Those are some tough points that you made to me and has given me a lot of food for thought.
You nailed his feelings in the part where you talk about "but". Its not that I don't care, its because I care so much that I ask. I have read what you said how this can be turned around for him. So this will be an area that I really need to concentrate on.
Is the part about you showing interest/jealousy of OW true? Would you have reacted if he'd been that interested or texting a guy about a motorcycle? Yes it was true because I feel that texting OW was wrong he was doing it on the sly, hiding his phone and he confessed to texting and calling her 4-5 x a day for 6 months before I saw the "Goodnight Babe" text on his phone. If it were a guy about a motor cycle I would not have cared.
He does not like to resolve conflict at all. I like to talk it through. He lets it fester or keeps it inside and therefore some of the issues that came out had been festering since marriage. He said he always thought even before we were married (married 20 years) he would wonder what will she think if I do this, will she get mad? That I feel has nothing to do with me. These are his own issues that he had in his head.
He would say there is no need for conflict resolution, he doesn't want to fight. He would say he will deal with it on his own.
I am trying to work on the trust issues/control issues. I think I asked where he was, why he was late or why he wanted to go out with guy friends was because I was jealous or didn't trust him. I am working on the fact that anyone should be able to go where they want and I shouldn't feel he is going to cheat on me when he is out. This is very hard for me it happened to my mom and I think I have carried it over into my M. I think this is a way I have felt I could control that this didn't happen to me by keeping track of him.
He has always asked to do or buy things, this is not something that I made him do and he is still doing it. Like he asked if it was ok for him to buy a mattress two weeks ago and if he should buy a motorcycle. I said buy whatever you need. How should I handle these questions?
I think I am having a hard time controlling my behavior in this aspect. I have been blown away by this. He was the center of my life and it seems to consume me right now and I know this. I am not normally this way with anything. One thing I have noticed is "he was the center of my life" I needed to do some things on my own and I didn't because I wanted to always do things with him and my son and maybe that is why whenever he went off and did things I would be home jealous or wondering what he was doing and why he couldn't just do things with me and S.
I am working on getting out and doing things on my own and realizing that he could stay with S but in the past it seems like he went and I stayed so he could go. I think I need to be a bit more selfish and take time to do the things that I want to do also without feeling guilty for leaving them.
So to sum it up I will be concentrating on myself and not what he is doing or thinking by using the STOP method that you told me about, trying to GAL with my S because I have him all the time, and working on trust/controlling. This will be hard because he has broken a lot of the trust by telling lies, hiding money, secret accounts, before leaving. How do you get past this?
