I think traumatic is the right word. I know - we have talked about it a little - that during our separation he was on autopilot and just buried himself in work and this massive project he had on. He says he was not seeing EA woman during this time, and I believe that. He worked constantly. It was a once-in-a-career thing and I think he just focussed entirely on that and put the marriage entirely out of mind. In some ways, I am quite envious of his capacity to do that - to insulate himself from what was happening. I was in a very very quiet period of my work, and focussed on my own pain and the marriage to the point of obsession - I couldn't manage to put it aside even for a day - and as I was in that state, even me being in the same room as him was a reminder of the thing he just did not have the capacity to think about and deal with, and triggered all sorts of push-away behaviour from him, which was angry and abusive and horrible.
Now we're both on a more even keel with work, and I think he's perhaps still processing the separation, and I'm further ahead than he is in some ways, but in others no nearer to working through that trauma. The shock - that even though the marriage was terrible and that things were impossible - he really did leave and I really did change the locks on him. That it is possible to end or break a family - that had been unthinkable for so long (as it is to all of us) but it loomed into view as possible, and you really can't ever come back from that. Marriage is always a choice, which means either of us could choose not to be married. It is kind of awful to live with that knowledge - just as it was awful to live with the sense that this was it, it was terrible and unfixable and we were both trapped in it forever. It was so so so horrible and I know we both have so much fear about going back to that - both the pain we were suffering and the ways we were both individually behaving. I never want to be so flailing and distressed and desperate, and so willing to absorb abuse, and I don't think he wants to go back to feeling so trapped and frightened that he lashed out the way he did.
Thinking of it this way helps me actually to have a lot more compassion for him.
