I am trying to take things as slow as I can. But my H does everything at warpspeed. That's who he is. His entire affair, the EA and PA together was only 4 months. And I was left hanging in Covid limbo for 4 months. 6 months from now I'd like be a lot farther along in this process than "cutesy" things. H is already calling me pet names and looking at houses. I've told him we can't just pick up where we left off. We need to take things slow. Figure out who we are on the other side of this and who we are together. We need to reintroduce ourselves to the world as a couple again. And we need to run this household and parent in congress not in tandum. All that needs to happen first. He totally understands and respects that. We are dating. We do family dates and we do our dates. Like when we first started dating except he sleeps next to me every night now. We are feeling each other out on this side of things and finding our footing with each other. We are working on falling back in love with each other. That's just a space I don't see that detachment could help me in any way. Nor holding back on "cutesy" things. Why would I purposefully make myself emotionally unavailable to a person that is trying to win me back? I won't be cruel simply because I hold the cards here. I won't punish him because he did something wrong and withhold affection if I feel it.
No matter what, in this space we're in we both risk heartbreak here. Either one of us could pull the plug and decide this isn't worth the work we'll need for piecing. And I'm more than willing to risk the heartache of vulnerability and hope instead of wasting more time parsing my self out to him in tiny doses so I can't get hurt. I've been doing that for 7 months. And I'm going to hurt no matter what. Digging deep and working on our marriage or giving up and not going forward isn't going to be comfortable. But as I see it, a path forward, whatever that may be, is worth the risk, the discomfort, the work. I take my space when I need it. I vocalize what I need. This is me holding on to my 180s and my GAL. But we are developing a soft, happy place in each other again. And I so want that place untainted with the din of my feelings of what he did and how broken we became. Those heavy things are things we can dig out from later, together. Right now, in this place, we are just working on liking AND loving each other so the hard work isn't so hard later. So there are reasons to dig through the muck. Memories, laughter, sweetness, kindness, things we can hold on to when this journey and our MR gets hard.
I'll keep pushing my timeline, for things to happen at my pace. I'll keep pushing my needs. But I'm not going to keep up my walls or shut him out of things I'm feeling because I could be attaching or vulnerable. How do you fall in love without those things?
