Putting it back together, but SSM issues linger

[Accuray]

Thanks Young at Heart, it's valuable to get the benefit of your experience. My IC actually recommended something similar. She said that we tend to assume that the way things are now is the way they will stay -- but that's usually not the case. We continue to grow in our marriage, and the marriage continues to grow through us.

You may be right that my best course of action is to cope *for now* and put a check-in point on my calendar in six months to re-evaluate how I'm feeling about things.

My W and I definitely fell victim to this thinking historically, where one of us would say something once, and the other would take it as fact now and forever. If we had instead brought the point to question again, we would have found that the other person had softened or changed their mind entirely about what seemed set in stone before. I've made it a point now when discussing how I'm feeling with W to say that "this is how I feel now, I may not always feel this way" because I recognize the value of keeping the door open to continue to re-evaluate divisive issues.

Based on these posts and further reflection, I'm going to assume my W is not willing to work with me now, but that doesn't mean she won't be willing to work with me ever, and I'm going to let it ride for a while. Everything else really is going quite well (with the exception of lack of words of affirmation) and we're by no means done "retraining" each other how we're going to react and respond in this marriage going forward. Over time we may build more trust and comfort, and that may open the door to a willingness to be more vulnerable and take more chances.

I really, really hope it does. In any case, I will put the date on my calendar for June to re-evaluate.

Accuray