I really have had very hard weeks/days/hours throughout this process, and I had to reexamine a lot of things about my own behaviour and decisions as I discovered how much PTSD from my childhood abandonment colored my reactions and life. In fact in a strange way she has given me an incredible gift: in confronting MLC and my own issues I have grown and feel much lighter and freer than I was before. But in this process I have also realized how much of our relationship was great and how important she is to me, and how special. And through out I committed to not leaving until necessary (she decides or demands a divorce and/or I run out of patience or ability to stay). The few times she has been more present and I have asked point blank "do you want to divorce and move on" she always immediately says "no" and then when I ask what do you want she looks very confused and says "I don't know."
What was interesting is that as I detached and moved on whenever she would reach out and here me happy and moving on she sounded puzzled an there was always a varient of "you sound so happy" in a puzzled tone. And past 2-3 months I noticed she would call out of the blue (rare occurence) and talk for over an hour at a time (again something we rarely did even before MLC). Initially it was always when she was feeling down and alone, she was just reaching back to "plan B" or maybe touching base back home. I would just listen, not try to fix anything and would just acknowledge how she felt. She always would say something like how it made her feel better talking to me. But almost every time after one of these calls she would disappear for weeks at a time (textbook MLC).
But around 3-4 weeks ago I started getting daily texts, but instead of the always light self absorbed kind they actually were a little different. And she started talking to me regularly once or twice a week. This first shift was she started actually asking how I was doing, or talk about specific things that did not involve her. Before that her interaction and behaviour was like a self absorbed 14 year old, full of emojis, flowery prose and over enthusiasm (this was not at all what she was like before the crack). I honestly could see her replay in action and when I saw pictures of her or saw her I could see the teenager in her behaviour, language and even in her eyes and facial expression. But the past few weeks she was consistently more like her age and much more like her old self.
When we met this last time she was mostly back to the way she was before the BD. Where before she would barely give me a peck on the cheek she was holding my arm when walking, giving me hugs, and the entire body language and interaction was back to normal. Only thing that was missing was any intimacy and even she unprompted said she really was thinking we should be intimate but the thought still made her recoil. We had a very good and active sex life until it suddenly stopped around a year ago, and she had told me how she found me repulsive, and then slowly it became "I never wanted to have sex with you, I made myself" as the crises progressed. But otherwise she was behaving like her old self, we had a very good few days, and she thanked me multiple times and said over and over how much she enjoyed seeing me again. And made plans for us to meet up in about a month when I go back to our second home (she is somewhere close to there).
