Learning to Detach

[kjensen]

Thanks for the support!
The girls and I were busy today, spring cleaning, yard work and just hanging out. I do speak positively aout their Dad. They both know I'm doing my best to keep our marriage intact and make it stronger.

The OW is older than me, which is a bit unusual, she is 46. She's recently(in the last few years I think) divorced with two younger children (age 8 and 10). They met working out at the local rec center. She is very outgoing and started talking to my H and his friend...My H and the OW both work in the field of finance, doing different things-so I guess that was one thing in common. She is very different from me, in that she wears 'skimpy' workout clothes, has a large tattoo on her back, great body(works out all the time)[mine is OK but a work in progress :)], and is very conservative politically. My H's friend says that my H said he and the OW have had some rows and my H thought the OW was scary when angry. H has told me he feels active when he's with the OW, but he texted me once that he doesn't see building a life with her. I really don't get the hold she has over him, except to say she probably represents the kind of woman my H never thought he would attract.. He did say once that he was surprised she liked him.. the attraction was so strong-it was hard to deny....

Definitely the stuff of adolescence. All of the complaints my H had about life with me, I have worked on. I listen better without inerrpting so much. I am more active(and have lost 20lbs and have kept it off now that my appetite is returning). I appreciate my H whenever I have the opportunity. I rarely watch TV now(no time trying to keep everything going!)

Its funny in our first couple communication class last week, we had to mark a sheet with the things we thought we knew for sure, and the things we didn't know-about our spouses. I felt I knew 11/15 things and my H thought he knew only 8/15 things. One of the items, the most stressful thing that happened in our childhood, my H said he had never heard me tell him before(I know I did at some point in our relationship)!

I guess this is just more evidence that the spouse going through a MLC is so not the person we knew before the MLC. The re-writing of our history, the not knowing who we are, the absentee parenting, the attraction to people they would otherwise have found unattractive...They are different people during this journey. To have faith in the spouse returning to some semblance of their former self seems to be a monumental task. In my mind a marriage committment is for better or worse and this may very well be one type of worse. And I'm still in.