one step forward 10 steps back

so my husband and i separated 6 weeks ago after a very tumultuous year in our relationship.  the separation has been the best thing and the worst thing to happen to us (i’ll expand on that more later).

we spent the first few weeks of our separation completely apart and not knowing how to act or how to manage our still intertwined lives (we have a 6 year old daughter and a 4 year old son so we will forever be intertwined).

after the first few weeks of separation, we started spending time together.  just being close to each other, holding each other, really talking and then we became romantic again.  our time together is always without the kids – either on a night with a babysitter or after they are in bed.

but now, things feel worse than ever.

we had our first joint therapy session on wednesday (i had resisted when we first separated because i was so hurt and angry and frustrated and i didn’t even want to think about reconciling).  i was really hoping counseling would help get us back closer to the same page (maybe back in the same book?) but it definitely didn’t pan out that way.

i could tell during the session that Matt was angry and hurt.  he stopped talking at one point and really withdrew.  he shared with me his feelings from that session last night in a phone call that ended up with a lot of yelling and anger on my part.  when he retold some of the topics from therapy, his version of what was said was completely different from how i remembered them.  how do you work through that???

he says that for every day he’s away from me, he wants to be with me less.  i guess he’s saying that our separation is pushing him further away.  a lot of this is because he says that he needs physical closeness to feel connected to me.  it is hard to have physical closeness when we are separated, so how do we stay close if we are going to maintain a separation while we work through our issues and see if we can reconcile?

i just don’t know.

it hurts me so much to be away from him, yet i know it’s what we need to work on ourselves as individuals and to work on ourselves as a couple.  we have years of unaddressed issues and poor communication to work through.  we just need some basic skills before we stand a chance.