Reconciliation Rollercoaster (part 5)

[Pommy99]

That being said, for you guys-- I sense that your H is having a tough time facing his own actions-- not even being able to name what he did as an A is pretty major denial for starters. It is good that he feels relief in talking about these things and not carrying them around inside. Have you guys talked at all about what other truths there might still be left to be discovered?

MC asked if I have a list of Qs - I do. He suggested I re-review my Qs and see which ones I feel I need an answer to. He also suggested that H and I do this away from the house, maybe go for a walk and talk. Since the session, I have read my list but right now I don't know if this is the right time. In some ways I feel we are focusing to much energy on that and OW. This weekend, we need to get back to enjoying life and not focusing on the negative stuff. Perhaps I just have to accept the Qs are petty in the grand scheme of things - there were a huge amount of lies over 12 months, so knowing who he went off to phone on holiday 18 months ago probably isn't that important (although I've been carrying this for 18 months and wondering why I cant let it go).

If your H is saying he feels you're going over old ground and that isn't helpful for him (even though it is for you), what would H find helpful from a session and maybe you could let him start with that next time?

This is a good point. I will suggest this to him. I did push him a little today around lack of intimacy and he reassured me that he feels we've been spending better quality time together and feeling closer. He did also say I'm trying to push him too fast. We did agree, however, that the events of the last 3 weeks have caused us to derail a bit and we haven't been doing our MC "homework" and we need to start that again. I sat down and thought about what he HAS done over the last 2 weeks in the name of the M and I felt a little guilty for not allowing him some time to process everything. Like you, I struggle for patience - I think that is because my timeline is 20 months in and counting...his is a lot shorter. He told me more about how the NC conversation went with OW - she got really angry with him and made him feel guilty, saying that she would never have done that to him ,would never block him, would have always been there for him etc etc. That's what's been playing on his mind but MC session helped him release some of that - H said he realized she wasn't his responsibility anymore. (I bit my tongue as I thought "and when WAS this married woman your responsibility?" !!!)

I've been thinking recently about the conversations I had in the fall and early spring with my DB coach, and re-read my notes from them. She said multiple times that the number one predictor of couples that recover from an A and go on to M2.0 is friendship, backed by Gottman's work. She talked about romance being the fruit of the tree of the R, and right now it looks dead from the outside. You need to water the roots and have the leaves come out before it is ready to fruit again. The roots, trunk, branches are your friendship and you can't pick the fruit before it is ready

- I very much agree with this, but I guess I start to panic that the tree isn't growing (after all I am trying to watch it grow every single day!!) and then I do something dumb like over-water it!

Maybe it does come across as pressure for your H to think you're waiting for some big sign from him to put them back on and he doesn't know what to do about that. From a 180 standpoint... I wonder what would happen if you did just put them back on and not say anything. It could be a signal to him that you are willing to open the door to him as he stands on the doorstep and work on the M. They are just rings after all and only have the significance you place on them. I'm not suggesting you do that if it doesn't feel right to you, but maybe it would help to just lighten things up a bit if you could say, OK, I'm here too, I'm willing to work on our M even though I'm not feeling everything I want to feel right now. It is more like thinking about love as an action rather than a feeling. Just a thought for you to take or leave.

I do feel I have made this a bigger deal than it needed to be - one of those things that eats away at you and you try and say nothing, waiting for them to act, and knowing that if you say something and they act, you feel like they are only doing it because you asked them to. Respect to H as he has not taken action lol. He has made lots of references over the last few days to me being his wife ("happy wife =happy life" kind of things!). I'm still learning and still confused May, as with your H, I don't get the ILYs, but he does tell me he loves me when we're having R conversations. (I get it..."in love" vs something else). GD this is hard! Thank you so much for your support

Have you thought about scheduling some IC sessions for that purpose?

Hi Cwarrior, I haven't had regular IC for a while although it was helping earlier in the year. I guess what I felt relief over this week was that my feelings were being aired and heard in front of H. Maybe I've been more confident in talking about how I feel, MC has encouraged me to speak up after I said that I always felt my feelings were being quashed and that I was being pushed into the corner to suck up and accept H's behaviours. I think I am becoming more vocal about what I will and won't put up with. I kind of like that. I actually feel like H is starting to take me more seriously. Perhaps I'm finally learning about boundaries