I've looked at life from both sides now

[Raine]

Thanks Wonka, RoseLinda, AJ, Pudmuddle, chasingpavements, job, and complicated for your posts. You don't know how much it means to me and how much they help me.

Yes, my thread title is Joni Mitchell

The kids have been exceptionally well. I think it helps a lot that they are younger. Also, it helps that we have both have been very protective of them. H and I have remained very good friends through all of this. We've never involved or used the kids, and never fought, in front of them, or otherwise. H has been involved in their events too. It's been just a new kind of normal, and they accept that.

However, there have been ramifications for sure, especially with my oldest, now nine. He does not fully accept my H as an authoritative figure. He is very sensitive to H, thinks that H is being mean and teasing. S9 gets very upset, very quickly with H. Tears, hitting him, running from him, etc. S9 comes to me for comfort and talks to me about everything. Before all of this he was very close to H, but now it's very clear that the bond and trust was broken. H and I have been working together to fix that and rebuild it with S9. S9 has also been in C. That relationship is very important to me and I am facilitating the fixing of that the best I can. It's getting better, but I don't expect that R to be healed quickly. It's going to take time.

Both S9 and S6 push the limits to the extreme with H, to the point I've had to tell H, you have to deal with it. They are testing you. My stepping back and allowing that dynamic to play out has helped. H typically would throw his hands up in exasperation, and ask me to step in. I won't anymore, and he deals with it himself now.

I am seeing parts of an old H and a new H when it comes to fathering. A much better father than he has ever been. He is becoming more and more involved, even calling them daily to check on them. There are still things I would like to see improved. Still ways he should be more involved, but I don't feel like his focus on himself and his friends will always be ahead of his sons. I see it shifting slowly.

job, you better believe it this is a frustrating spot, and I biting my tongue and holding and going with it. I'm accepting things for what they are, and not as an expectation. And I don't initiate it. He is making advances, and I'm going with them, and not rejecting him in anyway. I feel like he has wanted this with me for a long time, but felt I would reject him, and so he has continued to hold on to his posse of OW, because he knows they won't reject him, or he doesn't care if they did. This all goes back to him saying he needs that intimacy in his life and he is using OW1 for that because he couldn't have it with me. Yes, the answers do come. I'm not taking things as this means R in anyway. We are not talking about it. I know doing so would push him back into the tunnel. At some point we are going to have to talk, but I accept that time is not right now.

Raine,
How does your H respond when you remind him the issue is his? Does he ever talk about it or just move toward reconnection?

I never tell H that the all encompassing issue is his. He says that. I think he felt that this job was the problem, and once that was cured, it became me. But once I was pretty much out of his life for 7 months, it became very clear to him the issue was his. And we talk about it as it is depression, or other issues. I'm empathetic and I share with him my issues, things I didn't like about myself, things I want to change, things I've been working on, etc. I do take responsibility for where I was wrong and could have been better. There are a lot of 180s in there that I don't talk about, but he has noticed. Many times he has said, "you used to do this" or "you learned early in our marriage I didn't like this" and he talks about these things as if I stopped doing them 10 years ago, when it's actually the last year. He talks about them to other people in a bragging manner, like "My W is understanding or sensitive to that. She should talk to my W."

So let me clarify on the reconnection thing. An example is him complaining about sleeping on the couch with his parents here. Now I was not going to talk about the sleeping arrangements at all. He knew his parents got the guest room, and I left it at that. So he started sleeping on the couch. I didn't say a word about it. So after four nights, he started to complain about his parents waking him up in the night. So we went through the cycle of what can we do to fix it. And anything that was discussed was not going to be a fix. So at that point I said, where you sleep is your choice. I'm okay with what you feel comfortable with. And he brushed that off, as a "no that's not what I'm talking about." To which I said, "You sleeping on the couch is your choice." There was no further discussion. That night he said, "lets go to bed," and he went to the MBR and he has slept there ever since. That was it. He never asked. It was never specifically stated him sleeping in the MBR. It was just enough for him to know he wouldn't be rejected.