InLove, ok there are some baby steps. But the red flag for me is still the push for a separation agreement. As if he is playing nice so you will too.
What would be the point of doing a separation? I had already agreed to sell the house. What would be the point of talking about our marriage and how we are healing it? I have never known this man to be a game player. He is usually genuine. Truthfully, if he was a terrible husband, I wouldn't be hanging on. He has been a good husband, sweet and doting, over the years.
He claims the separation papers protect us both to split it all 50/50. He says he doesn't want to rush repairing our marriage because there was so much fighting and the patterns we were in need broken. He also said he has to get his mother to accept me.
All of us LBSs tend to romanticize our WAS's pre-BD behavior. As if they were perfect before BD. You admit he almost cheated on you 16 years ago. That hardly makes him perfect. Also, recent behavior, to me, trumps previous behavior. The first time someone cheats, rapes, commits murder....etc....isn't overridden by the fact they didn't before. Someone that murders someone isn't NOT a murderer simply because they hadn't commit murder before.
Your H may have been awesome before all this. But he isn't now. You do not have to be around these sitches long to see patterns. People that are planning an exit often times play nice to try to get their LBS to "go along" with the plan. "OKay, you don't want a D, so let's just agree on a separation for now." That is a baby step.....IN THE WRONG direction. It is all about perspective. You might think that moving down from D, to separation is a baby step toward R. He could be seeing it from his perspective that getting you to agree to separation is a baby step toward ultimate D.
You know him better than me. Maybe he is genuine. All I can tell you is that all of us LBSs wanted to take our WASs at face-value....and very few of them can be.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
