You are very perceptive, you know. Yes, H has not learned to express his negative feelings - anger, resentment, fear, doubt - the whole host of bads. He holds off on them because he is afraid, frankly. He is afraid of losing you most of all.
You made the right call, he needs the reassurance from you and looks for it. He doesn't see it, for some reason, the way you give it so he prods you until it comes.
Somewhere inside of him is sure that he doesn't deserve this. That Sheila is much to a wonderful a person to want him, that she has seen that once before and it's only a matter of time until she sees it again. That self fulfilling prophecy is so painful to watch for me. I was there. It ends with the exactly what you don't want.
I wish had the perfect answer to how to deal with this and how to get H to deal with it. You are so right that you have to plow through it together. You are so right that he needs to work through all of this in himself not just bury it and hope things will be fine. I wonder now, since you went your separate ways and then returned, how much more motivation he needs to do that?
But I wonder too, how clear he is on the fact that this is what he needs to do? I KNOW you have told him, MC has told him, pastor maybe has told him. I know you have probably tried to show him from every angle, but being a teacher I know that saying something perfectly clearly and lucidly over and over to someone else in no way means they KNOW what you are telling them.
I hate to resort to parlor tricks that I know nothing about any way, but I wonder that if he could see a little success and a little step in the things he needs to do that somehow it would lead him to a bigger one?
Maybe you could try something like "on Tuesdays you are going to tell me something that you absolutely hate about me or our marriage WITHOUT ramifications or at least the most horrible ones."
"You can tell me once a week (or month or whatever) anything like that. Anything that just scares the sh^t of you to say to me. I promise not to walk. I don't promise not be hurt, but I do promise to think about it and try to understand it."
"Tell me you sometimes think of OW and fantasize, tell me you are haunted by OM every time we make love, tell me you LIED about something to do with $$ last week, tell me you daydream about being single sometimes, tell me you hate the way I have my hair now, whatever"
You know, Sheila, I don't know jack about these things and so please bounce them off someone who does before trying them.
I have another thought too. Your H may think poorly of himself in some way too. He may be sabotaging his chances, without knowing it, because somehow he thinks he's not worthy. Somehow he sucked you back into a marriage that you left because it was so bad, and NOW you are not happy. He is to blame, so he thinks. Sheila's life has been ruined twice because I am not good enough to get her what she needs. I can't let her go voluntarily, but I could push her away.
Understand, I don't think he THINKS these things in his conscious mind. He probably doesn't, or maybe not as much as I write.
Let's keep talking. I really want to see how this goes because I really want to learn about myself just as much as I want to see you two people to be happy.
e-mail if you need to allensaccnt at gmail dot come
