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I'm not ready to trust my wife. That is not what this post is about. This post is about trusting myself and trying to heal.

I've always been confident and self aware of weaknesses and conquering weaknesses. My wife is currently wanting R and is now showing all the signs of R. I will be patient and wait till I feel it's genuine and then will work on R if I feel our relationship can be worked on safely. I was so good at seeing things clearly on front of me. People that were good friends vs crappy friends, things that bring genuine value to life vs things that are fleeting, etc.

My wife was one of the things I was really confident about. I was very aware of her weaknesses and strengths. But I never ever ever ever thought she would ever cheat on me. Denial almost killed me post dday. And while she continued the affair and wouldn't go NC. I realized I was dead wrong and realized that many of the things I thought I knew about my wife were wrong.

How do I trust myself after that. I understand that I really don't 'know' anything, and that a lot of things are based on assumption and good decision making. But I feel like I can't quite trust myself again.

Thoughts? I'm wanting to move past this.

Hmmm ... this is one view that I hold:

You say you're 27, RHT. Fuck safety!

R is a risk. If you decide you want to spend the rest of your life with your W, and she shows she wants to spend the rest of her life with you ...

if you decide she loves you, is in love with you, and is happy to be monogamous with you ...

if you believe she will do the necessary work ...

take a chance on R. Give her a chance to earn your forgiveness. Give yourselves a chance to build a really great partnership, one that serves you both.

Alas, there are no guarantees.

One set of numbers that gave me hope when I was where you are (but 39 years older!) was from Shirley Glass - of her client couples in which both partners said they wanted to R, 20% eventually separated. 80% did not. That 20% scared me, until our MC suggested they didn't do the necessary work.

I'll tell you, it's great to be with someone you love and who loves you for 50 years. You've got a chance for that, if your W really is remorseful. The pleasure of a long term relationship is worth some risk.

And if one or both of you decide to split down the line, have faith in yourself to survive and thrive.

Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith.

Just be sure to monitor yourself and your W to stay on track for R, and if you don't stay on track - D.

*****

And this is another view, that I hold:

To begin with, you seem to be handling yourself pretty well ... asking what I think are the right questions, keeping yourself in pretty good touch with reality ... so IMO you can look forward to being trustworthy for yourself.

Shirley Glass talks about 'working on the M' if you're ambivalent about D & R.

If your W is a good candidate for R, she'll be making changes in herself primarily for herself. No matter how much you benefit from a WS who has changed from cheater to good partner, the WS benefits more, again IMO.

So if she's a good candidate, she's going to be making the necessary changes while you do some of your own healing, and if she really wants you, I expect she'll wait.

IOW, you get to choose whether to D, to commit tor R, or to wait and gather more information.

Your choice - do what's best for you.

My opinion is pretty obvious, but it's your life, so it's your opinion that counts. You'll get support and arguments whatever you choose....

[This message edited by sisoon at 7:20 PM, October 31st (Thursday)]

I tried to respond to this last night, but I couldn't come up with anything.

I didn't question myself after dday. I was duped. It happens to the best of us. My fch was dishonest about almost everything about himself. There was no way for me to know that. There were no red flags. Everyone thought he was genuinely a good guy, and he was (is). He just went about it the wrong way.

Try to take this as a live and learn lesson. When we know better, we do better. Now, you know.

Coco,

That was my experience too.

The whole person is diseased. If the gravity of the revealed cheating doesn’t prompt and motivate them to get well, they will continue. They are so entitled, they believe THEY don’t need to follow societal rules, that WE are the problem, not THEM.

When you interact with this thing , keep in mind that they believe you are less than them. They don’t respect you.

Ultimately, they don’t really care about you.

This is how they can do what they did

Thank you for the replies. Cocoplus, I guess the gaslighting during the affair, and the fact that I was huge in denial before and after dday, and 'foggy' it's hard to know if I'm still in touch with reality.

Sisoon,thanks for your response too. Having you even mention that I'm in touch with reality and asking the right questions helps me trust myself more.

20BS, now that you mention it, entitlement is huge! WW felt entitled to everything for the last year. It was sufficating.

I'll keep watching my wife's progression and continue to process emotions...... When did you all start feeling like emotions were winding down? They're still pretty crazy for me. I'm 4 months out. I've learned to keep my self grounded and not act on any of my emotions and to be patient, but it sucks.

Interesting post. No one can be %100 sure of other peoples behaviour and/or actions. Obviously this causes a major trust issue in the relationship. Additionally I think something that is overlooked (it was in my case) is one's ability to truly understand trust in one's self.

In my journey it wasn't until I saw an episode on Oprah with Dr. Phil that was very significant for me.

A key point was that you trust yourself to the point you trust the yourself to be able to handle the situation if the other party acts in a way that is not in best interest in the relationship.

