To all,
I am starting to see a pattern where the apple cart needs to be upset in order to setup a breakthru in the R.
For quite sometime my W has gotten into a pattern of being upbeat, affectionate, caring, emtionally attached after diner. As we talk, we are face to face with her gazing into my eyes. As we cross each others path in our evening routine, there is now the affection carress or an embracing hug. Then a change comes over her around 7:30 pm ... she becomes quiet, no longer encouraging conversation. Her responses to my inquiries become short and no longer cheerful. She stops smiling. By 9:00 pm, the emotional attachment completely desolves and she is withdrawn and distances herself physically. On the worst nights, by bedtime at 10:00 pm she can become quite cranky and couldn't care less if I gave her a goodnite kiss or not. She would totally shut down and shut me out ... a totally different person than the woman I came home to. This would happen 2-3 times a week. This always bothered me. In the past, I would become angry that she is doing it again and we would both go to bed irritable and it started to become most nights of the week. During what I call her WAW phase, I learned to just give her space and "act as-if" it didn't bother me. Gradually, the behavor deminished. In the last month, the pattern reappeared and I reacted "act as-if" again, but it has continued and has been draining my PMA as I began to wonder about her commitment to R. Last Thursday was one of the worst and this time I let it bother me. In rotten DBing form, I woke up Friday, jumped out of bed, angerily got ready for work and left without giving her a kiss or goodbye. During the workday on Friday, I was pissed off at her, at myself, at the whole sitch. I visited this BB, but could put my thoughts together in order to post. I was feel really weird. My PMA started to sink futher in that she never called during the day about what happened in the morning and I was beginning to wonder she was really losing interest in R. I didn't know what I would come home to...
I came home to a great BIG hug and a caring and concerned look in her eyes while she said she was worried sick about me. She didn't call because she didn't want to make things worse. Then we sat down and talk about what happened and I brought up her pattern of behavior in the evenings and how it really bothered me. For the first time in years, she didn't get defensive and was genuinely concerned that how she acted affected me. That evening she made the effort not to shutdown and at bedtime she started another OR talk by first apologizing for how she was behaving. WOW! Now this is on of the telltale signs that started years ago of the problems we were having. She had gone from apologizing for things she did she thought bothered me to no longer apologizing for anything. Now after all these years, she made a sincere apology. Proof that she truly cares about mending this R again and we finally broke one of those patterns of our behaviors that never worked for all those years.
She also brought up the OR talk to attempt squelch the continuing insecurities she knows I still had and admitted that she was accessing whether she truly wanted to commitment to R. She said after giving much thought in recent months, she can now see us together as we marry off our daughters and then enjoy our grandchildren and this is what she wants.
She also brought up the savings account again this weekend and she wants to use it to save money by not allowing her to have access to it. Since she is so sure this is what she wants, I decided to go with it.
Sorry for such a long post, but we covered alot of ground this weekend and our R seem to be on a much more solid foundation now than before. We seemed to reach the phase in Michelle's book where one can ask the other for what they want. It is no longer just one working to keep the M, but now it is both...
