Well, went to rescue my thread from page three and found out I was locked, so here goes again - My previous threads: Valentine's Day - Is it a Massacre?
My story: I'm 46, H 42, married 18 yrs. together 20, 3 kids S16 D12 S11. Backstory - night before our wedding old girlfriend seduces H. He spends next six months mooning over her and wondering if he made right choice. I know nothing until I find his journals six months into the marriage. Try to throw him out but he pleads. Eventually after I move to another city to continue my education he decides to recommit to marriage. We are happy, start family, life is good.
8 years ago I develop overactive thyroid, become spacy, loss of athletic capabilities, fatigue, gain 20 lbs.,etc. For various reasons pursue somewhat ineffective course of treatment until 3 years ago, disease flares up and am too fatigued and confused to continue working. Give up and take drugs for it (which have small risk of fatal disease). Numbers look normal but I never feel normal. After two years on drugs, make decision to kill off thyroid with radioactive iodine, become severely low thyroid after, takes 6 months to get thyroid replacement dose adjusted to proper level. Start feeling normal Nov. 2002.
H initiates MC 2 years ago. We go weekly but sessions seem focused on all his dissatisfactions with me and our mutual childhood abandonment issues (my father died, his mother left family in MLC). Things get worse.
Nov. 2002 - I'm finally starting to feel better. I find Michele's book. 2 days later H drops the bomb, ILYBINILWY. Spend November and December DBing madly. Because of improvement in thyroid condition am now able to work out and lose 20 lbs.H gradually warms up to me sexually, still no ILY's.
Dec. 29 - H wakes up early to "journal" then go surfing. Actually says ILY for first time as he leaves. Then I find his journal writings on the computer and discover: he started an affair one week after saying ILYBINILWY with a girl he had just met a couple weeks before. While we were on ski vacation before Christmas and having a great time together, he was still getting up and writing fantasies about happy second marriage with OW. H is planning separation. Kids find out, H comes home to tears and devastation all around. H tells me affair ended Thanksgiving weekend and OW moved out of town 2 weeks ago.
Dec. 30 - I announce to the board my intention to climb Mt. Whitney - to give me a goal to focus on outside the marriage and to celebrate my return to physical health.
January 2003 - H becomes very depressed after affair is discovered and seeks immediate psych visit - started on Prozac and individual counseling. Spends first three weeks of January very depressed - my concern for him overrides all else.
Last week in January, H still plans to move out Feb. 15, but starts to argue with me about child custody arrangements. I offer extremely generous visitation and buy myself a new bed because I don't want to sleep in old one with his memories when he's gone. Arrange for Feb 13th delivery.
Last weekend in January I go out of town on business trip with him for 2 days - seems a little better. H has insight with counselor about "longing", about how keeping one toe out the door in our marriage in case that "perfect" woman came along was a defense mechanism against the possibility of me abandoning him.
Next weekend - H actually feels happy! Is prozac kicking in or are insights from individual therapy kicking in? Unbeknownst to me, OW has been calling and emailing him throughout this past month. He is still drawn to the fantasy but starting to recognize her manipulative and self-centered side.
Second week of February - H informs apartment manager he is not moving in. Buys me red roses for Valentine's day and writes me a beautiful poem. Tells me ILY for Valentine's Day. We sleep together in my new bed. We go camping that weekend with kids and have a marvelous time.
Rest of Feb. - OW is still contacting H although he has asked her (not very forcefully) to stop. H finally tells me all this. Things between us are improving. He decides to write her a definitive "Don't contact me anymore" email but dawdles over it for over a week. I finally lose my patience just as he's coming to peace with the whole thing and letting go. We work it out. Go away on business trip together and ride hot air balloon over the desert.
March - I get my permits to climb Mt. Whitney. H is going to be my guide. We're both excited. I love him and he loves me. R is better than ever. He appreciates my strength and unconditional love when he was so confused. I know I wouldn't be here if not for Michele's books and the love and support of everyone here on the board.
June – we climb Mt. Whitney together! Our love is strong, although there are still issues to work through, but we are learning how to be more productive in how we deal with them.
Well -that's it. Unfortunately my original postings all got erased one day by accident, so I had to start using a different account, but I used to post as toughenoughforlove. I think most of February is in the Valentine’s Day – is it a massacre? thread.
Post Game Analysis What I did right: Act As IF - glass of wine, dancing in the kitchen to Tom Petty with beautiful meal prepared every night when H returned home - tried to stop reacting to his moods and just be in good mood myself.
Notes - kept index card with note in pocket - 180, act as if, do something different
Beginner's mind - let go of preconceived notions and tried to approach everything with a "why not?" attitude. This was also a 180 for me.
Validate, validate, validate - thank you Soup. Tried not to present my side but just validate what H was saying. Hardest thing I did but one of the most important.
Worked on myself - appearance, fitness, conscious living - at least other people were saying I was beautiful even when H wasn't yet! Didn't do it for H, but athletic companionship very important to him, my willingness to try new sports was something he really liked.
Loving detachment - got out of my defensive posture and let H's problems be HIS problems, not mine. Quit believing it was all about my flaws. Realized I could not control what he did, could only control my actions.
Act, don't react - tried to break cycle of reacting without conscious thinking first.
Emotional aikido - when I finally stopped fighting H on the separation is when he started to rethink it.
