Wow. I am almost speechless. I know I tend to ramble, but this was surprising for me.
He let me say everything I wanted to say. He didn't interrupt me, not once. And some of the things I said he seemed to acknowledge by some nonverbal things, expression changes, small gestures, etc...
I said pretty close to what i told you all I would say, but at the end I re-iterated that I loved him regardless and he did not have to hide anything from me, I needed him to know that whether we worked out or not had nothing to do with this, this was about him and the struggle I saw him facing.
It was silent for 2-3 minutes as we sat next to each other on the couch...that seemed like a long time! During the silence he closed his eyes and shook his head a couple of times and it was clear he was doing some reflecting/processing...
Then, he said,
"You might be right"
And that was all he said.
Then we sat in silence next to each other another couple minutes. I asked if I could hug him and he said yes, he put his arms around me and held me. I told him how I had missed him, and he nodded his head into my shoulder (we were still hugging at the time). Then I let go and sat back against the couch again. He wiped at his eye and just sort of sat there. I told him I was sorry I had not reached out sooner, and that if there was anything he wanted to talk about with me, he didn't have to be afraid of what I would think. He nodded. Then I told him if he wanted to talk to someone else about it, that was fine too. I just didn't want him living under the weight of it, all alone, anymore.
Then I stopped talking except to say that I would love him and accept him regardless of anything he had done. He nodded.
[ALERT: I didn't say I would stay married to him forever regardless of what he CONTINUED to do...no I am not being a doormat! ;)]
I shut up after that because it is my nature to fill silences on his end with thoughts on my end but this was not the time for that. (Probably never was the right thing, truth be told...) Anyway I just let him sit there with his thoughts a few minutes. Then when I could tell it was time, I asked if he needed help picking up in the garage (he and the kids had been building the playset and there were tools and supplies all over when I got home from class). He said i could come help if I wanted.
So we talked about totally unrelated things in the garage. He started telling me all about the playset, what they had gotten built, what remained to be built. I praised him for being such a great dad to build such an awesome playset for his kids. He brushed it off, "It isn't all built YET..."
I started to walk back into the house a few times and each time he would start talking again, just about the playset project, but still I walked back toward him each time and listened. Then he said he would see me/talk to me later and headed toward his truck. I said goodnight and went in the house...
