Alien invasion 3.0

[hoosiermama]

Well, the only way I know to facilitate them is to offer a safe place without pressure, and to model the behaviors I want to elicit. For example, he was over for dinner last evening after more pool work (yes, it really is taking this long! Yuck, what a mess!) I made a nice dinner, fresh corn, fresh tomatoes, fresh salad, etc. and he grabbed a plate and ate it before I had D's and mine plated, because he was in a hurry to leave by 7 pm. Refused the corn (ok, more for me!) and bread--sometimes I swear he's afraid I've drugged the food--and never once said anything was tasty or thanked me. But I continue to say please, thank you, hello, goodbye--and express a lot of appreciation for working on the pool. Now it's almost a game to me to try to get him to say thanks or goodbye--sometimes I'm successful, usually not. But I am not nagging about it, just making sure that I say it a lot. Just as an experiment last night, I made him kiss my cheek as he was leaving--and I got an exasperated face, but he did it. As for a family activity, I'm still a little stumped about that one. Not even sure I should be working on it at the moment, since when we went to fireworks together at D's request, he was such a poop about it and was as loudly silent as anyone could be.

As for the last 3--or at least the last 2--they're several giant steps away, and I'm still doing mother-may-I baby steps. The admitting to the affair--I think that MC may take care of that. In our last session, C asked for facts but H denied it--which was enraging to me. Anyway, she mentioned that there are certain facts she needed the truth about, so perhaps I can facilitate the topic coming up again. I think it's important to the integrity of MC (even tho, at this point, it's all about helping D12, not reconciling) to have that issue on the table. Or at least not to lie about it. I really don't want details; I would like to have some idea about the status for my own ability to prepare. H hates the word "affair," has consistently denied that there's "someone else" even tho I have email conversations that prove otherwise--and I think that saying the words, especially in a counseling situation, would force him out of the denial of what he's doing. He's told 1 or 2 friends that he has "reconnected" with an old friend--is that some new euphemism for intercourse or what?! Even if it's still an EA--and I doubt it at this point--it's still a factor in this whole situation.