He was distressed over the promise he made two months ago.  I asked him to tell someone about the affair.  He asked me what he could do and I told him what I wanted him to do “without discussing it with him and coming to an agreement,” thus, the distress.  Wow.

I told him that I had not known there were limitations on what I was allowed to request when he told me he would do anything to prove his sincerity. Pardon the heck out of me.

He then explained to me how he didn’t understand how bringing an innocent person into the mix was going to help us.  I immediately thought of two of my friends.  They aren’t wringing hands about me laying this burden down on them.  Anyway.  I am not totally buying this excuse, but I am listening. He wanted to know what difference it made for him to tell someone else.  He confessed it to me, after all.

Okay.

Are you kidding me?

He only “confessed” it because someone else informed me.  Does that even count?

He couldn’t get me to tell him that it was perfectly okay, he didn’t have to keep his promise to me because it was too hard, but I did say something like,”I hope you understand that backing out of your promise means that it is going to take an extra long time to recover from this.  It’s clear to me that you have no intention of keeping your promise.”

He said that he was going to keep it and I told him, simply, that I didn’t believe him.  This, based on that fact that it has been 7 weeks?  Sorry if that wounds the image he has of himself, but…?

Things got quiet.  He’s unhappy with how things are between us right now.  He’s worried that if we are cold to one another, that we are doomed.

Forgive me, but I said something to the effect that if our marriage ended, he’d find someone right away on Facebook.  I didn’t really say that, but I alluded to the fact that he’s not shy about dating since he did it while he was married.  What struck me was that he didn’t even “blink.”

I understand that he wants things to be comfortable.  So do I, or I did and things were, but the facts still nagged at me…and those are only the couple that are obvious to me.  I don’t even know what I don’t even know.  He asked me, yesterday, if I felt there was more for him to tell me and I answered there was no way for me to know that, since he was the keeper of all the information.

I think what he is trying to do is get some kind of commitment from me that I trust him.  If I go on my emotions, I feel like I can trust him.  If I look at the facts, I don’t.

I can’t imagine being without him.  When I married him, after I said I would never marry someone again, I changed my philosophy to, “Only marry someone if you have to be with them.”

Am I seeing everything he does as bad or suspect or self-serving because it is or because I am paranoid?  If I am paranoid, guess what?  He built it.  I never before even thought of questioning his fidelity.  I’ve learned that I was wrong.

So, then I said, well, maybe you should go talk to the pastor around the corner, since he had suggested that,  instead of a real person.  I didn’t take it seriously, since I didn’t think it was going to be a sacrifice: he is a minister, not exactly a peer.  However, this may be a worthy compromise since I think my husband could use some highly intelligent and inspired insight and the pastor is both intelligent and insightful.

“Why do you think I need to see him?”

Husband, husband, husband. Are you a slippery SOB? Slipperier than I thought?

I don’t want war.  I just want truth, but maybe I can’t have truth without war…but something is happening because when I tried to smooth things over about The Promise, he said, “It doesn’t matter, anyway because I am going to do it.”

It’s obvious he has been agonizing over some things as evidenced by his sequestering himself in the bedroom all night and then firmly stating that he was doing it.

I feel like such a burden has been lifted and the knot in my back went away.It pains me to see him so upset, but…I need to detach from that and allow him his own journey.  He said that all of the pain in our marriage is his fault, entirely, which he has said before, but now, it carries more weight.