Stuck On You

[Raine]

Thanks Shining! I'm glad my posts and those responding to them have helped you so much.

I had a really interesting convo with H last night. I had gone out with a friend who is struggling in her relationship with her H. She just feels like her and her H don't take enough time for each other, and she wants to, really tries, but doesn't get much back from her H. She just doesn't want to have to go through what I did to get the kind of relationship I have. All she knows is that my H went through a rough, depressive time, and we were S, but nothing about OW and stuff like that. She wants to fix things, but just struggling to. I think she is expecting too much and waiting for her H put in the effort first. I told her as much.

Anyway, when I got home, I started talking to H about it, and that lead to us talking about us and what we went through. H said that he takes full ownership of what he did. That he will never be able to forgive himself. He felt justified at the time, but he can't look back and feel any justification now. He feels he was incredibly selfish. At the time, he felt like I was better than him. That I didn't find him attractive, funny, charming or anything positive. He liked the attention of other women. He liked that they thought he was so amazing.

He said he can see now how much he valued me and looked to me, even when S. How he wanted my opinion on the weirdest things that you shouldn't ask your STBX about, like which room he should rent. He wanted me to see how it was setup. He wanted my feedback on everything. He placed value on everything I said and did. There are things I said back then that he held onto as absolute truth.

He said the biggest one that he held onto is that I told him a few times in different scenarios, including before I ever found out about any OW or DB or MLC, that people who leave a marriage with a backup plan already in place, rarely ever have that backup plan work out. We had friends who were going through this situation of cheating/divorce before BD. I had looked into the statistics. I told my LBS friends that the statistics were just so low on that ever working out. Essentially what we all know here. There is no such thing as an affair up, only affair down. That the people who get involved in that situation are broken.

So because of that, and believing my words as absolute truth, my H felt that it was never going to work out with him and the OW. He wanted to leave me, without running to anything. He wanted to leave without owing the OW anything. He wanted to step back from the OW and try and do things right, to end it with me and start things new with OW, properly date her, see if there was a relationship there. But it never worked like that. And he just felt like it was never going to work, because the odds were not in his favor. He couldn't undo anything he had already done. And the more he got involved with her, the more conflict would arise. They were constantly on and off again. He didn't want anything from her. He didn't want the drama, the stress, the time, the effort of a relationship. She would make demands, he would walk away and drop her, and then eventually, a few weeks later, she would come crawling back. He said, "It was always you, Raine." And it's true. Anytime I asked him for anything, he would come running. He says he couldn't see any of that at the time, but he can see it now.

He felt he had already lost me. Mixed in there with the thought that I didn't want him, was the guilt of him being in situations he thought he was strong enough to avoid. He knew me. He knew I would never forgive that. He had no chance at me. In his mind I was already lost before I ever knew anything. So it was trying to figure out some kind of life without me in it.

Being S was so hard for him. He said he got through it with a lot of sleeping meds. He would just sleep all the time so he didn't have to think about what he had done, what his life had become, what he had lost.

He said he relied so much on me before, and not just for practical things, but as a confidant, a friend, a sounding board for everything in his life. He said he never thought he would get married. That when he was at college he thrived surrounded by intelligent, fascinating people, but he just never clicked with them in a romantic way. I came into his life and clicked in every single way with him. He never thought he would marry, but then he met me and that's all he wanted.

So when we were S and he was spending time with OW, all it did was make him miss me, because they couldn't fill all the holes. They weren't smart. They weren't confident. He liked being the white knight and solving their problems and feeling needed and wiser--but it got exhausting. He would see me and how confident and happy I was, and it just made me all the more attractive to him.

He had so many regrets because the one person who could fill all the holes, he had lost forever. None of the OW were better than me in any area. He said all of his bests have been with me. I hope that's true. I think it's true.

He says he is done with hiding and lying anything. He tells me everything, even when he thinks I don't want to hear it.

So life is really good. We can have these deep, hard conversations without it making me turn away from him or get anxiety or panic attacks. It makes me feel closer to him. I feel secure. I trust him. It seems like it should be too early to trust him, but I do.