Hi Jenny, thanks for your kind reply. Apologies if I made it sound as though you were engaging in furtive activity, re lurking. I just thought that was a common term for those who read some, but post seldom. I understand your need to limit your perusing of the bb, as much as I understand my own need to have been here as much as I was the past ten months. It was a lifeline when I was grabbing at straws, trying to understand why my h was behaving the way he did. My h had just made his third turnaround, and we had experienced that reconciliation high that you speak of, only to have him renew contact with ow because he thought he could handle it without any emotional repercussions. The results were always disastrous and he was thrown into emotional high gear over her again. Of course, my reactions made matters worse, pursuit tactics that I didn't realize were pursuit. There were also the MLC issues, which as you know makes the whole situation seemingly untenable.
This time, my h is making moves in the right direction, but we are not having any relationship or reconciliation highs and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's more mature, and healthy than our previous attempts, and maybe we will be able to work things out in a more realistic manner. Though I do long for those feelings sometimes!
Each situation is different and yet so much the same, and each partner handles things in different ways. So many times I felt lost, and turned to friends, who were initially supportive, then later encouraged me to consider separating. When I found the bb, I also founds new friends, who were going through similar things, who could share pain and successes, and who liked to work through problems. I tend to analyze as you well know, Jenny, and it's probably been a curse in some ways. Not good DBing perhaps, but it's helped me and others as we have struggled to understand what it is we've experienced. Through that exploring, I can honestly say I've learned more about myself and about my relationship. Thanks to the suggestions here, I have read many many helpful books that I would not otherwise have read, books which showed common relationship mistakes and more importantly pointed the way to fixing some of the mistakes, or at least ways to avoid revisiting them. These lessons have made their way into other areas of my life, and in my career I'm experiencing tremendous opportunities that I doubt would have come my way had I not gone through this.
Which brings me to my son. Over the past couple of months, I've made a conscious effort to reconnect with him, perhaps in much the same fumbling way that my h is attempting to reconnect with me. I can understand h better, when put in context of my efforts with son. I do believe that the tension has eased in the past several months: for one, I ceased caring what my h was going to do, and I redirected my energy to both my career (just like you, Jenny, I figured I'd be single soon and started hustling) and to my son. Taking the focus off h probably let him breathe a bit better too.
Although my son was never privy to what was going on, I know he felt keenly the undercurrents. Just the fact that we rarely went anywhere together as a family would have been sufficient to get his radar going. And there was the odd time he would see me in tears on the phone with a friend, though I did try to hide that sort of thing. But to see his happiness when we went as a family to an outing on Sunday was music to me. He took a stash of money from his allowance savings because he wanted to buy some things for himself (including McDonald's), but when he went into the gift shop, with h, he ended up buying gifts for each of us -- h, me and the baby (who is now 18 months old). I have sometimes overwhelming feelings of doubt and hopelessness still, due to this being the fourth time around, and the air never having really been cleared. It is a struggle for me these days to be confident that my h is making changes, or that he cares for me, or that I will not constantly live in the shadow of his fantasy ow. But I try to move along as I hold onto the dream of that little boy to keep his family together, and the sheer pleasure he has in hoping that things are okay and that his world will not shatter as so many kids do.
I'm going to talk with my counsellor about how to approach son, whether he has some things for me and h to try to draw son out (I've asked son in past if anything is worrying or bothering him, and he always says no). I will also ask him for a good child counsellor. Since son has already started in preliminary orthodontics, I can also bring up the grinding with his orthodontist.
Thanks again for responding -- you know I value your insight, or I wouldn't ask. The article in Parade is not available here, I don't think, biut perhaps I can order it on-line somehow.
