So as I said above I went to see our MC today by myself. My W had encouraged me to go see him to see if he coule help identify why I wasn’t feeling a 100% connection with my W about a month ago. I also felt like we were kinda stuck.
But between the making of the appt and today, the Phone fiasco happened. That really put us on edge.
So I went to se our guy today. I first explained why I originally made the appt. He seemed like he kinda understood. Then I launch into the whole living apart thing
I lay out mostly everything including my W's EA. The fact that I snoop. When I see something I freakout at times, etc.
He kinda boils things downs. He said that first of all I needed to feel like my W is committed to this marriage and I don’t feel that and I haven’t felt that in a while. I think that’s why I was using divorce as a way for my wife to assure me...and she did for most of last year.
He aslo addressed the snooping thing. He said that I did it when I was bored, anxious or lonely or a combination of all three. He said that it didn’t matter that i was focusing on one particular guy, because there would also be something else down the road if I didn’t address it now.
He said, what I suspected, was his theory on the last year. In most marriage couples, where the spouse works with the opposite sex there is a potential for thoughts about straying to come into play. It’s pretty natural. Most times the other spouse is able to deal with it rather quickly an easily he said for me, I had a lot of things going on last year and I lost that ability to cope with it.
And once it’s started, it’s like a drug almost. There is a response in my brain when I do it..a part that gets satisfied. He said is the same part of the brain that is active when you look at porn. Basically, he said the only way to deal with it is to chip away at it in small piece. Like first don’t look at the phone records. When you have a handle on that...move onto something else to work on.
And to be honest, I have been doing that with some other issue.
He also said that because of the EA and my actions there are trust issue between my W and I. We can be the greatest friends (and he did say that he could tell that we had a really strong friendship foundation) but if the trust isn’t there it will basically implode. I think my W and I kinda knew this. He said that the piece that needs to be addressed.
He said my W needs to feel like I”m committed to the marriage as well.
He did say one thing that kinda shocked me and made me take a hard look at myself. I was talking about the things I wanted in a marriage-- things (6 or so) I could put down on a list and give it to my wife. I said If I wrote down those things my W would neve agree to the even if they were complete reasonable. Then he said the thing that go me thinking. he said about the list ‘You want to own her and she doesn’t want to be owned.”
That blew my mind. I mean I”m a pretty liberal guy and would never think that about myself. It did cause me to thing a lot.
So then he said that he wanted to see us again. He said that he thinks we need to talk before we make any definite decisions about me moving out. He said he thinks there are things we can do to avoid that.
He basically agreed with me that moving out would make my and W’s life 10X more stressful, especially with the the little kids. He also agreed that he thinks my W is conflicted about it.
I’m pretty sure she will agree to meet with him.
My problem is that I have to bring it up tomorrow and I hope I can do it w/o it turning into an R talk.
Other than that things have been going well. I kinda getting the glimpse of forgiveness.
Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. --Jean Jacques Rousseau.
