'Morning all Happy Friday! I have to say, there is little better than great feedback from the 'tribal elders' here at the board
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Accept the fact that he loves you and wants to be with you. But continue to chart out your own territory and go after the things that are important to you. If you change how you see him, you just might see that his motives aren't so different than yours. You just execute them differently. Not better or worse. Differently.

Yes, I'm guilty of derailing myself by forgetting that we do thing differently In most ways that matter, NG loves me. I have no doubt that even when he was in the absolute grip of the a, I was still the most important person in his life. Of course, not as important as I think I am
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At some point, it may just be healthy to put some imaginary blinders on so that you see only what you are doing and that whatever NG is doing has no bearing on how you proceed.

To be honest, I'm getting stuck here. Maybe because this has been BOTH our approach for the past 20 years, and I guess I'm nervious about doing something that does not work. But then again, we were happy, so maybe it did work It may be time for me to do some hard work and list out the before and after of various aspects of our life together...
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But many of our spouses clearly fear doing just this. It takes them much longer to see change as positive--I'll even wager that the only way some of them even get to that point is to have enough distance between them and the event that forced it to see it clearly.

This is so what NG is doing. Couched under the terms of 'I don't want to pay for the a for the rest of my life' he is adamantly sticking to the old habits as much as possible. Me on the other hand, feel strangely liberated. Its like I have now shaken a strange paralysis (self imposed of course) and am eager to try out new things. Ergo, we have some inherent conflict that needs careful management.

Valentine's day per se is not the issue, perhaps more the lack of courtesy in not even acknowledging my card. But here again, its not a personal issue, NG finds it difficult to say 'please' or 'thank you' to anyone. I just thought post a, I deserved better

Slowly

A Liberal Allowance of Time