Thank you, akakarma

From akaKarma in the comments of last post:

You two are deservedly exhausted right now. Sometimes all you can do is retreat
to your separate corners and heal a bit, lick wounds before you are able to come
together again. The little stuff is the hardest stuff isn't it? It wears you
down. I was not prepared for marriage and motherhood and how hard it was. When
my H had hid A I was at the pinnacle of feeling like it was drudgery (even tho I
was crazy for my child) and I felt like I was slogging thru the mud every day. I
think he did too and found a way out in fantasy- a choice I like to think I
wouldn't have made. Hang in there and just see what happens- stop working so
hard to be perfect and connected- just be for awhile. If you both can just
commit to staying out of other relationships that might be enuf right now?

Wow, did that comment speak to me. Thank you very much for it.

I brought this up to Matt, and he was tremendously relieved. We're both tired of working hard at this-- it's all we've been doing for the last year, and we need a break. So our break has had the following rules: Spend time together or apart as we want to, no expectations on Matt sleeping in our room or not, no relationship talk (including separation), no seeing other people.

We've been on our "break" for a week, and Matt has come home at a decent hour almost every night since, and has asked me to watch movies or spend time with him a few evenings. He's slept in our bed with me every night but the first. Last night he asked what he could do to help me get my work life back on track.

Was I putting that much pressure on him-- on us? Apparently so and I didn't see it. I feel like an idiot. I feel like I never know how to deal with things anymore. This is just another example.

Akakarma? You may have saved us for now.

My Chosen Path

We all make decisions that direct our path. There are the big decisions that are easy to see-- mile markers if you will. Getting married or divorced, having a child, buying a house and other such choices are the mile markers in our lives. I remember a lot of things lately as "when I was pregnant with Michael" or "when Michael had just turned one" or "just after we got married". It's hard for me to say exactly when something happened by precise date until I think of the mile marker event that it is nearest to.

Those big decisions are so easy to see and it is easy to give them the proper weight that they deserve when considering your options. I thought for a long time about whether or not I should marry Matt and rightly so. It's a decision that changes the path of your life and there's no telling the new direction.

And then there are those small decisions that you can't know about or prepare for. Like choosing to take a certain route home-- not your normal route, but a way that gets you there just the same. You might get home the same as always, but you also might get in an accident you may not have gotten in if you had just kept to your normal route.

My chosen path, as Matt was referring to in last post, was my decision to stay and work things out in our relationship. He acknowledges that once he decided to stay that I also had a decision to make considering the devastation to our relationship post-affair. I chose to stay and work.

And this is how things have turned out. We kind of just survived until last February when something seemed to click inside Matt's head and suddenly he got it and made drastic changes. He's kept the big changes (no close relationships with other women, letting me know what he's up to when he's out outside of work hours, keeping his accounts and phone open to me, etc.) but all the small things? Poof. Disappeared.

Why?

He's tired of keeping it up.

And I understand that. I'm tired of this whole thing too. It's not about the affair anymore. It's about us and the problems we have in trying to maintain our relationship. I've been feeling particularly awful in this relationship for several weeks now. I kept trying to pinpoint the problem and couldn't so I finally decided that I must be in a weird place and I'd get over it. And then in having a mundane argument (something household related that I don't remember) he said that this is what I've chosen for myself. And that's when it hit me.

I've put myself here, and I hate where I am on my chosen path.

Back Again

Since I was last here...

1. We pulled Michael out of the daycare program he was in. Four of the teachers quit or resigned within one week, and that makes me really nervous about the management of the place. So we are looking for a new program or private care, which is really stressing me out for some reason. I don't even know why, but it's constantly on my mind.

2. Because of this, I'm kind of doing the stay-at-home mom thing right now, but trying to work at least part time because I need to get my income flowing again, and I can't do that unless I'm billing hours. So I'm doing mommy stuff most of the day and then working during Michael's afternoon naptime (which Jack currently sleeps through too, thank goodness!) and then for a few hours every evening after the boys are in bed. I'm going to need to start trying to get up earlier than them too and see if I can at least answer emails or something small before they get up.

3. Matt and I talked about separating last week. I can't talk to him anymore, and he works late so that he doesn't have to come home. I'm not sure how we got back here, but I know that this time around I don't care. I can't keep cycling through this with him. I can't do this every year for the rest of our lives. The thought of separating from him exhausts me... I'm worried about managing everything on my own, but at the same time, I'm already managing 95% on my own, what's that last 5% going to do to me? And at the same time, separating might be a relief... I'm tired of trying to make a relationship work when he's not doing his part anymore. When he was working at it things were going well. Now he's decided that he's done enough work and it should all be over by now. That's what he told me. He told me that I chose this path for us and I need to live with how it turned out.

So he's usually leaving for work before we're up in the morning (or he hangs around basically just long enough to say good morning to the boys) and then he doesn't come home until just before Michael's bedtime. He spends a little time with Michael for about 20 minutes before helping to put him to bed then retreats to his office and either comes to bed after I'm asleep or sleeps in the other room. No real decision has been made yet, so we'll see where this goes.

I apologize for being offline for awhile, but I've been trying to manage life here, and I don't really want to apologize for that, you know?