Midlife Crisis and Affair with Past GF

[may22]

Hello. If this was a family friend I could just say, yeah you can't come over to my home. But it's not. This is his home as much as it is mine. Don't get me wrong, I do recognize that there is a tiny bit of control in my boundary about him seeing OW and asking to protect me from Covid. But I feel sort of trapped in this one, because I am at risk no matter what I do unless I leave or get a restraining order. And my lawyer said I should avoid leaving the home for legal reasons. So as I recognize this one is hard to enforce and isn't solely the best type of boundary,

IDK, I think if you choose to go to a hotel because your H is putting you at risk of COVID and would not agree to safe behavior (quarantining and testing) I would be floored that it would impact your ability to keep the home in a D. Keep records of all of it. It isn't like you're moving out. You are protecting your own health. (That being said, I think it if was me, I'd do exactly what you're planning on doing-- wearing a mask and keeping your distance. It might be kinda fun to ostentatiously follow him around with a bottle of Clorox and paper towels too and wipe everything he touches, but that probably isn't exactly DBing. )

I don't think there is anything wrong with asking him not quarantine and test. It is perfectly reasonable to ask someone who lives with you (H or not) to protect your health and that of your children. But I just wouldn't call that a boundary. It isn't. The boundary would be "I won't be around you if you refuse to quarantine" (and then you'd have to follow through by leaving). The control attempt is you must quarantine and test if you see OW on this trip before returning to (your) home and seeing (your) children. Do you see what I mean?

On the ring-- I agree 100% with the others. This is totally your call. I thought about this a LOT too. My H takes his ring on and off all the time for yoga and surfing, and I used to watch like a hawk (not say anything) to see when he took it off, how long it took him to put it back on, etc. Before the A, it was really rare for him to forget to put his ring back on. During the A it would be off more than it was on. He told me it didn't really mean anything, but admitted that because he wasn't feeling positive about our M (this was before I knew about the A, just that he wasn't "in love" with me anymore) he wasn't incredibly motivated to put it back on. I took some comfort in the fact he always wore it when he traveled-- somehow I felt like that meant something. Recently I asked him if he just took off his ring as soon as he got to AP's city and left it in his toiletry kit the whole time-- he said yes. So here I was reading into his wearing the ring as he left the house and thinking it meant something, when it meant nothing. Gross.

I wore my ring the whole time until this past September, when I finally was ready to D him. He was looking for an apartment, back in touch with AP, and I was done. I took off my ring then. I don't know if that meant anything to him, but I know he noticed. (And note-- I did not take it off to produce any response in him. I actually didn't think he would notice or care. I took it off because I was ready to D him.) When he changed his mind and wanted to try to R, he put his ring back on but I did not. I actually left it off for weeks, until I decided to put it back on for practical reasons (we were doing some renovations and I didn't want to leave my ring around the house with workers coming in and out all the time). Now, he always always wears his ring-- even if he goes surfing he sometimes gives it to me to hold for him rather than put it away.

The only thing I would add to the advice on the ring beyond doing what feels right to you, is not to force anything. Be patient with yourself. This is all hard, really hard, and takes time to properly process. Give yourself a break. One piece of advice that is repeated here a lot that I think is golden is to not react out of emotion on anything. Even when thrown into an unwanted R talk, just validate your way out of it and escape so that you have time to calm yourself, think rationally about what is happening, and decide how you want to respond. You have time on the ring question. Don't stress out about it.

((Elbereth))