I don’t hit the boards very often any more. To be honest, it’s too painful considering the state of my own M. But I get the feeling that your H is in a state that my W was in once. My greatest wish is for her to make her way back to that place. But I think her mind is made up and even positive things are seen in a negative light.
The reason I mention this is that from what I’ve read in your thread, your H seems to want to trust you. He wants to want to reconcile.
I don’t know if I missed it, or if you didn’t get into specifics about what he doesn’t trust you about, but I’m sure you’ve already considered them, and are doing some 180’s on them.
You two seem to have had some classical communication problems, and lately you’ve had some more intimate conversations than you had before. But you both feel that’s wrong.
I know you kinda feel like the OW, but you're his W! You lost your friendship somewhere along the line, but if you want to get closer together, it all starts with friendship. Close friends share their feelings. That means intimate conversations.
For what it’s worth, I think you need to think back on the things that attracted H to you nine years ago, and maybe do some more of that. Those things are still a part of you. Doing those things would not be fabricated or dishonest.
On the negative side, you’ve expressed regret for some things you’ve done. Well, stopping those things is no more dishonest than doing the good stuff. All it means is that you’ve become conscious of some mistakes, and decided that they do not fall within your value system. It’s called growth
The rest is up to your H. Nothing you can do except to be the best Mandy you can be, and wait and see.
That’s what I’ve been trying to do for several years now, and I won’t say it isn’t painful. But it’s the way things are.