Before seeing and exploring this, I often didn't trust my FWW when I saw her act in ways that weren't truly remorseful, not aligned with rebuilding the relationship and/or restoring trust. The real issue was that I wasn't trusting myself to make the best decision for me (to leave the relationship). I knew I should leave but I couldn't. This went on for a while and I trusted my FWW even less and then trusted myself less (because deep down inside I knew it wasn't going to change unless I left and removed myself from it). And it just kept spiraling.

Then I saw the youtube clip I mentioned above and things became much clearer and finally had the trust in myself to leave.

In your case this is a learning experience. Your learning about your own trust. I suspect you will move past when you are confident that you will trust yourself to make the best decision for yourself when a situation of broken trust occurs.

Trusting myself has been a major hurdle, it’s one thing to not be able to trust my wife but it’s another thing entirely to not trust myself. I told myself nothing was going on. I let myself believe it. I basically allowed myself to be gaslit and I don’t know how to recover the ability to trust my reality. It’s a real mindfuck.

My wife was one of the things I was really confident about. I was very aware of her weaknesses and strengths. But I never ever ever ever thought she would ever cheat on me.

Exactly how I felt about about my WH. Boy oh boy was I wayyyy off base. Now I don’t trust my character judgment at all. I even find myself hating my stepdaughters new boyfriend for no really good reason.

I told myself nothing was going on. I let myself believe it. I basically allowed myself to be gaslit and I don’t know how to recover the ability to trust my reality. It’s a real mindfuck.

Yep. Same.

Emotions - my timeline was: absolutely awful and getting worse almost every day for 3 months, stabilized at absolutely awful for 3 months, then very slow improvement for 2 years, then more rapid improvement. I think 2 factor helped a lot: W was totally consistent in doing her work, and we had a very supportive MC.

*****

It helped me to keep in mind that d-day is traumatic and, for me, unprecedented. I kept reminding myself that I had no training or other preparation for this, and it was just going to be painful.

Moreover and more important, I kept reminding myself that all I could do was give it the best I had at the moment and hope what I did worked out well. If something didn't work out, I did my best to learn from it, I bore the consequences, but I did my best not to beat myself up over it.

*****

D-day and infidelity definitely makes us question ourselves. Most of us misread our WSes, and that's apparently a big failure.

But human beings are biased to trust the ones we love, so getting blindsided on d-day isn't as big a failure as it appears.

We're also usually in brand new emotional territory when we're being or have been betrayed is in our lives. It's wise, therefore, to question our own perceptions.

If R is a possibility, I think communicating orally face-to-face is essential to rebuilding self-trust. We conduct those conversations automatically with heightened awareness. That allows the partners to re-acclimate to each other's non-verbal communications. That in turn rebuilds self-trust.

But just as we no longer trust our WSes blindly, we can't trust ourselves blindly, either.

RHT, wow, this hit home!

Yes, I know this about trusting yourself; so is this about trusting myself....after thinking I could believe what I trusted in.

I totally believed everything my H said before all of this. I had no idea of his double life: on the internet; (some gay) dating sites (one with a nude photo of him), emailing & going to see men; ...When I first learned of his last date, a (failed) CL date, and he told me he didn't go, I immediately believed him. (that one turned out to be true), but after checking his computer and finding all the dating sites and emails to men, I realized I didn't know him at all. And, he kept telling me "I NEVER MET ANY OF THESE MEN FACE TO FACE!!!!!"...very adamantly, and just a bit too much protesting, BUT, what did I do?...."I believe you"...for months! But, I didn't believe him enough to drop it. Then, I found his 'little black book' of email addresses that didn't show up on his gmail account until it would only load the basic version, and it showed all the email addresses of his boy toys (you could tell by the names of the email addresses....BCSbimail, etc. That's when he confessed to going to see some of them. (He said he turned down ALL of them ..one was too old, one a hoarder, and things I can't remember (there were about 4-5. And, he says he NEVER had sex with ANY of them. That's the reason he started hanging out at the porn video store and found someone. That's all in my story in JFO)).So many things I said "I believe you" to, turned out to be lies. I thought I could read him. He LOOKED so sincere. I trusted myself enough to think I could tell if he was lying .

So, now that we're in R, and I see him looking sincere, I don't just automatically trust him any more, so that leaves me hanging, not knowing which way to turn. I do NOT know whether to trust my instincts (or him) like I thought I did before.

To help this, he's getting a polygraph. There are a few things I'm not at rest with, mostly that he didn't have sex with ANY???? of those men he went to see. I'll just have them ask if he's had sex with more than one person.

Also, he's going to an IC, who is a SA specialist as well as relationship specialist.

But, I still won't know how to read him any more...or anyone else for that matter.

Good luck figuring it out....It takes time to get through it...I'm just a little over 5 months past dday, and every day I keep hoping I'll wake up and it'll feel better......not yet.

[This message edited by SusanneH at 12:02 PM, November 3rd (Sunday)]

The gaslighting can make you feel crazy! That's kind of what it's meant to do. The purpose is to get you to question your own reality.

