Train, roll on ...

[Train]

Just a bit of an update in my little corner of the world … (this will be longggggg) ...

I know I should likely be posting in “Piecing,” but – I dunno – I feel better posting here because this is where my friends are … and I'm still dealing with the aftermath of Infidelity nearly every minute of every day.

The good news, my friends, is that y'all were right: time starts to heal wounds. The pain comes fewer times in a day now. And it isn't as intense. And just like HS said, my H has started earning back trust … sometimes little bits (and sometimes large chunks) at a time.

I'm still living one day at a time – and I have absolutely back-slidden a time or two. Or five. But my H, for the most part, has been completely understanding.

I've learned that I have a very difficult time sympathizing with where HE is on this journey. Since he cheated twice during our marriage – about eight years apart – I have pretty much rejected the notion that he can feel guilt or shame for what he's done. My mind thinks: He did it once, and he knew the pain it caused me. And he did it again. So how can he “get” my pain? How can he really be sorry?

I'm TRYING to shake my insecurities and my anger. I vacillate between feeling I'm keeping things bottled up and finally understanding that I'll NEVER be given the answers I need. I've blown a gasket a handful of times, even – I'm ashamed to say – as recently as Saturday. For two months, I have bottled up the fact that H took to a scrap-yard the gift he made/welded for me for our 10th anniversary, just five days before I busted him cheating again. He had welded a frame around a piece of wood that had my phone numbers on it. He had saved that piece of wood, and it had hung in his shop, since we met and he asked for my number. To commemorate our 10th year together, he gave it a more permanent home, framing it with metal and putting it on a stand. It was displayed in my house for a total of five days before I chucked it out my back door when I discovered he was cheating and he refused to end the A. Not only did he take it and dump it in a scrap yard, but he texted a photo of it lying in a pile of metal and sent the photo to OW, writing in a text: “Think I should send this photo to Train and tell her a junkyard dog might be calling her? At least he'll know he'll get 10 years outta her. Lol!!”

I have been seeing RED over that and hadn't said anything to H about it, hoping I could figure out how to deal with my anger over it on my own – knowing nothing H did during that time made any sense … and there's NO WAY he will be able to make it make sense to me now. But I couldn't let it go, and it came out on Saturday, after we concluded another great date night that H planned. (Ouch.)

He gets frustrated that no answers he provides seem to even TOUCH my wounds or satisfy my curiosity.

The fact is: that's more of the same of how we operated before all this happened. And I don't want that. Neither does he. Though sometimes I wish he could peer inside my heart and soul and FEEL what he made me feel, that's impossible. And I don't even know that I want him to know how badly he hurt me. I think, in his current state of mind, it would send him over an edge to know the extent of that pain.

Our M, right now, is better than it's ever been. I've realized that we have NEVER put our relationship first. We are learning each other, and enjoying one another, like never before. As I posted in someone else's thread yesterday, we've enjoyed live music at a nearby whitewater rafting center, drinking beer and watching people ride the waves as the sun was setting. We've gone to a live raggae band, which I secretly thought I wouldn't really enjoy … but I LOVED it! We're planning a zip-line trip and a paddle-board excursion (neither of which H and I would have done before), and as part of a beer tour at the whitewater center, we are planning a moonlit canoe tour, which will take us to a deserted island, where a chef will prepare a meal for us! H loves to plan our dates, and we are both immensely enjoying the variety and adventure of trying and learning new things.

H is listening to me without reacting. Before? He would take my “venting” about the kids personally; he basically thought I was transferring my stress onto him, and he would absorb it and end up stressed, too. Instead, as I've now explained to him, I'm just telling him how my day went; I'm venting to get it off my chest. I'm not asking for help. If I wanted help, I'd ask for it. So now, H meets me outside every afternoon for a cocktail - and no kids - and we talk about how our day went. He calls it our "20-minute afternoon vent session." Lol.

It has made things sooooo much better around here.

I've also realized that I had dipped into a bit of depression before H cheated and left. That DOES NOT mean I excuse what he did to me. But I felt so overwhelmed with the house; I'm a perfectionist, of sorts, about my house. As I've written before, I'm pretty crafty, and most everything in my house is handmade/hand-painted. It looks like it stepped off a Pinterest page. But being a SAHM of two – and homeschooling my son – this house is lived in EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY. It's a full-time job just to follow behind D3 and clean up after her. And I got to the point that I felt so overwhelmed with everything … and all that was unfinished by way of my own projects ... that I completely shut down. I barely got off the couch. I went from cooking five dinners a week to nothing. I was depressed and overwhelmed and didn't even realize it. I made every excuse for why – the anniversary of my dad's death, the house was a mess, my son needed my attention for school, etc.

