I finally got around to watching The Descendants this weekend. If you're a guy and you're more than about six months out...yeah, you should watch that movie. (Might be triggery before the six month mark or so.)
You know the best metaphor in that whole film? The wife is dead. At least for all intents and purposes. She is a corpse. She has no stake in the narrative. She doesn't have a voice. How her husband heals from her infidelity is NOT HER STORY. It's not her narrative. She doesn't get a spin, a position, a take on it, or an attempt to manipulate the outcome...and in fact, the only time in the film where her BFF *tries* to give her a voice, Clooney dismisses her as full of bullshit, cliches, blameshifting and chick-pandering nonsense.
This is a beautiful movie for betrayed men. It is odd. It is quirky. It is authentic...and there is a strange, deeply abiding dignity to George Clooney's process. Even when he fails, when he's out of his mind, when he's terrified about the future, when he doesn't understand, can't understand, can't figure out where his life jumped the tracks...there is a deep-river dignity.
This is a man who's going to be okay, and whose life isn't built around nose-fucking his wife's sensitive vagina because he's got to be all up in her business lest she trip over the soap onto another herd of strange cocks in a public shower.
I realize that this entire post feels like it's unrelated to the original question.
It is not...and that doesn't mean I think you're out of line or paranoid for asking.
Your life is yours. Your story is yours. It's the only one you'll ever have.
Don't waste it trying to re-write your wife's part or give her a role she isn't capable of playing.
Don't pander to her. She has no voice except the one you give her. She can have all the voice she wants in her own story (and she's got her own story -- it's the one where you're the asshole, the villain...and now you're the rock, the redeemer, the knight in shining armor who will forgive her sins and give her a new hymen in a God's-Truth-Baby-Jesus-in-the-Manger-Holy-Bible Miracle. The story where she doesn't have to do anything but pout while you do the heavy lifting, change none of her unsafe behaviors, read what she wants, do what she wants, mouth some apologetic words and then wait for everything to go back to normal...and if they don't, then you're just a dick who can't let it go.)
Do you think your wife would spend as much time trying to dissect what's going on in your internal landscape if you decided to start watching more porn?
I wonder. I doubt it.
See, because that's the problem with so many WW's. They don't want to just be the star of their own life story, they want to be the star of yours, too. And if they think they're not, they'll make damned sure they're on your mind.
I suspect it's because in their own life stories, they feel like they're too often playing the Invisible Woman. Not that it's true, mind you. Not that it's your fault. It's what often happens to the girls who longed to be popular princess and couldn't get a role above handmaiden. Then they hope to at least get to be Bess Throckmorton, but when all else fails, it turns out that porn stars are princesses of a sort. Dumpster princesses, maybe, but you get your jewels where you can, right?
URL for original thread is here: http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=474333