Sex - in this situation I refused to let our sex life die. May not work in every sitch but was important factor in ours.
Focused on baby steps.
WHAT I DID WRONG: Too much pursuing in the beginning. Fought the separation in the beginning - didn't respect H's need for space. Started to get into a little competitive space last week about the OW when I was getting impatient about the email; H really needs to see me as better than her and she is not worth my energy. Worried too much about things that never ended up happening - don't borrow trouble.
BOOKS THAT HELPED DR The Five Love Languages by Chapman A Year of Living Consciously by Gay Hendricks
ADVANTAGES I HAD Coincidental return to physical health at just the right time. H willing to see psych finally for his depression and start Prozac. H finally having insight into his own issues and able to see it wasn't about my imperfections. This board and its incredible support. Affair was already "theoretically" over when I discovered it. OW had moved out of town before I discovered A. H is basically a good guy whose needs weren't being met and had a crisis because of it. H's friends supported me and pushed H in right direction. I found Michele's book right before the bomb dropped. H lucked in to a pro-marriage individual counselor.
I mention these last things only so that those of you whose situations are not turning around as quickly will see that I had a lot of fortunate coincidences on my side. Patience and Discipline needs to be your motto.
Good luck to everyone!
Ellie
Postscript - Jan 2004 discover D13 has developed anorexia and bulimia. Applying all my DB skills to dealing with her illness.
PPS - September 2004 - D13 has started high school and is in recovery from her eating disorder, doing very well.
Had a bad week last week - felt pretty down, didn't really realize why at first. Think in retrospect it was partially hormonal, partially a reaction to H's stressed-out overscheduled summer, partially a let down from the worry about D13 now that she is doing better, and partially old grief (my father died unexpectedly during my first week of high school, so sending my D off to high school kind of kicked that up).
Plusses? I was able to tell H what i needed from him, and although at first he fell back into his old infuriating habit of not reassuring me (somehow when he feels worried I might abandon him, he loses the ability to offer me comfort in my pain - does that make any sense?) - once I called him on it and told him exactly what I needed, he came through. I guess after all this time the guilt is such that they STILL can't really deal with the LBS pain when it surfaces.
Feeling a lot better now, though, and have a funny thong story to tell (WARNING: FOLLOWING STORY MAY BE TMI FOR SOME AUDIENCES!).
Back when I was trying to win my H back, we went out to dinner one night, and at the end of the evening I slipped into the ladies room and returned with my thong in my hand which i discreetly slipped into H's pocket. Well, he has kept that thing in his truck ever since!
So H was at this convention with a female friend (getting donations for a charity we all work on) and the valet parking put his keyring on the wrong hook, so it didn't match his stub. When they brought out his truck, they wanted proof that it was his, but he wasn't sure where his registration was, so he told them, if they looked in the center console, they'd find a black thong!!!!
Glad to hear your daughter is doing better, it is a worry here too. D is only nine, but when she was slightly under the weather for a few days recently, she seemed a little too pleased by her flat stomach. It is sooooooo difficult to know how to handle the subject.
Also, I notcied for the first time in your situation summary, emotional aikido. I used to go to aikido classes many moons ago, and once read an interesting book about emtional aikido. Do you know the one I mean? Would you know the name of it? I would like to get it, if I can, but I suspect it may be out of print. I remember very well them describing the technique of mentally deflecting the force of another person's words away from you and perhaps even back on to them, so it doesn't affect you.
God, if you weren't there on my thread, gently pointing out other ways of seeing things in my situation, I'd be a basket case by now.
My H is very aggressive, not so much physically, but full of bluster and abuse, when he feels threatened. Why I don't I see it for what it is?
Livnlearn
"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates
Quote: once read an interesting book about emtional aikido. Do you know the one I mean? Would you know the name of it?
Sorry, don't know it. I think of it this way: instead of fighting back, validate, agree, drop the rope - and more often than not they will fall down!
Quote: My H is very aggressive, not so much physically, but full of bluster and abuse, when he feels threatened. Why I don't I see it for what it is?
It's pretty common that when the WAS feels guilty, they act out by showing anger and attacking. After all, if you don't fit their image of that terrible woman they were justified in leaving, then it throws off their whole world view - so they try to push you into behaving in a way that would justify what they are doing.
Quote: somehow when he feels worried I might abandon him, he loses the ability to offer me comfort in my pain - does that make any sense?
Oh, man, does it!
Hi, Ellie. I am new to your thread, also just back from vacation, and don't have time to read all the Val Day Massacre threads at the moment, and so in full discosure, I'm commenting with the benefit of only having read the synopsis.
That said, can I ask how you've handled the reassurance thing before? It's great that you called him on it and he came through, but has anything else worked in the past? Sometimes, it seems like they are letting you "win" if you ask for reassurance and they give it to you. S. used to do this and it drove me batty. I'd ask for reassurance and he'd get annoyed with me for being "demanding."
Anyway, I wonder, too, how much going dark played a part in getting your H to recommit. How did you go dark with him right there?
Well - make-my-day comment last night (as if getting to see GBO next week wasn't enough ) - last night D14 had her birthday party. One of the moms that I hadn't met before said "oh, you're so young!" to me. Now, D14 is my second child and I was 34 when I had her - you do the math, but I am definitely NOT a young mom Pretty cool that I can pass for one, though, eh?
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