When does "piecing" start?

[NotCrackingUp]

Good evening Pinhead

Some thoughts on what you've written, although I'm bumping along in the fog myself.
You say a few things that stick out when I read your post. The first is that your W spent the evening catching up on TV shows she'd had recorded while away.That might be the norm for her, or in your house or even in America, but it sounds very much to me like someone trying to escape uncomfortable thoughts. I've seen my husband do it, I've done it myself. Float away onto a silly island of TV drama to forget the bothers of work or the parts of one's own reality one doesn't like. My husband used to do it, I was hurt by it but didn't say anything, just went away with a book, like you. Now I realize I should have gently called him up on it, it cut me out and was a means of escape for him from things he wasn't saying. You've already mentioned her spending the evening on her mobile phone another time. Piecing apart, maybe (?) you should get up and go out these times, saying :"If all I'm to see of you is your profile in front of a screen, I'm off out to get some conversation. See you." You seem to be doing what I 've done myself so often, waiting for her reactions, putting yourself on hold to see what she'll do.Do something unexpected?

You also say that you're noticeably more relaxed in individual counselling, that your C tells you to "be yourself" more in MC sesions with your W. You also say she's no fun at home or at MC, although liked for her good humour at work. So she and you have some kind of side you only show to each other in each other's presence, a stilted side. That rings a bell. I've been told that my good humour is appreciated at work, I know I'm missed where I used to work and have already made friends where I started in September, but my H found me "boring", "unbearable", smothering", "absent&, you name it at home. My H is also a sensitive, just and caring person with a great sense of fun. But became a critical, difficult,bullying person here. I think couples (and maybe siblings, parents and kids...) can find themselves on a sort of "tramline", where the only direction is ahead along a certain narrow track. It's a way of functioning that builds up, articulated by habits, patterns of energy and tiredness, tics of language that we adopt and don't even notice anymore, after a while. We become prisoners of these habits, can't see them taking on alife of their own and don't know how to step out of them. Your W and you sem to have got into a way of functioning where there's no more lightness between you, everything's pregnant with possible hurt feelings. I know that's the way it is now in my own case. Sometimes feel it would take a big shock (the house burning down or something) to wake us out of this scripted sketch we fall into when we're together. I mean, it's worse now, but it was there before the bomb. Roles we played that didn't reflect the real us.

Is there something you can do for her to break the routine? Take her a picnic at lunchbreak as a surprise, change 'round the furniture in the living-room, cut your hair really differently or change your style of dress? Anything to brek patterns? I've begun to try this, although my H doesn't live here anymore. He's surprised, reacts with puzzlement and even some interest. Sometimes.
Chin up.
NCU