Still taking it a day at a time

[may22]

But if we both told our stories about that time, they'd be different. H would use words like 'unfair' and 'not having my needs met' and those are true stories for him. And I'd use stories like 'feeding your ego' and 'you had other options' and 'you felt comfortably lying to me' and those are true stories for me. I don't think our stories will ever totally match, and I am not sure that is necessary for healing. He knows how much it hurt and why it hurt, and I think I do understand a bit of what was happening for him at the time and why it was linked to how he was experiencing our marriage at the time.

Well. This is super interesting and I've been chewing on it all day long. I would say we both understand each other's positions here just like you and your H...and now I'm wondering why I feel so strongly that he needs to be sorrier and stop the justification game. is it OK that we have different stories for what happened? I guess in my perfect world he would be able to say and own that his behavior was wholly unacceptable, full stop. it was wrong and cruel and he regrets it completely. Full stop. He can say this, but always tinged with the justification in the background.

And I'm not trying to minimize the effect of the SSM on him. Much of what he says is true about me withdrawing my love and affection for him in many ways. I understand why he was open to starting the A. I still don't think that makes it OK. It makes me think he was sad and lonely and totally ripe for the picking with a young and ego-feeding AP. But that still doesn't excuse it. I just don't understand why he thinks it does. Maybe I'm being too dogmatic on this one, though.

I wonder, May, if you need to accept that there are aspects of your experience - as a woman, as a mother, as a friend, in your professional and creative and spiritual life, and in your healing from this terrible wound - that he isn't going to understand because he isn't you. There's always a kind of existential privacy inside marriage, and I can't help but wonder if you are stuck because you are expecting him to understand your pain and anger in a way that just isn't possible. Maybe instead of asking him to get up close to it and really see it, your job is to get up close and see it very closely for yourself?

I think I push wanting him to understand what I've been through less for him to understand my experience and more for him to understand the gravity of what he's done. I feel like he keeps minimizing it, because it was a positive experience in some ways for him, it's over now, and it is deeply uncomfortable for him to feel that he did something to hurt me so traumatically. I feel like if he'd spend some time trying to sit in my shoes, maybe that is what it would take to get the breast-beating clothes-rending sorrow I'm waiting for? IDK. Other than that, I'm OK with him not fully understanding my experience-- as you say, he isn't me. Just as I honestly don't want to fully live in his brain and feel how he felt during his A. I think you're right in that my job now is to really look up close at my pain and anger and understand it for myself, regardless of how or whether H spends much time thinking about it at all or not.

Another thought I just had... I wonder if I think that if he moved on to thinking about how badly he hurt me, that would say something about him having gotten over thinking about her?

The ritual thing... I like that idea, a lot. I have been noodling a lot about not having had a real separation. I need to think about what that might look like for me, though. At the moment I'm working on some ritual to exorcise AP from my headspace. I really want to stop thinking about her at all.

I started a little ritual for myself but one that will take me a loooong time to get through. Maybe a year ago or so, we started playing the NYT crossword puzzle together online-- previously we were doing the Sunday paper version. And maybe in the spring we started doing every day in a compettion against each other (we still sometimes do Friday and Saturdays together, but we race the other days). I went back to when he met AP and started doing back puzzles from back then. I think I'm going to go through all the Mondays up until H and I started doing them together. And then Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, up until I've done every puzzle during their A. It feels like reclaiming those weeks, for me. When I open it up and see February 2018, and remember what we were doing then, and reconcile the fact that H was having an affair while I blithely went about my life... somehow I'm taking that week back, one day at a time.

I have to say though, when I read the part were your H said "If you don't trust me, then ask me to leave" and "I'm not actively in love with her anymore".....I really just want to punch him in the face. what kinds of sh*t is that??

The man still wants a cookie, I think. UGH.

He says he understands why I don't trust him and it is fair given what he did... but then a few moments later he launches back into if I can't trust him then what are we doing? I have told him I need time, please chill out.

I think it is entirely understandable that you can't trust him right now. It is a sane decision. It doesn't seem to me that you are trying to manipulate, punish or control him. But you are accepting very clearly the fact he lied to you for an extended period of time, and after you found out about that, he decided to carry on lying to you for some more time. And as a result, you are unable to trust him.

He might have all kinds of feelings about that, but none of those are your problem.

You're right. NOT MY PROBLEM. I feel kind of like it is. But it really, truly, is all his work.

I think here the problem might be that he thinks you're in piecing or marriage 2.0 and is confused or annoyed that you are saying you want that, but acting otherwise. Is it that you're still waiting for something from him?

I think you may be right on this. But I don't feel like we're in piecing until I feel 100% secure that AP is out of the picture and his head, he's 100% committed to the MR and making it work, takes full responsibility without making justifications and is truly remorseful, like "I made a horrible mistake" kind of remorseful.

These may be totally unrealistic and unnecessary hoops. But, it is how I feel right now. Maybe I'll feel differently once I process my anger. I'm sure there is some level of anger seeping out in all of this. So I don't really feel ready to piece, quite yet. I've told him that, but he gets frustrated in that I'm "telling him how to feel" because I don't want to start working on M2.0 until he can tell me unequivocally he's over AP (and normally I can't resist throwing in some choice words about her, which I know doesn't help anything). I think I need to just lay off on that part. I don't think I need him to be embarrassed about her, just over her.

I need to think about IHS vs an extended reconciliation period and what that looks and feels like, different from what we have right now. I think it could be helpful to be more explicit about the rules of interaction, for now.