SurvivingInfidelity.com Forum Archives

Geez, I don't even know how to start this post. I am being eaten up inside by indecision and anxiety.

There have been years of emotional abuse in my marriage. He has always had a temper and has had several terrifying rages that lasted 8-10 hours.

The last decade my WH checked out both literally and figuratively. He left me on multiple occasions and led me to believe we were separated for months on end.

He would shun me for weeks if I dared get out of bed without having sex with him. I was emotionally punished if I slept on my left side making it difficult for him to hold my breast like a security blanket while he slept.

His A began with a make out session at a conference (no sex because OW was too drunk to stand up). Followed by no contact for 7 months. EA commenced for a month and then PA/EA for 8 months. A ended when I found skype chats and confronted. he went NC immediately (confirmed).

He violated every aspect of my privacy: Told OW my medical history, sent pictures of our kids, our home, our trips. Texted her while lying in bed next to me. Sexted with her immediately after having sex with me, even described what he wanted to do to her, which was exactly what we had just done.

He asked her to marry him. She said yes.

They planned confrontations for him to have with me and would gleefully discuss them afterwards. He told me the only purpose I served was for sex, nothing else I did mattered.

You have to realize I was his complete support system for decades. He had nothing to do with the kids because that was beneath him and his pay grade. In fact, the kids usually pissed him off because they would interrupt his concentration by trying to talk to him.

I handled EVERYTHING in our lives. EVERYTHING. He just concentrated on himself and his career.

Now? He has not raged or even just lost his temper in 13 months (dday was 14 months ago). He is kind to the kids. He actually has started participating in their lives. He has started participating in the family and the household. He has stopped shunning me, stopped punishing me and stopped emotionally abusing me.

He is NOW exactly what I have asked for our entire marriage.

But now I feel nothing for him. I warned him for years he was killing the love I felt for him. Now I am pretty sure it is completely dead. The only thing I usually feel around him is anxiety. The same anxiety I felt trying to live with the Evil Him.

My questions: Did any of you have a similar situation? How did you decide to D?

I know many of you are divorcing remorseless WH or your WH has left for the OW.

I would like to hear from the BW who had a remorseful WH who completely turned himself around and became the H they deserved all along. Yet the BW still decided to D.

I need to figure out what I want to do. I have absolutely no desire for sex with my WH, yet I love sex. I want to have sex with someone. I have no passion for WH whatsoever. "Faking it til I make it" only makes me feel like a liar and puts me right back where I was before: put out when he wants (usually inappropriate times) or be shunned.

I did. It was the hardest and most painful thing I've ever had to do, but now five years down the line we both agree it was for the best. For both of us.

Even though he started being the ideal husband and going overboard to try and make it up to me, there was no way I was ever going to share a bed with him ever again (he gave me an STD), and everything about him just annoyed me. He refused therapy, was too terrified to rip the lid of that old box of FOO issues.

And the idea that he could do it again and just get better at hiding it made my skin crawl. It was just unacceptable.

I'm so much happier alone, I can't even begin to tell you.

BUT, it has taken a number of years and A LOT of hard work and introspection (and celibacy to avoid muddying the emotional waters) to get to this point.

If you're done, you're done.

Big hugs. It's a rough ride any way you slice it.

[This message edited by FaithFool at 12:59 PM, July 12th (Friday)]

And the idea that he could do it again and just get better at hiding it made my skin crawl. It was just unacceptable.

I never had the chance for R. He never stopped the A, never even tried to make me believe he did.
But this above was my fear. I didn't want to tell him how I found out because then he wouldn't make the same mistakes the next time.
When I realized there would probably be a next time or even me thinking that way was the last nail in the coffin.

We weren't married. I never got that. Now he told me he is engaged to the OW who divorced her husband and is now a fiance.

I can't answer your questions since I don't fit the profile but

(((hugs)))

I read your profile. Could it be that you had your most recent incident of lying (TT) in May - about 8 weeks ago? Could it be that the anxiety you feel is that your are afraid that this new behavior is something that he has to "work" at doing, and the next time there is stress or problems in his life he will return to the default "evil" him?

You shouldn't feel bad for wanting a D. You gave him more than enough chances. He was extremely disloyal (sharing your personal info with OW). And on top of that, you find out that he had issues being faithful in the first year of marriage. No one could blame you for not feeling safe, for not wanting to gamble any more years away hoping that NOW he's changed.

