MLC Saga, contd...

[elfie]

This is the first time I am posting, but I have been a frequent visitor here over the past year reading and learning from other people's stories which sound so much like my sitch. Well, to make a long story short, my H left about a year ago while I was away on a trip and without having given me any hints for such an action before. Needless to say I was totally shocked and devastated and for days afterwards I was in non-operating mode. I did go to IC though which helped me in acknowledging my anger and therefore to recover my strength to at least start functioning in my daily activities. My H had left me a long note explaining his reasons for leaving which of course were all about my faults in the M, that he could see no hope, that he had been feeling like this for at least 10 years, and so on. He said he always loved me and he still does but he just can't live with me anymore and that he will always be there for me if I needed him. I soon discovered this site and I realized that he sounded like a textbook case of MLC and that gave me comfort to at least not feel alone in this misery. Not for too long though, since a couple weeks later I get bomb #2. I find out from a reliable source that H was on a trip with OW who happened to be a "friend" of mine. That really did it for me. Appalled, I confronted both of them, she admitted it but he denied it. After I got more detailed info about her I confronted him and laid it on him and he seemed to be shaken and ashamed at the same time and it was then that he said to me that his leaving was temporary and that he just needed time to heal. The summer was spent with its ups and downs while our S20 and D17 were staying with me and H still living not far from us in his aptmt. There was a lot of anger in both of us which could not be controlled especially each time there was any mention of OW on my part. I needed some explanation but he would get so upset that there was complete breakdown of communication. H was saying that if I wanted to have any hope about us getting together again, I should stop mentioning OW. He would become enraged each time I even hinted on that. Easier said than done, since unfortunately, even when I tried, I was constantly reminded of her since I had the pleasure of seeing her at my place of work. She has been acting "happy-go-lucky" about all this and my feeling of disgust was intensified. I got both DB and DR, been reading from all sources, but I never managed to control my anger when it comes to OW. After the confrontation, H did show effort for "reconciliation" went to MC together a few times to 2 different Cs. The second one thought we should do IC first since we were both very angry. H felt that I needed IC in order to get over the OW issue and he said that he would also go in the fall. Neither of us did. After our children left for school in the fall, H was still friendly with me as long as discussion was around "safe" topics. I felt that if I wanted to have him around I needed to act like I had a "lobotomy", and that, accompanied with the fact that I was seeing the OW at work, made me very upset. Well, around November, H started acting distant again and he remained that way on and off through Xmas and afterwards. He would come by of course helping with this and that, but not as often as before. He would show his anger at me for not being able to let go of the OW issue and he would withdraw to his place. At some point I realized that this can't continue and I started to detach. With great effort. I stopped calling him and the first time around, after a week with NC, he called me because he wanted to bring me something that he had fixed for me. The subsequent times didn't go well because I still couldn't bring myself to "act as if", he got angry at me again, and I resolved again in NC. It's been again another week since I last spoke to him and here I am, not knowing how to handle the situation. Sorry for the length of the post...Any input would be appreciated...