Happy anniversary breakdown! Happy for you! Keep it going.....keep it going.
TPS Me: 44 H: 42 M14 T17 S10 D7 10/10 H moves out after death of his father-same month 21/04/12 H is 'DONE' 04/05/12 OW/PA confirmed (rumors from 2010) July '14 H ends affair May '15 H moves back home
Two steps forward and one step back. Dinner ended up being a bust about half way thru, which was probably due to the wine pairing in part. She started talking about OM, and I got upset and said something she didn't like and then we just slid into the same old arguments and continued them thru dinner and all the way home. She dropped bomb again and slept in spare BR.
Some discussion this morning that is positive, but W feels like we're back at square one. I put together a list of what I was willing to do and what I wasn't willing to do and shared it with her, also provided her the same format in case she wanted to do the same (she didn't). It helped me wrap my own head around my boundaries and actions I want to take.
Are you really gonna rest the fate of your marriage, on whether or not either of you have had a few drinks ????
You tell me what you think
Actually, I had thought about that....and I know it has certainly caused issues at times. I don't think it's a root cause but I do know it lets us both slip into old habits, and a lot of the work I've put into myself slips after 3-4 drinks. I can certainly do my part to exclude it.
I'm certainly NOT saying that you are a raging alcoholic or anything....
I just see a pattern here with this.
Read back at the bad conversations with her, and look at the circumstances surrounding them. A good portion of the time, they involve having drinks, at the bar, or after drinks...
Just something that I would like for you to look at.
No, it's a good point. I actually stopped drinking for about 60 days at the beginning of the year because 1) I felt I was using it to cope and 2) my anger and frustration bubbled to the surface after a couple. I don't think either of those is true today, but I do know that after a few it's 10X harder to be patient, or act upbeat and happy in the face of OM discussions, or steer the conversation away from negativity. I still think I'm successful a lot of the times, but 1 bad night can't throw us off the edge of the cliff right now, so it's probably not a bad thing to cut out until we're on solid ground.
And honestly, no booze may help me get that last little bit of fat off my belly in the next few months, so it's a win win
One other thing I wanted to mention here that I'm unsure of. W is constantly complaining about my behavior in the first 5-10 years of our marriage and eventually I took a stand and said "I'm done apologizing for the same thing over and over." During our retrov weekend a woman said that her husband apologized 1000 times, and she didn't really hear it the first 999. My W reminded me of that this morning. I'm really starting to feel like she may need to hear it repeatedly for it to sink in, but I'm afraid it's a slippery slope. I really don't have a problem giving her the repeated apology for mistakes long past, but I don't want it to backfire on me. She hasn't really accepted responsibility for her part in our problems, and hasn't really even apologized for her relationship with OM.
