I had a pretty significant insite that I just could not wait to share with y'all.
I've been mulling over the various conversations we've been having on this thread.
One thing that I've been focusing on is the conversation about namecalling the OP. And how the OP is merely a symptom, not the cause. I explained this to Husband and he agreed and understood. Including the bit about if it hadn't been that particular OP it would have been a different OP. But that there would still have been an OP because the spouse was looking for something outside the marriage that he should have been seeking from the marriage.
Well, yesterday, Husband and I had a talk about his friendship with Amanda. In that conversation, I rehashed all the things/incidents that had happened.
And for the first time, he told me that he could see how things looked to me, and why I would come to the conclusions I had. And he told me that if the situation were reversed, he'd have been distressed/angry too. That he could understand that even though he wasn't cheating on me, that it LOOKED like he was...to me.
For the first time, I felt understood...and sane!
He apologized and told me that he 'just didn't know how to handle things.'
When he said that it soothed some wound inside me.
I thought about it more as the day progressed.
And I realized.
I really wasn't angry with Amanda. I was angry with him.
Yet, I didn't feel safe being angry with him...so I was projecting my anger onto her.
And I realized that by doing that, I was withholding forgiveness.
On the one hand I had told him that I forgave him EVERYTHING. On the other hand...I was telling him that I couldn't trust Amanda because of all these things she had done..and that she had never given me any reason to trust her.
And it hit me. I was being hypocritical.
Since I was really angry with him, but disguising it as anger towards her...the message I was sending to both of us, was that I hadn't forgiven him.
I told Husband this morning that I was so sorry. That I realized I was being hypocritical. And that I felt something heal inside when he said, (in pain and sorrow) "I just didn't know how to handle the situation."
I told him I had really needed to hear that from him...and didn't realize I needed to hear it.
And that when he told me that, I realized that all this time, I hadn't been angry with her, only him.
I told him that on some level he must have realized that I was still angry at him...even though I had told him that I wasn't and that I forgave him.
He said, "Oh, I knew on EVERY level that you were still angry with me."
I blushed, apologized and said, "I hadn't realized it."
I hope this is making sense to y'all. I don't think I'm expressing it very well...but this was a huge insight for me.
And I told Husband that way early in our relationship I had set him up on a pedestal. It never occured to me that he didn't know how to handle a situation.
And that was unfair of me.
The big insight was that I was angry with him. But I didn't have that insight until his words healed that wound inside of me. And I started pondering why him saying, "I just didn't know how to handle the situation" had such a huge impact on me. And that's when I worked my way backwards and realized that if some wound was healed by those words..then I HAD a wound that needed to be healed...and then I realized finally what that wound was.
Isn't it strange that this whole time I thought I was angry with her...when I was angry with him...and I never realized it?
