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Have you talked to your BH about this particular scenerio? How did he feel? That would be a step towards finding remorse. More effort to understanding him & his feelings.

I can almost guarantee he was feeling WTF!?! The weekend of our dday I couldn't get out of bed. While I am in there DYING, what is WH doing? WHISTLING. I remember feeling I had been slapped. He didn't care what I was feeling because he was WHISTLING.

We weren't at a place that I could voice that to him and he certainly wasn't at a place that he recognized what he was (or wasn't) doing.

So put yourself out there and reach out to your BS. You recognizing that your response was poor will be meaningful to him.

Thanks, I'm starting to realize I have to get comfortable with all the uncomfortableness going on. It surrounds me and that's why I shut down and move on to something else - I hate that feeling. You're right though - that's still nothing compared to what my BH is going through and I need to "man up" and get over the selfishness of not wanting to feel uncomfortable.

Also - yes, we did have a talk about what I did, both alone and with our MC. It did help me realize what I did and think about it a lot more and think about what the right thing to do would have been. I just feel so lost so many times I just move on to something else and that's definitely not the right thing - it's insensitive and self absorbed. I'm starting to get better at thinking "what does he feel? What does he need?" but I'm still far off from being great at doing the right thing. I am improving though and my BH is being kind enough to not only be patient with me while I learn this, but he's also giving me positive feedback when I get it right.

SFN

check out the following book

Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You: Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear and Build Resilience

you need to build up a tolerance to those feelings. and start to be ok just feeling. to "Just Be"

[This message edited by DrJekyll at 12:37 PM, August 15th (Friday)]

How does your husband express himself? Like would it be easier for him to journal or write his thoughts in a letter and give that to you?

My husband's default coping mechanism with uncomfortable conversations is to shut down, get defensive, put up walls, stop all feelings that he can. We worked hard on this in the early part of our marriage, but it got bad during the A. And he's tryign to work his way out of it.

Our MC is working on imago, where he works on hearing and validating - rather than feeling like he has to "respond" to what I say. By putting it into his own words, sometimes that alone makes a lightbulb go off (and vice versa). Being freed of having to react also puts him in a different role than feeling like it needs to be a turn-based I say-he respond - i respond - he respond, etc. type situation.

That you're trying is a step in the direction. This isn't a sprint, it's a very long marathon.