Cat and Sara, thank you for your responses. I know you're right, and I admire the idea and practice of the Retrouvaille weekend. It can do nothing but good. But the big question for me is, why did I scuttle-butt it so easily? I thought it was a major coup for me to get H there, for heavens' sake! And after doing that, I really didn't have any regret for the lost weekend, or for the setback in reconciliation.
I'm thinking it was premature for me. Not for H, for me. He is liking to start sharing on a deeper emotional level. In the marriage it was me who was the open book, and H who gave emotional support. A one-way emotional flow. H often told me he got good feelings about himself for being able to do that, to support me emotionally. He still does. But he also likes the good feelings he gets from being able to do that with others, so he does. And I'm not trusting of him because of this, and I'm keeping him at arm's length with these emotional melt-downs. This kind of thing never happened in the marriage! But now, I'm afraid to get in too close to him after successfully disengaging over the course of this 10 month separation -- not unless I see some pretty strong drive coming from him that he wants not to have history repeat itself. So that's the problem.
I don't know why you left either. At some level you must have ambivalent feelings about returning to the marriage. And when you made the decision to leave you were overcome with the negative feelings. It is hard to fight negative feelings. But they will sabotage us in reaching our goals if we allow them to.
You really could benefit in learning the dialogue technique, but it takes patience. The Retrouvaille process feels slow. They know what they are doing, it takes time to reverse all the hostility that the couples come in with.
Think about the faces of the people you saw that friday night. I bet all of them looked tense and frightened. I know they did at my session. And nothing really changes that first night. It's just the ice breaker to have that first question.
If you had stayed you would have seen the change come over those people. By dinner on Saturday they are walking with their arms around each other. No, they didn't exchange spouses! Those are the married couples, talking and laughing and feeling happy together. It comes from learning to listen to each other with your heart. From both people learning to care about what the other person said. Until that day, I half listened when my husband spoke, and half planned my response. They taught me not to do that. To just listen. To ask questions and try to fully understand what he was saying.
You got angry because he didn't listen to you. You had a knee-jerk reaction to his desire to run away from your feelings. But if you had stayed THEY WOULD HAVE TAUGHT HIM TO LISTEN. You wouldn't have to argue or beg for it. They do it for you. And if he isn't listening, you can go to one of the presenting couples and talk about the problem. They will give him instructions on how to listen, really listen.
I can't tell you how this helped us. And from their success rate, I know it helps a lot of couples. It is a shame that we are all moving so fast that we don't take the time to really listen to each other.
At some level you must have ambivalent feelings about returning to the marriage.
You got angry because he didn't listen to you.
I think you are right about both of these things, Sara. And I appreciate your taking the time and energy to try to explain me to myself.
So here's the update on this latest episode of the Perils of Pauline: H and I are furiously emailing one another today, as we speak. I'm feeling proud of him for not getting derailed, he's staying with the program (which includes some elevated, noble stuff from me as well as some shitty stuff from me) dealing methodically with the different categories of communications we have going at the moment. He returned the current dialogue question set: "How do I tell if my partner is happy? Unhappy? How do I feel when my partner is happy? Unhappy?" and I returned mine. It is amazing and enlightening to see the different ways he and I responded to this question.
H said he always thought he could tell if I was happy or unhappy, and he based much of his self-esteem on being able to make me feel loved and appreciated, it meant he was successful at emotional intimacy, and if I was unhappy it would make him feel nervous and apprehensive. (this is an almost direct quote)
H then goes on to comment on how that has changed for him over the course of the separation: "these days I would be more at ease with an answer that you were unhappy. That's because we are, in fact, communicating better, and I think you do know that I love you. There can be other reasons you might be unhappy which would be less painful to me." That was nice, and makes me think we are making progress in spite of our setbacks.
BTW, my answers to this question didn't resemble his much at all. As part of my answer I wrote I had long believed that people were responsible for their own happiness, and if my partner was unhappy my feelings would be "anxious, interested and confident. I would feel a call to action, and would feel confident that I could be instrumental in helping my partner resolve his unhappiness."
It looks like H was more fused in the marriage than I was. Someone (ediemarie?) recently posted about the idea of using two circles (representing the two partners) to describe how each partner saw the marriage. Her perception was of two circles standing side-by-side, overlapping a bit, not a lot. And her H perception would be of two circles standing in the same place, fully overlapping. I see M the way ediemarie/LBS does, a healthy separation of the partners who choose to be together but not in every way, and it's looking like both our H/WS see it as fusion.
