Don't Break Character

[Raine]

Kind of a big talk last night...

H thinks we are in such a good place. Better than we have ever been. I sense he doesn't want to do anything to ruin that. I told him that I agree, but we are going to have to work through the past. I'm not okay with sweeping it all under the rug. He looked pretty disappointed/upset by that, but said okay. I said I don't know when I need it to happen, but I'm not ready yet and I know you're not ready yet. I said, "I don't think at this point you can even be honest with yourself, because you weren't honest with me about things you had been honest about in the past. I don't want to ever get here again and I feel like ignoring what happened will put us here again." He said that he will never go back there again, ever. He has been there and he doesn't want it.

He talked about the trip we did in October, and how that was a big turning point for him, where he was with me 24 hours a day for a week. He said he was trying to figure out what he wanted. That upset me. I didn't say so, but "ugh" right? Later on I said to him, "When you said that you were trying to figure out what you wanted in October, that upset me..." and he just interrupted and went off. I could tell he was ticked. He was just saying, "See this is why I don't want to talk about things because you want to analyze how I say things and I don't know how I was feeling I'm just trying to describe it..." and I just let him go off on his rant.

And when he was done, I said, "Okay I'm going to finish what I was going to tell you. When you said you were trying to figure out what you wanted, it upset me, because I felt like I was always the one you wanted it. Whenever I started to move away, to take a step away, you would always do something to pull me back." And he got really soft and said "Yeah. You're probably right. You're right. I was trying to figure things out consciously, but subconsciously I always knew. You are the only thing, the only one I've never been able to quit. I've quit everything in my life, except you. And now the only thing I can think about is being with you. All I want to do is get home to be with you and the boys. I don't want to go anywhere, make plans, do anything, without you. I don't want to go hang out with my friends like before unless I can be with you too."

I asked him what happens now when he gets angry at me, and he says he will tell me, where before he didn't. He said that he knows what happened was his fault, for not talking about it. He said that he needed to grow up, and he has. He said he need to nut up and take responsibility. He says he has made a lot of changes and he thinks he is a better person now. I apologized to him for being controlling. He said it was on him for not talking about things.

He said he struggled with the changing family dynamic. He said he is really happy with our family and the boys and everything now. I said that he has a hard time with change. He said yes, which is ironic, because he has changed and left so much from his past and his childhood. He said he is much better about change now and would be okay with more change.

We talked about his parents being here for a month. I told him how aspects of that were difficult for me. I enjoy his parents. I know they enjoy me. I liked seeing that dynamic. I liked him being able to show them what he has done with his life. But, I told him it was draining. I felt like everything was on me. And it was. I planned everything, took care of everything, entertained them. I made changed with things in my life that I wasn't ready to change yet, because I couldn't do it all with his parents here. That there was pretty eye opening to him. I told him that I felt like it wasn't recognized what I did. That it was expected or just unnoticed, which made me feel unappreciated. We kept talking about that trip in October and I said that he could have gone with just his parents and he thought that would have been really hard on me, to have him be away for a week. That was really puzzling to me. I'm thinking, uh, I was on my own for seven months, pregnant, with a newborn. I think what he was saying is that would have been hard on him. I didn't say anything. And I'm glad that trip happened, cause he did get super close to me. He made the first physical move on that trip.

I told him how I had made some moves before that point, that there were small things that had been happening all along. I talked about going down to his room at night to be with him. I told him I had been worried that he didn't want me there, but when he would always make comments about when I left to go back up to the MBR, and that I didn't need to leave, I knew he wanted me there. He said that it meant a lot to him. That he would save certain podcasts to listen to with me, hoping I would listen to them with him, his favorite ones that he would usually listen to right away.

I told him I'm still working on a lot of things. He told me to tell him if I needed him to back off in anyway. I told him I didn't need that.