We had a so-so weekend, and then a couple of good days. Yesterday felt almost normal. In fact, when I came home looking blue, H came over of his own accord and hugged and kissed me.

But then last night before going to bed we had another long talk about how he is afraid of the therapist. How he is afraid the things he is thinking about and going over in his head will hurt me. He said he didn't want to talk about it right then, and I should have listened to him.

There was no fighting, but some of the things he said tore open the thin, thin, scabs I was building up over my feelings, and plunged me right back down again. I barely slept last night, despite the sleeping pill I took before going to bed. When I would wake up and cry, he would hold me, but I know he is discouraged by it. The pain this morning is fresh again, and I fight to keep from calling and talking to him.

We have our second therapy session today. On one hand, I am desparate to go, because I would do anything to fix this. On the other, I am terrified that my marriage is over no matter what I do. I am hurt to the core over what he did, but I also feel a lot of guilt about the damage that I did the marriage without knowing. And yes, I am responsible for some of that.

I want to trust him to be strong and stay with this long enough to really try to make it work, and I don't know why I am having a hard time believing that he will. I keep thinking that we could have fixed this BEFORE he had the EA, but now he will be always comparing our relationship to that fantasy and I will always lose.


How am I going to get through this day?

First of all, it is so great that your H is willing to go to therapy with you. There are many who are not willing, not ready or not interested. We found it to be really, really important for us.In my case, H happy to go to MC and IC - any opportunity to talk about himself and he is there.

And, yes, it is very possible that it will get painful and ugly and incredibly hurtful. We always thought of it as a padded room with a good referree. We tried to save the big fights/issues for our sessions because somehow we knew that we wouldn't fight fair without her. On the other hand, we got to some real truths about our problems and we learned about how our respective pasts had led us to the places were in. It was never about blame and always about understanding, learning, getting things out in a productive way. In the early days, I expressed my rage and pain in vulgar and hurtful ways - MC somehow managed to let those things be said and then used them to help H understand that my words were an expression of the pain I was in.

I often left our sessions sobbing and sure that there was no way we could put things back together. My IC made a suggestion - she said that we should go out together after the session to talk - what had we learned? Our sessions were early in the morning so we usually went out for a quick cup of coffee before going to work and it really made a difference - I could calm down and see some hope in the debris.

Also, based on our experience, you need to give it time. Some days, I thought it was a waste of time. Some days, I thought there were breakthroughs. Somedays, I was annoyed because I didn't feel she was hard enough on my H. We were there for about a year and a half. And, we somehow knew when it was time to stop, that we were keeping the wounds open, after they had already been examined and cleaned.

I hope it works out for you.

Susan said it all. All I can say is ditto, and offer my support. ((((((((((hugs)))))))))

~ CAL
"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection" ~ Buddha