I guess I’m making progress. He’s now spending as much time with me or me and the kids as he does at OW house. In fact, last 2 weeks he was actively avoiding going “home” to her house. He made and excuse to show up here at 8 a.m. last weekend, saying he was looking for the kids but he KNEW they had spent the night with his parents. He asked if he could just hang out here for awhile. We actually had a very pleasant time. Very casual and relaxed with each other.
I told him last week (very calmly) that all I want is for him to be happy and if he can’t be happy with me and he’s happy with OW, I need for him to start the paperwork for a divorce but was very clear that I did NOT want a divorce, I just couldn’t stand in limbo much longer because it was too difficult for me and the kids. I also pointed out that if he really cared about OW, he should be with her 100% by freeing himself of me completely. I told him that if he didn’t want to be the one to make me happy somebody else would and I need to move on to be open for that person whoever and whenever that may come. He seemed to be a little bothered by that thought. Suddenly, he called me at work to talk very calmly and friendly. Suddenly he wanted to talk about the kids. He told me 2 days a week is not enough time with the kids. I told him he could see them anytime he wanted to but he insisted that I have al kinds of restrictions for his time with the kids. I reminded him that the only rule I have is that the kids aren’t introduced to OW or around OW until we are completely done with each other with ink dry on the papers etc. I reminded him that if it’s so important to him to have the kids be around her, that was another good reason to begin proceedings. But I also pointed out that if he thought 2 days a week wasn’t enough, wait until a judge gets involved and he gets them only every other weekend. OW has 2 EH and her kids spend every other weekend with their dads, I reminded.
He finally spent an afternoon golfing with a very close relative and opened up -- he had been avoiding contact with all his relatives until then, so this was a big deal for many of his family members. This cousin has been through a nasty divorce and dealt with the challenges of step families and split time with the kids and the affects on the kids, etc. Cousin told me very little of what they talked about so H wouldn’t feel like he’d betrayed his confidence or anything, which I completely understand and respect. H admitted to his cousin that he does love me very much (which he’d been insisting that he had no feelings for me, of course) but he’s very scared -- the last argument we’d had the day he moved out was pretty loud and ugly, but not physical, never gotten that far. He admitted that he doesn’t love OW but feels “obligated” to her. He said all she does is ***** and nag at him all the time. Said he hadn’t been in contact with her since Jan. when he told me he’d broken it off but after a week of moving out, everyone was telling him he needed to come home and work this out and he wasn’t ready to do that and so he called her because he knew she wouldn’t try to send him back home to work on things. He also admitted to his cousin that he’s very worried about the kids and how this is affecting them, especially our 12 yr old D who is old enough to understand more of what’s going on than the other kids.
His cousin summed it up to him very simply -- no one can tell him what to do and no matter what happens, the kids are the ones most affected by all this but H has to make a choice one way or the other.
H and I finally sat down Sunday night and talked about the real issues, which we hadn’t really done since he’d moved out. It went very well. He finally, tearfully, admitted to me how much he loved me and how scared he was and how much he’d felt “crushed” in the past couple years by me. I never turned to finger of blame on him during this, I accepted the blame and responsibility of as much as I felt I could but didn’t point out where he’d also crushed me. I told him that after finding out about the A, I was ill-equip to deal with that and I obviously handled and reacted to it poorly but I didn’t know how to process that kind of shock. I also told him I had such a hard time believing that he would give up someone else that he cared for to love only me when at the time, I was feeling so badly about myself that I couldn’t even love myself. I wasn’t raised being told I was loveable and even when we first met, I couldn’t understand why he loved ME. And periodically throughout the marriage, I would stop to wonder why he loved me because it stunned and amazed me so much sometimes. He said “Because you’re smart, beautiful, funny and everyone loves to be around you.” I told him that he hasn’t said words like that to me for years.
I had been carrying a lot of anger inside me for awhile and the separation forced me (Plan A) to address that, reconnect with my spirit and release the anger. Since then, even through the most brutal parts of this ordeal, I’ve felt only a calm and peacefulness inside that made me understand that I can’t control the situation, I can only control how I respond and react to it. I told him I understand that he may not trust that in me. And I told him that I realize there’s nothing I can say or do to make him believe or to prove to him that there is a real calm change over me, he would either have to choose to trust and believe that it’s possible or choose to not risk it and never know for sure. But I also pointed out that he expected me to just trust that he’d ended things completely without any proof.
By the end of the talk, he was hugging me very tightly and then told me “Give me a week or 2 to straighten this all out. That’s all I can give you right now.”<p> As always, I'm hoping but not expecting. Any thoughts?
