Finding the Balance then Tipping the Scale (3)

[Adam04]

journaling

Tried to do this since Fathers Day several times. The internet ate my words up a couple times. Other times I felt like I had a mental block in trying to express what I had been feeling. Like I'm still trying to make sense of it all. Then the opportunities to have some down time are fewer these days.

This year will be 15 married, 25 years together, and in 2 months it will be 1 year from BD.

If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I ever thought I would get BD'd, I would have naively said no. And post BD, if you would have asked me if I ever thought I would be here, I would have naively said no.

So where is here? Continuing from the last update, W and I are what I consider progressing. I say that very loosely. It's been a couple weeks since last update and W has asked me to move in to the new house and one night she was moving clothes from one side of the closet to the other and I happened to walk in and I asked why all the moving. She said it was for me, and I told her she didn't have to do all that moving that night and she replied without hesitation that she didn't mind doing it and that she loved me. We both paused and she gave this smile like okay, this is it. It's real. So ever since, she has been able to tell me she loves me again when we sleep, wake up, sometimes random times throughout the day.

With W mother over for the summer to help watch the boys, W and I both wake up super early in the morning to go work out at the gym at our work. I'm up by 4am, workout, work, get home, and we eat, spend time with the boys and make effort to spend time together. Couple days ago, we went on a date night. Both our boys spent a night at their cousins. After date night and a few drinks we headed home and crashed early. In the past, I would have expected sex from something like this and I was good with the way things turned out. There have been so many moments, I could have expected something and not voiced it or I could have acted a certain way from the past but I didn't. I don't. I haven't purposefully written a list but its a pretty lengthy one on how I changed. I notice when I am in the moment. If she says something that could have sparked a different reaction out of me, I am patient and cool headed. I have been listening to a lot of John Gottman and not only controlling emotions but controlling physiology is important as well. So I had been working on emotional control , controlling those flare ups, impulses etc from BD. I am a work in progress on both emotional control and the physical.

When I want something and if its that important to me, I talk to W about it and I encourage her to do the same so that we don't harbor ill feelings or become passive aggressive. W has also said when I moved in, she noticed I placed my shoes on top of the dresser once or twice and she didn't say anything at first but then told me it bothers her because its shoes and they could have anything on the bottom of them. I have no idea why I placed by shoes on the dresser except that sometimes I take my workout shoes out of my gym back and place them on the dresser. I could see her point. Because I care about what she has to say I cleared all my mess. She is a neat freak and I am the slob. She says she didn't make a stinker about it because she has seen me change in so many ways and she notices how I am with other parts of the house. We do laundry together, we split our fair share of the house work and also the 50/50 split helped us continue that schedule while we are both at home. One week I help the boys with the bath or put them to bed and the other week she does it. Some nights if I am tired she will or if she is tired I will.

W and I haven't scheduled Retro. She is willing to do MC. Her Medical Records did come in but they weren't full records and her ovarian cyst was from 2017. Along with her breast cysts. At the time I must have been unaware or not in tuned with what was going on with her. These records weren't full records and only showed that she had been taking meds to control the size of it. I told her I know she loved me and it was important for me to see the medical records where it showed the doctor prescribed the BCP initially as treatment. She said she was a little disappointed that what they sent her wasn't good enough but she would get me the full records and she would tell them what she needed. Last week she said she left a second message with the office, which she had to do with the first set. So there is some effort she is willing to make. She doesn't know it, but the fact that she is doing this is the sign I wanted to see and not so much what is on the initial record. I could tell her it would be unnecessary, but since its in motion, I will let it play out.

W and I do have or conflicts. There have been a couple but nothing big. I mention this because I don't want people to think that because it seems like we are working on the relationship that its conflict free. On the contrary. It's how we approach one another and the willingness to listen, validate, and try to resolve the issue. I don't approach her saying things are her fault. If there is something that bothers me, I express how I feel with the I feel this way when this happens. We try not to use the words always or never. She catches herself sometimes saying that and backtracks and says that's unfair and is not what she meant to say so she is working on some parts of her.

