Hey Elissa,

First, massive hugs to you darling

"Change is a process, not an event." - I used to have this as my user title (but swapped it for my current one liner which I'm sure is much more profound and useful actually and funnily enough, probably an appropriate thing to say to your XH!). Change is something I have always struggled with in all sorts of aspects of my life, hey don't we all. I like to be reminded that you can't just "change", there you go everything is different now. Change has to happen gradually, with stages in between, and sometimes you might feel like you're going nowhere, or worse, going backwards but actually it's all part of the process of change.

Please don't be so hard on yourself. Of course, be honest and look for clarity but also know that what you're going through is really tough stuff. And your XH seems like he's being a complete and utter ****head about everything which is helping to confuse the situation even more.

And FWIW, when an extremely important relationship in my life broke down I had sex with my X a couple of times over a month or so. We just couldn't help ourselves. There were so many things that we loved about each other and would miss terribly. But in the end, for us, the bad stuff did outweigh the good stuff, we both accepted this and then were able to move on with our lives. Of course I felt awful about it at the time, but I can see now, for us, it was part of the process of saying goodbye. Please allow yourself to grieve for the good and wonderful things about your marriage. Even though it may appear to be a step in the wrong direction right now, don't beat yourself up for taking it, learn from it where you want to go with your life from here.

More hugs