So. H got back last night (around 11.30pm), as soon as I heard his key in the lock I felt sick, and then when he came up to bed I think I was in "flight" mode, twitchy and no way I could go back to sleep.
Today I picked him up for the joint counselling and he says he is probably going to go away after all. I haven't mentioned anything about having somewhere to go, so I just asked him to tell me when he is going so that we can get organised.
Session was pretty horrible.
H was not engaging at all. The therapist kept trying to push him to say if he could see what needed to be worked on in the relationship to move forward. She also questioned him about why he is saying it's impossible to work on our relationship right now because we are "in conflict". He couldn't say what the conflict actually was, but basically it was because I had dropped this "idea of separation" on him and so made it impossible.
She had asked us at the previous session to think about what we want out of a relationship so that we could talk it over with her and see whether it was feasible to stay together and work towards that.
He had totally "forgotten" that. She had to ask him several times if he would be willing to discuss this in the sessions and if he saw that by being there, I was making an effort to work on things.
I started the session by saying that I was discouraged because on the one hand I felt we had made some important breakthroughs (or at least discussed important issues) in the sessions but that it didn't seem to make any difference to H's behaviour and that he seemed not to remember any of it.
This turned out to be true, because when she asked him to identify what was wrong with our relationship, he didn't bring up the "sulking" or the lack of conflict resolution at all. He just said he thought I wanted a bit more attention.
He also said that right now I am so distant that he doesn't feel like making an effort and that he has done a lot of thinking and that most of it is negative and leading to a separation ultimately.
On the way home, I said we need to talk very soon about how to handle the holidays and the next couple of weeks. He agreed that we should talk this weekend.
I am tempted at this stage to just say, ok, this is it for me, I want out now.
Seeing as he is seeing things that way too currently, his ego might be protected which could make the discussions and negotiations a lot easier and might even mean we can talk rationally about what to do with the kids.
On the other hand, once we got home he was all super chirpy and cooking dinner etc. God knows what that was.
He is working now. Of course.