SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

In my earlier posts I explained a confrontation I caused with my wife, our oldest children, and her parents. I painted her therein as being imbalanced and all too willing to bring others into the confrontation and escalate the debate. I portrayed the kids as being invasive and antagonistic when they were trying to protect her from my obliviousness and later anger and frustration. I allowed people to insinuate that she was a bad mother who was deliberately involving them and her parents, who I portrayed as meddling in the situation.

My wife I portrayed as mentally unhinged and antagonistic. Not once did I acknowledge in the posts the pain that I caused them or that I am responsible for putting them in the positions which they found themselves in or that they had no desire to be there. I caused their pain and everything that's happened since is a direct result of my initially causing my wife immense trauma, and then exacerbating it by continuing to justify my actions both to myself and here.

I haven't shown remorse in my actions and that has directly hurt my children and wife and her parents. I tried to control my reactions and thus them and I was wrong for all of it. It's frustrating that I'm only now coming to see just how much pain they're all in. The extent of it. I am so sorry for all of it. The communication problems were mine. I shouldn't have insisted on IC. I shouldn't have said the things that I did to her when she was so hurt. Shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.

I hope IC and continuing to post here can help give me the tools I need to truly begin helping them to heal. That we can move forward and out of this place together and not worry about walking in a circle right back to it. It really is all my fault. And they've been trying to reach me and help me the entire time and I've rejected it again and again. They deserve a better husband and father than I am. I am striving to be that for them and for myself, starting with this post and continuing every day.

[This message edited by Tesseract at 1:54 AM, January 30th (Thursday)]

And they've been trying to reach me and help me the entire time and I've rejected it again and again.

They are not the only ones Tesseract.

You have posted here many times asking for advice and have rejected that advice every time.

What now is different?

Don't get me wrong, you are under no obligation to take any advice, I just wonder why you bother posting and asking.

Maybe you need to ponder that.

Good luck in IC.

Hi Tesseract,

A couple of thoughts:

It really is all my fault.

This is a very blanket statement, which makes me wary. When you think in terms like these, it becomes easy to be daunted and discouraged by the enormity of 'putting everything right', or even resentful toward other people's view of what that entails (which will never be identical to yours).

You've probably come across communication tips that say, Don't Generalize. This (like most 'communication', really) needs to be implemented in your thoughts first. So stop thinking and saying 'it all' and start engaging with a small part of it in more detail. I imagine you must feel a lot of pressure to make things better just now, but trying to make the whole thing happen at once as if by magic is never going to work. (Difficult to accept for those of us that are somewhat invested in being unusually capable, I know!)

I tried to control my reactions and thus them and I was wrong for all of it.

Trying to control the people around you by controlling yourself sounds very much like a coping mechanism which you developed at some point as a response to the circumstances you were in at the time. You're no longer there, and this mechanism is now very harmful to you. It's great that you're seeing that.

Remember: The coping mechanism is the problem. Your desire to affect your world (including the people in it) is not wrong - in fact, I think it's very central to being alive. You can't actually control the world (especially not the people), and you have to accept that, but you do deserve to feel safe, just like everybody else deserves. But in order honor your needs, you have to know more about them. So separate the effects you'd like to achieve from the harmful habits you've attached them to, and listen carefully to what you need at any moment. (That will also make it easier to listen to others.)