Blindsided

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chl0901,

You are doing great, especially when you completely ignored his temper tantrum. You are also smart not to mention OW, it will not change a thing.

A few words of advice...

I understand that by not bringing things up you are "letting them go" but what we mean on here by letting it go is to really learn to detach emotionally so by letting it go, you are releasing the emotion attached to it.

My H used to come home in a bad mood all of the time, exuding negativity everywhere he went. I always took it personally and spent many years saying "are you mad at me?" "did I do something wrong?" "what's the matter?" After learning about DB, I finally quit taking his mood on and ignored him when he was in a bad one. So keep doing what you are doing.

GAL - it is great that you are meeting friends for lunch more often but H doesn't really see that, even if he knows you are. When DR comes, you can say you are going out and go spend a couple of hours at a coffee shop reading your book. Personally I found DR to be more helpful than DB, although I liked them both.

Acts of Service - this may not be your H's LL. It may, however, if you have been meeting his LL all of these years, I think you would know. Of course, I am not an expert on this. I would suggest trying them all out and see where you get the best reaction.

Physical Touch - I would be careful with this. It is like walking a tightrope when you have a WAW. I know he is reaching out to you, so maybe small touches here and there, I am not so sure about initiating sex. You have done that several times and been shot down. I would give him his space.

I just went through all of this with my H. I stopped calling or texting him completely unless it had to do with our children.

I was always in a good mood around him, however, I wasn't overly chatty with him like I would have been originally. When he asked me a question, or started a conversation, I would answer back (always friendly) but I would be the one to end it and walk away to go do something else. (I never did this in the past)

I started doing more things with friends when he was around to see me do it.

I started making plans for MY life, not our life. I didn't talk to him about it directly but he knew.

You have to get to the point where you are truly making the changes for YOU, not to keep your H. I know how hard it is but it is truly the only thing that works. If you two R right now, don't ever talk about what is going on, how this happened, OW, etc. you will be back here at some point. However, you can't talk about it right now. You have to give him the space he needs to figure out what he wants.

Don't accept every invitation. He needs to see that you are going to be okay without him and that you are making a new life based on what you need. If he texts for you to meet him for dinner with your S, once in a while have other plans (unless it is a situation where every Wed nt you go to such and such place and to say no at the last minute would be rude).

It does feel like a game in the beginning, it isn't. This works. Even though there is a lot of time where things seem 'normal' AS is right that the storm is still brewing underneath and anything can happen at any time. You will really want to master DBing.

I know you can do it, you are off to a great start and have shown amazing strength already. Most people would not keep their mouth shut about OW, I can only imagine how hard that is.

I know you journal on here but I also found it very helpful to keep a written journal. It is easy to go in the room, write down what is annoying you in a minute or two, and then it is much easier to let it go once you get it out there.

Keep doing what you are doing and keep learning more about DB. The more you do it, the more it becomes who you are and not a bunch of techniques to save your M. This is a long journey.