How to get past the sex thing

[sage]

Hi Brian --

Sounds like things continue to go well for you...you sound very strong and sure and calm. Good stuff.

Are you back to the "no snooping" policy?

One resentment that I have comes from the fact that my W only said a few times during the 1st week after the bomb that she was sorry, and hasn't expressed it since. I guess she thinks what she said is enough. I don't want her to just be sorry that she hurt me, I want her to feel it in her bones. I want her to be I'd-give-my-right-arm-for-it-not-to-have-happened sorry. After the 1st week or so, I have pretty much suppressed the pain I've felt, at least around her, and have tried to spare her and have not tried to make her feel guilty, in order to win her back. But the truth is, I want her to feel guilty. I would love it if she would come to me sobbing in pain to apologize for everything. What a great dramatic scene that would be. I could wrap my arms around her and magnanimously announce that I forgive her. But it's very unlikely to ever happen. Instead of that, I think I'm going to have to reach the point where I forgive her anyway, even though she may never feel sorry the way I want her to.

So...I can completely relate to the desire for a super-duper heartfelt apology. For me, it's less about wanting h. to feel guilty and more that it would be a sign to me that he truly understands how unbelievably devastating this sitch has been...the extraordinary pain and loss of self that it has caused. Of course, it wouldn't simply be a sign that he understood MY pain and loss of self, but also that he understood his own, too. I guess I would see the apology as some sort of step in the right direction of ensuring that we NEVER find ourselves in this sitch again.

I haven't based my level of forgiveness on receiving this (and to be clear, I did get one if not two apologies from h. early on. What I did not get yet, though, is the statement that it will never happen again ). Anyway, I think for me forgiveness needs to be a totally separate event. It hasn't been easy for me to get there but I think I'm there....I can see how our m. could have felt painful and unbearable to him in some ways...I still can't make the leap to having an a....but, well, that's just me.

Sage