Albuquerque living part 3:Strapped in for the ride

[Albuquerque]

Starsky,

I'm sure you didn't mean it in the way you stated, but asking someone who just drove over drunk to leave, is quite counter intuitive. My point, which you may disagree with, is that we only have control over ourselves. Asking him to leave is great. But I can't enforce that. I can't MAKE him leave if he chooses not to. And it can elevate an already tense situation. I CAN however, choose where I sleep. No, it's not fair. Yes it would inconvenience me. But it would make my point. But this is getting slightly off topic since the point of my bringing that up was that I never HAD to go to that level because the threat of MY actions was enough to prevent recurrence of that bad behavior.

You seem to make a lot of excuses for your husband's poor behavior.

Starsky

I admit this kind of made me laugh. MLC is the very definition of poor behavior. I certainly don't excuse it. But I don't fight against it either. It is pointless. That is the point of these boards. I work with it as best I can. My H has to muddle through it on his own. I have the choice to leave at any point, as does he. You may not feel OK in a similar situation. But I continue to be OK with my decisions while also knowing that there are no guarantees.

As for the situation, it seems to be slowly improving. H continues to have anxiety issues, primarily in the evenings. However, he's been fighting it more and more. The amount seems to have decreased over the last few weeks. In fact, H told me the other day that he really felt a lot better and he went many days without any issues. In fact, when he DID have an anxiety attack a few days ago, he was noticeably disappointed. I told him he shouldn’t expect automatic healing. It’ll take time.

He's managed to explain the source of his confusion to me a bit better. When he was on his own, he had to make decisions on his own. He admits he was very bad about that for quite some time and it took him 4-5 months before he even bought plates. But when he did so, he KNEW they were his decision. Our issue through our marriage is that he's been an accommodator. He dislikes making people unhappy and always tried to do what he thought I wanted. He did this without paying attention to himself and it resulted in long term unhappiness and resentment. Now that he’s at home again, he fights with himself to figure out whether he’s making a decision in order to make me happy or because it’s what he wants. To boil it down, he’s still not completely sure of who he is. That will just take time and I’ve let him be.

When he’s not having an anxiety attack, things are going very well. He’s super affectionate and we enjoy our time together. I’ve been slightly pushing him in some areas where he knows he needs prodding. One issue is his tendency to work too much. One evening, I was going to take D to a local amusement park. He said he wasn’t going to be able to go. Although disappointed, I still packed up and got ready to go. As we were leaving, I told him we’d miss him but we were leaving. I guess he’d thought about it and changed his mind and went. We ended up having a really good time.

Just this weekend, I gave him a surprise tandem hangliding gift for Father’s Day. He seemed super stoked about it and posted video and pics on his FB. I was touched that he thanked me and D on FB. It’s been a long time since he’s mentioned me on his FB. Almost makes me wish he WAS still FB friends with x-OW!

I’m working on focusing on the stuff that’s important to me although I’m also trying to balance that with the need (and desire) to be with my family. I haven’t been training for my triathlons nearly as much as I should. My work schedule is more of an issue than family. But the few free days I have, I don’t feel like leaving them to go off and train. It was nice that H has recently been trying to go running with me. He’s not in very good shape so I ended up leaving him behind, but it was fun while it lasted. And although my patience has been tested MANY times, I’ve managed to keep things pretty calm mentally. The few times that he has to spend the night away, I always welcome him back with a good mood and a hug. I think he’d feel his anxiety issues were more warranted if he came back to a crabby wife. But more importantly, I really am not upset when he comes back. I know that I usually had a fairly good night’s sleep and know that he didn’t. I feel bad for him but am glad that these episodes seem to be waning.

The house is still not put together but it’s better than it was. He reorganized his office and bought me a desk so that I can work along side him. The plan is to convert my present office and maybe install a pole in the room so I can practice my pole dancing at home!! Woot! I’m excited about that. Still doing my pole dancing classes and still loving them. Ladies, if you need to find something to GAL and get in shape, definitely look for pole classes.

I haven’t been on these boards in awhile. Partly due to work and partly due to the fact that with H at home, it’s a little trickier to do. So that’s why it’s been so long since I’ve posted. But please know I do still read and catch up on people’s threads when I can. If I can offer words of wisdom to any newbies to these thread it would be to learn REAL patience, and focus on YOURSELF. I can never say for sure whether my H would have waken up had I not made the changes I made, but I CAN say that his moving back would have been disastrous had I not developed the patience and ability to detach that I gained a year ago.

As always, I continue to take things one day at a time....