Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Begin.

A few things that happened in the last few weeks that I feel like I need to catch up on.  I know that I wrote about us going on a trip and we ended up leaving on the antiversary or DD#2.  One of the things that we were looking forward to was to have some time devoted to us, without the distractions of our kids, jobs, bills...well, just life.  Well, I think we both found this trip to be eye-opening.

While we were away, I did my very best to focus my attention on The Mister.  I did my very best to make sure that his needs were met.  This was not reciprocated.  It has been a point of contention between us that his need is to have a physical connection and while mine is to have an emotional connection.  To be blunt, he wants sex while I want to talk.  There were three occasions where my needs were shut down.  First of all, I was chattering away about something and he waited for the first pause in the conversation to suggest that we have sex.  I didn't say much at this point.  Then later, we were sitting in the room chatting and The Mister suggested that we get dressed for bed, hold each other and talk.  I was over the moon!  ...until he promptly fell asleep.  Then one night after dinner, we decided to head over to a bar to have a couple of beers.  We were drinking and chatting.  Then he encouraged me to finish my drink, putting the conversation to an abrupt halt.  I quickly chugged my drink.  He asked why I was doing that, I said because he wanted me to finish my drink.  On the walk back to our room, I could tell that he was trying to assess the situation by making jokes.  I responded with the very minimum.  When we got back to the room, he asked if I was mad.  I told him that I was hurt.

This started a very serious conversation that teetered dangerously close to us deciding to separate.  During this conversation, he was able to admit that there were internal issues to address versus his affair being a product of solely external factors.  He said that he felt like he was chasing something, but he didn't know what it was.  He had already made a few individual counseling sessions and decided that this was probably something that should be discussed.

Then once we were home, we were having another discussion where The Mister confessed to me that although he had no plans to follow through, but that he had feelings that he wanted to contact The Whore.  My heart lept into my throat, but I sat quietly and listened to him. He rambled something about bookends and maybe if he talked to her, he'd stop thinking about talking to her. And he wasn't thinking about anything secretive, like before. To be honest, I was only half listening at this point because I was making such a conscious effort to contain my visceral reactions.


After a few moments of silence, he asked what I was thinking and all I could whisper was "I'm scared." He immediately got mad at me ("You're the one who wants me to open up to you"), but then turned it around ("I'm sorry, I know you can't help the way you feel either"). So, I let him know that although I have no control over what he does (he made that VERY apparent during his affair and the following trickle truth), but I did not think it was a good idea to contact her and I don't know that I can stay in this marriage if he does. I also told him that I can appreciate his wondering that if he just contacted her that would end him thinking about contacting her. But, that this was too close to the circumstances (per him) that kept the affair going on for as long as it did - he had previously told me that he tried to break it off a few times, but just needed one last goodbye and that started everything up again, plus he only had her to commiserate being in the affair.


He happened to have an individual counseling appointment the next day. During this session, he was given the homework to to write a letter to her and to read it aloud to the counselor at his next appt.  I didn't know about this exercise until he came bounding home from counseling, excited to share his letter with me. He said that he knew one part would be hard for me to hear, but overall he thought it would be good for me to hear.

Nearly the entire thing cut me like a knife. I know he was disappointed in my reaction. I did tell him that I appreciated him opening up to me. And he did have a paragraph talking about how I stood by him at his worst, even when I wasn't sure that we'd make it. He also talked about his vision of our future together.

But I couldn't get past a few things he included. He opened it with something along the lines of "I've missed you and there hasn't been a day that has gone by that I haven't thought about you.". And then he ended it with something like "although I don't hate you and I'm not angry with you, I hope I never see you again."

He argued that the first paragraph was past tense. I didn't see it that way. He has said that he knows that the person he knew wasn't real - that it was all fantasy. But, his letter didn't sound like that. It sounded to me that he still has feelings for her, but doesn't plan on acting on them because I will leave.  I have always said that I don't want him to remain in no contact with her because I'm requiring it, but because he sees her for who she is and doesn't want to contact her, but maybe that's unreasonable.  However, my guess is that he's still in The Fog.  

I wasn't able to confront The Mister about my thoughts until the next day.  I told him how I felt about the letter and that I thought that he was still in The Fog.  I told him that it was like a kick to the gut because I felt like over the past year that we as individuals and as a couple have made many steps forward, but I see now that he is still at the beginning of this whole thing.  I told him that I was currently my fight or flight response.  He got angry and defensive.  He told me that instead of focusing on what I was looking at, I should focus on the fact that he didn't even really want to write the letter because he was over it.  I should focus on what he said about me and us.  That the letter was for him to let go, not something new to trigger me.  

:-/  I'd say he's still in the fog.

4 comments:

  1. you're right.
    has he had any consequences at all?

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    1. He's had consequences. It has been a struggle between the consequences that I feel he should feel/have and what he actually feels/has. What I have learned through my work in codependence is that I cannot dictate his recovery. I've tried. He'll do anything that I ask him to and he'll say anything that I want him to say, but I can't make him feel any sort of way. I think that my forcing him to be at a certain point in his recovery, rather than letting come to it naturally has slowed our progress down dramatically. But, once I let go of what he should be doing and focused solely on my own recovery, things fell into place rather quickly. However, it was quite a shock to see just how little progress he had made.

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  2. also, just had a thought....is it possible he has already contacted her and was hoping for tacit approval by couching it as a hypothetical? Angry and defensive is not a remorseful man who is grateful for a second chance.

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    1. It's always a possibility, but I don't think so. I don't think that he would have brought it up in counseling and he knows that it would put me on high alert. Whether he actually believes it or not, if he contacts her, I'm gone. Anger and defensiveness is generally his first response, but we usually have a good conversation once he processes whatever it is. It's something he's aware of and working on, but no it's not perfect. Stay tuned, there is actually a part two to this conversation, but this is all that I had the energy to write yesterday.

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