Good day Slowly ... I sure has a quite a bit of catching up to do after this weekend ...
Quote: it could be withdrawal.
best to consider it just another case of "itchy butt" to remind you its his issue and that you don't need to get sucked into it. Detach and let it go. Wait it out until his mood changes. In fact use the time you're thinking about his "itchy butt" to focus on what you can do for yourself. You still needs some "slowly" time too and less thinking about him and his moods. It does sound like both of you can use a break from "working" on M and just enjoy some R&R together. This weekend sounds like its just the thing at the right time!
Quote: we talk about the A or OW anytime the topic pops into our minds - I don't really want to have taboo subjects between us, NG has been pretty open up to now, I'm comfortable keeping this approach.
My concern here is NG may start seeing this as a bottomless pit, that will never end. His willingness to be open now is probably based on that his hope that it will lead to closure sometime not too far down the road. So my suggestion here would be to maybe set up some structure around such talks so that he can see that it is gonna lead to a dwindling. Maybe limit yourself to only mentioning at a certain period each day. After a week or two, reduce it to the same period every other day, then only twice a week ... once a week and so forth over a period of 4 - 6 months.
Quote: how do I get NG to open up about his feelings?
I wish I had some suggestions here, but I've been faced with this dilemma for years and have not found anything that works up to now. I've even asked the same question a few times here on the bb but to no avail. So I gonna watch your thread closely to hopefully gleen some wisdom for others that may respond.
Quote: secrecy - emails seem to have such a wall around them - and emails were one of the main modes between NG and OW. how do I get it across to him that the continued secrecy is not letting us get over trust issues?
This one seems to fall under the boundary discussions on Betsey's thread. Its gonna take NG to understand there will more than likely be some unfavorable consequences due to his secrecy, but those consequences won't derive from you. The will impact him in other ways.
Slowly, I know you're having a bit of a rough ride, but keep focus on the positives to help ride out the rough waves and next week tell us if the positives outweighed the negatives.
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