Having had KGirl's post knocking around in my brain for awhile (thank you, again!), here are some thoughts:
1) Paying more attention to H did seem to make things better at home. We are laughing together again, which is nice. He also does not seem to be contacting OW at all, at least from home. That said - I have given him a much wider berth with distancing, so it's hard to say. What I do "know" is that he is not contacting her in my presence, which was one of the boundaries.
2) Our last conversation about OW is basically over a month ago now. One of the DR techniques also says to find out what it is that OW provides that I don't - so that I can. I'm pretty sure that was attention! So - I'm walking a very interesting tightrope right now of not pursuing (and checking in on him throughout the day), but answering him cheerfully and not curtly when he does reach out to me.
Things DO seem better...or at least different. Is it working? I have no idea. My end goal is that OW will no longer be in the picture. I suspect that we're not there yet, but have no proof.
In the meantime, I have realized that something I really, really need to work on is conflict avoidance. I don't mind conflict with students (at work) or with my kids, or EVEN with my friends...But my parents and my H, you betcha. So, that's a big thing that I'm going to have to work on with myself. Growth - here I come.
And I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but here is an example: In the past, H would send me pictures of women that he thought were sexy. Victoria's Secret ads - whatever. He did for the first time in ages this weekend, and I didn't respond. My reaction was to simply not react. So, he brought it up as we went to bed last night, but it was in a round-about way and I didn't make the connection that he was talking about the email that I had ignored, so he sent it again this morning....And rather than encouraging some flirty sexy talk (as it used to), I told him, honestly, "That email made me feel inadequate."
He answered, "I don't want to make you feel inadequate. That's not fun. We used to talk like this and it was fun. I'm trying to be fun."
This, my friends, is pandora's box.
On the one hand - it is a perfect opportunity for me to start chipping away at the many, many things that I've got on my mind right now (and setting some boundaries!). On the other hand, he's leaving for her city tomorrow....this is his first trip there since May. I have never sent him to her city without some sort of acknowledgement that what he was doing was hurting me. To NOT discuss it would be consistent with what I started about 6 weeks ago.
If he weren't leaving tomorrow, I think I would have been more inclined to pursue this conversation, but something about the timing feels very wrong to me.
