Last night, H acted distant, and only stayed with us long enough to eat supper and watch a show on TV. It was a busy time for me—getting the kids ready for bed and taking care of a few other tasks, though I did lie down next to him on the couch for a little while. He left, and called a few hours later. In my attempt to become a better listener, and create a safe place for him, I asked him if he was okay, that he’d seemed preoccupied tonight. He agreed, and started talking about issues at work, the long list of things that need to be done NOW. He talked for almost an hour, and I felt really good about the conversation. No R stuff, and no opening up about his feelings, but an opening nonetheless.
H is an emotionally closed personality. He doesn’t worry about the past or the future, just tries to get through today. Most often when I ask what he’s thinking/feeling, the answer is, “Nothing. Really. I don’t think about anything.” In one of our more heated discussions, he said, “How do I explain something that I’m not thinking? How do I describe something that I’m not feeling? How do I tell if I don’t feel? How?”
Part of my fear of letting go of the past has been that he will distract himself with his busy-ness and push every emotion regarding his infidelity and our M away and never really resolve anything—just “forget” it and pretend it never happened. From what I’ve gathered, his A’s just “happened” (dang those selfish, horny OW and his lack of integrity), and they surprised him. If he doesn’t ever acknowledge his feelings and share/work them out, how will we get past this?
My gut tells me this is all territory I need to leave alone for awhile. The thing that worries me is that he won’t work it out, that there will never be a good time to address it because he just doesn’t want to (he seems perfectly happy to be living away from us). I know that we’ll never have the intimacy I crave without complete honesty, and maybe he doesn’t want that kind of connection.
This is my fear to conquer. If he wasn’t committed to our R, he would have been long gone by now.
