Brief background: together since 18 - 24yrs, married 20, not been happy for a long time, fallen out of love with husband due to some of his behaviour. I played my part in not communicating my issues but I've never felt comfortable to talk to him. A month of stonewalling in February led to me saying I wanted a separation. I backed down, agreed to 'try', came to head in July, talked about divorce then I backed down. Finally left at the end of October, moving into an AirBnB with DD(16). DS (18) stayed at home with dad. I moved into a rental property the Monday before Christmas and am making it our home for the next few months.
STBX's reaction to all this has felt extreme. He has known since March that separation/divorce is what I've wanted. In the time since we have tried to connect but I just don't feel anything for him. Not love or hate, just apathy. I have felt so guilty about wanting to leave and have been in counselling since March to reconcile this with myself.
When I left he had five weeks off work (teacher, so all paid). He couldn't possibly work with everything that was going on. He wasn't sleeping, barely eating and devoted this time to researching how to fix our marriage, how my depression and mental illness was to blame (I have anxiety, it isn't!) and talking to my friends and family about my initmacy issues (as we have never had emotional intimacy).
During this time and since he has sent me many, many messages....ones of undying love, ones telling me I've ruined his life and 'thrown him under the bus', he's recorded himself singing (badly!) and written poems, put together videos of family memories and set them to music, sent me song lyrics about me being a 'man eater', told me I'm inhuman, that he's sad for me and that I'll never be happy, drawn pictures of our family and given me gifts, slagged off my family for all being emotionally incapable....every message ends with a 'please come home' despite the content, and his insistence that we can have a wonderful life if I'll let us. You get the idea!
Some days I have 10 messages and I can't face opening them. I started a chat for practical stuff as I was missing things we needed to discuss about the kids. Yesterday, he removed himself from this, presumably because I had 8 Whatsapps unread and 5 imessages unread.
When this started, for me, it was all about me and my feelings. Yes, he had influenced them but it was very much about myself so I was tolerant of the shock and upset. But now he's made it all about himself, is very much the victim and I struggle to be around him. We've spent some time together at Christmas with family but I struggle to be in the same room as him because of some of the hurtful things he's said. He doesn't see this and uses this as 'evidence' of my emotional inadequacy.
He only has his sister to talk to and she's being very good to me too, but keeps telling me to take it slowly, not rush him into decisions around houses or finances, and that he's not ready for conversations about divorce. He apparently found me leaving such a shock that he feels like this started in October, and appears to have glossed over the months before it.
Am I being unreasonable to expect him to have moved to some sort of acceptance in this time? Not acceptance of my feelings (I'm not deluded that that will ever happen) but that this is happening and he needs to deal with where we are, not where he thinks we should be.