SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

If the A's have been going on through your entire relationship and you never saw what normal commitment looked like, how do you know when you get there?

Truly, your gauge is how healthy you are, not how healthy WS is. Also, talking to other people, as many as possible and as often as possible will help you get a handle on "normal". Other people can sometimes see our situation better than we can because of their perspective. Self-sufficiency was a lie.

I can relate because I live with someone who never admitted to having feelings or needs, and now I can't believe I ever accepted that as normal! Holy fuck, what was I thinking?!? Now I know that's sort of a baseline for our recovery and R, a bottom line, something to aim for. WS has to start getting in touch with his feelings, and start expressing his needs or I know nothing has truly changed.

Maybe one good approach is to ask yourself how you feel and what you think about your relationship as you go along. Also, trust your senses.

And trust yourself - you're a human being, and human beings know how to have good relationships, after all.

Remember - life is a work in progress. A 'good relationship' may not be a 'there' - it could be just a relationship that is good enough to start and keeps getting better.

None of us really knows what's normal. We only know our own experience.

ETA: Really, is 'normal' important? I think many of us in R - and you seem to be one of them, chicho - are aiming to make our relationships full partnerships, which I think will make them much closer and more supportive (without suffocating each other) than most - which makes them 'abnormal'.

T/J - I recently skimmed an article that seemed to say our happiness with our sex lives depended on us doing as much as we thought others did. (I guess that means 72 times a week isn't enough if you think the average is 80, but no sex after 50 can be satisfying if you think that's normal.)

[This message edited by sisoon at 7:41 AM, April 26th (Friday)]