New thread, some background and then the new stuff:
Background:
H 38, Me 38 (yikes, just had to change that), boys 5 & 7, Married 1988
Fall 02, H travelled tons, I thought he should be home/with boys more--nagged/cold shoulder/angry with him--all backfired, 11/02, tells me he wants D. He gets phone calls on his cell that he suddenly must take outside. Snoop only once, woman's name he works with. He found out I snooped--ugly scene
11/02 Join this BB as JackieH, but change name as too obvious in case he snoops
Winter 02/03---see MC, she's not great, but gets us through worst part. I DB butt off. H tells me that I was so miserable last fall that drove him away, likes my disposition better now.
Spring--I get my first ILY. Still very infrequent. He rates our M as a 6 out of 10.
Summer--He plans mystery family vacation to CA, great time, the two of us go to Europe together, wonderful.
Mid-August--H talks about cruise for our 15th anniversary, has been a bad year. Book tickets to Orlando for family vacation. He turns 38. Becomes miserable. Tells me it isn't going to work, he doesn't love me, good times aren't enough, doesn't feel like shouting from roof top that he loves me, feels empty inside. His life is half over and he doesn't want to spend the second half wasting it away with me. Mystery phone calls begin again.
9/5 -- moves to a hotel for 10 days. Decide not to tell parents anything.
9/18 -- home, but apartment hunting. Finds apartment, should be ready mid-October. Has not put money down yet, as far as I know.
10/8 -- He backs out of Disney vacation that we planned in August--he had told me then that we deserve to go have fun as we have had a rough year. I take kids alone.
10/15 15 year anniversary
11/3 Tell kids Dad will be moving into own townhome. They are excited at the prospect of hanging out with Dad without me around.
11/5 He moves into his new home.
11/7 He comes over while I'm gone and clears out all his stuff.
11-12/2003 He begins to see a therpaist. We spend T-day apart. For Christmas he spends Christmas Eve here and we do just our family thing. He invites me to his family X-mas. I go, it is weird, but I survive. The kids and I go to Germany on xmas day and stay 13 days. My kids and my nephew spend a good part of the visit fighting and the visit is very stressful. I try to not be upset when I talk to H on the phone about my vacation, but he knows it was tough.
January 2004 -- H picks the kids and I up at the airport with lots of smiles and hugs. On car ride home he shows me letter to cancel lease in March, Plans a family trip to Disney in March and a Hawaii vacation for just the two of us in May.
January/February -- he begins to spend most of his time here, we see therpasit together. Lots of bumps and bruises, but we survive.
March -- I help him clean his apartment and we are done. We are still learning our way around each other, but we are doing well. Disney trip goes well.
Apirl--have family birhtday party and for some reason I land in a funk. Annoyed at the world. Have quite a therapy session where I let out all my disatisfaction and H is very pissed. Tell him I want actions, not just the words. I feel like a maid/housekeeper. Next morning I get coffee made and the following morning flowers are delivered. In conversations with the therpaist, learning that I need to speak up when I need things, to let him know I need some signs of affection. Not assign blame--you don't bring me flowers, but that I need them! Florist beware. I also meet with T on my own and we talk about H's anger and how he shuts down. She has the theory that many men treat their wives like women at work, if they become angry, they expect their employees to work to do better and make it up. I'm adopting a new policy/attitude --- Jackie, love it or leave it. I am what I am, always going to be a klutz and do dumb things, he knows that, isn't anything new. So I apologize once and that is it. I make sure I have plenty of fun books on hand and go read when he is in a bad mood.
Been trying to get things accomplished around the home, was finding myself spending too much time on the BB and not enough living!
Another interseting thing T said was that I expected H to be my best friends and Hs aren't that. I'm not sure if I agree with that completely, but she had a point that I wanted to call H during the day and chat, and that just isn't a male thing, GF are for that kind of stuff and I need to make more of an effort to spend time with GFs. I have been doing so and it does make a huge difference.
Had a birthday last month and H did a great job of making me feel special and we had a lot of fun. Things are going really well at the moment, quite scary, and we leave next week for 11 kid-free days. Yikes. The list of directions for my parents is now five pages long.
