Thanks for the feedback @Zahlia ... 🌷
it feels like progress when you place it beside the emotionally abusive carry-on and distorted thinking we have encountered in the last two years prior to 2016 ....
This year he is clearly feeling like he is getting away with retaining his e.d. in secrecy. He has referred to the more socially unacceptable behaviours as a vice, like smoking, and therefore nobody else's business .... and he feels he has been justified by medical staff to continue with the "socially acceptable" behaviours because he has fudged them well enough to those medical staff for them to not recognise what they really represent ....
These seem to be the basis for his calmer behaviour, along with our passivity, which of course is the result of not resisting what we can't fix ....
We are around the seven year mark now. My reading has lead me to understand that this is, on average, around the time that the second stage of change kicks in ..... so I am desperately hoping that some of this is at least contributing to, or leading him towards, that next stage.
i have had to disengage emotionally to be able to survive in what passes for a relationship with him at the moment. This is not sustainable. Soooo hoping what I am seeing is the start of self-,awareness ...