Moving forward together and piecing

[angel61]

OMG, CTflor, thats exactly the same insight I had a couple of months ago! When H and I started piecing, that was around the time that OW was leaving back for her country. One day, I snooped and saw that H had called OW's phone number, and I also learned that there was a possibility that OW might still be working with H's company in the future. I blew up, and told H that I will not accept that kind of situation! H was so frustrated with me at that time, and told me he felt so bad because we had come so far already, but that I could not go past my obsession with OW. To make a long story short, after two days of crying and drama, I came to the same conclusion as you.... and to show you how I felt about it, here is part of a letter I wrote my H at that time:

"Dearest H:

It is so valuable that I finally did understand your stand. What you have been explaining to me since the weekend, that you finally realized that we did have love after all, albeit at a different level. That your greatest barrier to commitment was the thought that we did not have love in our marriage. That barrier is now gone and thus you were finally able to commit and decide to work on that love.

I finally understood that what you stated directly addressed my own barrier to full commitment (of which I originally thought there was none) me was the fear of being hurt again by your emotional connection to her.

I don’t have to repeat what we discussed but since I am writing anyway, I think that it was a beautiful discussion, one of the best we have had in years, and it would be something we can read again to remind ourselves of our commitment. We talked about how you thought that we needed to have the stereotypical Hollywood love, those ideas that came about because of my demands. How God put that PDA (public display of affection) couple in front of us to reinforce the concept of how love is of different kinds, that having that Hollywood love is not the answer to marital problems. That having an affair, or in your case, feelings for another person is more of a symptom than a cause of the destruction of a marriage. That knowing the source of conflict in our marriage is important in making it healthy.

My greatest feeling about what happened was first of all enlightenment, and a feeling of peace that flooded over me. Although the process to get to this understanding was painful, all of that pain washed away with the moment of insight.

Hoping that now that you understand what it was for me.

Love, Angel"

After that lightbulb moment, things started to change for me. I would still get moments of anger, resentment and jealousy, but gradually, they grew less and less. I know that being that jealous, angry person would make me less lovable and would make H search for "someone to be on his side " , as he says what happened to him when we were in our miserable stage.

I am now concentrating on building up my love and being a person that H would love as well, because if our love is strong, then it would guard against him having another EA, or even me as well. If we were both miserable, whats to stop us from wanting out of the M?

You are not alone, CTflor. I am guessing we all go through these stages, and no matter how other people explain it to us, we won't understand until we have our own "aha" moments. Another poster, Cyrena, who usually posts to me, went through similar experiences. I think we are all in different stages but walk through the same path.

I am so happy to hear that, CT. I do hope that you push through with Retrouvaille, as I can see that with the mindset you have (and your H too) it will resonate with you.