back or wanting to get back what they had when they first got together or wanting to feel in love with their spouse like they used to feel. I'm not really interested in looking back. cac and I are different people now than we were 22 years ago. We're a lot more mature, we're parents now, and we've weathered many storms together. What I want and what I'm trying to do is to build a new future and a new R starting with who we are now. (Is that Schnarchian? I should try to read that book again.)
