Islesguy
First, a very manly hug for you... you seem to need one, or a hundred.
I hope you don't mind a few observations and questions?
The first thing I'll tell you, in reading this exact post and others that you've posted, is that you are still very, very down on yourself. And believe me, I get that! You HAVE been doing the work, the hard work, and part of that process involves seeing "the real you" which is the point I believe you are at now.
I have to tell you, it is almost impossible to look back on the things we did as WS's, and even just as broken people in general, and not go into an endless shame spiral. I mean, how the hell does a person look back on 20 years of not being honest, not being faithful, and not really being a loving and supporting partner, and then be expected to "love themselves" and forgive themselves? How exactly does one say to themselves, "I'm a person worthy of love" when everything you know about yourself seems to run contradictory to that?
You also now have the added consequence of having to live with the damage you caused, in the most literal sense. Your wife, your kids, even yourself, everyone that got hurt because of the things you did or failed to do, are still part of your daily life. You are the fox living in the hen house. They don't trust you, and you don't blame them for not trusting you. It is what it is however, and so you all serve as constant triggers and reminders to each other of what happened and how much it all hurts. So what to do?
I hit a very similar place for a long while. The more it started to sink in what I had done... not just the affair itself, but also the larger picture... the way that I had not been there for my wife the way she needed me to for the past 20 years, my addiction problems, my inconsistent work history, my lack of authority as a parent, my spending habits, on and on and on... the more I hated myself. Sometimes it felt as if I hated myself more than my wife and kids tied together. I still feel that way sometimes. Truth is, who I was, what I did and how I lived my life was NOT OKAY and innocent people that I loved got hurt because of it. And there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Nothing I do or say will ever take away or fix who I've been and what I've done. I know that to be a truth, and it is a truth which I hate to the core. But it's still truth.
So then... what? What to do? Should I stick my head in the toilet and keep flushing until I drown? That's certainly an option. But if you are anything like me, then the sad truth starts to pop up, and realize that even that would still be me just avoiding dealing with pain, and failing my wife and kids yet again. And I am DONE hurting people. Seriously, I am just so damn done with that. So no... punishing myself for being a POS actually does nothing whatsoever positive and does not help my wife and kids heal in the smallest.
What I eventually came to realize is that everything begins and ends with me because I am the only person in this world who I have total control over. And I know what a contradiction that sounds like, especially when we come to SI every day and hear BS's saying over and over again that WS's are just so stuck on "me me me" all the time. And that's true. But it's not really the "me me me" that is the issue, it is the focus on yourself as a victim, as a loser, as someone entitled, as someone broken. It is all the blame shifting and TT and lying to cover our own asses and control the outcomes. That's the "me me me" that is unhealthy and broken.
There is another "me me me" however, and that's the "me" that is authentic, that is genuine, the "me" that knows who I am, who likes or even loves who I am, the "me" that is an honest and decent human being and that deserves respect and love even from myself. It is hard to put into words, but when you come to a head space where you see yourself as someone worthy, someone who has dignity, self-respect, compassion, empathy, drive, responsibility, confidence... the kind of "me" that isn't selfish and shameful and stuck in guilt, but the "me" that knows who he is and won't ever again compromise his self worth or the love he has for the people in his life... that "me" is someone you need to hold onto. And it is the "me" that other people can respect and trust.
We often say that if we can't love ourselves, then we can't possibly love others, because you can't give what you don't have. In that same way, others cannot love, trust or respect you unless you love, trust and respect yourself. We cannot accept that which we cannot know. Truth.
The truth, in my opinion only, this is how I see it from my side of the internet... the truth is that you still aren't there yet. Of all the people that need to forgive you for all the bad choices and selfish actions and missed opportunities, YOU are the person that you need to forgive first. You must forgive yourself for being who you were, what you did, how you did it, and so on. You have to learn to love yourself DESPITE the fact that you fucked up, hurt others, and let yourself down.
Islesguy, let's face it. While it doesn't excuse anything you've done, it is still okay to accept your fate as a victim as well. You didn't come out of your mother's womb as a cheater or a liar. Unless you were dropped on your head as a kid and got brain damage (and even then) most of us come into this world as innocent, blank slates. It is up to our parents, our schools, our communities, our villages, our world... to help us build a sense of self that we can respect and trust. We learn from the lessons life hands us. People have this mistaken concept that if they weren't somehow abused and neglected as kids, then that means they didn't suffer any sort of trauma or negative messages. That's bullshit. No one escapes trauma in their life, and trauma is often masked as love. The kid who gets straight A's and one A- sees the disappointment in his parent's eyes over the one lower grade, and learns that he is not good enough no matter how hard he tries. The girl who can't wear what the other girls are wearing because her boobs came in before everyone else, learns that her own body is somehow defective and that she in unacceptable simply for being who she is. It's fucking tragic, and it is amazing that anyone grows up without a sense of self that isn't permanently curled up in a fetal position!
