I have been lurking but for some reason haven't felt up to posting during the past few weeks. I think it's been a combination of busy-ness (work is picking up for me right now, so I have little free time) and feeling like I'm failing at DBing. But, I thought I'd pop in for an update.
We are definitely on a rollercoaster. My H continues to affirm that he wants the M to work, but he has been very pessimistic in his belief that it will. Things seemed to get better and I went on a limb and asked him to spend the night last weekend. Of course, he said no and we had an awful R talk that ended badly. The next day he said he was still trying but that he needed space, so I pulled back (again).
The bad R talk was last Friday night, so it's been more than a week now. I have seen some positives, including --
1. The day after the bad R talk I texted him and asked if we could talk for a few minutes. He said no, and I told him that I would respect his request. He sent me a "thank you" text, and thanked me again later in the day at kid exchange.
2. We did another family activity last Sunday. We were together for 3 or 4 hours and had a lovely time. Later in the evening I texted him again and asked if he would be comfortable talking for a few minutes because I was worried. (He had threatened during the bad R talk on Friday night to call his attorney "first thing Monday morning.") He said he would call me in the morning and that I didn't need to worry "WVP". WVP stands for Wedding Vow Promise and is something that we invented when we were engaged to signal when we are especially committed to something. We haven't used it in years, and I was touched that he remembered.
3. We had a MC session on Tuesday that went ok. I explained that the underlying issue for me in all of our conflict is H's level of commitment (or lack thereof) to me. H says in the session and again afterward that he is committed to me and he wants me to know it. H asked when I would be free later in the day for him to call and check on me, which he did. He said that he was still processing what we'd talked about in MC but that he wants to talk about how to demonstrate commitment (and teamwork, which he feels like is missing).
4. On Wednesday afternoon he called me out of the blue to say hello and how much he appreciated my patience. That night, he put D7 to bed at my house while I was teaching a class. When I got home, he was asleep on my couch in his pajamas. I wondered momentarily if this was his way of telling me that he would stay the night if I asked, but I decided not to say anything. Instead, I thanked him for being more attentive the past few days. He again thanked me for my patience and asked if we could do something this weekend.
5. Last night while D7 was at a Halloween party we had our date. Initially, we were going to do dinner and a movie, but the movie we wanted to see was smack in the middle of the party and we wouldn't have had time to eat dinner either before or afterward. H asked if I really wanted to see the movie and I said no, that I would prefer to eat dinner and do something else so that we can spend time together and talk. So, we went to dinner and then shopping at the mall together. I tried to wrap things up and he said, "Why don't we have dessert first?" We ended up spending about 3.5 hours together -- great conversation and no R talk. At the end he said, "I had a good time. I'm glad we didn't go to the movies." Yay! for no withdrawal/avoidance on our date.
