Where's my pot of gold?

[sage]

Now, we are back together, and all that I worked for has slipped away. Bad memories haunt me. Distrust keeps me away from him. I am all the things I was before he left (negative) and then some. I think maybe that is why he insists that I don't want to be with him. I make him feel this way becasue of that. I feel into a deep depression last summer and had to do some outpatient counseling at a local mental hospital. I struggle everyday with my depression and anxiety.

I'm sorry that you are struggling so much. Does it help at all to know that it's not uncommon to face the anxiety and fear when reconciliation occurs and often not before?

I don't see, though, how it is that DB'ing is working against you...what it sounds like to me (an ASSumption) is that you actually let some of the DB principles slip away ...again, not at all uncommon for us here in Piecing.

A part of me thinks he is already gone, atleast emotionally, from this relationship. He told me yesterday that he didn't want to be here anymore and hated that he felt that way because he knows he will regret it if he leaves, but if things don't change he will leave again. That on top of him telling me atleast three times to leave yesterday alone. That was what pushed me away so far.

Aren't you BOTH doing a pretty good job of testing the other? I mentioned this in my other response...at a minimum, you're both arguing with the other and then retreating to your own corners. It seems like you're each looking to the other to be more committed, more sure, maybe even more sure than you yourself are....again, not uncommon, but probably not something that is sustainable.

Here's my cut to the chase assessment...reconciliation, particulary after an affair, is a scary, crappy, anxiety producing exercise in which two people, each with their own fears and agenda, try to come together with no guarantees of success despite all hope of finding some. Did I scare the crap out of you?

Here's another way of looking at it...reconciliation after an affair is an opportunity to explore what it means to be afraid and do it anyway, to heal, to forgive, to reassess and hopefully to strengthen bonds that existed for real reasons in the first place.

For better or worse, both of those viewpoints can exist simultaneously.

Piecing is not for the faint of heart.

His biggest issue with me is that I am not physically close enough to him. We rarely, if ever ML. I am not the huggy, kissey kind with him. I was supposed to push my fears and hurt aside and try to meet his needs and he would do the same for me. He got upset today because by noon time I hadn't gone near him except for a good-bye protocol kiss. When I think about grabbing him and hugging him, or grabbing him and kissing him......my anxiety gets so bad that I have to pop my anti-anxiety medication. I HATE living on meds just to function day to day because I let my depression and anxiety rule my life. I decided today to start using his home gym daily to see if I can work out some of that anxiety on it. But the problem still remains that I am not interested in ML. From October to recently, I had four major surgeries and the last one threw me into a surgical menopause. (I am 31). I wasn't able to ML for the months that I was having the surgeries and recovering. But I know that's no excuse, I was LD before all that happened. THis confuses me because with my ex-bf (the one I broke up with to reconcile) I was very affectionate and we ML all the time.

There's SO much going on here...babysteps, ok? What would it mean to touch him or hold his hand briefly to start...? Also, the exercising sounds like a GREAT idea.

So, I think somehow, when I lost my DB'ing skills except the afformentioned ones in the last post, that's when things fell apart. Why does one find it so difficult to be themselves in the presence of a specific person?

Nah, you didn't lose them...they just went on hiatus when the context changed...all the skills you have are still within you.

Sage