Quoting ShinyBear: what we all find here in piecing is that things that might NOT have worked earlier on...might have pushed them further away....are OK, in fact even NECESSARY to really put our M's back together.
Ahh! This makes sense to me. I know if I had addressed this a year ago, he would have only gotten mad and defensive, so I couldn't figure out what was different this time.
Thank you Shiny. I had been wondering about crossing the line from trying to win them back to rebuilding a relationship.