Yes, that's it, absolutely. I know that I have been much less than affirming throughout our R. And I guess it comes from my ingrained feeling that "once is enough." S. seems to need repeated affirmation, and I've noticed it, but I haven't acted on it. Case in point: When he cooks, I will take the first bite and say, "Mmmm, this is good." A few minutes later, he will say, "This is pretty tasty, isn't it?" and I will say "Yes, it's very good." Another couple of minutes go by: "Mmm, this is good. Do you like it?" and I will say, "I like it very much. It's very good." After dinner, he will say, "That was tasty, did you enjoy it?" And by this time I either want to burst out laughing or scream, but usually I just smile and say, "Yes, I enjoyed it very much, thank you." And then sometimes, a few days later, he will say something like, "How did you like that [dish] I made the other night? That was pretty tasty, wasn't it?" And at THAT point I find myself wishing it were still in my gullet so I could regurgitate it on his shoes.
T was tough this morning. S. brought in the dread e-mail from SM (the one where she is "sorry for him, and sorry for herself" and wonders what "could be done," and says she is ignoring the no-contact rule, and evokes old memories of them together throughout their history. ~~~*) <-- that, for newcomers to my thread, is the JinBklyn memorial pukey icon. Anyway, we spent the whole T session talking about her and S.'s R with her, and we didn't get to read the e-mail until it was time to leave.
I am still processing, but it was somewhat traumatic and I am probably going to leave out all manner of important detail the first time around. Here are some bullet points:
* S. is VERY reluctant to admit that there is ANYthing in that R that threatens ours. * He is still clutching the "controlling" card, that my asking him to limit contact with her is my being controlling (rather than trying to heal our R). * He said he felt "violated" by having to read the e-mail aloud, and having me read it the other night. * He said that my focus on her made him think about her "far more" than he would if I just let it be. (This is actually one of the very first things my DB coach Chuck said to me eons ago when I called for the first time. "Why would you purposefully make him think of her when he's with you? Stop bringing her up.") * The T was all over him, asking him to tell me how my feelings made sense to him, even as he was saying he didn't agree with what I was saying. * After he finally read the e-mail aloud, the T said it sounded to her like SM was "imagining" there to be some connection there that S. is denying exists, and that it sounded like she was trying to draw him back into a R with her. * The T said that the R with her not only served to pull S. away from me, but me away from S. She asked S. what the priority was, his R with me or something else, and he said his R with me. So she said next week we'd talk about how to say good-bye to things that pull us away from each other.
She said that it's an ongoing process, because more often than not, we don't want to say goodbye to those things. But if the priority is to be together, then we must do it.
My self-assigned homework this week is to come up with things that draw me away from S. - things I can say good-bye to. I feel I need to show him that I am willing to let things go, too, and it's not just him "compromising" himself and "losing" something.
~~~*) <-- that, for newcomers to my thread, is the JinBklyn memorial pukey icon. Anyway, we spent the whole T session talking about her and S.'s R with her, and we didn't get to read the e-mail until it was time to leave. 
