One month down, zero casualties

[Raine]

Hey Linda! My H told me he had been trying to make me mad at him before and was really upset end of may when I did get upset with him. He wanted to know why now and not before when he had been trying to get me this mad. And I wasn't even mad. I was relaxed and even toned but I was done with the situation.

I get along really well with them. They adore me. They are very upset with H to the point they wouldn't talk to him. His dad is softening though and beginning to see the depression. Before he felt like H didn't have anything to be depressed about and was being a selfish blank. They don't know how I have has the patience and have stood by H. His mom said she would have left him.

T I'm kind of hoping something happens during this visit. H needs to reconcile all the bitterness he has toward his dad.

...

H is starting to cycle down again. He seems more aware than ever before. I've been having some very interesting discussions with him.

Yesterday H and I started talking about one of our friends who seems to me to be in deep mlc. He is doing everything: Drinking drugs women money, etc. H said that this guy is trying to drowned his problems. So I said yes he is, and I can see how he got there and started talking about this friend's neglected childhood and emotionally absent mother. And then I said, "he just never developed any coping skills." H goes, "that's my problem too. I don't have any coping skills. The way I deal with it is to reboot. I just check out for a week. That's what was good about having my apartment. I could just check out. I could talk to the boys for 5 mins a night and then turn off the world. I can't do that here." He likened it to a computer rebooting. I said the problem with that is it always comes back. He agreed. I said, "if you could just get to the point where you were willing to get help and develop those skills, otherwise you're going to have this the rest of your life." He said, "I'm almost okay with that." And we laughed and changed subject.

Another convo: I asked him when he started feeling what he described as a "surreal displacement" when he talked to me about it in summer of 2011. Today I asked him about that and when it had started. This is that Convo:

him: it was creeping up on me was the thing. I had had a few times where I felt it for MANY years before, just this feeling of displacement

me: Would it be like being in a fog, this displacement, it slowly comes on and slowly leaves and you can't really remember being in it or what was going on? Many years before? Like before we were married or all during our marriage?

him: after marriage, and maybe not right away, maybe like 2003 onwards... maybe before that, but not so constant as it was from like late 2010 onwards. and yeah the fog is a great analogy, because I would be constrained but not physically constrained, so almost claustrophobia