This is NOT what I expected!

[InHisHands]

Okay, I got myself a C appt for next Wednesday. In the meantime, I stumbled across a great program for people with low self-esteem. I knew it was low self-esteem that caused me to constantly try to find my value through my husband, but I had no idea that it could manifest itself as nagging, controlling, and anger, too! That is me. No, that WAS me!!

H called yesterday afternoon to say that he left work early & was headed to the gym and then he was going to stop by work to see me. That was around 11:30, so he should have been at my office by 1:00 at the latest. By 2:00, he still wasn't there & my boss decided to send everyone home early. I tried to call, but he didn't answer so, can you guess where my imagination went? I thought about going to the gym, partly becaue I wanted to work out and partly to spy on him & see if he was really there . . . 2 1/2 hours is an awfully long time to be working out!

I made myself stop wondering about him & decided to do something for myself, instead. So, I headed toward a bookstore/coffee shop in a town about 30 miles in the opposite direction from the gym.

He called before I got on the interstate & I told him I had the rest of the day off & was heading to the bookstore. He asked if I wanted him to meet me there & I was quiet. Then he said, "Unless you just want to have some time alone" and I said, "Yeah, I think that's probably a good idea. I'd like to unwind a little."

He sounded really disappointed and then said, "Why don't you come down here and meet me at Starbucks instead." He sounded like he REALLY wanted to see me, so I suggested we meet for lunch. When I got there he looked like he was going to explode, he had a great big smile on his face and seemed really excited.

It turns out that he had been shopping for me! That's why he was so long at the "gym." He had picked out a really great outfit (very stylish, too, not "mom" clothes which I hate) and had planned on having it laid out on the bed when I got home from work and taking me out to dinner!!

This is how it keeps turning out any time I get suspicious and stupid. I really, really need to get it through my head that the drama is over, that he is really IN this! I'm writing all of this so that the next time I start to get suspicious and stupid, I can read it and remember how all of my other stupid suspicions have turned out and hopefully keep myself from heading down that ugly road that I go down so often lately.

Well, we had lunch and I told him about the self-esteem stuff I was struggling with, the counselor, and asked him if he could please be patient with me while I try to learn how to behave in a healthy realationship. He asked me what he could do to help and I told him to just let me deal with my own problems. I let him know that I'm not really clear on which problems I should bring to him and which I should try to deal with on my own and asked him if he could just let me come to him with my feelings, but not to take responsibility for them. We talked a lot about my past and how it's been like poison in our marriage. Of course, he kept telling me how this whole fiasco was his fault and I tried to tell him it wasn't, but, you know what? If he is seeing his own fault in all of this and I am seeing mine, then we're really at the best place there is to heal, aren't we?

I actually wonder now if his relationship with OW wasn't some sort of passive-aggressive way of getting my attention. I'm disgusted with myself that it took something like that to finally get me to take him seriously.

So I think we're in agreement that each of us has a lot of work to do on ourselves and that it's going to be a struggle, but we'll be there for each other as much as possible. I will probably have major backslides, but I plan on coming here to dump out all my negatives and hopefully somebody here will come along with a 2x4 when I do that and remind me that I am extremely fortunate to be in the situation I'm in.