Still surviving

[Surv1ve]

Poking my nose in here.

Where are we now? So much has changed internally and very little externally.

I still have a live in MLC. We still go out each and every week together.

I still live with my other expartner, also called EXOM.

I have shifted to caring a lot less about whether or not things work out and H and I return to our romantic and sexual relationship.

I have increasingly had boundaries and hard lines, and each time I've done so, H has altered himself to respect them.

I ask for the things I actually want, and I fully expect him to say no and I don't really care (but of course I do). It's just I'm trying of saying no to myself and, when he says no, I take it as evidence about who he is and what he is right now.

He's been going to neurofeedback (a very passive therapy) for 6 months and it makes an actual difference. I've been going for EMDR, (a trauma therapy) and he now wants to go for his own EMDR. That's really a pretty big deal and it requires way more addressing his own historical traumas.

We're taking a day trip in 2 weeks to a ski hill 2 hours away. This was a Christmas present from him to me, complete with a cute card of us skiing, and he will do all the driving and emotional labour. I told him I wanted to go away with him for a weekend, and this was his boundaried response.

The person who had just lived through the bomb drop and wanted nothing more than her husband back would probably love to know that I get 2 twenty-minute periods of touch each week, weekly dates, daily hugs, and an H that is way more owning his own stuff and accountable. He talks about "feeling nothing but fear" and wants to learn how to manage the fear. "I know I still love you, I know it's in there, but I feel nothing. I have no idea how to access that."

And yet, I'm also just tired. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of crumbs and scraps. I'm tired of living with a H who knows he loves me and is terrified of loving me.

The LBS makes the final decision, these boards said, and 2.5 years ago, that felt like so much hogwash.
And, now I know that if this is to end, I will end it.

"Can you wait 5 years for me?" he asked. "Because I feel like it might take that long."

"No," I said, "not like this. Claim it and tell me that you're trying to save our marriage and maybe. But this weird limbo where you love me and refuse to say so, where you're trying to reconnect in our marriage but you won't name it that way, where you dissociate and forget all of the conversations that are so crucial to who we are to each other...? No, I need more than that."

As always, your wisdom... so appreciated.