Update: So things are chugging along. We've started opening the can of worms. H is much more comfortable talking about why he decided to turn back toward me and the marriage then discussing why he turned away. I still think it's going to be a long time before he really understands himself in the situation, but it is what it is. I think he really needs to start IC but working through this between the two of us has been going pretty well so far. H is open and honest. He listens and is invested in working through this. Emotionally I feel closer to him now than I have in ages. General kindness and thoughtfulness is a complete 180 from where we were. I'm actually kicking myself for thinking he was helpful around the house or invested in being a partner with me in M 1.0. H's willingness to help alleviate the workload, understanding how much of a financial burden I was carrying with the smaller income, just being genuinely grateful for what I do is like a whole different world. This was stuff I was honestly resentful for the whole time and I didn't realize how p!ssed I was about it until I didn't have a reason to be mad about it any more.
We've dug into other things like how H likes to jump to worst case scenario with the girls and how frustrating it is for me to have to jump in and be the buffer or the one to smooth things over and I'm not willing to do that any more. He needs to gain control of his temper with them and be less fatalistic. That his tantrums don't benefit anyone certainly not the kids, and that there are better ways to approach problems. That not everything is a Dad on 11 problem. That if the girls aren't on the street corner selling themselves, getting hopped up on aderall/doing blow/playing with MDMA or committing felonies, that his reactions are so over the top. That there is like 1-10 he could utilize but it's always straight to 11 and then I'm left to do the real parenting and then come in and fix the rift he made. That all this basically comes down to me being tired of you resenting me for things the girls haven't done yet blaming these imaginary scenarios are caused by me "coddling" them and me resenting you right now for your absolutely ridiculous behavior that's affecting them in the here and now. We've always had very different parenting styles and while he's slowly migrated to my side of the fence, in "crisis," (that's in quotes because anything that the girls do that causes slightly more than a minor inconvenience is a crisis to him) he's back to authoritarian dad. Working through that and just getting it out there has helped open more conversations about parenting the kids especially as we approach the years of having adult children in our home.
School and work and the kids are getting harder and harder to juggle and thankfully H is really picking up the slack and being super supportive of my schooling. I have upped my meds. This time of year and with all that's going on in the world I was seriously, seriously struggling. In the last couple of weeks I can feel a difference. I'm not exactly all rainbows and sunshine but I'm not arguing with myself about getting out of bed in the morning any more.
In other news, my maid of honor/childhood best friend is expecting. She started dating her H around the time H and I started dating. They were engaged after H and I were already married but they had a super short engagement so they could start working on the growing family thing as we aren't exactly getting any younger. I had no idea how much this would affect me. With H re-investing in the marriage I don't have that same anger that he stole 7 years from me any more, but I do still feel like he stole a year of my life. He stole a year of our marriage to find something he still can't articulate and never actually found out there. A year and half ago he wanted to have a house and be trying for a baby by now. A year ago he started an EA that led to a PA that led us here. And now by the time we get our marriage fully back on track I will be nearly 40, our kids will both be adults, and the concept of a baby at that time would just be ridiculous. Right now I'm dealing with the anger of his demons taking something he's known I've wanted for 8 years. I brought it up with IC and were going to be working through that.
But I guess the point of all this is that the anger, the sadness. All that stuff just comes in waves. This whole process of working through my feelings around this sh!tstorm feels much like the way my grief for my mother washes over me. At first it's constant like surviving a shipwreck in a storm. Out to sea adrift hanging on to what you can to survive waves and rain battering you. Feeling like your drowning in the anger and sadness. And little by little the storm clears. first the wind dies down and so do the pounding swells. Then the rain stops. At some point the sun starts to peek through and you have a little room to breath, but then remember your stranded in the middle of the ocean and trying to survive. Then slow you start to drift ashore. The waves pushing you along until you reach the safety of shore. More time passes and you start to forget you were ever in danger or how hard getting through all that was. Then a storm hits and it doesn't challenge your survival but it brings all that other stuff back up.
R after all of this isn't easy. It's exhausting. It's so much self work. And so much work together. But most days in most ways our MR is better and stronger. The fear of upsetting him for me is gone. I honestly didn't realize until all of this how much I was keeping to myself to keep the peace. Now I have the solace of "well what is he going to do, leave me?" I know that if that's his choice because I'm trying to have a healthy authentic relationship and to be healthy and true to myself then he was never really in this nor was he ever really for me.
We carve out time to talk about the heavy stuff. We carve out time to just enjoy each other's company. But the bulk of our time is spent living our everyday lives trying to get by in these weird weird times. I can honestly say I have no idea when I'll feel like we're out of the woods, but I feel like my intuition from the get go wasn't wrong. For better or worse I'm H's person and he's mine, and we'll keep chugging along.
Well that's 6 weeks worth of thought/word vomit. I hope at least some of that was coherent.
