Mostly I lurk on your thread, but have never realized how eerily similar our situations are until I read your post for today. Mind if I take a moment to commiserate with you?
Saturday is the one year anniversary of MY bomb. October has always been my favorite month of the year and now for the rest of my life, it will forever be tarnished with the news I learned one year ago. My bomb anniversary is also one of my best girlfriend's birthday. Sigh. I am so ready for the day that it ONLY becomes her birthday again and all this is forgotten.
As I read your post, I recognize so much of the same things I am also going through right now.
My H is also pleasant and considerate, occasionally fun to be around, but there is no romance (read as intimacy) whatsoever in our R. When romance is addressed, I get the same excuses as you do--that he is simply worried about work, that he's incredibly behind because of all the time he spent goofing off from work for over a year and a half (he will admit to the goofing off, but he WON'T admit that the time was spent with OW), is getting in trouble for it from his superiors AND his employees (his superiors want oodles of work from him and his employees want to continue to goof off while he wants them to work now) and is afraid he won't get his promotion.
I try to offer as much support as I can to him in any way that I can and I hope that it is doing something for him, but the best thing I can do for me is to "drop the rope." Sometimes I have to wonder how healthy that is for us too. I struggle with letting my H be and letting go and letting God. How long do I do this? Is is imperative to set a timeline up or do I simply continue to let things go? When do I start asking for what I want? I have tried it once and it caused a big blowup between us and subsequently my requests were ignored, because in his opinion one request was a bad idea (blocking OW's emails, which I think is a fair request) and my request for more intimacy was agreed with, but quickly forgotten. So that is what I got for attempting to ask for what I wanted. Mostly I was hurt all over again. I think if you send another letter at this point, it will not be a good idea, IMHO.
And neither do I want to go back to the way things were before as you described: distant, cordial but not passionate....just kind of blindly trudging through life. But it seems that is what we are doing. Perhaps it is a necessary stage in the healing process before we can move on to the next better level. Am I fooling myself thinking that? Probably, but for now, I am going to consider this a healing stage for the both of us and will continue to be still.
So I am in that same weird place emotionally you are today. Since so many of us are experiencing this same phase, does that mean it might be normal in this process? I hope so. My counselor told me that it is going to take a long, long, long time for us to heal. I just have to remember to remain patient in the healing process.
Pamila and Nevanna--your words helped me immensely today. Thank you!!
Blessings,
LG
A blessed and happy marriage is a union of two forgivers and Him, because...a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12.
