Relapse

When I was married I had this reoccurring dream: My X is telling in an extremely deadpan, unemotional voice that it is over and he is seeing someone else. In every dream I’m devastated and I wake up upset. I told him about these at the time but he always reassured me. In fact I was trying to interpret them and wondering if they were more about my own fears than anything else. Well I was wrong, the scenario played itself out almost exactly this week.

We spent a therapy session that was supposed to be for organizing kid scheduling, talking about us instead. The idea was to make sure we were both on the same track, we weren’t, and that we understood each other, we don’t, and get a handle on my/our anger, we didn’t. But we did agree not to take a destructive path, which will force us to put aside pettiness and control impulses toward hot button topics.

I had to hear, really for the first time that it was truly over and he was moving on. Not “was” but that he had. The girlfriend is a relationship he is keen on pursuing. To hear these things, yes, devastating, but also I couldn’t stand that I had to hear it through someone else; the therapist. I feel like he was such a coward. I was angry that I had to hear that finality communicated this way, though he had paraphrased it throughout the last week.

For the most part, I’m upset at myself for letting his visit here completely shake me, make me question how far I’ve come and show me those dark places again that I’d thought were gone. Was I not convinced it was really over? Possibly, but not being able to make that decision myself was hard to bear.

I can’t breathe around him and can’t wait for him to leave. It seems impossible to heal with him in my sphere. Now I look forward to working past all this, and truly, truly finding the strength to move forward and pursue what I really want. All this while being mindful of my children and their ever growing personalities and emotions.