After the Storm...

[Treasur]

Hmmm, I'll muse on if there is a middle ground which is less controlling...

Maybe focus on the £ stuff and have a 'draft in pencil' for talking. The £ stuff will probably take a month and who knows how we'll feel then. He might change his mind about talking. I might change my mind about being bothered enough to listen because I'm ambivalent now.

The one thing I do need though is to move forward and let go. It's not good for me to be divorced and pausing to talk and pick over the rubble of something that is done and buried. There's no point talking about a dead M or why someone hurt you if there is no current or future relationship. Unless you need it to heal. He may, but that's his business. I've had to heal without it and I don't want to go backwards. There's no point to that for me and it will keep me connected to someone/something which is a ghost. It is funny because for 18 months, I would have done almost anything to get him to talk to me and tell me what the hell had happened...

What is different for me - I was a bit controlling because my H was a bit Mr Nice Guy passive, that was part of our dynamic and I was always more impatient than him. I've learned a lot of patience in the last 2 years though! In the past, I would have come up with a solution and persuaded him to take it. Now, I think I'm saying these are my boundaries. They are about respect, trust and safety for me. If you want to talk, we need a solution that honours those boundaries but I'm ok with whatever choice you make either way. The consequence of not finding a solution which honours my boundaries is we don't talk and that's fine too. Because another feature of our shared past is that I cared much more about his needs and what was difficult for him, and I wasn't honest enough about my own. Some of that is about respect too, that secretly I thought I was stronger and braver than him.

It is a 180 for me to say clearly this is what I need right now to do that and I'm ok with whatever choice you make. I guess it will depend on how important it is to him to talk, for whatever reason. What's most important to me now is to be treated with respect and equal value, and to not be sucked back into a limbo waiting on his actions. Does that make sense?