NikkiB's new thread, new life

[NikB]

I can TOTALLY relate to this. But I really believe that when they have these great ml moments, afterwards they are thinking, what did I do? I thought I wanted to break up with this person, do I want them? do I not? then they get mad at themselves for "losing" control and then ultimately take it out on us. Leaving us totally confused! So, as long as you know or feel confident you won't contract anything, I think it is totally good for you to continue ML if that happens. It is really really important.

Agreed... it was one big problem in our M for the last few years (low 'drive' on my part plus the broken leg thing made it difficult), so I think it's important now to show that it's important to me, and I won't get back into that "little to no ML" rut. I guess in a way I'm lucky, he doesn't really take it out on me in a mean way, he just kind of acts like it never happened.

I am reasonably sure I won't contract anything. Nothing's 100% but the ONLY woman H has been around that much was the one he had the EA with. I know I can't believe all of what he says but he continues to promise me nothing happened physically. At my request the MC also asked him in his solo session - he was pretty brutally honest in there, so I am reasonably sure that he would have told her. If he follows through with the separation and moves out that will change, but for now I'm trying to show him what a GOOD M, including ML, can look like with me.

i told him that I believed he really felt that way when he said it, and he agreed saying he was in a different frame of mind or something, and I asked if he did love me before and he said yes, and agreed with me that our love now is different and better than it was before.

Boy do I hope we get to this point, too.

I am working on a calm but clear way to express this to him in our MC session. He's not much into writing so I don't really have any love notes from him, sadly, but I do have memories of some of his actions and gifts and such that show that he loved me at some point. I also just can't believe he would take the marriage decision so lightly after seeing how much D devastated both of his parents repeatedly.

I told him during one of our R talks I thought the MC was helpful so that we could learn "mature" love and make sure we don't repeat our mistakes, either together or in a future R. His response was that his only mistake was getting married "just because it seemed like the logical next step." I stayed fairly calm but I did say "So that's the only mistake you made? In our relationship and marriage, the only thing you take responsibility for is marrying me when you shouldn't have?" and he said yes. I asked if he was willing to admit that he did not express his feelings or needs well and he did agree to that at least though. Although he still acted like that wasn't really something he needed to work on.

If your H had OW and wanted to be with her and wasn't acting so "friendly" with you, then it might be a good 180 or something, but I think you changing everything around will send the wrong mesg to him. <snip> Does that make sense? I'm not doing a very good job of explaining what I'm trying to say. ugh. I'm bad at that!

Yes, what you said totally makes sense!! The confusion came from me not explaining myself well in the first post you quoted. I didn't mean change anything around in our house right now. I meant that I started wondering if me moving out and setting up my own place, the way I want it, would be better.

That is even more reason for you to not let him have the house. He will get to have his "fantasy" if you leave. You really don't want him to enjoy this S time.

I am so NOT for you moving out. Anyone else? I really think you should stay. It doesn't matter if he was the only one paying for the house and you didn't even work. You guys got married and his job was to support his family, children or no children, and now he wants to change his mind, so that is his fault. That is his consequence. Don't give him the choice! IMHO that is.

You know, you and Julie have followed my story from the beginning and are both thinking a lot clearer than I am right now. You both feel really strongly on this and it is my gut feeling too. I think I'll stick with plan A that, at least initially, I will stay in the house. However, in the spirit of not burying my head in the sand, I'll start sorting, downsizing, etc. as if I may need to move. If the S looks like it's going to become permanent or if I start feeling like I need my own place to detach/GAL, we can re-evaluate at that point.

I think what's getting to me is this: IF we do end up divorcing, it would probably be easier for me to move on if I were in my own new place, instead of being here in our house waiting for him to come home (I think Oldtimer mentioned this also).

But, I think that me staying in the house makes it more likely we'll stay together. It will make the S more real and not the fantasy "do over" that he seems to have in his head. It will also make it a lot easier on me, at least for now, to be in a familiar place with familiar neighbors and such. I feel so strongly that this S won't last very long... just trying not to cling to that TOO much.

I do need to be especially careful to motivate myself to GAL. Living in a whole new place would FORCE that to happen while staying in the house means I'll have to work at it harder.

I find myself wondering if he's reconsidering the whole thing, actually. I'm not getting my hopes up too high, but yesterday he was talking about repainting the exterior of the house. Last night we had a birthday dinner for him at his mom's house and she was talking about re-doing her kitchen, and this morning he said it got him thinking that we should start on our kitchen remodel (been saving/planning for it for years). Huh?? You're moving out but you want to remodel the kitchen and paint the house?? I just kind of said vaguely "yeah, maybe."

The birthday dinner was so awkward. Our moms both know something's up but his sister and her H don't and they were there too. His mom was dropping a lot of semi-subtle hints - talking about how glad she was both her kids were married, how hard living alone was, etc. My mom looked like a deer in the headlights and like she wanted out of there the whole time (really ticks me off that my own mom is so caught up with the memories of her D that she can't support her own daughter... gotta let it go though).

Anyway H was very "off" even on the way over there - he looked exhausted and beat down. I wasn't putting any pressure on him, just visiting with the family and stuff. Most of the time he wasn't even in the room with the family - he found stuff to repair at his mom's house so we all visited while he fixed stuff. Kind of weird.

At dinner he was such a jerk to me. It was like he put on some sort of filter where he couldn't even HEAR me. He was sitting next to me and I'd ask for things like "Please pass the salt" and he totally ignored me. We had tacos so there were lots of toppings to pass around. His sister kept getting whatever I was asking for and passing it to me (way across the table) instead. After about the 3rd time she looked really annoyed, so she passed me the bowl RIGHT in front of his face and over his plate, and she said "wow too much hearing loss from work?" and asked if he needed to borrow his grandfather's hearing aid. Gotta love sisters! He looked at her really strangely and she said "Nikki has asked you for this like 5 times,what's wrong with you?" He said "I didn't hear her." The next time I asked for something she grabbed his hand, moved it to what I asked for, said "Now pick that up" (like she was talking to a 2 year old) and then moved his hand over towards me and "helped" him set it down. It was sad she had to do that but I almost burst out laughing, too. I mean c'mon man, is it really that hard to show some common courtesy? He had no problem passing stuff to his sister on the left, just ignored me. Weird.

When we got home...poof... H is happy again. Wants to rent a movie so we can hang out together, and that's when he started talking about painting the house too.

Think you can be a little MORE confusing, H??????