the last month of the a she confronted me on two occasions to which i got defensive and shot her down. i should have just ended the affair. but eventually got caught only days later.
to her my not leaving is what she resents most. and that her work is affected. we work in the same company and a lot of people know.
i have been honest with her about why i had the affair and why i did not end things. she says what i say and my actions do not match up. i explained to her again very calmly that i understand my actions and how they affected her then and now. but that i was not going to leave her and i was not in love and i was not ever on the fence about my marraige. i in those months was just an arrogant selfish person who felt he could have his cake and eat it too. towards the end i was a coward in a sense that i should have ended things. i didnt out of fear of retribution from ow. again only thinking of myself not my wife.
these things seem to be her hardest things to deal with mentally. i do not know how else to go about over coming this, if it even can at all.
i have been honest about everything that occured and have never shyed away from discussing things. im also doing everything i can for the last two years to change. there is full transparency, she has access to everything. i am no longer on any social media. i am more thoughtful, putting her first even when she does not want me near her. even that gets minimized to a simple statement of "you only do these things because you got caught"
of course things get complicated due to her two affairs prior to mine and her admission only after mine came out, and a recent revenge affair from her.
i do my best to suppress my issues with her when we discuss my affair. that said she deems her affairs better due to the fact she ended them, and that her most recent one was due to my actions.
things are a mess right now and i am unsure of where to turn next or what to do.
Are you guys in MC? IC? (Man, I don't see how you can heal when you're madhatters without both....)
You sound remorseful and committed to R, but is your W? It takes 2, always.
A reaction: comparing As sounds like a way of not doing the work of healing. In particular, I hear 'yours is worse than mine' as 'I'm not willing to own my own shit.'
Another reaction: You write about your behavior as a WH, both in the A and in recovery. How about your healing as a BH - what are you doing about that? I expect you have a lot of pain WRT being betrayed, and you have to take care of that, too.
And if your W won't get over her anger and resentment toward you, she's saying - IMO - that R is not a possibility.
You cheated; you were awful to your W. But if you recover - which means, among other things, you make changes that will allow you to be a good partner - why do you want to subject yourself to her anger for the rest of your life?
I will say that the fact that FWW gas-lighted me into believing there was nio A, ignored my requests to come to IC with me and instead went on to a 2+ year A with another OM was one of the hardest things for me to get past. I had to accept that at that point in time, I simply did not matter to FWW.
we both have been in mc and ive been in ic.
not sure how commited if at all my w is to r
and yes i agree. she wont own her shit. she is a very analytical personality where every action is disected, except her own.
i deal with my pain as a bs by talking with a friend who listens well. i speak about my anger to my w, which falls at times on deaf ears.
but the reality is, i forgave her. i found a new inner peace from it. i am no longer angry at her all the time and i do only see what happened as a moment in time, no matter how painful thats all it is
i said yesterday that she seems to hold on to the resentment she has like a blanket. that as soon as she feels herself getting close to me again she recoils and reverts to this mentality where the resentment boils up to the surface.
when her mind is not clouded with anger, she does understand how much she has hurt me also, and that things can work between us if we try. the anger kicks in and it is a different story