But what I realized when H left is that I can control 90% of the things that overwhelm me. Mad because D16 keeps leaving the gate open and the dog escapes EVERY time? Quit nagging about it, Train, and just check the stupid gate before ya let the dog out. Easy. Upset that the bathroom isn't clean and no amount of nagging the teen girls isn't working? Quitcherbitchin and pick up the freaking Pine Sol, sister. Upset that D3's closet looks like butt? Stop depending on D17 to do it for ya. Get up and organize that closet the way you want it! Simple things. And it keeps me off the couch. It has kept me busy, yes, but it's helping my PMA. My H said: “I had no idea that your unfinished projects made you feel so overwhelmed that you shut down. I just thought you didn't want to do anything!”

We've also established a calendar. H hates yard work. Come to find out, he hates having yard work sprung on him. If we schedule yard/house work on the calendar, he's expecting it, and that is helping him predict it, which makes him hate it not as badly. Plus, I get out and push-mow the parts of the yard he can't reach. Teamwork makes him happy, and the exercise and sunshine make ME happy. Win-win.

Though I battle insecurities every day – I've even decided I'll take the LSAT in December and start law school in the fall of 2015 to make sure I can have a career that will provide for my children in the event H ever cheats and/or leaves again – I'm learning that this time, H and I are doing it right. Curious to go back and read real-live data (if it still existed) that would remind me how H and I handled things last time, I Googled my old DB name and read back through all my posts in 2005/06. I was MORTIFIED, going all the way back to my very first posts, before I even knew H was cheating on me (all I knew is he had left). I cringed as I saw how I took the DB principles and turned them into “doormat principles” once I discovered H had an OW. I even told him I understood and couldn't say anything about it since we were separated! Talk about a lack of self-respect! And I have NO doubts that I lost a lot of respect in my H's eyes by handling things that way.

He told me just the other day: “We NEVER got this far when I came back last time.”

And it's true. I swept everything under the rug. I never showed him my pain. All he saw was my relief to have him back. We didn't work on anything.

To be honest? I can't really say that H and I are “re-discovering” one another and our relationship. I think, actually, we are JUST NOW *discovering* each other and the relationship we never knew we could have.

It's still new. But we've developed many tools that I feel confident will help us not only maintain but improve our marriage from this point forward. H says he now knows exactly how happy we can be together, and he doesn't intend to EVER let us get back to the old way of doing things. We have committed to at least one date-night a week. That's a minimum of what we will do to keep our connection going. We are sleeping together. We are parenting together – he's pitching in with discipline more and backing me up. Though he had started to be wishy-washy about my homeschooling S8 (brought on, in part, by OW), he stands behind it now and supports it wholeheartedly. He is also being extremely supportive of me going back to school. But when I told him the other night that the primary reason I'm going back is to support the kids in the event he left again – and when I told him I would RATHER homeschool our kids right now than go to school myself – he said he would support me no matter what I decided but that I did not have to go back to school out of fear that he would be leaving again.

I've found myself slipping a little on some of the changes I'd made. But here's the good news: I've caught it quickly and pulled myself up and together. I've said “I'm sorry” when I've needed to. I've listened to what my H has said his needs are, and I've woken up every day, deliberately setting out to meet those needs, and I will continue to do that until it becomes a natural part of who I am. I've gone well outside my comfort zone on several things to make my H happy. And I've found that those things make me happy, too. Something unexpected through my H cheating on me (and this could be TMI – my bad): I've learned to like and embrace my body because, as flawed as I think it is, and as insecure as I am about it after carrying four children, my H LOVES every inch of it. And he makes no secret about it. The other day, I attended an all-day work-event with him (which I would never have done before), and he was all smiles the entire time. He told me that night: “We really turned a corner today, Train. I LOVED having you there with me, on my arm. I LOVE showing you off as my wife.” We've decided to build a Rat Rod together, pulling together his passion (building cars) and mine: upcycling/repurposing crap. I know I'm beating this to death, but it's so fundamental: we are bringing fun back to our marriage, and it's making such a huge difference.

I'm not gonna lie: I'm still guarded. A little hesitant and cynical and untrusting, deep-down inside. But I'm doggone happy. Happier in my M, in fact, than I've ever been. And H is, too.

So, yeah, this Train rolls on, y'all …