I also wanted to wish you good luck for today, but I guess it's late by now (I did think about you though). Now I'll just wait for your post how it went.
It's been a long time I wanted to post but somehow never manage. I'm on a sick leave now so will try to be more active here.
Did something come out of your meeting with the photographer? If not yet I hope it will! Like that you could stop doing this via your h's company. Though I do know it's not easy in art but I wish something will come out of it soon!!!
Every time I see your signature it pains me that your BD was on my 40th b-day! And it always makes me think that it was also a day when I should have realized that something is coming up in my marriage too (for the second time). Having b-day in the middle of the summer my friends are rarely around. So, if I could take holidays around my b-day we usually celebrated with my family or if I couldn't and the kids were with my parents, my h would stay home with me and we would celebrate it just the two of us before joining kids. Last year, it was a BIG b-day and my h decided to join the kids for holidays and left me home alone! I should have known... Anyway, enough about me.
I read your posts and see how much it hurts you seeing pictures of friends from your social group and the lack of interaction with them. Well, I can understand it's difficult but I think it would be more difficult interacting with them. I don't think they realise what the pictures do to you. They most likely don't even think about you looking at them, they just continue documenting their lives as they always did before. But I do think that a little clean up of friends is always necessary in a situation like this. And though it hurts, long-termly it can be beneficial...
The situation in which we are is quite difficult to understand for people who never experienced it. Me, myself, if you asked me a couple of years ago if I would stay with my husband if I knew he had an affair I would tell you I would file for divorce the minute I learnt about it. When I saw husbands of some of my friends how they talked to them and the hurtful things they were saying or if they were just withdrawn, not paying attention to us when we went somewhere together, I thought: how can she stay with such guy. And here I am... What I'm trying to say is that it is a lonely life for LBS. First you lose your partner, your dreams, the future you thought you were going to have, some "friends"... and those true friends who stay to support you they don't really understand unless they are/were faced with a similar situation. So, though it's difficult, it's just the way it is.
But you seem to be doing great. I hope it will continue. Some of your thoughts you describe, I have exactly the same. But we cannot change the past. And I did try the counseling and today I'm convinced it was a mistake. He was just not ready. He's still not. And may never be.
Hope the day was not too difficult for you! Have some cocoa before you go to sleep. I haven't done it for years but had a few in the past few months :-).
