Thanks may! I definitely feel I only did sorta OK on actual DB-ing, but I did take the time to work on my mental health and examine the sore spots in our marriage, validate, and give more positive feedback and become way more compassionate. H was a mess for a while, but has really turned a corner and gotten it together and is all in, words and action wise. It's been hard since we have been in different cities since the first day we discussed. He knows it'll take a bit for me to get over the hurt that he caused by leaving, but also now that he has opened up a lot more about it, I get it. He said it hurt him more to leave, but that he was miserable at how I was treating him, and he was bottling it up instead of really talking to me about it (he did half a$s try some and admitted he could have tried better). He said he can see that I do value him as a person, and apologized for not believing that I could work on myself and turn things around. He opened up about how no one in his life who has loved him but treated him poorly some times (parents, boss) has been able to actually change how they are treating him, and that was a lot of why he didn't think it was possible. I am not going to stop DBing in the sense of GALing (this hasn't been really a problem for us that much), working on myself, and not letting his entire mood dictate how I feel. Being kinder to myself means I can be kinder to others, generally. He has been so good about contacting me as much as possible during the day while he is on work trip -I am actually on a (shorter) work trip right now, too. I'm interested to see how this plays out in day to day stuff once we are back together. Not sure when he will be able to move home, depends on work, but he will be in our town the first 2 weeks of April for work. I am definitely still going to read the boards- my thread never got much traction but I am invested in everyone else's stories, even if I never comment.
