At some level you must have ambivalent feelings about returning to the marriage.
You got angry because he didn't listen to you.
I think you are right about both of these things, Sara. And I appreciate your taking the time and energy to try to explain me to myself.
So here's the update on this latest episode of the Perils of Pauline: H and I are furiously emailing one another today, as we speak. I'm feeling proud of him for not getting derailed, he's staying with the program (which includes some elevated, noble stuff from me as well as some shitty stuff from me) dealing methodically with the different categories of communications we have going at the moment. He returned the current dialogue question set: "How do I tell if my partner is happy? Unhappy? How do I feel when my partner is happy? Unhappy?" and I returned mine. It is amazing and enlightening to see the different ways he and I responded to this question.
H said he always thought he could tell if I was happy or unhappy, and he based much of his self-esteem on being able to make me feel loved and appreciated, it meant he was successful at emotional intimacy, and if I was unhappy it would make him feel nervous and apprehensive. (this is an almost direct quote)
H then goes on to comment on how that has changed for him over the course of the separation: "these days I would be more at ease with an answer that you were unhappy. That's because we are, in fact, communicating better, and I think you do know that I love you. There can be other reasons you might be unhappy which would be less painful to me." That was nice, and makes me think we are making progress in spite of our setbacks.
BTW, my answers to this question didn't resemble his much at all. As part of my answer I wrote I had long believed that people were responsible for their own happiness, and if my partner was unhappy my feelings would be "anxious, interested and confident. I would feel a call to action, and would feel confident that I could be instrumental in helping my partner resolve his unhappiness."
It looks like H was more fused in the marriage than I was. Someone (ediemarie?) recently posted about the idea of using two circles (representing the two partners) to describe how each partner saw the marriage. Her perception was of two circles standing side-by-side, overlapping a bit, not a lot. And her H perception would be of two circles standing in the same place, fully overlapping. I see M the way ediemarie/LBS does, a healthy separation of the partners who choose to be together but not in every way, and it's looking like both our H/WS see it as fusion.
