@Want2bHappyAgain,
Very good to see you again too.
I think you just mentioned a pivotal part of healing.
It was a long time into reconciliation, when Mr Uxor and I had to sleep in different places, that my brain didn’t do the trigger dance of "what if he…."
Mine are not the same reasons, but because they had been trying to plot a work getaway right when I began to add up what I was seeing.
And because of the phone records of hundreds of texts and facetimes while I slept and Mr Uxor would say he couldn’t sleep and was going to go "read".
(Note: We never slept in separate places. And he does struggle with insomnia, so we did have to strategize a softly lit reading corner in our room for him for our healing.)
But life does sometimes have us have no choice but to stay in separate places for work and extended family situations.
I remember hating myself. I had never been needy, insecure or controlling about something like this. It felt like living in someone else’s skin to need to know where he was, to see phone records. To be able to randomly FaceTime to see he was alone.
Did I hate that he had brought this into our marriage? YES!
But the truth was that I hated the deeply wounded and emotionally bleeding part of my self-stability even more.
Weirdly, over the years I have discovered it is Mr Uxor who has always hated being and sleeping alone.
It was actually his insecurities that made him hate those empty insomnia hours or if I left for work trainings or to help aging parents.
I don’t look down on him for this. It is how he feels.
But I found as I healed through my IC over the years, I began to regain some of who I was.
I can get glitchy if I am just worn out, tired, meno-hormonally-wibble-wobbly or if the stars align too many triggers.
But overall my comfort with just me and separate from Mr Uxor is mostly restored.
He is the one with a greater need that we call and connect. That I know he was in the reading chair and visit on what was keeping his brain awake and on overdrive.
My happiness has these balanced thoughts. "He may slide to coping with his empty moments with someone else or sex again. But his coping skills are not my responsibly. It is on me to not damage his coping skills. It is also good that I feel my own comfort with my automomy returning. "
In other words, my joy is returning with the return of myself. While I do not have to fix his challenges. I can support his good strategies to deal with them. But I am free to not own responsibility if he chooses to cope poorly.
You described the long game of healing above. I hope it helps motivate both waywards and betrayed toward healing, transparency, good coping strategies, and a willingness to hit the reset button when they drift from healing before they get too far back out into the ocean of self destruction.
There is so much more happiness at the shoreline of healing.
