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As we are moving away from the TT and false R and to the best of my knowledge actually going in a relatively good direction. My clearer mind is terrified of the ability my H had to play mind-games and use gaslighting.

I can forgive the general lying to cover up a bad thing. Thats simple enough and you see it in young children all the time...the quick instinct to throw out a I didnt do it, when its obvious they did. I can forgive the A itself and understand the whys, even though that doesnt excuse it. Its the part where I was yelled at, told my paranoia was ruining everything, led to question my reality and my mental state of mind. Told lies about how I was hurting other people (found out he fabricated entire scenarios with other people mainly to try and make me sit home and be 100% silent about our almost year long ordeal). I find those traits scary. How do you forgive those and learn to trust someone when you know they have no problem doing something like this to you about many things. In making me question my reality, he's really made me question his reality and what type of person he really is...I dont feel safe trusting this kind of person. EX/ if I know someone is a serial killer, Im not going to hop in the car when they offer me a ride...
IDK...anyone have any advice on this. Also, I dont know if he knows what all he has done, Im pretty sure he thinks some of his lies are realities...or maybe its bc he doesnt know I know some things...but if I tell him he would know my information sources.

I think it's all part of the gamble we take when we decide to R. We take risks that our partner will do the work required of them to become healthy which in turn means that there will be no more need for lying & covering up bad behavior. That's the best case senario but it's still iffy to me.

So many hurtful/harmful things happen during the time that the betrayal is occuring but, you have to look ahead & either trust that he will be true to his word to be a better man or you don't. If you can look toward a brighter future with this "new" person at your side IMO, it is a promising prospect. I think you will know if he isn't sincere & that should help you make your choice.

Just remember that you can't drive forward while looking in the rear view mirror. Hopefully, we learn from our mistakes in an effort to not repeat them and I like to remember that I am not the same person I was when I was 20. I'm older, wiser & am able to look back at the wrongs I have done in my past & learn to be a better person as a result of it. So, maybe, if he's worth it, give him a second chance & see if he can be a better person. Maybe not but, I plan to let my WH spend the rest of his life trying to make ammends & the game rules have changed significantly. I am a little more high maintenance these days! We will see what happens. No rules that say you have to keep on if it isn't working for you!

Just my thoughts!

[This message edited by outtanowhere at 8:00 AM, June 20th (Thursday)]

I am curious to hear other's replies on this. I only lived with the mind games for about 4 days and even that seems insurmountable at times...

The mind fuck is awful.. It will make you crazy and question everything about how you feel and what is really going on.

You know the truth but when they play with you and lie, it is hard.

It will make you nuts because you feel like you are banging your head against a wall. You get exhausted and I mean literally exhausted. Fustrated, overwhelmed with all the fuckery.

I dealt with it for years and still am. I am seperated so that helps but damn I know how it feels and that is one thing that I am having a hard time with. It is emotional abuse.

I understand what you are saying. When I confronted WW on Dday, I started off by telling her that I fully expected her to deny what I was about to tell her I knew. That's a natural initial reaction, but that she should appreciate that I was not on a fishing expedition and I did not need her confirmation.

But more to your point - I am not sure I have even reached the question of "forgiveness" of the types of lies you are talking about. I am still at the - "what kind of person can do that" stage. And I am not talking about sex outside of the marriage.

I am talking about the dehumanizing/demonizing of me in her own mind. The things she says she believed I was guilty of in order to justify her actions are bizarre.

Her ability to live a secret life is scary. Her willingness to let me struggle with "what the hell is wrong with our marriage" is nothing short of cruel, but I am not sure she even cared enough to have cruel intent.

The fact she was completely uninhibited from normal feelings of guilt is sociopathic.

I am left with questions of whether she has some serious psychological issues, particularly NPD.

And the bigger question, what makes me think she is not going to do the same thing a year, two years or five years out?

Callnecrazy

I agree with everything you wrote.

When your spouse can see the hurt they caused, remove themselves from a place of empathy and go after you, by turning it around and playing mind game is the kind of spouse to me that has come to see the BS as an object and not another human being.

The trickle truthers I see as cheaters just trying to save their a**es.

But the ones who do the mind tricks are evilly because it comes down to controlling the BS in a way where they are traveling in a mind maze of doubt while their cheater is hovering above knowing the way out but watching and doing nothing.

That's just pure evil and comes across to me as future Dateline and 48 Hours episodes.

