Still Together & Trying To Work It Out!

[Azagtoth]

Another thing to expect is that your wife will run "hot and cold" -- she'll be nice to you one minute and the next will shut down hard. This is extremely confusing. Here's what's going on -- your wife will "try on" being nice to you to see how it feels, or if she gets comfortable may slide back into a familiar partner role. At some point she'll catch herself, will worry that you'll get the impression that everything is now "okay" when for her it is not, and will then make sure to demonstrate to you that everything is NOT okay by shutting you out and pushing you away. That's all an inner dialog so to you it just looks completely confusing. If you expect it, you'll enjoy when she warms up and won't worry too much when she goes cold.

It's tempting to get into a mode of catastrophic thinking -- that each time your wife goes cold you worry it will stay like that forever, or "oh boy, this is it, she's gone!" That leads you to panic and overreact. This is a roller coaster, and there will be very dramatic highs and lows. The best thing you can do is try to stay near an emotional baseline. If the WAS bounces between 10 feet up and 10 feet down, the LBS tends to go 25 feet up and 25 feet down in response. Your goal is to go 5 feet up and 5 feet down instead. Take the long term view. Easy to say, hard to do, but if you know what to expect things get easier.

Your therapist sounds like a pretty good one, so follow her lead for now and let her try and work through this stuff with your W. [/quote]


AnotherStander,

Thanks for the response. The bold lines stood out to me the most. She did actually verbalize this; the first time she shrugged me off I didn't think anything of it. The second time, I was of course confused and asked her if I had done anything wrong. She said of course I hadn't but "everything isn't fixed yet" and "I'm sorry if I gave you mixed signals".

I did half expect this from what I read so it wasn't too painful that I couldn't control my emotions and I let it ride. When my wife starts to have doubts and verbalize them, I just smile and tell her to take her time and I have faith in her and us. This seems to relax her a bit and lighten her up. She even told the therapist that I have been so nice throughout from BD to now that she feels bad about it and just wants her feelings to come back.

I am glad you guys feel I have a good therapist; That was my only concern when we started this, but I did interview about 5 and the lady I went with seems to follow all the solution-focused ideals, is very pro-marriage and agrees that unless there is some kind of ethical issue or abuse that any marriage can be saved. She told me and the wife directly that she can still see there is love and a strong connection between us; its very obvious how we interact. My wife really likes the therapist and looks forward to each session so that's a bonus too!


Azagtoth