Thank you all for the thoughtful advice and support during my 'crisis', dear friends.
I felt clear and strong in my intentions when H and next spoke about the birthday. That he would be able to come and the expectation would be that we worked on a friendship and being amicable prior to and during the party. I felt capable of it and H affirmed that he was as well.
I thought it was going to be a quick conversation, but it morphed into a huge R talk. More of a one-sided conversation, in that I listened and validated and tried to re-direct when things started to feel intense. But I learned SO much from that conversation (I think Job is the one that says to sit back and listen because sometimes the MLCer will say a LOT and there will be some truths mixed in there worth examining). So I did a lot of listening.
Some of what H said he has stated before. And maybe I was only now able to 'hear it' and validate because I am in a more detached headspace?
Some of the key points that have stuck with me over the past few days:
H is deeply, deeply, deeply insecure. To a degree that I never recognized. Some childhood issues came up and then I saw them manifest into his current state within the same conversation. It was like watching a sci-fi movie. It made me feel deeply compassionate towards him. But at the same time also made me realize how much we both have been compensating for these insecurities over the years instead of really addressing them. Not that they were mine to address in the first place.
He questioned my fidelity in such a way that don't think this was a manifestation of his own guilt coming to play. Loyalty and integrity are huge values for me. The fact that he wove this narrative in his head about me over the years makes me so sad. For him, as a reflection of his insecurities, more than a 'how could he ever think that?!?' sort of way.
He can barely deal with his own emotions and those of the children, let alone mine.
We both have sheltered our narratives in a bubble of our own pain and suffering over the past year. And those narratives could not be more opposite. Detachment is helping me to re-write my own narrative with more self-compassion and compassion towards H. I don't know if he will ever be able to reconstruct his narrative. But I hope one day he will.
I left the conversation feeling hopeful. Not about my M or our R, but about the lessons I am learning about myself. Mainly, that I am capable of detaching. That I can listen to all of this and feel compassion instead of it instigating a defense mechanism in me.
In the few days since our conversation, we have worked on being friends. Warm hugs, kindness, chit chat. He opted to come to my house and sit side-by-side through parent-teacher zoom conversations instead of joining the zoom from his own home. We had lunch today at my house and sat alone and chatted throughout.
In a recent parenting challenge, he accused me of coming to the parenting table with my 'own pain and suffering about our situation' but I gently stated that those emotions weren't present in my life at the moment and I was truly focussed on our children. He heard this, not because I said it, but because I am living it right now.
He is wobbly and I can tell that this is uncomfortable for him. It's easier to vilify me when I am reacting from a place of hurt, instead of interacting from a place of detachment.
Interestingly, I feel we are further from any sort of reconciliation than closer to it. I sadly believe that maybe he is right: I am not the person for him in this life. Not that I wouldn't like to be. Not that I wouldn't do anything to have our family intact again.
