Wesse, and Jenny, it was so good to hear from two old-timers. And I was especially cheered to hear that you have doubts that plague you from time to time (as sick as that may sound). The rest of us need to hear that even succes stories have backslides and life doesn't go completely smoothly. I guess that we're culturally trained to think all or nothing, problem to resolution, but no relationship is conflict-free, as we tried to drum into our spouses brains from time to time during the battles. At least that's what I keep telling myself!
When you're trying to save your marriage, you can set goals and do it, because it's sort of a black and white situation. When you're in recovery, it's more like tripping over minefields, hoping not to blow the whole thing up and go back to square one. The sweeping under the carpet is a common occurrence, I'm finding, Wesse. My h is starting to be much nicer, and so on, but what it's doing to me is allowing all those repressed emotions to surface. You fight to save the marriage and then when it appears the trouble is coming to an end, you start to sabotage your efforts because a) you're afraid to allow vulnerability and go back there and get beaten down again, and b) you're suddenly wondering what you were fighting for. I need to deal with those repressed emotions, and like your h, my h will refuse to deal with them. When he's poked his head out of the tunnel in the past, he retreats very quickly when it gets to the sticky situation of having to deal with my hurts (it means making a commitment of one sort or another). He doesn't want to be reminded and he doesn't want to be blamed. Meanwhile, I'm trying to deal with the desire to respond to my h's new warmth and my skepticism over why you seem to want this, especially since he's voiced no recommitment, or desire to regain the marriage. So my question gets to be do I keep up the distance because I may get slapped very badly again, or do I respond with warmth and risk emotional abuse that may come my way again? It's a question of OUR feeling safe again. And many many things can remind us of when we didn't feel safe at all. (In my case, I still don't very much at all, even though my h's frost seems to be thawing a little bit).

I still think you can DB effectively during this period, but the techniques are different, and part of it is we don't like having to do techniques. It sounds so manipulative, but if you break it down and analyse it isn't at all. For example, being unavailable is it to catch h's attention, or is it because you need refreshing and time to lick your wounds. In my case, if I was trying to catch h's attention, it would fail, but if it was solely for my own good, he would notice. I recently read Coloroso's book Kids are Worth It, and thought it helpful in these situs too. Her description of the jellyfish and brick wall families describe my two fluctuating approaches to everything in life, but my goal is to be a backbone person. We are strong womena nd can be intimidating. I think we also share something else -- we don't really know what our h's were up to and in our dark, obsessive moments we ask why, what, and how will I know if it's happening again. In those moments we need reassurance that our h's either can't or wo't give. It would have almost been better to know about an actual affair and have everything in the light, and be able to deal with it. For me, just knowing the intensity of feeligns my h has or had for his EA and how he continues to protect her, pursue her, try to impress her, and fashions projects so they'll work together hurts a lot, but without the physical connection my h feels justified keeping things from me. Just as he did with chasing other women (and I suspect those were more than just EAs), he feels that because he felt out of the marriage, it was justification for what he did and how he treated me. Whenever I've tried to broach this subject, because for me it would be better int he open (I think), he clams up and retreats even farther. It's past in their minds, and they prefer to leave it that way, because they feel guilty. I think it's part and parcel of the spouses we are dealing with and partly the male nature to act this way (there was murder mystery on TV not long ago, depicting an older couple, whose only child had died 40 years before due to neglect by the h to get her to the hospital in time, despite his wife's frantic please. For 40 years, he blamed his wife for everything that was wrong in his life, and refused to even have a picture of their daughter out on display -- he shouldered her with the guilt he felt inside.)

Another part of the anger, Wesse, comes from the feeling that our spouses regard us as the good old solid workhorse who handles all things and we feel unappreciate, especially since others receive or received the passionate attention we might sometimes have like to have. Oddly, it is often those OWs who are extremely manipulative and we are the ones who get accuses of strategizing or being manipulative because we wanted to save our marriages. I think it speaks more to the nature of the spouse, who often feels deep down they are unworthy, and yet strives to maintain a facade of perfection and rightness for fear their whole house of cards will tumble if they admit any wrongdoing.

There was a recent book review that I thought you'd like Jenny. The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness, by Martha Stout. She treats survivors of traumatic events, who often have anorexia. She describes these survivors, the ones who actually pull through successfully, of having a far greater passion for life than the rest of us who just "survive." In some ways, I think this "surviving" is what our spouses were trying to overcome when they went through their mlc. And we, having gone through the trauma of that war zone, are now also survivors. I guess what I'm getting at is that in order for us to survive what our h's have done to us, or continue to do to us, is to turn our attention to really living with passion. To stop just ticking off the daily routine stuff as it gets done. As Stout says, to these survivors of trauma, after recovery, everyday misery is just simply unacceptable. I think that's what you were getting at Jenny, when you suggested reading Lillian Hellman's autobiography, and also Joan Anderson's Year by the Sea. It is so easy to slip into the lure of our marital situation, and in some ways it's work-avoidance for what's really important in life. I know this sounds kind of lecturing, but I'm also trying to convince myself of this truth. Dissociation during trauma is common, and it's probably what we did during our h's mlc crisis; Stout says the problem comes later when the ordeal is over, and the tendency to be disconnected from ourselves remains. Old terrors come back and we feel safe by taking psychological vacations from reality. The review really hit home for me, because I have felt very much like that the last little while.

I'm sorry to ramble on so, but I was so glad to hear from both of you, that I wanted to respond.

I am doing much much better, by the way Jenny, than I was some months ago. It happened little by little when I started to let go of worrying about h and his antics (though I still get into those obsessive modes sometimes), and started trying to engage in my own life. It's hard, especially for someone who has wrapped her life and identity around her partner.