Dinner's ready, on the table, W is just about ready to sit down and eat. OM calls on W's cell. W takes call, and goes outside to speak to him in private for 20 minutes. Lots of giggling and laughing. Very hard for me, but I sit down on the sofa, turn on the TV, and just let it go. W comes in, we eat dinner and watch TV. She is mostly quiet. After dinner she starts to communicate a little, but is still removed and distant. She gives herself a pedicure and--probably against good DBing and giving her space--I draw myself a hot bath and plop down in the bathroom with her. After talking to myself goofily for a few minutes--about my reflection in the tub drain, Dolly Parton's Islands in the Stream, my toes getting pruny--she finally starts to open up a little.
She talks a bunch about OM--mostly minor stuff I've already heard many times, I listen, I'm just happy she's talking. She talks about some things (concerts and events) they are planning to do together. She talks about her job a lot too, how it drags on her and why, what she wants but isn't sure how to achieve. She also talks about her and I some too. She says my changes are obvious, and its wierd for her: why now? why did it have to take so much and so long for me to change? She feels like she's already moved on and wanting to focus on herself and a new life, and now all the sudden my behavior is the way it should have been a long time ago. She says sometimes she comes home and just wants to be by herself and think about things, and that she can't do that if I'm home all the time. I try not to be defensive about this, but I say I've been able to find plenty of time to think the three or four nights a week that she is at OM's. She feels that between her work, OM, and me, she doesn't have any time for herself.
She says she's well aware of where I stand and how I feel, and that while she doesn't feel that I'm pressuring her, she can sometimes sense my anxiousness, and it makes her uncomfortable. She feels I'm sometimes a little too eager to take up opportunities to talk about us. She accepts that she had some responsibilty in how things fell apart. I tell her that of course I'd prefer us to get back together, but my first priority is her happiness, no matter what. She believes that I am concerned for her happiness and that I care about her, but she's not so sure it equally applies if we don't get back together. I tell her I don't know what I can do to reassure her, and she seems to understand.
I tell her that if--and that I know that its a big if--we were to get back together, its to build a brand new R from scratch. Neither of us want to go back to the way things were. She reiterates that during this time we are separated I am completely free to do whatever I want to do. I respond that I am doing what I want to do, I'm happy with the choices I've made. I tell her I am sorry if it seems sometimes that I'm too forward about how I feel, and I don't want to seem like I'm obsessing about us, but I don't want to go back to how I was when I suppressed everything I felt. She says she understands that. I also tell her there's tons of things I feel and would love to talk about, but that I don't because I know it makes her uncomfortable.
She also wants to know more about me: what I talk about in my C sessions, what I've been reading, what I've been learning about relationships. We talk for awhile about this. I tell her some of the books I've read, some of what I've learned about healthy relationships, how my C feels there's nothing stopping me from being a solid partner in a healthy R. I tell her my C sessions are not about her and I, but more about life coaching for me. I eventually end up telling her--I want to share so much with her, but I know there's so much I just can't tell her right now--that I've been participating in an internet discussion board where the participants talk about relationships, mostly in relation to books and articles that are read and discussed. I didn't tell her anything specific about this board. I wish I could share everything about me with her, but I don't want to do anything to jeopardize the one place I have to express myself freely and completely, I don't want her coming here to read my posts and coming away with the wrong idea or using it against me.
We even talked some about my father's affair. When I told her my Mom and I were comparing my sitch to my father's affair, she immediatley defended herself saying she wasn't having an affair. I said that wasn't what I meant at all, just that my mom and I were talking about it. I told her how my father met another woman, then separated from my mother and moved in with the OW, telling my mom he just didn't have feelings for her anymore. I told her how my mom during this time told my father that she would take my sister and I and vanish for good if he ever brought OW by our house, or if he ever took my sister and I to see OW. My father did eventually break it off with OW and move home after a year or so, but he committed suicide shortly after that (if anyone was wondering, don't worry, this has never crossed my mind, I'm just not the type, I love life way too much, but sometimes I wonder if W reads too much into my father's effects on me)
She talked more about her job for awhile after all of this, and we didn't get to sleep until after 3 am. I know I can't stay up like this all the time, but sometimes the only time she opens up is late at night.
Overall we again maintained a very good rapport, we conversed well, but I feel I'm slipping on my detachment again. I'm probably not detaching enough, I probably am a little too obvious about my feelings, I'm probably jumping too much at opportunities to spend time with her. On the other side of the coin, I strongly feel that generally the time we spend together brings us closer together, and that time apart just makes us more apart.
She's going to her parents up north for Easter weekend. I think this may be a good time for me to regroup, readdress my priorities, my goals, etecetera. I actually feel like I could usse a little time to myself, and I'm actually glad she'll be spending some time away from both OM and I.
