We can still be friends

[liono]

dear diary,
My smooth ride hit a big speed bump yesterday. Still away on my business trip (last day... I'm ready to go home), and my W texts me, we talk about some random stuff then she mentions my mom texted her something "weird".
Something along the lines "how are you enjoying time with the girls" "oh it's great" "well don't enjoy it too much (smiley) I'm sure <liono> missed you all".

Thanks mom. Not helping.

Further complicated by the fact my parents know what's going on, but don't realize W knows they know what's going on, so here's mom trying to be all "innocent" but totally comes across as a jab to W. So she gets really hurt and frustrated with me, has problems with me "sharing our private matters". Feels like I'm misrepresenting the situation and I should tell them the "whole story". Mind you this is all based on her being able to see all my texts between my parents, which in my mind, are pretty tame. Most of the meaty discussion has happened with me venting to my dad over the phone. And btw I thought I had fixed the text thing, but I guess they still show up on the ipad at home.

Barf, anyway I could go into more detail but you get the picture. W is telling me how hurt she is. She feels like "trust is eroding" and I'm making her look bad in front of my parents.

Mind you, all of this discussion is also happening over text. And it's all about other interactions that happened over text.

It was really hard to know how to react. I tried to validate and not defend or try to explain. I did a little of that, but glad I didn't go overboard. I'm just feeling really deflated, like we're taking one baby step forward at a time, then 5 giant steps back.

Now the initial flurry and panic is over, I'm trying to recenter myself a bit. I think the important things for me to remember right now are being the lighthouse. W's head is in a storm right now, and me trying to calm her or defend myself is probably only going to create more chaos. Standing strong and being a shining light is going to be the thing that surprises her (and it's also better for my own wellbeing. it's how I want to see myself as a man).

Part of me feels like I screwed this all up. Part of me wonders maybe this is just necessary. I've been told it gets worse before it gets better. It also gets worse before it gets worst So who knows.

Head is cloudy and I feel really confused and deflated. Just going to try to keep doing what works.
Not talk about R outside MC (next session is 1 week away).
Cheerful, lighthouse, strong.
GAL.
No more writing down ANYTHING related to R (right now I'm on work laptop, with browser in private mode, changing my db forum password to something unique and hard).