Sorry for the long post.
After many months, I think I have a good grasp of the WHY. (FOO stuff + MLC + etc.).
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to help me much.
The question I am struggling is WHAT. As in, what happened emotionally. What was going on emotionally/what did he feel about me that made it possible for him to have such profound indifference to my feelings and wellbeing (at best) and with cruelty and malice (at worst)?
We have had the following exchange several times that leaves me frustrated.
"I thought you loved me."
"I did love you."
WTH? Then I feel I need to educate him about what it means to love someone, or worse, I am with someone who has no clue what it means to love someone ... and OMG is that depressing.
Then finally we had this conversation.
"I thought you valued and respected me. I thought you were committed to the marriage. I thought you would never do anything that would risk blowing up the family." (or something like that)
"Yes. Clearly by that standard, I failed."
(Note, it was late at night - he may not have been thinking clearly and might not said they same thing during the day).
So I keep coming back to the question, what happened?
What did he actually feel about me during those years?
I don't know what I need this question answered. But maybe it is as if the sexual acts are beside the point. The negative emotions (including callousness, resentment and blame) feel like the real betrayal. And until he can describe it/admit it, I feel as if I won't know what actually happened in our marriage.
We haven't made much progress on this. He has found this a difficult question to answer. Not sure why. Lack of insight into himself? Scared of hurting me more by saying anything other than assuring me that he always loved me?
He now calls this the "you want me to say I hated you - which isn't true conversation"
I sense he is getting closer to being ready to answer this question, but MC has been away over the past couple weeks, and when we tried do do it ourselves without him, the convo didn't go very well.
Not sure why it didn't go well. Maybe I think I want to understand more about his negative feelings/ indifference, but in fact it will just make me upset?
Does this sound familiar to anyone? Is this an important questions to answer? Or am I just setting myself up for a situation in which I am encouraging him to say blamey resentful, mean things to me.
(Then there is the difficult question: what does he feel for me now? And, what is he actually capable in terms of loving someone.)
Please help. Thanks!