Cardinal, it was a chocolate layer cake (baked by my D8 with help from H) and liberally frosted/decorated with vanilla/confetti buttercream by my D10. I think my H had to run the dishwasher three times that day. Sage, I totally agree.. people kept texting me to ask what I did special on my birthday and besides five straight hours of Zoom work calls, I simply didn't clean or cook, plus no real child supervision since they were so involved with the cake-making and decorating. It was ah-may-zing.
I had an interesting mini-R talk with my H last night as we were laying in bed. He said he is having a really hard time understanding why he did what he did, wrapping his head around two years of lying, cheating, that he did that to me. That he has been trying to put the reasoning on a spectrum, with one end being just a despicable human being, and the other end being (and he was clear to say he didn't think this was the case, just that this end would be the most justified end of why someone would behave the way he did) like The Princess Bride type true love. if there were only one person out there that you could be happy with and if you found that person, maybe that is a justifiable reason. He doesn't know where he falls on this spectrum, and I think he's trying to wrestle with the "I'm just a bad person" narrative in his head, that there is no excuse for what he did.
He doesn't know how to figure it out right now, because I don't want to hear some parts of what he would need to say (because I've drawn a boundary around hearing about his feelings for AP), his IC is OK but kind of an echo chamber since he's the only one talking, and until we can see the MC again together he just doesn't know how to process all of this.
I said I didn't actually think the feelings for the other person played into it at all and was not a justification for any behavior. He asked me what I thought was the other end of the spectrum. I said, carefully, that I thought someone could be a good person but be sad and hurting and lonely, and that someone comes along who listens and wants your advice and wants to be with you, and that probably would feel really good, and those decisions were made from that place, not completely out of selfishness and not caring how your actions affected other people. He was silent and then said thank you for saying that, it means a lot.
He said, but I did this for two whole years. I said I imagined that he got into a situation that was hard to get out of, and the only way he could justify it was to believe that it was true love, or whatever, on his justification spectrum, and so that fed into the the whole cycle. That he kind of had to double down in order to justify his own behavior. He said, I think that is more true than you know.
He said, but you would never have done this. I said no, I didn't think so. But that who you are is made of up the choices you make, and you can change that by changing your choices as you go forward. Don't want to be a liar? Don't lie anymore. You can't change the past. The A happened. There is no changing that. But you can move forward and be the person that you want to be going forward. And that I agreed that understanding why this happened was really important going forward for me as well, and for what it's worth, I'm here to listen. (I didn't bring my boundary back up, but it is still there and I think he knows that without me needing to say it again.)
He talked a little about consequences, that there are some things that you don't just get to say are in the past, like if you had a DUI and hurt someone, you'd have to live with that forever, maybe go to jail, whatever. Anyway. We talked about all this for awhile, and a little bit about how I'm feeling. This morning, he accidentally woke me up super early with his alarm too loud... he apologized a bunch (I have a hard time falling back asleep if I wake up since all this started) and came over and gave me a long hug in bed before he left. This hasn't happened for years. Like YEARS.
So... I feel cautiously optimistic, maybe we are moving into "piecing" whatever that is. Yes, still no beating of the breast and rending of the clothes in sorrow and penitence. I'm not hearing "I'll do whatever it takes" to make it right. I don't think he'll ever do either of those two things. But-- he finally answered my outstanding questions about the A. He is being thoughtful and working on why he did this (and I'm assuming part of that will be how to forgive himself for it), not just trying to sweep the whole thing under the rug which was a fear I had for awhile. We're talking about it and not fighting. I suppose it doesn't matter what we call it. He is working through his stuff, I need to continue to focus on me, and I guess I'm just not sure how to navigate what gets worked on together out of all of this when we can't see the MC and no child care on the horizon until the fall, assuming in-person school starts back up then.
For those of you who have gone through or are currently going through this stage... any thoughts?
And Sage... still wondering if you have the time and energy for it-- what are your thoughts about setting intentions/visioning for things that aren't just for you, but require another person to be engaged?
(re-reading this it sounds like I did a lot of the talking... I didn't, really. I mostly listened.)
Me (46) H (42) M:14 T:18, D9 & D11 4/19 - 12/19: series of escalating BDs 9/20 - present: R and piecing
