Stuck On You

[Raine]

Thanks uR and 2BH! All the best wishes and love to you too.

Hey Lady Wonka! I'm happy to hear from you and hope everything is going well.

We do talk about stuff periodically. Not as much as we were a year ago. There will be longer periods of time and then something might come up. It's there. It's a part of us now. Neither of us pretend it didn't happen and I think both of us are very aware and conscious of it, him especially. He doesn't put himself into any compromising situations. He is very aware of what has happened and what could happen. That no one is immune from it. He knows what he has and he knows what it's like to lose it, and he never wants to come close to there again. He is very open about everything. I don't feel like I need to check on him in anyway, because he is the one being very open. It just feels natural.

It's rarely he is the one to bring anything up though. He feels like it holds him back and he is moving forward. He talks about anything new or anything I want to talk about, but he doesn't want to rehash anything, and neither do I. I feel like I'm in a really good place where I know everything and I can accept that and move on from it.

This does take a long time to heal from. When I read that it took a minimum of two years to heal from an affair, I thought I was in such a good place and ahead of that game, that it wouldn't be the case for me. I had already forgiven him. Tsk, tsk. Let me tell you. It will take a minimum of two years...:)

I do think he is very self-aware of his past and also very quick to say that there is never just one thing, as if he could walk into therapy, have the therapist say, "It's not your fault," a few times, and then everything would be resolved.

When things in his past come up he is always has the same kind of conclusion about it. There may be negatives and positives and regrets and amends, but there are no excuses. He feels he had a very happy childhood, even though he can look back and see there were things that were negative about it. He feels like nothing has given him any excuse for what happened or for anything he did during his crisis. He won't call it that or say anything like he had a midlife crisis. To him that would be an excuse for his behavior. The only thing he will says is that he was depressed. He knows what that feels like and he knows when it's coming on. He says the best thing for him to do in that case is to talk to me, because together we can put reason to what is feeling completely irrational to him.

I don't have my anxiety attacks like I was before either. He can talk to me about some pretty tough stuff and I have a very calm and understanding reaction to it. But now, it's not me thinking DB tactics and this is how I should react. Now it's genuine. This is me and how I am. I don't think about what I should or shouldn't do. I'm just me, and I like me and how I approach things.

There are definitely things that he doesn't remember, and those are the hardest of all for him. He takes full responsibility and ownership for it. As he says, it is on him. And it's on him to make things right, but also knowing that he can't make it so it never happened. He is just seems very mature and thoughtful and forgiving in his approach to everything. He doesn't hold any blame or anger towards anyone.

As for me, I think I am still his lighthouse. I am the one he tells everything to. Everything. Anything comes up at work or in any aspect of his life, and I'm the one he wants to talk to about it. But now, he is my lighthouse too. I feel like we are so equally matched in every way. Even though we are in completely different fields and have some interest that are different, there isn't anything that we can't talk to the other one about.