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I've been at work the last week and haven't had a chance to talk about the A with my BW like we do when we have time alone. She asks me questions and I answer them. I understand that the same questions will be asked over and over again. I will give the same answers over and over again. I brought this point out today. I basically said to her there is a three an a half year portion of my life that I hate. I ruined many peoples lives because of it. I'm not that person anymore. It's not that I don't want to talk about it but its that you will get the same answers to your questions. I was cut off before I finished my thoughts. My BW took what I said was that I didn't want to talk about it anymore. When I got to speak again I told her I would talk about it as much as she wants but nothing was going to change. My answers were my answers. I wasn't trying to be rude. I was just making a point because I know how frustrating it can be for both sides. My BW went off in a huff. I can't explain some stuff to her because the answer I give is not the answer she wants to hear. Sure some of her thoughts she had ended up to be the truth but she now thinks all of her thoughts are the real truth. They are not. I'm not expecting her to get over it or even understand it. I would like a way for her to at least be receptive to my explanations.

She asks me questions and I answer them. I understand that the same questions will be asked over and over again. I will give the same answers over and over again. I brought this point out today.

Did you bring this up randomly, or was it part of an ongoing conversation?

I hate to say it, but you're probably just going to have to suck it up. Telling your BS that your answers aren't going to change doesn't help her... answering her questions truthfully, every time she asks them, will. She may be testing you, to make sure your answers don't change. Or perhaps she's thought of something that doesn't make sense, so she'll ask again for clarification. You don't need to explain to her that your answers will always be the same. Eventually she will see that for herself and stop asking. Your BW is looking for assurance that you won't do this to her again, and if that means asking the same 9 questions over and over again, so be it.

Does that make sense? I'm glad you're answering her questions, but try to be supportive of her need to ask them.

I know that when I take empathy out of my actions/communication/life in general I have the same kind of conversations with my BW. A year and a half out and if I am not mindful it is a easy/familiar rut I can get into.

Well I got some clarification. On top of the A that my BW has to deal with she has to still deal with dozens of regular issues that I have. It may be down from twice that before the A but I still have them. I thought I had them all looked after except a few. I want to work on these. I don't want to have excuses not to.

Sam, I know I've gone off in a huff a few times when my WH brings this point up in conversations. It comes across as defensiveness and a thinly-veiled deflection - changing the conversation to talk about how we are talking, instead of the real meat and potatoes of the affair.

True, questions will be asked many times, and you will answer many times, and the answers will be the same. You know this.

I guess my question to you is, what is the purpose of you pointing this out to your BW? What point are you trying to get across to her? What is the explanation that you'd like her to be receptive to?

In my situation, I infer that my WH wants me to stop asking questions when he brings up this point. That's what gets me all whipped up - could it be similar for your BW?

It seems that HL saw what I saw when I read your post. A lack of empathy for your BW.

its that you will get the same answers to your questions.

My answers were my answers

If you keep saying this to your BW, expect her to continue stomping off in a *huff* (your word, not mine). I heard statements similar to this many times and you know what I felt/thought about those words and that attitude? It was condescending, a *pat on my head*, a *get over it*, a *this again?*, etc. It's just downright disrespectful of her.

Just because your answer is always going to be the same doesn't mean that it's the truth, kwim? My stbx told the same lies to me over and over again for years while declaring that I could keep asking but his answers would remain the same. And the answers were the same....until they weren't. I'm not saying you're still lying, I'm just saying that you *telling* your BW that your answers will remain the same serves no purpose.

The mind of a BS is an odd place and it's a hard place to understand if you haven't actually *been there*. Sometimes the smallest of details can have the biggest impact. IMO, part of the WS's job when attempting to repair a relationship is to help the BS *process* what happened.....and that means answering questions and *helping* the BS 'fit' the pieces of the puzzle together. What she is asking or talking about or trying to fit together may make absolutely NO sense to you at all. You may be sitting there looking at her as if she has lost her damn mind because what the BFD about whether you held the door open for OW or not??? But just remember, in that moment when your BW is asking, it IS a BFD to her. Her question means something to her or else she wouldn't be asking you about it. The last thing that she needs to be met with while she's trying to process this is any type of *attitude* from you.

I would like a way for her to at least be receptive to my explanations.

If you want your BW to *listen* to you and be receptive, then maybe YOU could *start* first. Be receptive and listen to HER.

Gonnabe2016 said it perfectly.

Just to add my own thought that you will never understand how a BS feels so the only thing you can do is listen and answer, listen and answer. But for the love of God if your are still lying about something come clean or answer with more detail. She's obviously looking for some type of closure, and you are not supplying it.

Trying- i'm not trying to deflect but rather find out more of what my BW wants. I understand she wants to hear the answers over and over but I feel there must be more of something and I want to hear what that is. While I don't mind discussing the same things each time we talk, I would rather know what she is thinking rather than her not beleiving the answer itself.

Gonna- There is tons of empathy but like 99.9% of the people on this site, they just see what people type and not who/how the person typing is. I pain every day on what I have done and when I get frustrated its because I see it in my BWs eyes. Some days I feel that I would like to give her the answer she wants to hear and not what really happened. Again, we both see what happened through different eyes and what I see as x, she sees as x times 1000. I get that.

Sad-I listen and answer. I also have nothing else to hide. I understand the TT makes a BS not believe there is nothing else but there is nothing else.

The outstanding questions are:

1. The A lasted 3 and a half years yet the last half a year the largest progress was made (more sex, more lies, more visits) Why could this happen then stop?

