Confronted spouse...now he wont come home

[25yearsmlc]

indeed it IS hard...

it's fine line between doormat and compassionate patience...

it's a fine line between false pride/anger and setting an actual healthy boundary.

And the line shifts!! And it's blurry!!

I get that...

so try your best to do YOUR work, own your part and let go of the PAST...
and

stay in the present if you can.

8 weeks before my h was planning to leave our family to live in the tundra, which would likely end our m, he had a conference in Palm Springs and wanted us all to go with him.

I balked. Felt weird and fake and like I was "rewarding" him for being about to leave.

But my DB coach said "do it for the kids (both d's were still at home) and give him something to miss"

and so, since it was going to be our last likely vacation as a family I felt I could do it for 4 days.

for FOUR days I could shelve my anger and not "go to negative land"...for 4 days

I could see my h in ONLY a positive light. I could avoid the negative thoughts, for four days

and instead of seeing him as a nerd monopolizing the conversation, I could see the value of his intelligence teaching our d's about medicine and science...

instead of thinking of h as a health nut, I could treasure the fact that he takes care of his body, etc.

You get my point. I stopped all the negative thoughts of my pain and anger and stayed in the moment...and created more of those moments..

Frankly, if I had to do that forever, I could not have been able to do it for a day. BUT I actually comforted myself with the thought that

"I can always be angry at him LATER"....and that, sad to say, got me thru it...

but see, the thing is, after about a day of this, H began to relax and HE began to be more loving and fun. And so did I.

We had a frickin' BLAST those 4 days and the girls have great memories of it...and so did H and so do I.

so I think I got a glimpse of what forgiveness looks like...and that was a turning point for ME and then later...us...

make sense?