Positively new thread - how do you deal with this?

[PositivelyListening]

Hi Rob, Thanks so much for checking in with me. I know you are right that H is having a tough time emotionally, and today I found some compassion again, along with some more patience. H was a little more responsive and loving this morning than he had been the past two days - common when we have spent some time together, he begins to warm up to me again. I had a short conversation this morning with him which was good, and very interesting to me. I told him I was surprised to hear him make the comment about "all you need is a suitcase in life" yesterday as I had remembered when we got married we talked about how much he had travelled, and he had told me at that time that he had always wanted a home, and that he really wanted to create that stability with me. He revealed this morning that the suitcase comment was really something his dad used to always say when he was growing up, and he had just repeated it. This is very telling to me, that H is in MLC and reliving some of the traumas and memories from his past that have long been repressed. It was good that he felt safe enough to share it, and to imply in the conversation that he really did still want a home - that the "suitcase in life" comment was his father's line, not truly his. We also had ANOTHER conversation about integrity - he wanted my opinion about how he was going to manage a conversation with a competitor, and when I suggested that he be honest and complimentary, as honesty and integrity was always the way to go - he wholeheartedly thanked me after we talked about it, and said "that's why I always like to talk to you about these things, you always have the right approach."

H got paranoid with me today when I went to the bank to get out money for our lunch though. He wanted to check his bank account balance, and I told him when I had looked at it yesterday it was about $5000. He jumped on me, wanted to know if I had been snooping, how did I know that when he didn't know that etc. Once I explained that I had accessed our on-line accounts yesterday to make a transfer so had seen his account balance along with all of the others, he seemed to calm down. But I became a bit sensitive and his reaction got to me, so I said, "It really hurts my feelings when you jump to accusations like that when we have always shared everything. It makes me feel like you only want me to be your wife when it's useful to you." He actually comforted me, and said "Oh, honey don't go there" and gave me a hug as we walked back to the car. Then also said we should just talk more about these things so it is not a surprise out of the blue without having more information! I told him I would like it if we communicated more. In the car, I suggested that maybe we should have a meeting once a week or something just to make sure we were communicating regularly about the important stuff. By that time, he was tuning me out (not listening) caught himself and made a joke, by saying "I think you you were communicating about us communicating better, and I wasn't listening...." and he laughed.

Despite the MLC fog I am seeing, it seems healthy that I am beginning to take some risks about communicating directly with him, and it is turning out better than expected. I made some requests for things from him this weekend, such as a few moments of quality time and eye gazing when I was feeling emotionally overwhelmed by our circumstances, and he gave it to me and things got better for me and he did not run, and we got closer by the end. So somehow, funky as it was at times, progress is still being made.

I had an idea tonight that I might consider offering that H could move in to his current office as his own room in August with no expectations about our future R. I am thinking of just dropping it in casually as an option to save him money so that if he decides to leave he will have saved more, and meanwhile he can work on finishing the house projects a little more easily. This is still just a thought germinating in my mind. I would need to be very clear with myself and with him what I could and could not live with in our home, and then he would have to decide if that could work for him. There are some challenges for me with this, as sometimes H's behavior really hooks me. But I do have a 100% private place to be in our home (my office) which has TV, phone and computer available for my venting. The plusses are that it seems the more time we spend together the more he likes me and remembers why he didn't want to leave. And of course I could really hone my DBing skills further to be even more of who I intend to be whether H stays or not.

So these are my thoughts on a late Friday night. D has now arrived to our home with a truckload of stuff. I did rent a storage unit and tomorrow we will handle her stuff and a bunch of mine, and get it out of here, so I can begin to move towards further serenity on our home environment. Better get some sleep - lots of heavy lifting tomorrow, with H arriving at 7:30 am to help.

Thanks to all for being there.