Hi Fellow Ramblers!
Well, in early Feb 2023, it was Chinese New Year but as my Dad had passed we could not celebrate and decided to go have a sibling+spouse holiday in OZ. It was fun and sad as we were still grieving to a degree.
My birthday came and went we did ordinary things but a sense of unease or unfinished business started rumbling. H, DS and I were a little more anxious, a little more irritable. But still planning family trips and now trips for H and I. H still does trips abroad for work (but is based in home country )and I now accompany him except for the latest on in March 2023. H calls and texts which is usual but this time he said he “didn’t like being there without me.” I hadn’t gone with him as it was a short trip and I had stuff to take care of.
In hindsight, I believe that this was the middle of the 5th stage of MLC [Withdrawal] and the start of the sixth. [Acceptance] — which has 3 stages. I could be completely off or misreading so please bear with me. H also changed Jobs in December 2022 to working less for less pay because he “wanted to spend more time at home”. I think it was a change that suited him and he helped me tremendously when it came to my Dad’s final months. But it also meant he became closer to my Dad and he is grieving this loss deeply.
I refer to HeartsBlessings Six Stages of MLC. It can be found here :
https://thestagesandlessonsofmidlife.org/the-six-stages-of-a-mid-life-crisis/Sometime in the first week of April, I was talking to H about spending 2 weeks in Sept in an immersive language course overseas. H threw a major hissy fit, it was like a regression to when he came back during Replay. This shift triggered me quite badly and my body kept score, if you will.
We returned from the trip and looked at the dates. April 12th was when we went together to his apartment in the work country to throw the Oompa Loompa out. But this wasn’t an ordinary trigger DS felt it too. There really was a shift back.
For some reason, I focused on the missing timeline. It had been 8 years since DDay#2, I still didn’t have it. It got put on the back burner for various life events that came about and also we remembered that we had the moratorium agreement. I felt we couldn’t handle the stress of what life was throwing us and also work on the affair processing. We thought :
1. We have a broad understanding of what went on in the work country
2. We have dealt with most of it (HA! NOT…by a long shot)
3. We had a blessing of the rings and we wanted to stay together.
Well, Replay is only HALF way through an MLC. And MLC is a crisis of identity resulting from FOO issues broadly. With my Dad’s passing, we were now THE Adults. If the MLCer has been running from stuff, this kind of “responsibility” is pressure to move forward in the tunnel.
This time H said he would give me a timeline. There was more regression as he went through “research” - all the stuff left behind (emails, photos [in Oompa Loompa social media] and expense accounts) - he was opening the boxes he slammed shut as quickly as he could when exiting Replay.
Because it had been so long, the contents of said boxes were “rotten, stinking messes” . It has been over 2 months of H working on it and I saw the return of all his old thinking pathways and how our “old ways” of communication were resurfacing. H did move from “the timeline is to help SP heal” (or at least get her to shut up about it and have nothing more to complain about 🤣) to ( “it is for me too”) he kept on and I got more and more agitated. His therapist said I had complex PTSD and needed expert help and so I got myself a therapist.
More anon. Have to make dinner. 😘 thanks for following along .
Peace and strength