My STBXH wasn't a model WS, but he "said" alot of nice things. He always said he was trying. But in the end I just wasn't willing to waste more time waiting and watching for the next "oopsy".

In one of our discussions on why "I gave up on us", I told him that with each slip up, with each lie, with each broken promise, he used up a little more of his margin of error, until there was no more - so the last thing he did no matter how small he thought it was, became the last straw. He had dug his hole way too deep and there was no way he was going to climb out of it - not with me anyway.

If being with him gives you anxiety...save yourself, you've given enough.

Josephine, have you told your husband any of this? Are the two of you in any kind of couple's counseling? I think it's important to open up that dialog and tell him exactly how you feel. Maybe there are things the two of you can do to reconnect and make your relationship stronger this time around. Maybe not. Getting it out on the table will at least let you both know where each stands and knowing where you stand helps put into perspective how you need to get to where you'd ultimately like to be.

Yes he knows. We have discussed it. I just don't know how to fall in love with him again.

Thank you all for replying. I was traveling earlier and didn't have the opportunity to reply properly.

FaithFool - did you have an ah ha moment? I saw in your profile you were married for a very long time as I have. Was it hard to walk away knowing that your retirement just wasn't going to be the same?

Lola - did that thought come to you a lot before you decided to file or was it the first time it came to your mind? Also, what made you so sure he would cheat again?

Thank you caregiver9000

Phillygirl

I told him that with each slip up, with each lie, with each broken promise, he used up a little more of his margin of error, until there was no more

I have been telling him this for years!! He really had used up everything even before his A. If this were a mortgage he would be seriously underwater. I think if he was still behaving like he used to it would be very easy to walk away. But now he is behaving the way a normal person should. If it weren't for all the history, I would be happy.

How do I get passed the history? I think I have to do that in order to fall in love with him again.

Sometimes I actually twitch when he touches me.

I actually have tremendous anxiety every morning about getting out of bed. For years if I got out of bed before we had sex, I was punished (shunned, dirty looks, ignored OR berated). He does not do that any more, but I can't help but be anxious that it is what he is thinking or that it will happen.

Anewday - I have talked to my WH about my anxiety and how I feel about our relationship. He can offer no suggestions for how we should go about fixing it. He will just say "but I am behaving good now". He is. But it doesn't seem to be enough.

Truthfully, I am not as bad as I was prior to DDay, but I still feel like I have to walk on egg shells around him. Yet there is nothing he is doing now to make me feel that way.

We did try MC, but he thought the counselor was out to get him because she told him what his parents did to him as a child was abuse and no child deserves to be treated that way. He was in IC for about 8 months and seems to have stopped. I have just started IC.

I'm not in a position to answer your original question, because my WH was never sorry. But I noticed you said that if you don't have sex with him now, you still get shunned. If that's the case, he is NOT being a model spouse and he IS still emotionally abusing you!

Unfortunately. I had proof that he was not very honest and hiding things from me. It was always a possibility in the back of my mind that he would cheat.
He once had the nerve to tell me that he cheated because I always suspected he would. I brought it on.
I just don't know about your situation because he was never and still remains unremorseful.

Coraline, that behavior stopped on Dday.

But after years of that, it is difficult for me to even want to have sex with him now.

Jospehine, you have been abused for so long I'm afraid you don't know what normal looks like. You have so much more to work through, but getting out and moving on will probably be beneficial to you.

As for my situation, he was on the road for a about six weeks out of the six months we were supposedly trying to reconcile, which gave me a lot of time to think.

I was also monitoring his email and the way he talked to women in his business was also unacceptable. He didn't like it when I confronted him about that.

There was eye-rolling when he got home from that trip, he refused therapy and did not want to take any concrete actions such as reading/discussing/exploring things any further than the bare minimum.

I hit the anger stage shortly afterwards and realized I needed to get out.

As for retirement, he always refused to dream, so we had no plans for what that would look like.

I want to travel, study and maybe work overseas a bit after I shift gears from what I'm doing now.

He would NEVER have wanted to do that. I just saw the years ahead as having great potential to be suffocating and uneventful.

I didn't want to be stuck with him.

[This message edited by FaithFool at 11:00 AM, July 14th (Sunday)]

I would take a guess that he knows you are at your point of walking this time so he's on extra good behavior. An abuser doesn't like to lose their control and he knows his grip is slipping on you. I would bet money on a blow up from him when something bad happens next.

Just my two cents.