Que Sera, Sera - Whatever Will Be, Will Be

[lemonsnap]

Veronica, thank you for your insight. I really appreciate it.

This weekend brought about some MAJOR changes. I'd say I'm thrilled, but I don't want to jinx anything.

The long and short of it - after a terrible Friday night that I spent at my parents' house while H was out working during the evening, and a rough Saturday morning when I shared my situation with a good girl friend over breakfast...came a breakthrough.

I'm still not even sure how it all happened. I was going to leave on Saturday afternoon to watch a movie (alone) after arriving home from breakfast and NOT wanting to be at home with H. He learned I was planning to go alone and said he'd come along. I basically stopped and said that I didn't want him to come just because I was going alone, but because he wantedto be there. "Of course I want to be there," he says. I just stared at him and said, "For an entire month you haven't wanted anything to do with me."

I ended up sitting down with him and having (I know) a really direct conversation about our relationship and my take on what was happening. I can't remember every detail, but I basically mentioned the following: I know how responsible, committed, caring, engaged, etc. he is with everything in his life, and he was being very irresponsible with our marriage committment and was basically running away. I admitted that I have done many things wrong, but I felt that his leaving was not helping to address anything and would only hurt us both. I told him that I felt he was depressed and needed help that I couldn't give him (nor his friends or parents).

I realized during the conversation that I wasn't doing a good job of listening to him, so I tried extra hard not to react and just to let him open up. He seemed very afraid of returning to "the way things were." I asked him about his fears, and he mentioned all the travelling that I had done for work, and the dinner meetings out. He felt that I preferred doing these things to spending time with him. (!) Major surprise to me, and absolutely the opposite of how I really feel. We took about 10 minutes to really talk about this issue and I reassured him that I had missed him greatly during my business trips and didn't enjoy them per se- they were simply an obligation.

This seemed to really open him up, and we had a longer talk in general and shared more with each other.

My only thought is that his depression/possible low self esteem made him think that I wasn't happy with him, and his current lack of positive feelings also made him think that things would never improve. My only guess is that these thoughts overwhelmed him to the point that leaving seemed the best option for him. I think he thought he was doing us a favor by being the one to end it.

The good news:

H is NOT moving out. He even called his parents on Sunday to tell them so much.
H is willing to go back and see our MC, and to work on the M.
H is talking about OUR future again, not just his.

Obviously we have a LONG way to go, and by no means are things "fixed." We both need to do a lot of work ourselves.

This is just the beginning...