When I read your posts, I notice how resistant I am to some of your suggestions. I don't know if it is that I am generally quite down at the moment and that is colouring the way I see things (and I am - I am very tired and low and just DONE with having to convince the kids to do something other than sit in front of their screens 24/7 as well as try to keep up with my own work and the house stuff) or if I am just disconnected from my marriage.
I don't WANT to convince him to go to MC, then have to sit and listen to him struggle to learn to make an empathic response, validate, show care and consideration, learn my love language. I did those things on my own - not perfectly, but I did - because I wanted to. He doesn't want to. And it isn't that he doesn't know how. He knew perfectly well how to do it when he was trying to seduce a 25 year old. He was able to give complements, show interest, say affectionate and romantic things, find time in his schedule, remember her special dates and show concern for her troubles, research and buy little and thoughtful gifts, flirt, make jokes, have fun and be happy. He KNOWS how to do these things and he can find the energy and will to do it. He just doesn't care to with me, and I don't care to sit there while a therapist either gets to the bottom of why he doesn't want to / is afraid to / can't be bothered to. I really don't want to.
I also, really, don't want to sit and watch films with him, or play children's games with him, or listen to him bang on about how he's much better than anyone else he works with, or make catty remarks about whoever he works with, or the news, or anything else he wants to complain about. I guess I want him to be the type of person I'd enjoy spending time with, but he's really not. I have to be honest and say most of the time I don't like him at all. I am not forgiving. I am angry at him for not being for me what he was for his EA woman. It was short lived, and it was two years ago now - but seeing that glimpse of him in that relationship and seeing that he hasn't been that man in this relationship for a very long time, and still isn't willing to be, makes me furious. I think H thinks I am still angry about the EA and I am not. I get why it happened and I do believe it isn't happening now. But it may as well be - the man I wanted and the man I married never came back to me.
I have said we need to work our communication. I have asked him what he needs from me. All he says is peace, and space, and time on his own. it's a constant and regular refrain. I don't really bother him that much any more. And the more I sit here, giving him space and waiting for him to come to me, the more my resentment and anger builds, and of course he can feel it - I don't think I express it, but we've known each other a long time and the man isn't an idiot.
I am very very tired. This has been an extremely difficult couple of years, and while i have learned a lot and grown a lot, I don't think I will ever be the kind of person that is happy in the kind of marriage my H wants and the kind of relationship he is able to offer. I remember feeling this type of upset and hurt and resentment years ago, and my anger getting so out of control it drove him away. I won't be that person again, but I also won't STFU and validate and GAL for the rest of my life in another room so he can be happy and I can pretend to be happy as that what suits him best.
