Neffer, yes, I'll keep going. Thanks. It's hard when it's more of the same without any timeline for this to end but none of the alternatives are great either.
Ovrrnbw, I think what my husband meant is he wants to be close to our daughter and he doesn't want me to plan things without him. I obviously wouldn't take her out-of-the-country without his permission but that doesn't mean I want him to come if we're not together. I have no idea what he's thinking internally...maybe he's thinking we'll be a family again by then, or maybe he's just thinking he'd live nearby and visit our daughter even overseas.
Jim, that's right. He can't be trusted. Even if we try to reconcile someday I'll always be aware that he's capable of this behavior. I don't know what to think of his actions. I don't think one's intuition is a reliable indicator as to what's happening. I'm glad things are better but better doesn't mean fixed. This has been going on for so long now. It's three years now since my husband had his first known affair. Even now I don't want to get divorced, so we remain separated, but this causes its own psychological torture. It's kind of back to seeing all options as being bad - divorce is bad, separation is bad, and reconciliation is so hard and risky that's it's not a great choice either. Prevention would have been best. I wish we'd all have had the right skills to see what was coming and act before it's too late. For some of us counseling or just changing our own behavior may have worked. For others that still wouldn't have worked and we would have divorced a long time ago and have moved on by now. I guess all we can do is try to make the right decisions moving forward.
