Q:
What do you tell her, or do for her when she has these dreams, or has a bad experiance with the contractor and is in tears?

How does she react to the comfort you extend?

SS

SS:

Well... a lot, I guess. Like this morning, I listened and held her, and offered her support. I empathize with her verbally. I understand what she's going through, because I am too. When it's dealing with the contractors, we talk at length about what we feel and what we want them to do, including how we want to finish the work ourselves a lot of the time!

I try not to let the conversation get too negative, though, and she doesn't either. There are times when we come to the contractor's defense even. We seem to be pretty much on the same page as far as the house is concerned.

That help?
-Qfwfq

That help

Yes. I am having a hard time understanding why she can take your help, needs it actually, and then sometimes when you ask her questions she won't even answer you, or talk to you about it. I think her *experiance* hurt her far more than she can admit. On top of that, sometimes she is even hostile.

It seems that she values your help so much - I just can't see why she has this problem with ILY and calling you H. I suspect she doesn't seek help from her business associates in tears. She trusts you enough to do that though, and she expects to get the help and comfort that she needs.

Have you had any more success at drawing her out and getting her to talk, or are you just leaving that alone for now?

SS

SS:

I'm trying to draw her out, but slowly. So far, little is happening, except the NSA I mentioned above. But that may be it for now.

I've got lots of hypotheses as to why she plays her cards so close to her chest. Don't have a clue whether any are reasonable or not, and probably should'nt put too much stock in the (they are, after all, just assumptions).

But I think it's entirely possible that she and RM made some sort of "promises" to each other over the years. I remember Pepper suggesting something like this a while back, on someone else's thread perhaps. One, I'm aware of and I've talked to her about, was made on my birthday last year.

Another thing is that she's known RM for probably going on 15 years. I remember her asking ME what I thought about his PhD topic, like his committee was questioning the validity of his approach. And this reminded me of a comment that, again I think it was Pepper made, that my W felt like she was "rescuing" RM, or at least hand-holding him through an agreeably difficult department.

...but I want to stop dwelling on him. It just gets me down to think that their friendship may still be important to them, which would make our recovery difficult, though not impossible. Difficult, because I just don't think I'd want to stay M'd because of the depth and duration of the betrayal, and because if they worked together again, there'd be plenty of times when they'd be working by themselves for days or weeks at a time. I won't go through that. I'd rather DV.

-Qfwfq

Hey all!

I realize it's already the weekend for many of you, and it's Easter weekend to boot, so I wanted to post one more time to let you all know I'm more positive than negative right now. Don't want that last post to give the wrong impression.

"Small steps, Sparks. Small steps." -Contact

-Qfwfq

Yeah! What Q said about the weekend.

OK, I won't go there either today, and by Monday I will have forgotten. See ya.
SS

I will say one more thing.

One of those times when she won't answer, try something like this:

"I know I don't know everything - perhaps not even eveything I should know to help you but........ I am trying to help.
Please talk to me."

You know, get that wistful look, the one that she fell for about 28years ago.

SS

SS:

I will try something like that!

Well, I'm out the door!

-Qfwfq <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />