Quote: So ... because your W opened up to you twice in conversation and you've addressed your anger/intimacy issues, everything's been fixed and you only need to maintain all the changes?
RB, please, don't get me wrong. I don't think I can say this enough, EVERYTHING IS NOT ALRIGHT in my M. FAR FROM IT.
What I am saying is that for my W to have opened up like this is HUGE. It could have been about how she feels about the weather and it would have been big. My point is that my W has held SO much in for SO long and mostly because she couldn't trust me to listen, validate and NOT judge her/get defensive that it is a major sign to me that trust FROM her side is being built. Of course there is going to have to be trust established from my side of things and that will just take time and the right words/actions by her, but SO FAR, so good on that front. She seems totally remorseful and by her words, she know what she and why it was wrong.
As for MC, no, I am not going to pursue that. We got to this point without it and as I have said MANY times, my W is violently (ok, maybe that's a little strong a word) opposed to therapy of ANY kind. Call it a character flaw, whatever. The way some people feel about lawyers (sorry) she feels about therapists. It would be a VERY bad move for me to try to push that now, and since we are already making progress, we have both expressed understanding of what needs of ours weren't being met, how the affair affected us both and where we need to go in the near, then distant future, I am ok with going it along, all the while continuing to make sure I keep my personal growth going.
Quote: You've already read Mars/Venus, but what about 5 Love Languages or His Needs, Her Needs? I think that your W needs to be willing to do some work to improve your marriage -- it shouldn't all be you.
I read 5 Love Languages. It was the second book I read after DB. I LOVE that book and it really helped me get a handle on what I was NOT doing to show my W love and more importantly, what SHE was not doing for me. It played a LARGE part in my convo the other night because. As I said, I expressed what I learned from the book directly and got her to confirm my idea that she was a "gifts" kind of person and told her I was a "physical touch" type and that did NOT just mean $ex.
As for my W working on the R, she has done more in 2 days to work on our marriage than almost 10 years combined. The reason I think that is simple. My W has never, to my knowledge, done anything to work on our marriage. She has always just believed that a good marriage was, well, just good and everything each spouse did for the other should be known through mind reading and experience. Now, by acknowledging that there IS work involved (oh, BTW, sorry, forgot that part, she said that Saturday night, that a good relationship takes work and how she now understands that and is willing to do it).
Sure, it is only 2 days of talking, but in those two days, my W has, on her own, without me sharing ANY of what I learned about relationships since all this happened, gotten to a place where she says she knows there is work to be done and she wants to do it. I don't know if she has the tools to do what she needs to do, but, once again, judging from what I see and hear, it seems like she is on the right track and in the end, I am the ultimate judge of that as it relates to me.
She may not believe in therapy but I think she understands how complicated things are/can be and is at least aware of how much there is to know about daily communication/building love between us.
SO, it's NOT all me by any stretch, or at least at this point it isn't. We'll see going forward. I am cautiously optimistic.
