Oh well, there is always the option of long weekends and shorter breaks rather than long holidays away, right Alison? There's more than one way round these things. One thing I will avoid is going anywhere we've been before, if we go anywhere it will be somewhere brand new because our Easter trip was hard going with all those memories.
Discussed the R talk with my IC, his view seemed to be that I was saying what I needed and wasn't listening to my H. Well, I was but I don't feel it was productive to dump all that resentment on me and take no responsibility himself, and it is super hard to listen to someone basically telling you they don't know if they want to be married to you and that you were a deficient wife. I'm sure there is something to be learnt in there, but it is all wrapped up in such a painful package that I'm not sure I'm capable of the strength to go there. I also only said very briefly what I want and need from a marriage, but he pointed out there wasn't much about what our marriage needed, just two individuals and their needs and feelings. I'm not sure how to change that. I feel like we both need some honesty and for H to acknowledge that he would like to work on our MR before we even get to that point.
We also discussed alcohol and dh's abuse of it and my feelings about that. I think that half the negativity in H's R talk was because I had raised the issue of alcohol and he was reacting towards that, I don't know.
We talked about H not wanting to lose me as a friend, I was reflecting on how few decent friends he has and how I'm probably the only person he can confide in about a lot of things, IC pointed out that no wonder he doesn't want to lose me. Maybe he has even more to lose if we D than I do. We talked about whether friendship is a good enough start for rebuilding a marriage or building a new one. We started off as friends, but that was a very long time ago. Somewhere along the way we did kind of lose that friendship I feel. We have been better friends to each other during the last few months, but I do want more than friendship, that's for sure. I said I wasn't sure I could be friends if we D'ed. In fact I'm pretty sure we can't. But I don't want H back just because I'm all he's got, that's not deciding to work on our MR from a position of strength is it?
Finally, I mentioned that I'd stopped hugging H even though I had asked him for hugs. IC wondered if this was lack of assertiveness on my part and came across as rejection to H. I hadn't thought about that before, I don't know why I even stopped hugging him, it wasn't really conscious but maybe I was feeling rejected and so started behaving in a rejecting way towards him. Interesting, maybe I'm sending mixed signals as well as H? Maybe when things warm up between us it's me who also cools things down and not just him? That wouldn't be surprising, I've been the cold one in the marriage...
Anyway, I have decided I will meet H on Friday, just because I'm feeling hurt by his R talk and by some bad behaviour by him at the weekend isn't good enough reason to break our commitment to meet up once a week. I'm not being particularly chatty this week though. And I would like to discuss our ground rules when we meet up, somehow without it descending into an R talk.
I feel knackered, even though I had so much to discuss I could have stayed another hour!
