Albuquerque living part 4

[Albuquerque]

TS2,

To answer your question, it wasn't necessarily done intentionally. While my H was off galavanting with OW, I continued LIVING with my D. We did fun things together. I started up new hobbies for ME. And when he'd come to the house to get D, I always tried to me happy and pleasant (that part wasn't always easy but just the act of doing helped ME). Apparently, (and I only learned this after starting deep conversations with him after he started peeking out), this jarred him. HE was the one that left because he felt restricted and unhappy. So his leaving was supposed to fix all that. And yet when he saw me, he always saw me happy. He said I "glowed". Meanwhile he was spending a lot of time in the fetal position when he wasn't galavanting with OW. He said that it jarred him to the point that he tried to NOT come to the house. It's called cognitive dissonance. It's when the facts of the situation don't match up with your perceived notions of the way it should be. In that situation, people tend to do one of two things. They either rationalize the evidence away in a way to convince themselves that they are still right in their beliefs. Or they stand back and take a hard look at the fact that they might actually be wrong. Unfortunately, the latter choice is the harder and rarer option that people take (not just in MLC but just as humans we tend to do that).

According to him (and feel free to read back on my thread because I wrote about this time), this is what caused him to start talks with me again about possibly reconciling. Yet, even then, he still had the OW. And it soon became essentially him trying to decide between the two of us. He was very open and honest about it (with me). Ironically enough I think he didn't have these types of deep conversations with her ever. Anyhow, we had many discussions about what he should do and who he should choose and what would make him happy. These were extremely difficult discussions for me because on the inside I wanted to scream. But I tried to be calm and rational (and most of all honest). If he were to find TRUE happiness with her, then that should be his choice. I didn't like that at all, but that was me being selfish. I TRULY felt that if he were to ACTUALLY find happiness elsewhere, then that should be his choice. He seemed to want me to make a case for myself. At one point I remember saying something like, "it's not up to me to convince you what to do". I remember him seeming shocked that I would say something like that. It seemed like when he'd talk to OW, she spent a lot of time trying to convince him that it was wrong to come back to me and he was making a big mistake. Yet when he spoke with me, I told him to make his own decision. I loved him. I wanted him back. But ultimately it was his choice.

As is typical with MLC, it took him a loooong time to ACTUALLY make the choice. He made the choice several times but left the OW hanging around for far too long. There is no better thing to learn than patience when dealing with MLC. It wasn't something I used to be good at. It's one of the things I'm grateful for learning. It's helped not only with H but with D as well.