Huge Backslide After Affair Recovery

[hopeOK]

Well we've taken a turn for hopefully the better.

I had individual counseling on Monday evening (3 days ago) & came away with the feeling that I've been making the situation worse. For one, I make assumptions & run with them. For two, I don't slow down in the heat of the moment and end up saying things that push my H further away. And in these conversations, he is gauging whether or not he can possibly start to trust that I am not going to hurt him again. Oh & my counselor seemed to think that my H was making very small baby steps towards me. Taking some steps back but he was taking some steps towards me that I really didn't totally see as that. So I left the appointment pretty hopeful that I could work on my communication to not push him further away (slow down and think about what I'm about to say & what will happen when he says it), stop assuming things, and that at least maybe there has been a few baby steps he has taken towards me.

So then tuesday morning I had sent him a message saying I was probably better off just not saying anything in our arguments and he sent an ugly email back saying that it would be great if I'd include in that any accusations, trying to catch me in stuff, and quizzes in that not talking.

I wrote back and said I knew I'd been making the situation worse & that I was working on it.

He then wrote back -
I apologize for holding on so hard to these bad feelings and anger. I am going to try to do better starting today. I really think we can get back on track.

Me- Gosh. I am so so sorry for making such a mess of us. I am committed to doing better and working on myself.

H- It doesn’t help when I just hold on to stuff and feel worse and worse. I realized after reading to D last night that my choices in this are making everything in my life worse and moving me towards losing her and him. I do not want that or to lose you either.

me- I do not want to lose them or you either. I have been so scared of that.

H- Well let’s fix it. there’s no good future or outcomes in the way we’ve been doing this.

So... at least we are now on the road to seeing if we can fix this mess and he is no longer out to punish me and doing various things to hurt me.

When this message came I was so relieved I cried. I told myself though that this was just the first step... he would have to follow up with various things such as putting his ring back on, friending me on fb, unlocking his devices & not being so secretive. So he did all these things that same day. He held my hand in the car. It was very awkward & I felt very nervous... I guess from nearly 6 weeks of being so anxious about what he was doing and what else he would do to hurt me.

It has been a couple days and the relief has settled. I am still very thankful to be in this new place of potential recovery but I am starting to have my anxieties come back. For example, yesterday he went by & picked up some fruit from a fruit stand near his work. He texted me at 4:15 to say he was getting on the highway to come home. Then he texted a few minutes later to say he had picked up some fruit at the stand. Later that night, I happen to see the receipt on the counter from the fruit & it says 3:30p. Immediately I am panicked. But I talk myself down and tell myself that nothing good will come of asking H about it... or at least I could not come up with a way to ask that would not set him on the defensive and send up down another one of the bad paths of he feels I'm accusing & gets nervous & defensive and that never ends well. So I stuffed it for the night. But it has still been haunting me. And today my anxieties are taking it a bit further thinking- what if he just agreed to "fix" things between us so I would relax & not go seek out an attorney (which I had set a boundary that weekend about how I was going to have to adjust my actions accordingly if he continued to be secretive, not transparent, and dishonest). So I am fearing that he just wanted to pacify me so that he could relax & continue whatever relationship on the side he wanted to. Now this is my paranoid side, I realize. There could be truth to it or it could be just my fears. But figuring out that is where I am stuck.

So tonight or tomorrow... soon... I intend to ask him how he thinks we should go about fixing things. We are so far from being comfortable with one another (which to some extent will take time) and trusting one another... I don't think that we can just sit back and wait for it to happen. Pretty sure he is not going to be willing to go back to counseling for all the reasons he has already been so adamant against it... so this also sends me in a hopeless state of- how are we ever going to fix this on our own with professional help??!! How are we going to keep this from happening in the future?!

I also know I have to ask him some questions to help myself move on like what he did when we were on the outs, why he did what he did, and is he still "friends" with the OW.

And on his side of things, I know he has a lot of resentments towards me... so I also want to ask him how we can move past those... what would help him to heal from the things that I have done.


If anyone has any recommendations on recovery w/o professional help, please share. I feel very overwhelmed with the prospect and I am very much questioning whether I can trust my H after what he has done. (He might be asking the same thing of me!)