re: Love...

EL:

Thanks much for the kind words. The wonderful people who dwell in this forum have already done a great deal to help me along in the healing process.

My FWS and I just had another great weekend together exploring swimming holes in a nearby river. Maybe that is what caused me to think of Anne's Gift from the Sea passage. After the joys of our highs, I tend to "resist in terror" the ebbs.

Today I find myself dwelling on some things my wife said Friday night when our conversation somehow turned to her missing the outdoors when she strayed so many years ago. (The OM is into hunting and fishing.) Details of the conversation are already a bit fuzzy. But I believe she said something about wanting to put more of the outdoors and nature back in her life back then. It wasn't so much the idea of her missing nature that caught my ear. (I felt the same way back then. We were far from home.) What bugged me was the idea of her thinking that a clandestine meeting for a couple of days with an old boyfriend could put anything back in her life. I asked her, as non-threateningly as I could, how she thought such a meeting could possibly fill that gap if she never intended to launch into a prolonged affair, let alone abandon her family. I think she instantly regretted her words and started showing the all too familiar signs of an anxiety attack. She also once again explained that she has a very difficult time remembering, let alone understanding, her thought processes so long ago. So we changed the subject and went on with our weekend.

I know from long experience that my wife's memory can indeed be spotty. But I am coming to believe that memory lapses are only part of the reason for her inability to answer some of my questions in any detail. She has trouble explaining her actions back then (over a decade ago) for the same reason teenagers so often cannot explain why they did something wrong. She really did not reason her way through her actions or their possible consequences. She knew what she wanted to do in the near term, but did not think much about where she wanted or expected her near term actions to lead (or where things might lead if she lost control of the situation). I think she is also reluctant to answer some questions because she fears the answers will hurt me, and because it is humiliating now to admit what motivated her actions back then.

Fortunately, over the past few months my wife has offered enough information for me to understand the things she is so reluctant to talk about. Although I prefer to think of what happened as a clandestine meeting with a former boyfriend that got out of hand, the truth is that my wife allowed herself to be drawn into an emotional affair with her ex-fiancé from high school. She most regrets the emotional affair. And I find her residual feelings for an ex-fiance easier to accept than her willingness to get naked with him (and then spend two days together once the barriers had fallen). We all view things through our own filters.

In any case, the conversation last Friday did not drag me back into a deep dark place. Nor has my processing of it yesterday and today. Instead, it just got me thinking of Anne's words and the hard-earned wisdom behind them.

Thanks again for making me feel welcome here,
W1

P.S. Sorry this ended up a new post. I thought I was adding it to the existing thread and now don't know how to move it.