Maybe because I grew up with it and spent most of my adult life prior to dday in therapy trying to figure it out, I wasn't as completely blindsided by it after dday. I didn't know what it was called, but I knew it was deliberate, toxic behavior.

You know what you know regardless of what anyone else says. You don't need external validation for that. You don't need your CW to acknowledge or admit it.

Especially to SusanneH:

After R starts, and even more, before R starts, now that I think of it, it's wise for the BS to discount words and believe only actions.

I'll start with actions that ARE words : telling the truth is an important action. There are lots of indicators of the truth, but one good one is using the active voice:

I did _____.

I chose to do _____.

It's my responsibility.

I will do ____ - followed by the WS actually doing what was promised.

Being totally open with electronic media, being where s/he say s/he will be, giving you advance notice of activities, locations, and companions.

Starting IC with a goal of changing from cheater to good partner - and signing a release that allows the IC to talk with you.

Accepting confrontations and changing on the basis of those confrontations.

Getting less and less defensive.

Listening to your rant.

Consistent behavior over time - it's easy, relatively, to pretend for 6 months; it's a lot less easy to pretend for 2 years....

Watching actions allows you to build trust - in your WS, and in yourself.

It was your wife who wandered, RedHeadTemper, so you should not lose trust on yourself or life will be always be miserable. You are right to understand that you don’t know anything, who does? First of all, in the final analysis, we can only control the space around us. Who know what will happen to each person in the next hour? I can understand that you can lose trust in her, but not on yourself. If you live with integrity and honesty, you are not responsible for another person’s integrity.

Sisoon,

Thanks for the suggestions. I respect your comments (even if I don't always take the suggestions ) since you have more experience than I do, and seem to have a good head on your shoulders

After R starts, and even more, before R starts, now that I think of it, it's wise for the BS to discount words and believe only actions.

I've started actually saying "let me see it, not just hear it", after he says something he'll do. He said he'd see a counselor, and sure enough HE looked one up and made the appointment. He's going today. She's a SA specialist and relationship therapist also (as well as other things.)

Being totally open with electronic media, being where s/he say s/he will be, giving you advance notice of activities, locations, and companions.

He's been totally open with the electronic media for 1 1/2 years now. He also tells me where he's going (he has his own business, and goes to the next town to businesses & homes to install window film). The only other places he goes are to AA meetings and meals. (I also still use Find my iPhone for now, but will be slowing down and stopping soon. He's been in all the right places now for the last year & a half). He also calls texts me throughout the day & sends photos of the jobs he's completed. So, I know where he's been. He doesn't have any companions really. Due to my illness, we've lost touch with most people we used to know.

Starting IC with a goal of changing from cheater to good partner - and signing a release that allows the IC to talk with you

Like I mentioned, he starts IC today, but I never thought of getting her to sign a release. I'll do that.

Accepting confrontations and changing on the basis of those confrontations.

Confrontations about what? (sorry, I'm not coming up with anything)

Getting less and less defensive.

We just worked through a BIG problem with that one. He wasn't defensive about the A, but another subject that had to do with his inheritance, and my bringing up how the papers were signed so he could "protect" himself from the properties (rentals) from being 'taken' from him.....of course, that meant by ME in case of a D.... This was signed in 4/18, and I knew he did, but thought it was because his brother did it that way since everyone thinks his wife might take his money....and, it was suggested to my H to do it too anyway to protect himself, even though I'd never take it, and to make his brother feel better at the procedure.......later, he said he didn't know what he was signing. Then, a few weeks ago, I found he DID know and did it intentionally in case we got a divorce.....and, here I didn't even know our M was in jeopardy due to HIM having an affair! I was devastated that he would do that to me...and, all he could think about was his ASSets. Money means more to him than I do. So, he thought I was upset about this because of my losing out on the money from the houses........I DIDN"T EVEN THINK ABOUT MONEY! That just isn't me. It was the intention to have to 'protect' something from mean ol' me. It hurt so badly, and I couldn't get through to him. (sorry TMI and too long, but the argument over this has lasted several weeks). He finally had the appointment with the lawyer & tried to have the verbiage changed, but found that in our stated inheritances are worded that way period....the person who told us otherwise was wrong, and the WHOLE argument and pain could have been avoided! He never would have thought he was doing something wrong, because he really wasn't.....whew.

We discussed the fact that he became defensive EVERY time it came up, and that it just won't work if he continues. He seemed to understand....that is something we'll have to wait on.

Listening to your rant.

Boy, has he been doing a lot of that lately! And, I must say he's gotten pretty good at it. During the argument I mentioned, he did lose it a few times, but anything else, and he'll listen until I'm through.

Consistent behavior over time - it's easy, relatively, to pretend for 6 months; it's a lot less easy to pretend for 2 years....

I've thought about that. Even mentioned it (not in those words) yesterday. It's not something I'll be able to tell, like you said, for awhile yet.

Watching actions allows you to build trust - in your WS, and in yourself.

yup....time.

thank you for taking the time to care, too .