A day at a time

[may22]

thanks Alison and Mar.

Mar-- positive vibes right back at you!

I do think that STFU and validation are good when all else is failing. But if you are choosing a marriage, and you are choosing to be connection with someone who says they want to be in connection with you, then there's room for more. And that 'more' is assertive communication. I'm not sure that is covered in the 'how to respond right after BD rules' that are so useful to us all at the start. But I do think those rules help us develop self respect, self control, self-soothing mechanisms, boundaries and a willingness to take responsibility. From that ground work (that your H has not done yet) we can speak something like the truth.

This is really interesting, Alison. I think there is a lot of truth to this. And in the end I think it comes down to knowing yourself, having that deep well of self-love and self-respect that fuels your boundaries, and being able to do what is right for you in an authentic way, regardless of whether it pushes your spouse out or in. Because if you stop being true to yourself, you're not going to be happy whether your S is in the picture or not. i think I'm not quite as far along on this path as you are, Alison. I still need to sit in this place for a bit of being OK with leaving, OK with staying, what i will and won't accept over the long term in my M. And also, spending enough time on self-care and GAL that my H's slow timeline no longer bothers me.

I'll share something else he said during our little mini fight the other day, before I walked away and cooled down and returned to share my thoughts. He said I'd wrecked our M with the SSM (I can't recall exactly what prompted this, I think something along the lines of me basically overreacting to his rudeness, like I took a sledgehammer to our M for what was really a minor thing in the grand scheme). I said, you wrecked our M by having an A. He said (big honest eyes)-- I think the A is what may save our M. And I thought, DANG. This guy is really trying everything he can to excuse his own behavior.