I have to add (somewhat off topic) years ago on another board a poster wrote how her husband the cheater was into playing mindgames and how she a stay at home mom (5 kids) didn't have an out at the time and he would rage and play the stupid games, they had towards the end of their marriage an in house separation but she knew she had to get out when she woke one night to see him just standing in the doorway just staring at her not saying a word. She left the next day.

Later, exactly. Some things are more "normal" behaviors. Nobody is perfect, but its those things that are just so emotionless and the inability to have anything be their fault so they'll do whatever they must to make it yours.

My 1st IC met with him 2x and read through our text messages when I'd go in and be like "how in the hell does any of this make sense" and he said, "obviously I'd like more one on one with him, but it seems pretty apparent that he has a personality disorder and is showing a high level of never before seen issues. it may go away and be gone as long as his ego doesnt take to big of a blow, or this may happen to you every few years or he may never even come out of it now that it has been brought to the surface"

WOW...scary

Lifetime had a Tv show called My Life is a lifetime movie and one show was a family man with a beautiful wife and kids (3 kids) who disappeared one day the wife didn't report it right away but when she did the police questioned her and pretty much thought she killed her husband but couldn't prove it.

The wife did some digging on her own and found out all kinds of crazy secret /double life sex with strangers hidden condoms.

The outcome was he got tired of playing family and left everything behind she was pregnant at the time he left and he didn't even care to find out the sex of the baby when a reporter caught up with him.

He was renting a room in California didn't even care about his kids and he stated that on camera it was like a switch was hit and he just didn't care anymore.

It was weird watching the home movies of him with the kids and him talking to the reporter.

I don't know if I can ever forgive the mind games.

I believe mine has even gone so far as to call places I work and tell them lies about me.

I made the mistake of confiding in my employer years ago, because I had kind of a breakdown on the job due to his bullshit.

About six months after that, I was told that "Everything you said was a lie. I can't believe we did all that stuff for you."

I left right then and there and aside from my mom and you guys, I haven't told anybody.

That's not even the worst of it.

The mind games I've had to endure are beyond belief and some were so bad, I can't even list them here.

Almost 16 years of pure fucking hell.

Every time he tells me "I love you" I want to jump up and down and scream "Bullshit!"

This is abusive crazymaking behaviour for sure.

I should have left years ago, but I have a little one and I don't want to take the chance of her being stuck with him. If I leave, XW will be in the picture more and more.

She was a crappy mother who let SD get a tongue piercing when she was 15 years old. She is a nasty, vindictive game player in her own right, so I don't want my little girl to have any contact with her.

Also, husband kind of made SD into a surrogate spouse. There was nothing of a sexual nature, but their emotional closeness was creepy enough. I was this close to calling CPS over it because it was sickening.

I don't want him to do that to my daughter.

So, I have to be here.

I can't take the chance of my daughter thinking all this crap is okay.

To me, it's better to be here, where I can keep such damage from happening.

If I leave, he is sure to tell all kinds of lies, get SD & XW and whoever else he can on his side and fight for custody of our little one.

I am terrified of this. People tell me the judge will be on my side, who's really going to believe him?

But people do believe him. It has been proven in the past.

I don't know exactly what he told people at my jobs. Nobody was ever kind enough to let me know. And they were stupid enough to believe it.

When I look back on all these games, I hate him more and more each day.

One time, I told him I could never treat him like that. Use or manipulate him.

I believe he thinks it's out of fear or respect.

He said me and my shit would be out of here so fast if I did him like that.

I told him "It has absolutely nothing to do with you. I'm just not made that way. It's not in my nature."

He didn't seem too happy about that. About it being my nature and having nothing at all to do with him. He probably thinks the only reason I've been on the straight and narrow all these years is because of his controlling me and mind games.

He is so sick.

Strangely enough, this is what I'm struggling with recently. Having decided that the truth/story will only ever be what I have constructed and pieced together, I am now baffled with the amount of crazy making that happened through 2 and a half years of false R and the 7 years preceding that since the first A.

