Rumspringa

[RegretfulLA]

Hello all,
Time has flown!
Son #1 comes home for the holidays in 3 hours. Son #2 comes home for the holidays in 3 days. I expect to see a lot more of H while they are home for the next 3 weeks.

H has gone fairly quiet and I have not reached out. He has not come by to get his mail or visit the dogs. Finally heard from him yesterday on our family chat when he said an extended family member had a medical emergency. Absolutely no discussion of the holidays or boys coming home or anything. Radio silence.

My therapist told me to act as if we are separated and I have done so. It's been less than 2 weeks, but I can already feel myself detaching. That feels good, actually. He told me not to discuss holidays with him - let him come to me and ask what the plan is. That said, I don't know if he will be joining us or not at my family's gatherings.

I have spoken to a bunch of L's. Will choose one, plunk down a retainer, hammer out a strategy and wait. One that I spoke to today told me not to rush, just to sit here in the house and have him pay for everything as long as possible. (I think she might be the one I choose! I like her style).

My view of what to shoot for (with some prognosticating): H likely will not bring up any serious talk. Therefore, at the end of month five, you bring it up. If discussions go reasonable, and H wants to return, he is still going to re-new another 6 month lease.

6 months to prove he is over AP. That is absolutely no contact! Period! H must be 6 continuous months of no contact with AP. If he reaches out, for any reason, the timer resets. And he starts another six months. (By the way, for me I’d utilize 12 months. A full year!)

To me, returning, the desire to return, needs to be that strong. The willingness, the displayed willingness and behaviour needs to be that strong. H has to prove he has changed.

I like this plan, but I don't know that he wants to or is ready to return. My guess is that he's not ready to re-commit. Even if he did want to return, I agree - we "date" for 6 months. And I HAVE changed. A lot. Asking him to give up AP (although 100% reasonable) may be viewed by him as "controlling" - in which case - we are at an impasse. Certainly I'm not going to be anyone's second choice or fallback plan.

H still needs time and space. Give it to him. Let him choke on it. You don’t want him running again.

Also 100% true. He needs to feel some pain here. As I have said before, he's only going to change when the pain of not changing exceeds the pain of changing. I think he miscalculated this situation greatly - for starters, thinking I wouldn't find out about AP, and secondly, him thinking I'd just be here if and when he was ready to come back. I'm not even sure I want him to come back now.

In the meantime, I'm doing a lot of reading about MLC, healing, D strategy, boundaries, etc. And I'm GALing with holiday parties and movie screenings and fun stuff. Decorating for Xmas. Gonna have S18 help me w Xmas tree this year. Let H understand he's no longer needed.

Did a satisfying home improvement project - fixed S18's wardrobe because - shocker - H skipped a few steps when he was assembling it and it fell apart. I literally found the back with the hardware that he figured wasn't necessary.

Sleeping juuuuust fiiiiiine these days.