I've been a lurker the last few weeks. Trying to focus more on my job, but haven't had much success. Sometimes the BB brings me down rather than lifts me up. It's not you guys, it's me. The sad stories, especially those in Newcomers, sometimes just reinforce my own negativity, and I come away feeling worse instead of better. It would probably be better to stick to the Piecing threads - more hopeful.
My situation has taken a vaguely negative turn, and has left me confused and depressed about how to proceed. Since the confrontation about 3 weeks ago about catching my W still in contact with the OG, my ultimatum, and her latest (and, one way or another, final) promise to end all contact with him, life has mostly gone on normally. Nothing bad in particular, except that my fears, insecurities, and general feelings of crappiness are back to where they were about 3 months ago. I had thought we had gotten past this stage forever, but it turns out I'm still mired in the same ol' sh!t.
Had an R talk out by the pool on Sunday, at my initiation, and then again later that night, surprisingly, at hers. During the pool talk, she said that she didn't know why she continued to be attracted to the OG, except that he was new, had no bad history with her, etc. She said that she had not had any contact with him since the last confrontation. But, that she still feels more "in love" with him than with me. This statement perhaps shouldn't have surprised me, but it did, given how great things went in July, and how much progress I thought I had perceived we had made. She said that she sometimes feels in love with me, but not all the time. She continued to insist that the physical part of the affair had ended in May.
She said that she knew that she wanted the life we have - the kids, the neighborhood, the friends, etc - and that the OG does not fit in that life. She knows that she can't have it both ways, and that for our M to work, she can't have any R with him.
So now we're back to her staying mostly for reasons that have nothing to do with me, just our life together. In the beginning, that was enough. But I'm getting to the point where it has to be about me, or I will be perpetually unhappy. I won't leave, for the sake of the family, unless I find further evidence of continued contact (and I've stopped snooping, for now). But I will continue to feel that awful void, not having a W that loves me and me alone.
I asked her how long she thought I should hang in here, waiting for our M to improve, and what she would do if she were in my shoes. She said that I should hang in forever, at least as long as she is committed to our M herself (and she insisted that she is).
I told her about my feelings of doom and hopelessness, and that I wondered how long we were going to continue to be in this situation. She said that she understood my feelings, but that she was more hopeful than me about the future of our R. I said, "are we going to be having this same conversation a year from now?" She said something to the effect that, "oh no, things will be better sooner than that". So I guess if she's feeling hopeful, maybe that's something to hang onto. When she thinks about the future, it's with me, and that's a good thing.
The conversation ended OK. Later that night, she asked for a backrub. Toward the end, I told her that I loved her and gave her a big hug. She started crying hard and said that making her feel loved made her want to love me. She said that she has been going through a major depression herself, because of rejection by various people in her family (explanation: her S14, who had been planning to live with us, decided at the last moment just before Labor Day to go live with his dad several hours away from here. That was a biggy. Also, her mother is slightly psycho and has basically broken off all contact with us for no reason; and her older brother also rarely returns calls or emails or comes to parties that we've invited him to, he seemingly is just too wrapped up in his own life. Further, her dad died about 10 years ago. So the only family of hers that she is close to is her younger brother's, who live close by.) She said that she just doesn't feel much love and that is one of the big reasons why it is so hard for her to give up the OG - he makes her feel loved. She said that she knows she can't have it both ways, but if she could, she would want to go on seeing him and being married to me. (Yeah, darlin, there are times I'd like to have a mistress too, ya know?)
She said that our children are her only source of happiness, and that she wouldn't feel like living if it weren't for them. This last statement finally made me realize just how depressed she is. She has never said it like that before.
The thing is, though, that there is very little that I could have done over the last 7 months to make her feel more loved by me than I did. Physically, with lots of affectionate touching, with words, with various acts of kindness, etc. I mean, I may have stumbled once or twice, but there is no way that she could not feel loved by me. So it's not that she doesn't know that I love her, it's that she doesn't value it. She doesn't love me much, so she doesn't place a high value on the love I give her. If she did, she wouldn't be so depressed. I mean, for me, everyone in the world could reject me and I would still feel OK, as long as my W and children loved me.
We talked for awhile about her feelings and she opened up more fully in this conversation than she has in a long time. I think I listened well. We ended up falling asleep in each other's arms and spent the night cuddling, which felt good, but neither one of us got much sleep, both depressed, but for different reasons.
The last few days have gone OK, but this depression of my W's is not drawing us closer, for sure. I don't really know what I can do to improve things. It's hard to know, especially when you find that what seemed to be working, in fact wasn't, or at least had stopped working. I had been considering detaching as a sort of 180. But my W's statement that making her feel loved makes her want to love me more is making me reconsider. If I detach too much, she might take that as some kind of rejection. This is not the time to go dark, not the time to make her wonder where I've been, etc. So it's a bit of a quandry as to what I can effectively do to improve our R.
As a further complication, the 9th anniversery of our engagement and 11th anniversery of our 1st date is this Friday. My plan is to take her to the new Nicholas Cage movie (our 1st date was also to a Nicholas Cage movie) and dinner. Beyond that, I don't know how much of a celebration to try to make it. We always exchange cards and I don't know what to say. I guess I'll keep it simple. I don't want to gush and then get a simple Happy Anniversery card in return.
I know that a lot of this backslide in her attitude toward me is because of the renewed contact witht the OG during the 1st 3 weeks of August. But I wonder to a certain extent how much the renewed contact caused this backslide, and how much it was just a symptom of the backslide.
Overall, it just sucks to consider that we (i.e., she) don't seem to be any further along the path to a better M than we were 3 months ago. Things continue to be OK day to day, but all of the crappy feelings have returned, along with a whole lotta confusion about what to do about it all.
Finally, I apologize for not visiting other's threads. I've got some catching up to do.
