As always, so happy to hear from you. You *have* come such a long ways from a year ago. Earlier this week I spent some time reading through your thread at Sage's suggestion and am seeing all the similarities in where I am right now to your sitch many months ago. Which makes me both think WOW I sure like to skip ahead in my brain and feel like I should be farther along, but also underscores the value of your posting for me and so many others. So even if it feels boring or whatever, I just want you to know how helpful it is for those of us that come after you.
For instance, I was reading back at the beginning of this thread back in July and it was a big change that he was treating you like his wife and not sulking or hiding his phone anymore, but also no ILYs yet. Somehow in my mind, you've been in this place you are right now where he is sweeping you off your feet to say he loves you and never leave him forever... but I had forgotten that it took time to get there. And here I am still struggling with what feels like the glacial pace of my situation changing, and yet my H *is* saying ILY now without any caveats, smiling with his eyes and hugging me just because, and the sulking etc behavior has been gone for a long time. This gives me so much hope that I'm on the right path. And what you've said all along, that he's going to be all-in far before I can be-- that never made sense to me but I'm starting to see that possibility open up, now.
The other thing Sage said is that the very slow pace of my H's changing feelings, just like yours, does help you to trust the process more than if it had been a overnight epiphany or was something you hadn't seen with your own eyes. I know, for instance, that if my H had left, I wouldn't be standing anymore. To me, as much as the enormous betrayal of what he did do is something I'm still processing and the trust will be slow to build back, the betrayal of actually leaving, of choosing that life with another person, of needing that relationship to fail and then somehow deciding he wants back in here... that level of betrayal feels so much harder for me to ever forgive. I don't know that I ever would or would want to. I'm having a hard enough time forgiving the betrayals that he did commit-- that final step of walking just seems like something I could never get over.
Maybe not everyone is cut out for the IHS version of this process, and right now I'm living the pain of seeing how slow this whole thing goes, at least for my H. (I know you've said your H does everything at warp speed, so that is a plus for you for sure!) And when each little thing comes back, I'm hit with the realization that it was missing for so long. Did that happen to you too? Like my H told me over the weekend that he feels this change in the little things, that instead of feeling a rolling of the eyeballs when the first thing I do in the morning is make coffee he feels happy that I'm making myself something I enjoy. Of course what I hear is that he felt until now annoyed that I made coffee. And also that little spark of love he feels or whatever (he said it was a feeling of love that he had when I made coffee) is a tiny little spark compared to the overwhelming tide of TRUE LOVE he said he felt for AP in the past. (Ha ha I can tell one thing he is REALLY regretting right now is saying all the $hit he did about how he felt about AP.) But I am trying to separate the past and the future from the now, and be happy that there is a little spark, that he says ILY, that I feel it too in those moments when he smiles with his eyes and hugs me like he's happy to see me. You also talk about fear in your posts from last summer, and I still have that too. I'm wary. And of course don't really know that we'll get to where you are even if we are walking parts of the same path right now. But following behind you and seeing where you are now does give me hope and I think I needed some of that right around now. It's just really hard to let go of what happened in the spring, for me.
I had meant to ask how your Feb 5 went... I know you'd mentioned before that was a hard day last year.
Thinking of you. And wish I could send some warm weather your way. xx M
Me (46) H (42) M:14 T:18, D9 & D11 4/19 - 12/19: series of escalating BDs 9/20 - present: R and piecing
