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.
All I can say is have patience, keep DBing! T2 had issues and she and her H are finally working on those. We can only do so much and then it is up to our S's to pick up the rope and do their part. When that happens, things fall into place!
Otherwise, things seem to be going in the right direction for you.
Things have been going well. We had our ten days away, some in a cute bungalow in Hawaii with no air, an outside shower and toilet and as many bugs inside as out, oh, and lizard poop everywhere! But despite that we had a nice vacation. I did learn that I am not very good at relaxing and doing nothing, but learning (if I have a book, I can sit for hours and do nothing).
Life with H is going very well. I'm starting to speak up and ask for what I want or need. If H is angry, I'm letting that go, it isn't all about me! And even if it is me, I can't control his reaction.
Still have some tough times. I'm scrapbooking pictures from last year, right before it all fell apart and dragging up those memories of where we were at this time last year. H just doesn't know what to say when I bring this up, and the conversations seem to go nowhere. And to be honest, I think it is just me driving us both nuts!
A friend at corporate's husband overheard someone talking about us and custody arrangements. This got me in a tither--who would be talking about us and they are 6 months out of date and we never even argued about custody. I made the mistake of bringing it up at bedtime and it didn't go well. However, the next morning H brought it up and we talked.
Working on the trusting this is for real thing, but the gut feeling that something is wrong is completely gone. If I specifically ask for reassurance, he will give it to me. And he is doing small things just to make me smile. It is wonderful. Maybe these last two years have taught us both something. I'm trying to make more of an effort to make him smile.
Now if I could only master the losing weight bit, life would be grand.
It really is nice to hear from those that have been able to put the pieces back together and have them come back to say once together again it can remain that way. Its sooo encouraging to hear. I wish we can hear it more often from those that have busted the D and now are doing the hard part.
I think its sooo about doing little things to make each other smile. These are the kind of things we tend to forget about over time. It can be so easy to overlook those little things and yet they end up having a far greater impact on nurturing an R or allowing it to wither.
Thanks for stopping by. I am really proud of the fact that my H and I have chosen to go forward in this life together. Thanks for supporting and encouraging me along this journey.
I am glad to hear that things are going well for you and your H. I too am learning to speak up more often - to get things out in the open. It is hard and against my nature, but has been great in keeping the lines of communication open.
This new man (H) that I am living with is fun and interesting. Not the same guy that has been living here for the past few years at all. He is happy with himself and life again - and therefore happy with me and the kids too.
As a success story, I have promised others on this forum that I will continue to post the on-going work of rebuilding, renewing our R. I hope you will do the same. The work certainly doesn't end when the WAS spouse comes home.
Stick around huh? Or at least stop by once in a while. Remember, I am behind you on this path and want your help in navigating it!
totite
"Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative..."
