Interesting evening. Parent night at daughter's school. One of her classmates is a girl who moved into our neighborhood over the summer. Parents are divorced. Dad had an affair. So on the way home, we were discussing how, after the classroom portion broke up and the mother was telling me something about something she did that afternoon, another woman came up, interrupted both of us and just started talking about introducing this woman to a friend of hers. Not a big deal in the scheme of things, except that it was downright rude...something I've seen the interrupter do before many times over.

So H was carrying on about that a bit in the car. I decided quite a while ago that some of the women in this town can drive me nuts if I let them, so I don't. Life is too short. I was sharing that with him. Then he asked me something about the first mom's divorce and I said "I think she's still really, really angry about it. Seems the entire town (she moved from another nearby town) knew what was happening and she didn't.

So *that* opened up a conversation about how everyone in "these small towns" (his words) knows everyone's business and everyone in "this town knows all of our business". I didn't say anything right away because I know he somehow blames me for his feeling ostracized, as though no one wants to get close to him because he's chronically unemployed, etc. And he feels the entire town knows about his A. I said that I didn't tell the entire town. He said "you didn't have to. You should know how people operate here; they love to gossip. And you gave them something to gossip about."

ME: No, YOU gave them something to gossip about. I just shared with a few close friends because I needed support.

HIM: Here we go again.

ME: You brought this up. I still deal with this every day. I know you think I should have gotten over it already, but I haven't. I process it and think about it every day.

He didn't say another word to me the rest of the ride home. We stopped by our church to pick up our son who wasn't ready to leave yet. So he took me home, dropped me off and went back to get our son.

I have nothing really to comment about...I'm just passing along an interesting observation. Just as I still haven't processed the A because of his dishonesty, he hasn't forgiven me for exposing. Yet, I really don't think he would do this again. I think this is more about his preoccupation of others' perceptions about him and how he deflects that blame onto me.

A bigger problem than I am capable of solving simply by working the MB program.