Well, I thought I'd post a short one before Wolfie comes over and we have our long weekend.
A couple of things that have been very much on my mind:
I'm thinking things through about how our sex-life had become a disaster for about two years prior to separating. It was a vicious cycle going on. We've always had a challenge with timing--him working nights & every other weekend. Just in terms of timing, everytwo weeks was about average. When H started having physical problems sexually, thing started going downhill across the board. I have read parts of the book, the Sex Starved Marraige, and can really relate to how the dynamics of a HD/LD works. In my case, I was even more frustrated because he could do something about the problem (see a Dr. about Viagra) but he REFUSED to even discuss it. If I brought up the subject at all, he'd say he was afraid to go to a Dr. about it because he was sure it was a symptom of something seriously physically wrong.
Keeping in mind, he's a nurse, and so was worrying about everything from from cancer to diabetes....and I got all the angrier because he was allowing our sex life to dwindle down to an unsuccessful attempt once a month or so AND playing dangerous games with his health.
I'm glad I took the initiative of getting him some pharmacutical help. Reading about how a sex-starved marraige affects couples gives me a lot of insight into how we got where we got.
Anyway...the other thing I have been thinking about is how much of my anger about his infidelity and continuing to work with xOW is actually a profound sense of humiliation.
It is important to me to make the distinction because much of the humilation stems from how I feel about what other people outside our R think. I feel humiated that our kids, our families, and some of our friends know that he went outside our R, physically and sexually. I really have thought about this a lot since the gossip at his work surfaced. A big part of my need to deal with xOW in a public way had to do with my own sense of humiliation about it.
This feeling of humiliation has more to do with my OWN ego (how it makes me feel inadequate as a partner and a woman, as well as caring about what everyone else thinks).
This sense of humiliation is something I need to work on, as it actually has very little to do with the current state of our R. In fact, holding on to that feeling is a sure way for me to have continued resentments that could seriously undermine our efforts.
....just stuff I'm thinking about and trying to come to terms with.
