Mama, rob, tim, frank, NYS, hope and anyone else (SO sorry if I didn't name you) who keeps up with my thread, thank you so much. You all mean the world to me right now.
So on with the day's crap.
Today's mood is on the low side of even. I am not terribly upset, nor happy. Yesterday I had my 2nd counseling session. It went well, but it was really just a chance for me to recount my story of the past week and have her make comments on it. I don't know what I'm expecting but I guess I thought there would be a little more structure from her. I LOVE being able to talk to someone so it's worth it for just that, but I also want real help for my self esteem issues and control issues, something that she is well aware of.
I don't know if I am dominating the conversation to the point where we just spend all our time talking about my R or what, but I am going to send my therapist an email asking for us to set goals and for her to try to give me some things to work on to start me along the process of helping myself.
The basic gist of the therapist's message to me was that I really need to start communicating with my wife, something I admitted we never do in terms of our relationship. We have just NEVER really talked/worked on our relationship before which is why its so hard to start now, 10 years in. I want to clarify, my W and I have, to my knowledge, never sat down and started talking about "us". We just "were". We never had to think about it, it just worked...or so I thought.
So she wants me to try to talk to the W about how I feel, blah blah blah. I told her I was trying to leave her alone about that and she kinda wrinkled her nose.
In the end, she said I still need to work on "being there in my soul" meaning not living in my head, living in thoughts, but just "being" in the situation and reacting to it from my heart/soul.
Boiling that down, stop over processing everything and emotionally participate in your life man!
As far as the W and the R, really there was no news from last night. Sometimes I think that hurts as much as bad news.
The most interesting thing was that my W asked about the C session I had and I told her it was good. She asked why the C thought I was there, really asking if I was talking about our R or just me. I said she knew why I was there... Anyway, I said the C asked her to join us but that it was not a pressure thing and would not really work if she didn't want to be there. She kinda rolled her eyes and said "you know how I feel about us so I don't know why I would go." Damn, that hurt, but I casually asked, "well, has your view about us changed in the last couple weeks?" She said she didn't know. I dropped it...
So, we ate dinner with the kids, then I took them upstairs for their bath (which I always do). She was really on edge at dinner, which is not all that unusual because our kids are notoriously bad eaters, and yelled several times at both of them. The edge is normal, but the yelling is a bit out of character for her.
Anyway, as is the norm of late, while I bathed the kids, she stayed downstairs on the couch "resting" before cleaning the kitchen.
After bath time, I stayed upstairs with the boys and she did her thing downstairs. When they went to bed we watched Dancing with the Stars together (sorry) and even had some light moments making fun of the show. I went jogging afterwards, which felt great.
Finished off the night with a shower and went to bed.
She did hug me before I went up to bed.
This morning I did something I have not done, really just to put my big toe in the R water, before I left for work, I lay down next to her in bed and hugged her for a few minutes. She did not resist. Dunno what that means, don't really care much. I may or may not do it again anytime soon.
I only went through all that because I wanted to illustrate that it IS possible to do the friend thing. You don't come out the other side feeling especially good, but it's better than feeling bad.
The problem for me and many of you is that I really need to guard against thinking that since she's willing to joke and spend time with me, that she's willing to do more. That's expectation and mind reading again, two things that are responsible for much of OUR part in killing our marriages.
I am telling myself that the weekend is here. The weekend in my sitch brings with it the most potential for disaster because she will most likely try to make plans with the OM for one day or night and I always end up in my lowest place then. Since she normally sees him in the day when I am working, I can ignore that. When she blatantly goes to see him during what used to be "family" time, it hurts a LOT more.
Anyway, please, comments are encouraged!
