Still taking it a day at a time (2)

[may22]

Hi friends! Thought I'd update. I had a couple crazy weeks trying to button up everything I could at my last job, then a blissful week off. It was fantastic... H got me a hotel for a night ALONE and I took bubble baths and did yoga and slept in and had mimosas and room service and rented a cabana by the pool for the whole day. Read a novel and drank umbrella drinks. H and kids came by in the afternoon after school to hang out at the pool. It was soooo nice. Finally fully vaccinated too so had my hair cut for the first time in well over a year, had a massage, cleaned out my closet and got rid of a ton of stuff, generally just tried to really relax.

I started my new job on Monday and am totally beat-- I think a combination of the new job, meeting a million people, actually going into the office and being around people all day, and trying to learn a whole new business and triage all the various emergencies going on. They've been without a CEO since January and it was like everything was just waiting for me to come on board to vomit up four months plus of problems. I had planned on doing a lot of listening for the first few weeks (thanks, DB validating practice!) but may need to accelerate some actions or at least set ground rules and expectations sooner than I'd planned... anyway. it is a lot but I'm also loving really digging into something new.

Things with H are good. I generally feel like with me I'm one step back, two steps forward in my healing/forgiveness process. He has been very steady, continues to be open, caring, thoughtful, apologetic, non-defensive. A couple of months ago I told him he'd probably have to tell me he was sorry and he loved me every day for a year before I believed it, and he continues to do this maybe every other day or so. I'm still angry and hurt-- not like fire-breathing punching-bag angry, but part of me still has a hard time believing that H did what he did.

Our anniversary was during my week off. We went out to lunch and dinner ourselves. I got pretty angry with him at lunch, just thinking about the last few anniversaries-- he listened to how I felt, apologized, begged me really to stop thinking about the past and to focus on the now, told me he loved me, etc. I was able to set it aside for dinner and we had a nice time. We had this tradition before of choosing a song for our playlist every anniversary and I had decided not to say anything about it. Before the A, he was always the one to come up with a few songs for me to choose from and then during the A he didn't give a $hit about it (of course). I was curious if he'd remember and bring it up. He did, asked me on the way to lunch about it, had an idea for a song. It's funny in retrospect-- that conversation was what launched me into my angry recollection of the past three anniversaries, but now that I type it out i'm connecting that it was actually his loving behavior and doing what I'd hoped he would-- remembering the song tradition-- that spun me into that negative space. I'm pretty much giving myself a break for having those feelings because I come by them honestly, but I also don't want to sit in the space of negative reminiscing forever. I know my H thinks it is unhealthy and sincerely wishes I could let it go and focus more on the present.

After our anniversary and my negative reaction (which had the A on my mind for a few days) I decided to go back and read my thread from last year's anniversary, to see how things were different. They are very different. wow. I feel reluctantly grateful for the progress, the reluctance because there is still a big part of me that is angry it happened in the first place. I was very curious to know if I'd feel any fear or uneasiness reading back from that time, since it was just a few weeks after our anniversary last year that AP messaged him and he fell back off the wagon, but I don't. Gut check is clean.

I do believe he's 100% in this with me now, which is different from last year. I still feel like if he'd only actually truly cut everything off with her the first time around, I would be far less angry and more trusting now than I am. He feels like it was a process he had to go through, going to the very edge of separating and peering over the edge and realizing he that was not what he wanted in order to be wholly here and knowing in his heart that he wants to be here with me. I'm like, I guess, but there was significant additional damage done to me during that whole extra exploration process you did, and so that is now a part of our reality too that you'll have to deal with. A less understanding and trusting May than you would have had.

WF, I found a post you wrote me and WOW, it has even more resonance now than it did:

You know you will have to let this go someday if you want that MR 2.0. My bff tells me this every time I get caught up in my anger or fear. And I'm starting to make it a mantra on my road to forgiveness. There is going to come a point in the future where you have to deal with your pain, and fear all alone without involving H any more. He can't be beholden to your process over the A forever. And that's a sh!tty thing to say. Because let's be real he should be. But if you want to move past this and get to that MR 2.0 in full there really will come a time when you have to be alone with those feelings and process them and not drag him in to it, because your negative feelings about the A are going to go on far longer than his negative feelings about reinvesting in the MR.

I remember reading this back then and thinking nah, no way, he's the one being slow... and he was. But I had a delayed reaction, I guess. And now I'm the one who can't let it go. I know this is my work to do. I'm just not sure exactly how to do it other than just doing what I'm doing and not trying to skip ahead.