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peoplepleaser posted 4/9/2014 11:19 AM

So I hate this nonlinear thing about recovery/reconciliation. I'll try to keep this short, but I'm in a bad space when everything seems to be going well. I just need some support and maybe advice or stories about similar situations, maybe.

I feel I should start by noting that fWS and I had a wonderful date night last weekend that she planned including a romantic dinner with champagne and chocolate covered strawberries at a hotel last weekend. It was wonderful and I was so grateful and swept off my feet.

A few nights ago I went through her old emails. I found nothing alarming, but the emails sent between us over the last two and a half years were disturbing and pieced together the nature of our relationship during the time immediately before EA 1 through now. Appointments for therapy and fertility treatments along with emails I sent about struggling with our relationship and begging for her to work on the relationship were all there. It was sad. Nothing from either AP, as she didn't communicate with them via email.

Since then I have been feeling tugs of anxiety and anger. I realized that it was because the full picture reflected the depth of the betrayal. During the time of EA 1 I was so very depressed. I was being harassed at work to the point of crying on my way there to work night shifts (which is not good for emotional regulation or depression anyway.) I was also reeling from our third miscarriage and feeling so bad about my body for killing our babies. I was begging her to "want" me physically to help me feel good about my body again. I have recognized that when I get depressed I am irritable and that I wasn't meeting her needs during that time, either. However, I will point out that I asked her several times what she needed from me, to which she always replied nothing...even after I persisted.

What alarmed me was that during that time she was feeling undesired, too, but she chose to get those needs met. She chose to take what I was begging her for and give it to someone else. She was not there for me in my worst moment. Worse, she allowed someone I confided in as a friend (the AP) to lie to her about things I thought about her (that I wasn't attracted to her, was using her, and didn't enjoy sex with her) and chose to trust her over me (by believing it and not coming to me to let me know what was being said about me), who never lied to her. WS was telling me to "suck it up," that I was sucking all the fun out of her life and that she would leave me if I didn't turn it around. So, I sucked it up with the knowledge that I wasn't allowed to ever be depressed or express the depth of my feelings of sadness...that I had a limit to acknowledge before she was over it.

I attempted to talk to her about it yesterday, as communication has been going extremely well lately. I felt the need to be validated for what I did do to improve the relationship after EA 1 (of which I wasn't aware at the time) and my efforts were ignored due to lingering feelings from what she did and how AP made her feel about me. As we talked she insisted that her perceptions of me at that time were maybe influenced "some" by the AP, but most of it was because of how I was in the relationship. She refused to acknowledge that believing those things for two years contributed significantly to her perception of me leading to effecting all of our interactions. She also insisted that her motive in not telling me about what AP was telling her was because she didn't want me to feel bad that she knew what I was saying. She also insisted that she was angry that I shared personal information with AP, and that the twisted representation of it didn't bother her. She declared that this will never happen again because we won't be the same people we were before. Then she became defensive and insisted that I never did anything to make her feel special to me, and that I didn't make her feel wanted. Of course, I pointed out that I was sexting her at the same time AP was, which confused me about how AP made her feel wanted but I didn't. She finally asked to "pause" the conversation until later or MC.

What contributes to this is that I am starting to feel resentment that she put IC on hold recently because she committed to an extracurricular activity. I supported her doing the activity without realizing she would declare she was too busy for IC right now. She said she plans to start up in a few weeks when it's over and that she's doing her own work now; however, she used to share her progress with me, but is not sharing it at all since she stopped IC a few weeks ago. I feel that I wasn't taken seriously since this was a condition for R. How can we have these conversations in a more objective way if she isn't doing her own independent work to understand or explore her motives and responses that contributed to the first EA and then her ability to do it again? I feel like she can't look at it clearly yet, and she's putting off the ability to do so by delaying IC. And I'll add that I'm swamped with school work that's way behind because of the state of our relationship the past 8 months, but I'm still going to IC.

Since the talk I've realized that my other worst moment was DDay 2 when I truly uncovered the worse of what she did during that time and realized that she had been deceiving me for 2 1/2 years, and outright for the past few months after DDay 1. And she abandoned me then, too. That very day that I told her I uncovered her lies, she stopped reaching out, lost all compassion, blamed me for the EAs by treating her shitty and changed her phone account so I couldn't access it. So my anxiety is really about her ability to be there when I need it in the future.

Also, recently, she asked me to lie to her mother. It was a lie of omission. Her dog stayed with us for a night and peed on our newly laid carpet. I was annoyed by this, but WS insisted I not tell her mother because it would just make her feel bad and not ask us to help her out in the future. At this point any lie bothers me, but especially one where my annoyance is ignored in favor of appeasing her mother (which is the root of the FOO problems and WS's inability to express her needs or wants for fear of pressuring others or making them feel bad. ugh).

So, I'm sorry it's so long, but I don't know what to do with all of this. I feel like I'll just get hurt more if I continue to try to talk about it, especially since it seems she's not "there" yet and isn't working to get there while she's delaying IC. Do I enforce my conditions for R and do a 180 until she stops lying and gets back into IC? I hate to do that, as most of the time she is very responsive, remorseful and compassionate when discussing the EAs or any other anxiety I have. This particular situation seems to overlap with relationship issues, which we have done little to address other than changing the ways in which we communicate and express gratitude and affection toward one another.

sisoon posted 4/9/2014 13:33 PM

it sounds like part of your angst is due to memories of the A period. it took me years to work on those memories, and I'm feeling a lot of pain, too. it took me a few cycles of memories coming and getting resolved before I got to the nitty-gritty.

but your W is also showing signs of not getting it. IC is usually more important than fun for a WS fully committed to R.

Also, ignoring your misgivings to execute a lie indicates a big problem to me. I don't know if R is the issue, but she's definitely got something unhealthy going on with her mother. (Not that I would know anything about that class of problem....)

If she goes back to a good IC in a few weeks, this particular angst will probably pass.

[This message edited by sisoon at 1:33 PM, April 9th (Wednesday)]

peoplepleaser posted 4/9/2014 14:38 PM

Thank you sisoon for your response. I know that was a lot to read.

I agree that part of it is the A. I think the recent reading of those emails shed more light in the situation that was so long ago, so it brought up the old feelings while adding more points of pain.

I think that maybe what I need from her is the acknowledgement that I'm not as bad not was I as bad to her as she thought. I'm not opposed to recognizing my own poor behavior in the relationship, but I KNOW I wasn't as bad as she thought or even as bad as she continues to say I was.

As far as the lying, I said nothing to her except an astonished, "why?" She got that I wasn't ok with it, but I haven't discussed why yet. There hadn't really been a chance. I'm guessing that she thought I was only annoyed about the dog. It's amazing to me that she doesn't see it.

So what I'm getting from you is that my delivery was probably fueled by renewed anger at the A and I should take a minute before taking any drastic course of action.