YOU, my friend, ARE a good person, a person worthy of love, a person worthy of respect, a person worthy of happiness. I promise you that all I say here is true. You are worthy of forgiveness, and you must be the first person to step up and offer yourself that forgiveness. Yes, you did terrible, shitty, hurtful things, things that cannot be taken back or made better, things that hurt other people, and that will never change. That will always be part of your story. But I suggest to you that you embrace that part of your story. Cling to it, know it, feel it, regret it, but do NOT let it DEFINE YOU as someone unworthy of love. Instead, let it be your engine and your compass in order to define who you are now, today, and every day moving forward.
I know that may sound like some feel-good, tree-huggy, spiritual "Kumbaya" mumbo-jumbo, but I swear it is not. That is why it is so very important to figure out those "why's", because you need to go back and figure out where the damage started, and in doing so, figure out when you went from that sweet, innocent, blank slate of a kid who I'm sure wanted to grow up to be a wonderful person, to the damaged person you became instead. When you do that, well, let's just say that light-bulbs and switches start going off.
"Really Mom & Dad? You mean I got straight A's and all you could focus on was the A-? Are you kidding me? I've spent the last 40 years feeling like I'm not good enough, when in fact, I was pretty awesome, and for what? Because doing my best didn't meet up to your impossible standards?"
Right now, you are still living as a shell. You are still basing your own sense of worth (or lack thereof) on your wife's valuation of you. If she were to turn around today and say, "Oh Islesguy, you've worked so hard and I love you so much and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you" then you'd be happy and feel good about who you are, because she's giving you that sense of love and value that you lack within yourself. But she's not. She's angry and distrustful and hurt (as she should be), however since you have no sense of self-love, you instead accept yourself as someone unworthy because that is how she defines you. She can't love you, and she can't respect you, because you don't love or respect yourself.
Instead, she has the additional burden of being responsible for your emotional well being. Even though you are now 100% faithful, truthful, earnest and even empathetic, she still has the burden of carrying you around like luggage, feeling responsible for you and having to either modify her own behavior in order to make you happy - at the loss of her own needs for happiness and support - or she is honest with you and shares her hurt and frustration and pain with you, but the end of result of that is that she destroys you emotionally, and she feels that guilt. You continue to hurt her by being an emotional ball and chain for her. You are not only not helping her, but actually hindering her, because she needs for you to be a rock, so she can fall apart and not feel responsible or guilty for your emotional well being as well as hers.
OMG that was such a hard lesson for me to learn! The harder I tried to help my wife the more I hurt her, not because I wasn't trying, but because in trying to help her, I was trying to control her. Yes, I wanted her to be happy, of course, who wouldn't? But deeper down, I wanted her to be happy because I felt like shit, and I was so tied to HER emotional state that I couldn't be responsible for my OWN happiness and healing. Once I got past the point where I could start to separate those things, I started to become more independent and self-reliant in an emotional sense. I had to learn that if she was having a bad day or was mad at me for whatever reason, that I could be sad or hurt because things in life are painful, HOWEVER what it didn't mean was that I was a bad person or someone unworthy of love.
Think of it this way. You cheated on and lied to your wife. How do think she felt internally when she learned about that? I mean, beyond the obvious pain... do you think she felt like she deserved it because she's such a worthless person? Or do you think she was hurt but pissed because she knows she's deserving of so much better? From what you've written, it seems to me like the latter, and still is. If you went home today and said, "I'm done. I'm leaving." do think she'd kill herself because she can't live without you? Or would she tell you to not let the door hit you in the ass on the way out? Again, I'm sure the latter. That's because your wife loves herself and knows her own value. It doesn't mean she doesn't feel hurt, but she doesn't crumble either. She's hurt because you aren't treating her with the love and respect she feels she deserves, not because she doesn't deserve it.
You need to get yourself to the same point. I can't promise you anything in regard to your wife. A lot of damage was done, and sometimes we hit our breaking point after which there is little chance of recovery. But I do think this is true... if you learn to love and respect yourself, then it will make her own personal healing easier on her in general, and it will make it easier to learn to love and respect you again. And if the worst does come to pass, if the marriage doesn't survive, then it leaves you intact, and with the best possible framework to move on, feel worthy, and continue to be the best dad, the best person you can be.
As always, maybe I'm way off base here, and if so, I apologize. I can only give you what I know, and draw from my own experience. I can tell you however that once I started down that path of loving myself again, EVERYTHING in my life started to change. My wife's reaction to me, my kids, my work, everyone I know and meet, and most of all, how I feel about myself... all of those things started to get exponentially better. I'm starting to like who I am and how I feel on a daily basis. It doesn't mean I never feel shitty about myself... I did terrible things, and have so much regret and remorse for my life choices. I'll never be able make those things right. But forgiving myself has led me to a point where I can stop being blocked by my own pain. I am no longer walking around like a sad puppy dog looking for mother's approval. Instead, now I own who I am and what I did. More importantly, I own who I am today and every day moving forward, and once that happened, my wife started to heal as well!
Last thing, some advice my wife gave me and so I pass on to you... When you die, would you rather that people say, "How sad. He had his demons and they got the best of him". Or would you rather they say, "He had his demons, but he worked hard to overcome them, and became someone really respectable, and that's something to be proud of"?
Sorry for the novel...
