Yesterday was rough, though it didn’t start out that way…

I got up early and did the cat swapping, since we can now get back to the normal routines. Made coffee, got on my PC for blogging, made an adjustment in the video settings of Minecraft, and proceeded to spend the next hour or so doing that.

Then came EMDR. Since I’d missed the past week’s session due to being in Arkansas and there was so much to catch up on, I spent the majority of my session divulging all the things. With 10 minutes to spare, she gave me a couple reminders on techniques to do to alleviate the high anxiety.

I played more Minecraft until noon, taking a break only to get Floof put up. Finished what I was doing in the game and went down to let the 3 Turds out, get some soup for lunch, and watch an anime until it was time to go back upstairs for telehealth Women’s Trauma Survivor Group Therapy. This is a new one, by the way. I started the week before I left, missed the 2nd session, and yesterday’s was the 3rd. It focused on Gaslighting, Trust, and Green Flags.

About an hour into the 1.5 hour session, I got a message from The Boyfriend. Apparently, his ex (let’s call her… Typhoon – bc she’s legitimately that bad of a sub-par, toxic human) had texted him. I was only half paying attention to the message, but reading that hit me like a ton of bricks, right to the gut. Instant Panic Attack. Haven’t had one of those in a while. Ugh. He let me know that he responded “out of politeness.” Seems she was fishing for login information for Disney+ (something he was allowing her to have before he canceled the subscription). One of the boundaries I specifically put into the Couple’s Commitment Contract for this type of thing was violated with this incident (i.e. no personal conversations with women unless it relates to work or I am present and comfortable with it).

I did my best to respond while also paying attention to therapy, but I was shaking and crying so much that it was nearly impossible. Thankfully, we are allowed to turn our camera off and mute.

Thing is… I asked him to block her everywhere a long time ago. I remember checking his phone contacts over some course of time and noticing he hadn’t done so, and eventually deleted her contact info. I regret not going ahead and blocking it (which is what he should have done in the first place).

Anyway, the damage was done. I reached out to my women’s coach from the Recovery Program and relayed what had happened, asked for advice, and when therapy finally ended… she talked me through letting the emotions run their course. I went straight to bed and cried myself to sleep.

I didn’t wake up until 5p, and even then I didn’t want to get out of bed. I forced myself to, because cat swap again, but I was sluggish and depressed. I finally landed myself on the couch to drown in anime. Eventually, I was hungry enough that I messaged The Boyfriend, letting him know that I’d calmed down and was starving… asking if we could go to Freddy’s for dinner. He said yes and that was that. Went up stairs to sit on my bed and doom scroll until he got home.

Check-in wasn’t great. I mean… there was quite a bit of productive discussion, but a couple negative things and a lot of crying on my part is what made it suck a lot. Most notably from him: “I feel like I’m being punished for being open about it.” and “I feel like you’re encouraging me to hide these types of things.” Don’t get me wrong, those were merely the most negative things he said the entire time, the rest wasn’t like that. Other than the very end of our talk, this is by far more positive and productive than what it would have been a year ago. Hell, even 6 months ago. I am proud of him for how well he handled everything, despite the shock of my reaction to what happened (and trust me, I was just as shocked by it as he was).

It got to the point where he was Stonewalling (unintentionally) and I asked if we should take a break. He said yes, so I got up and went to the bathroom.

And promptly had a whole ass breakdown. I managed to do my business, but I had to lean over the sink because I was sobbing so hard I thought I was going to throw up. I turned the cold water on and hand one hand under it, fully intending to get to splashing it on my face at some point (one of those therapeutic techniques I was given), but the devastation I was feeling, the inability to catch my breath, and all the tears… just made acting on that technique difficult.

Eventually, The Boyfriend came in and started rubbing my back. I was finally able to splash water on my face a few times and dry off. We went back to the couch. From there, I asked if he would answer a question I’d had before the break, which was why he felt like crying and what prevented him from doing so. He answered that he’d been thinking about his childhood, sacrifices, and I don’t remember what else. What stopped him was more that he felt like the need to cry was forced, so he just didn’t do it. There wasn’t much said after that, but I did move over to snuggle with him and Mars.

I looked up what the Consequences were to violating that boundary and let him know that it was that we would have to sleep together (not like that!) for an entire week. He asked if we could alternate between beds. I told him I’d thought a lot about that and felt that him sleeping with me in my bed would be a motivator because Floof would be put out. He responded, “Except she would be neglected.”

Cue instant jealousy. What that tells me is that he is more concerned with inconveniencing his cat than taking accountability for hurting me by crossing a boundary. I am less valuable and cherished than a cat. I wasn’t able to tell him how that made me feel and I basically just gave up. After a few moments of silence, I whispered, “Ok. We will sleep in your room tonight.” More silence until I finally got up, got some water, and let him know that I was ready for bed and went upstairs.

And that’s that. He’s in a great mood this morning and I am puffy-eyed, exhausted, and pretty depressed. I wish I had the “reset” button some people seem to have. It’s like sleep completely wipes all the negative shit from the day before and yaaaaay good mood! *massive eyeroll*

Actually, I think I’d rather just not ever have to NEED a stupid reset button. I’d like to have a wonderful, fulfilling, happy relationship. That’s the goal, anyway. It remains to be seen whether the goal will be met at some point…