As for intimacy, its steady. I don't want to get too graphic or give too much info but sex is good. Sorry in advance if too graphic... Sex ranges from a few times a day to few times a week. She sometimes initiate and I mostly do. I make sure she is satisfied first if not several times. Sometimes if I ask , she'd be willing and we would have a quicky. Other times it could be an hour to hour and half. When its like that, I don't know what is wrong with me. Its like my mind shuts down and we're just having sex. It was like that a few times and I started to trip out where we could have sex for an hour and she would get hers and I wouldn't be able to. Like there is a mental block. There is something psychological behind it and it doesn't happen all the time. I'd stop and we continue later and that's when I'd be good.

W and I aren't on the same wavelength yet with reading or watching self help stuff. We had a discussion on that and she said she is open to both of us watching something together but wants to check the self help stuff on her own time. She said she felt pressure from me when I asked her if she had done any of that. She said she will in her own time and she didn't want to do anything because I was trying to force her into it especially with self help because that infers something, like I'm trying to point out her faults to fix. I expressed that wasn't what I intended because with Retrovaille I heard that we would go back for exercises and I wanted to know if she would be on board with wanting to do the home work. This she said she would. So I think overall we are trying to hear and understand each other better. I also am working on being patient.

Since Mother In law is living with us, we are going to church every Sunday now. W holds my hands a lot on the drive and in church. We are both happy to go and our boys are happy, although my youngest one says he gets bored and doesn't understand what is going on.

We talked about the apartment. She wants me to break the lease but I said I wasn't sure. She said why not give it 6 months. She says she knows what she wants and that its us as a family and she knows it will be tough and rough but she is committed to making it work. I told her I want to be patient, hence keeping the apartment. I am actually at the apartment now where my PC is. I leave and go out every now and then. Sometimes coming to check the apartment or clean it up and head back or go out to the mall here.

The other night my oldest son wanted to link a Microsoft account to hers and I helped do that and set up everything on her phone because she didn't know how. Again I had the list of her passwords and apps. She not once hovered or was keeping tabs on me to checking her phone. The Microsoft account she has was also for skype. I don't purposefully go through her phone but if its something like this, I would skim the info or see if anything was just odd and I get no red flags.

W and I also communicate via texts more daily now. I am trying to build that emotional road map with her by letting her know I am thinking of her. I am asking how her day went. If she needs anything. She texts me in the mornings asking about me. She thanks me for the talks we had. She didn't go to the lake house with her boss and said she didn't go because of me. She knew I didn't care if she went but they did a half day at her boss's house in town with the ladies from work. W expressed that when I listened to her unloading about work, it was very important to her and she really appreciated it. She said it was really a big thing for her.

My brother in law also works out at the same gym my W does also early in the mornings so she would send pix of him or if he comes visit he would say he saw her. He is also the head IT guy at her company and she has two sisters working with her who knows we are trying to recon.

The guy who she used to text a lot at work, they still communicate when there are issues. Sometimes by phone and I noticed she does talk to different people at different terminals pertaining to her work. When this guy's name came up on the phone she looked at me and said sorry. She knows I don't like what happened in the past with not knowing or feeling like something could be going on that's fishy with him or anyone. She said sorry, its work and took it and they spoke to resolve an issue. I got no red flags from her behavior or from listening to how he spoke to her. Everything and every call she has been right next to me to take when dealing with emergency issues from work. no red flags.

I know I am not out of the woods yet. I don't proclaim it and am taking it one day at a time.

One last thing, her boss's H recently said he wanted a Divorce and bomb dropped the boss. So W is seeing what its like with what her boss is going through.

I think I covered most of what has been going on. I'm just another average guy trying to live the best he can and live right, there is no magic bullet to it. There are no guarantees. If W was to BD me again tomorrow, I'd be alright this time around. I live in the moment. I embrace all my emotions and don't let any one get me to acting emotional or crazy. We as men have to be stable and in control of our emotions. I couldn't tell you what caused my W want to come back to work on the marriage. It could have been several things lined up or everything had to line up. And still, there are no guarantees...

I tried to do the work, read and soak in practices, stand my ground, not be a pushover to her, squelch that disrespect, be upbeat and be a great father to my kids. Sometimes none of this matters to them.

I think its too soon, but I brought it up to my W that maybe we should discuss where we are at with our children because the last talk was about D. Now she wants to reconcile, do I remain patient and let things play out the way they do for a while or do we have another talk with the kids so they aren't confused? They love both of us working it out as a family.

Time to go have dinner with the family.

Please keep the posts coming. I feel like this could be a pivotal time. I've made the decision to move forward and try to be the best me possible but if you think I am going too fast or should be doing something differently, feel free to chime in.