T2: You describe very well all of the understandings I have come to, as well as the state of where my R is today.
I sincerely wish that I had never had to go through this experience. It was, without a doubt, the most painful event I have had to deal with...and that is saying alot. Still, some of the end results are things I am very grateful for. It is the ultimate irony, isn't it?
Another thing that has changed forever is that I don't think my H will ever take me for granted in the way that he did before. It sounds as though he used to believe I would always be there...and now he knows better. I know that he appreciates me in a way that he never did before and is amazed and I'm fairly confident that he wouldn't let another person come between us in this way ever again.
It took me a long time to understand what he meant that the A was "not about me". How could it have been not about me when I was the one he was betraying? Now I understand that it really was all about him and his own problems and insecurities.
In our case, I don't think that it was a matter of not attending to the love in our R as much as it was conflict avoidance, assumptions and resentments based on assumptions. I won't be likely to stay silent anymore if I see things going sideways in the R. Conflict avoidance did a lot of damage before, and I am having to take the lead now to show my H how to deal with conflict directly in a POSITIVE way.
All the way around, our stories are very similar in result.
