LRT and Christmas

[barbsing1]

Angel - Thank you for this - it has been a comfort to me since you posted it and I hope to be able to implement it.

That being said - this was one of our worst weekends ever. I can no longer handle the pressure of my H having an affair. My core is being ripped into shreds. I haven't been able to act as if - I haven't been able to not bring up his ex-wife. It is all-consuming and now I am blaming myself for the complete demise of our marriage because I have not been properly able to implement the DR techniques.

After H spoke with my father and made it more public than ever that he wanted out, things got even worse. While he was out to dinner with friends later that night, I was on the computer we share. There is an ipod application there and I decided to listen to music - and then I found a playlist he had made for his ex wife. It included our wedding song and songs associated with our courtship. And I lost it. I lost it badly. I called him and spewed vitriol. And then I called his ex-wife and confronted her. H came home and we talked - he told me he had created the playlist 4 months ago when he first moved out and that he did not hand-select the songs but rather created the list by shuffling the songs. Hard for me to believe. I stood in front of him, a ruined woman. A frightened animal backed into a corner - and I came out slashing. We somehow got through all of it but he again affirmed his need to move out - especially in light of my current "behavior". He went the next day to look at apartments but said he can't find anything he can afford. He will look into moving in with a friend who is renting a house.

Our children's b-day party was yesterday. Our friends and family were there. Shortly after our arrival at the party, my H came to me and said sarcastically " you know, your family is a class act". I asked him what had happened and he said he reached out to them to say hello and they were rude to him. I asked him why he would tell me this - that I didn't control their actions. He said he was sorry. And then I felt like a big piece of crap - I had asked my family that if they chose to come, that they be civil and not rude. Obviously they were unable to do this and actually made things worse for me. On the way home, he shared that his friends had asked if everything was okay and that he said no and he would be moving out after the holidays. I couldn't handle this truth - it is becoming more and more public and hence more and more real. And so I alternated between withdrawal and snapping at him. As usual, when I withdraw, he comes toward me - hugging me, trying to hold my hand. I just recoiled. After the kids went to bed, I just continued to feel cornered. When I am rejected, I start lashing out. I asked him one last time if he would please give us 6 more months. He said he didn't love me anymore, continued to say his ex-wife has nothing to do with this, that he is not happy here, that he feels like a horrible dad (he has been really, really hard on the kids and they are responding negatively to him now). But then he said that while he can't afford an apartment, he didn't want to commit to one anyway on the chance that we can work things out. He admitted that daily he questions what he is doing but then said that when I keep asking questions about the OW, when I snoop (which I haven't done in a couple of week - looking at the ipod was not snooping), when I continue to want to talk about the R, when I lash out at him, it just confirms to him that our marriage has little hope. And I can see his point. But I also have much empathy for me - how does a person really handle their spouse having an affair, their spouse rejecting them daily, their spouse putting their time, energy and love into another person but denying this is part of the problem.

Anyway - I'm feeling really bad about myself. Like I have failed and that I have done everything that DR says I shouldn't do - that I'm the reason he is leaving.