2. You loved her.

3. What did you think of her as a person.

Al of these need to be answered. I have answered them the way I see them. I was there. I understand that my BW wasn't and that's why she is asking. I spent the last six months trying to figure out how to get out of the A without causing any issues. Basically I was trying to walk away Scott free. Does this explain the ramp up of the A? No it doesn't. I just kept letting my AP give me that ego boost I was looking for while figuring things out. My BW doesn't know how many times my AP wanted me to do things with her but I made a ton of excuses. WhenI had enough I backed off then stopped. Yes I was pretty sure my AP was going to try and get in touch with my BW but being the coward I was to face my problem I let that happen. How I wish I didn't.

I do wish there was a way I could make my BW feel better about herself. No I didn't hate my BW during all of this. I was though not nice to her which makes it hard to disprove. I was always impressed with her work ethic, kindness and love. I was raised in a family that loved each other but never showed it. They were quick to openly show faults but not love. I carried that "tradition" on I guess.

Many questions like the ones your BW is asking have two answers. There is the answer from your mindset during the A, then there is the answer after you've had time to reflect on what the hell you were thinking in the first place. Sort of the whole then and now thing.

Would looking at it like that change any of your answers?

I've followed your posts a lot Sam and relate to a lot of your story and what your BH has gone through. My WH's LTA had a lot of similaritiesmto yours though it was never a PA.

What BaxtersBFF just said really hit it for me. My WH and I have had almost identical conversations. He seems to feel that the fact that he's sticking with his answer means that they're true. What I hear is that no matter how many times I ask and no matter how much I try to communicate that the answer is really important and i think his answer is not completely hitting truth, he's done thinking about it, has an answer that he's satisfied with and is not going to examine it deeper and harder to meet my need for both of us to really understand what was going on in his head during his LTA.

When I ask, as BaxtersBFF said, I am asking him to keep digging about where his head was THEN, what he was feeling THEN, what he thought of her THEN. My WH's LTA, like yours, was not static. It changed and evolved like any relationship that lasts so long. There are clearly periods where it escalated, and he was very emotionally involved and periods when he was just going through the motions. But he kept going through the motions, and he kept telling her that he loved her, kept telling her he wanted her, and most of all, like you, he kept bad mouthing me and making himself a victim of my meanness.

If I remember correctly, as with my WH's A, there is a ton of written evidence from your A that is similar--lots of declarations of devotion to her and lots of nastiness towards your wife. Like me, I would guess that it's critical for her to try to get to the bottom of what you were really feeling both towards her and towards the AP when you were saying and doing those things, NOT from the current perspective, but from the actual time frame of the A.

My WH has a really hard time getting this because he hates her now and professes to see her clearly. He says that everything he said to her was just a lie to get her to stroke his ego and give him what he wanted and that he was just doing the same for her. But I don't really want to hear a global explanation of his feelings based on his current perspective. His A lasted over 6 years. There wasn't ONE way he felt or ONE motivation for all the shit that he said to her and there isn't ONE explanation for the whole A. For me, the explanations of specific periods and communications in the A are critical. The feelings behind specific things that he said at different times or behind things that he repeated over and over during several years.

What I need is for him to really think, keep thinking and reexamining every part of it. I need for him to look, not for different answers, but for deeper ones and for answers that address the different phases of the A and what was going on in each of them, the different things he said about me and why he chose those specific things to say when he really could have just said any shit about me. Why those specific things?

As for the question of you loving your AP, please understand that, like my WH, you told this other person that you were in love with her insistently for a very long time. You treated her, from your BH's perspective, better than you treated her, you gave her intimacy that you didn't give your BH,you treated her with more consideration, and you sold out your entire M and your wife for the sake of your relationship with her.

For me, this reality makes it very difficult to believe that my WH didn't at least think he was actually something like in love with his AP during some points in the A to be willing to give away so much that was precious and sacred for the sake of his relationship with her. I have told him over and over that I need him to look at how he felt THEN that made him say what he said, throw away what he did, give her what he did. I know that what he felt was nothing like actual, true, healthy love because he wasn't capable of it at the time. But in his completely self-absorbed, monumentally selfish, childish mind, a person who was feeding him the crap that he wanted to hear about how great he was, how misunderstood, how taken for granted, how truly good and deserving and victimized and, of course, hot, that person MUST have produced some pretty positive (twisted, but positive) feelings. It must have felt something like what his messed up mind would have equated with love--she makes me feel so good and truly appreciates me for who I am, loves me without criticism, etc, etc.

I don't know if this is what your BH is feeling when she keeps pressing about it, but it's what I keep trying to get my WH to look at. Because he continued his affair for way too long to just be able to say that it was sick and twisted and unhealthy (all true) and that he lied to her about everything. Because I KNOW that he didn't feel that way then and THOSE feeling are the ones that I need to know about, the ones that kept him with her for more than 6 years and produced damage on a million different levels of my life.

Why do you feel so sure at a year out that your answers are so complete and accurate? Do you really feel that youve completely gotten to the bottom of things? My suggestion is don't be too satisfied with your answers and dont keep repeating them without reexamining and trying to see them in a fresh way. Don't stop trying to remember what you felt then because you're ashamed of it and think it would just cause more pain. For me, the key to being able to have any faith that my husband won't do something like this again is knowing that he really, REALLY understands what he did and how he felt then. And he really doesn't want to go there and remember those feelings at all. He wants to stick with the completely negative feelings that he has now about her, but on DDay, he maintained at the beginning that she was a very good friend who listened to his troubles and didn't really have any bad intentions until I pointed a few things out. So I KNOW that he wasn't thinking that way about her then.

I don't know yet if being able to have faith that he truly understands all of his feelings and motivations over the almost 7 years of his A will be enough to overcome what he did to us for so long (I don't have that faith yet), but I know without it, I'll never be able to believe that he really understands what he did and won't "accidentally" do it again.

Wishing you and your BH comfort and success.