I think that no matter how well we will end up doing through MC or other efforts on our parts, the one thing that will stand out will be the immense disrespect through her manipulation and lies. What is it that they say about the A not ending the M but the behaviour after DDay which will determine the outcome?

i feel you pain and also struggle with this. i remember during our false r....i found an inappropriate email of his...referring to some woman as "babe"...and he said it quite a few times in one email. since i was paranoid, insecure and nervous after just having experienced dday, i went and typed a note to this woman and told her he was married with a child...and that the tone of the email sounded inappropriate. she QUICKLY responded back to me with an explanation that their relationship was strictly professional...and that he was helping her do some work on her job. my husband confronted me about this and went into a rage..he was so mad at me...and kept telling me i was embarrassing him on his job....that i was overreacting...that he couldnt take it anymore...that i would never get over the affair...and that i was over the top!! i felt TERRIBLE thinking that i had embarrassed him at work...and went overboard. i thought something was "wrong" with me...i felt like i was ruining our r. well, fast forward 9 months later..i checked his phone and low and behold...i find a nasty, dirty text to this same woman...."you cant handle this dick that deep" is what it said exactly...i discovered i was in false r.

so, he and the ow played me. she lied and told me that they worked together...and he got mad at me having me think i was doing something wrong by asking about the nature of their relationship.

when the truth was that i didnt do anything wrong. what i did was right on point...and he gaslighted me.

he had been having sex with her the whole time.

what a sick mind game...i still get upset about that.

The mind f**k is the hardest part for me. Him watching me feel like I was losing my mind and taking advantage of it. One day stands out in particular. WS and DD10 came home from a game. It was ws bday. I made dinner and a cake. DD says, oh mom he already got a bday cake from ow. Iof course blew a fuse and asked him why the bitch made him a cake. He became enraged at DD for telling me. I went ro get in my car and drive to where ow was to tell her, I was his wife and I make his bday cakes not her. Ws tells me I'm going to make a fool of myself. I'm so insecure and jealous over a nice lady doing a nice gesture. I had to make it shady and wrong. I stopped and got out of the car. I was furious but the self doubt set in. I thought maybe I was over reacting. I did nothing about it. I'm still pissed that I didn't set her ass straight that day. He always made me feel like a jealous insecure wife and that was far from the truth.
I was so afraid of looking stupid that I let lots of things go. I will never forget how that felt, never trusting my own judgement but feeling like something was so wrong. It was cruel and there's no way you can love a person and do that to them. He was all to quick to call me crazy and I felt like I was. I went from a strong confident secure woman to a self doubting, paranoid, insecure crazy person.

the head games were overwhelming pervasive. I had loads of confusion. I asked a lot of questions and now realize how terribly I was gamed. It creates a lot of pain for me when I think of myself in that mess. I really grieve for the woman I was because the mind games changed who I am, how I see the world and other people.

He is willing to reconcile now, and he insists that he is a straight shooter now because he is sick of all of those things, what happened, living that life.

I kind of think he really means it. But he is wanting to rug sweep, not discuss it, move on and forward.

I keep thinking about the amount of gaslighting and what was behind it and I just really can't connect with him right now. It's all killed my capacity to trust my own judgement.

I am really struggling with this, too. My WH left me for 10 days when he was in the A but I didn't know about it. The day before he told me, we met up to talk and I was sitting crying my eyes out, he was sitting there coldly. He kissed me but said he didn't want to give me, "the wrong idea". I don't know how to forgive or forget that, my husband saying he didn't want to give me the wrong idea. The morning he told me he cheated (but not with who, and I actually messaged the OW who I didn't know was the OW pouring my heart out) he also told me he wanted to move on and didn't want me.

I don't know how to forget these things.

In a word, no. The crazy thing is that I almost walked into the same trap again. What I mean is that the mind games in my case stem from her controlling and lying nature. So, the more comfortable she feels with the thought that I will R, the more she becomes like the same old person. However, when things start to slide toward D, she cannot kiss my ass enough.

My point here is that in my case this wasn't what I would consider any type of "normal" behavior. Pay attention to make sure you understand the underlying cause of the mind games and make sure they do not creep back up on you. I am not trying to accuse your WS to be like mine, just offering my experience. If your WS's motivation to play the mind games was a genuine defense mechanism to the A's that will never rear it's ugly head again, I think you could move forward in time. My problem is that after d-day my wife didn't show any signs of pulling her head out of her ass until I mentioned D. Then I think she was just playing peek-a-boo because it seems that being a decent human being is not her natural disposition and the nice girl was just an act.

Good luck. I wish you the best as you work through this. I think I could have learned to forgive if I thought the mind-games were a thing of the past, and not something ingrained in her current behavior.