New to DB and Clearly Oblivious to My "Horrible" M

[NickB]

Forrest Gump, thank you for the questions. I am sharing my thoughts in response to each and look forward to any experience or insight you can share.

NickB.. describe what you think DB'ing is about. Use as much detail as you can. Explain your thought's on GAL. Detaching.

For me DB’ing is about creating a healthy distance right now in our relationship. Healthy distance being described as allowing for the space and time she needs to focus on herself and allowing me to focus on me. I struggled with this at first – especially before reading DR and made the very common mistakes. I got emotional, I demanded that the EA stop, I pressured her to do more things with me and kids and spend less time alone. There was about two weeks of this before I found DR and even then it took a little more time before I started to realize the distance she wanted was exactly what she needed.

In those early weeks I also tried to “fix” her. I read books about her position in the EA and tried to get her to read them with me. All mistakes at that time.

It was after I started allowing some of the distance in that I saw small changes in her reaction. Nothing major, but less egg shell walking for me which I needed. I saw bigger changes in my emotional state than I saw in hers which is what I should have known was the right outcome but took me a few days to get it.

In focusing on myself, I joined a gym and started to work out again which had fallen by the wayside with our last child. I was not out of shape entirely, but I never made time for me either. Doing this every other day started to produce results which also spilled over into better eating habits and more reading about healthy nutrition, etc. which renewed my second passion I had not pursued in a long time which was reading in general. I used to plow through one or two books in a week and hadn’t done this in a long time. Spending time on these things helped me create some healthy distance without forcing it or focusing on it.

I have tried to extend this GAL activity into more social events as well. I am getting more involved at church and also spend as much time with the kids as I can. I love being a father. What I am slowly realizing is that I stopped loving being a husband too. (more on that later).

GAL for me now is a mix of social activities through church, through work and through some of my kid’s activities. I have kept up with exercising every other day and also still avidly read which brings me great peace.

Detaching for me as noted above has been a learning experience. I first detached probably more lovingly than I should have but have fallen back into a better pattern – or one that at least makes me less emotional internally. Early on, even when I was trying to give her space, I found myself wandering into the same rooms and going to bed at the same times. I slowly changed that pattern of physical closeness.

The emotional detachment has taken much longer. While I don’t think I displayed my internal struggle, acting “as if” is actually acting and takes time to get good at. Not sure I am there yet. But it does not feel as if I am acting as much. I have been keeping a steady PMA and it is not a struggle like it was early on. I don’t find myself retreating to a room to cry or having mentally talk myself off a ledge during a conversation with my W.

Also.. Why does her opening up in counseling make things better for you? Or more directly.. Why does her "venting" make you feel more comfortable?

I am struggling with identifying potential 180s. Exercising, reading, GAL’ing, 24/7 PMA are all big changes for me – and have a great benefit for me. Where I get into DB trouble/confusion is I still know I was doing something to drive her away from me and would like to know what it was. Perhaps there are 180s here as well. Some of what she is revealing is counterintuitive in the same way DB’ing is counterintuitive at first.

For example, she has mentioned she would appreciate small gestures such as getting her coffee when I am out. This wasn’t something I used to do in our past and is something I would have thought was pursuit behavior in some small way. Because she mentioned it, I have been stopping occasionally for coffee on my way back from the gym in the morning.

Her venting does not make me more comfortable. The venting is usually generic statements that are anger filled and don’t offer me any clues as to where the R came off the tracks. I get comfort when the MC gets her to open up because she is calm and is beginning to offer me a sense of what she sees as the problems in the R.

When did you start counseling.. I may have missed it?

We started in late September. We have had 6 sessions now. It was only in the last one or two that she stated to open up and talk more.

Is this your first go round with a "affair"? Or have you been "here" before?

Never been here before. This is all new ground. Can never say for sure what she has not done this before, although I just don’t get that sense at all in looking back. Not a question I broached with her. I have tried hard to not focus on the OM or the EA. It was so emotionally consuming at first that this was a big change I made for myself immediately. As hard is it is to not to try to fix something, this was something I learned quickly I wasn’t going to fix and the more I would have tried the more she would have jumped faster.

In our second MC counseling session together I set a boundary and asked her to no longer contact the OM while in our home or in the presence of our children or me. She agreed then. She also said she was cutting off contact at that point. I tried hard not to focus on this part since then.