Wow, guys, thanks. There's a lot to absorb here. Thanks so much for all the time and energy, and the outrage - it makes me feel very supported.
I was planning to ask him to see the e-mails - at least the one from him. I am waiting, however, until I get back and he has no excuse - I want to be there so he can't say he'll do it later, or that he can't access his e-mail. I'm not going to demand, I'm just going to suggest it as a way to build trust (ugh, I typed that and I realized how hypocritical it sounds coming from a snooper).
When I talked to him I told him how upset I was, and that it was OK for him to write her whenever he wanted, because that was his choice. I said, however, that it doesn't have to be OK with me, and it isn't. I told him he is continually pushing me over my boundary on this, and I keep crawling back to the other side, and that I wasn't willing to live like that.
He said there were "many diverse threads," that it's not about him writing to her (I interjected, "of course it's not about your writing to her"), and that we needed to unravel them to get at the heart of what it is really about. He says he's not "thinking about her," he's thinking about me and the baby and how we're going to get along with our daughter on the way. He says writing her is not about me, and I said it certainly isn't, but making agreements and then breaking them is about me and my ability to trust him. Incidentally, I did tell him that my ultimate goal was NOT "to get along well enough to raise our daughter, but to be happy together and get married and have a family." I felt I needed to be explicit about that, because he keeps talking about being in T so we can "get along." He said "Yes, it would be great if things were perfect, but we aren't there yet. It would make me very happy if we could just get to the point where we can talk to each other and get along." I asked him if that was his ultimate goal. He finally said that being happy together and getting married and having a family was his ultimate goal (after I had to tell him again that I wasn't asking about his medium-term goals).
Ellie, as an aside, I believe that he is so desperate to talk to her because he wants to tell her what's going on. He says he feels strange not having told her, and that he has been wanting to contact her so he can tell her. I believe, as well, that he wants to dump all the gory details on her about not wanting the child, about beng trapped, about not being happy with me. I, of course, want to control what he says to her, to make sure he doesn't tell her our business, say I trapped him into it, etc., and so that's why I've been so reluctant to talk about it with him (knowing I can't control it and knowing deep down that I shouldn't want to). I think the T will help in this regard, or at least it is what I'm hoping.
I've considered not going to T tomorrow morning, and letting him go in alone to deal with this crap, but I think I will probably end up going, if only to tell the facts (the timeline always gets screwed up in his mind [and of course in his favor], and I have a perfect memory for things like that). I can just hear him telling the T that SM has only been an issue for the last year, or something ridiculous, like he never carried on a R with her while he was with me. He tries that on me plenty.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughts, and the support. I'm mulling it all over - the thought of throwing him over is a daunting one, since I know I can't just run off with the baby away from him. I want to be fair, no matter how much of a prat he's being to me. I'd have to find some suitable and affordable housing in or around NYC, which is next to impossible for someone who will also have to pay family health insurance while not working steadily. The easy route would be to move into my parents' mountain house, but that would be too far away from Daddy. I just don't know what I would do, honestly. Complicating things is the fact that I do love him, and know he's trying really hard in other ways, and he is making a tremendous effort to heal our other problems (he just has this one BIG, UNACCEPTABLE hangup).
I'm curious to hear what he has to say about "what it means to him" to be in contact with SM. And H2H, you'll be interested to hear that on the phone last night in his attempt to highlight what he IS doing for us, he said just what you were saying all along, that he "made such a big deal about going to therapy" because I wasn't hearing him, that I wasn't able to hear him and listen to HIM. (Hmm, no mention about hearing me or listening to me.) You always said that the big push to therapy was for me to hear what he had to say.
- it makes me feel very supported.
