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Yes you'll have to take responsibility for your own healing as a betrayed spouse, but as Linda MacDonald repeatedly points out a WS who won't make an attempt to move from being a destroyer to a healer is not worth reconciling with.

Agreed, but 'recovery' and 'R(econciliation)' are 2 different matters.

They do not not necessarily go together. When they are going together, they often take place at different rates.

IMO, recovery goes better when the difference (was 'separation') is kept in mind.

[This message edited by sisoon at 1:51 PM, July 28th (Wednesday)]

IMO, recovery goes better when the separation is kept in mind.

This is interesting, sisoon, I don't know why this hadn't occurred to me before. Do you think my own healing and recovery would be accelerated by a therapeutic separation? I've been giving a lot of thought to this. Not to threadjack, because I wonder if the same question applies to the OP here.

I should have said 'difference' (between recovery and reconciliation) instead of 'separation.'

Thumos, I think your best bet is to stop giving power over your M to your W and instead to figure out what you want and go for it.

Your W has not shown herself to be a great candidate for R, but you've put up with it, and you've made excuses about D.

My reco is 1) to ask yourself what you get out of your behavior, 2) to get the real answers, and 3) to accept the answers. Then choose your next behaviors - which could be D, R, separate, continue as you've been doing, or something else.

My reco is 1) to ask yourself what you get out of your behavior, 2) to get the real answers, and 3) to accept the answers. Then choose your next behaviors - which could be D, R, separate, continue as you've been doing, or something else.

Pretty good, succinct advice. Thank you!

Your W has not shown herself to be a great candidate for R, but you've put up with it, and you've made excuses about D.

Insanity = doing the same thing repeatedly, but expecting different results.

OP, it looks like the more you have begun to find your center, to become a more fully integrated man, you have correspondingly grown in self respect and discovered your worth - what you desire and deserve. Your wife has seen that, your MC has seen that, and you have begun to assert yourself and refuse to be placated any longer. Good for you. Remember that feeling and revisit it when you are not being heard or acknowledged in the future and draw on that strength. And don't beat yourself up when it dawns on you that you were the one who allowed this to continue. We each learn at our own pace. You don't have to make angry demands either, just calm, well thought out requirements. She will recognize it as coming from a place of strength and be better prepared to respond accordingly. When she can look in your eyes and she knows this shit isn't going to fly anymore, she will comply, me thinks. You both have stuck around a long time after the fact so she is likely to step up when she sees her old methods no longer work.

best wishes.

Updates

Thanks for all the messages. Although I didn’t respond, I did read them. Since the breakthrough in transparency, I’ve been hopeful, had those hopes dashed, and… here I am.

First, I understand that some think I have been overly patient. It is a function of early decisions, followed by not rocking the boat. My DDay involved legal issues…keeping WW out of jail was much more important at the time than addressing the betrayal…so I sucked it up. Then life happens, you make a lot of small reasonable decisions and avoid the hard stuff. And every time I think "now is the time to talk about it," something else takes precedence.

Moving forward

Fyi: if things are happening around me that I don’t understand, I find that more traumatic than most people.

We’ve had a couple of MC sessions. I became disturbed after one session because I felt like I was expected to be mindful of others’ trauma while my trauma was ignored.
I sat with WW to talk about it the following week, thinking I just need to point out some of my confusing experiences and she would understand. This did not go well. I described multiple incidents that were very confusing (ie traumatizing) to me. Rather than apologizing or acknowledging, WW deflected, minimized or denied they had occurred the way I believed. I ended our talk before it got out of hand…I was feeling gaslighted and getting nowhere.

I brought this up at our next MC session. I relayed several statements that were gaslighting, how I know things occurred, but my issues are being minimized or unacknowledged. This went on for a while until WW burst out that I am not crazy, she was crazy, didn’t know what she was doing and doesn’t know how to fix it now.
I did point out that if I should not be expected to get over things if she is going to deflect or minimize.

WW hasn’t really reached out or apologized; she seems deflated. I don’t feel particularly overjoyed or relieved that I got some acknowledgment…it takes a lot of effort to get kibbles.

MC did point out something about AP that helped explain the role he filled, so that was nice.

This went on for a while until WW burst out that I am not crazy, she was crazy, didn’t know what she was doing and doesn’t know how to fix it now.

No you aren't crazy. You know what you know.

As far as 'didn't know what she was doing'.... puh-lease. In order to have sex with someone, there's about a bazillion steps a woman takes (at least for me and most of the women I know). I just don't buy it that at NO point in alllllll those myriad steps your ww wasn't consciously choosing to do it. Please don't let her feed you that drivel. She knew darn well what she was doing.

As for how to fix it... is she in IC? Has she read How to Help Your Spouse Heal? Listened to any podcasts? Read any articles? Offered to take a polygraph? Given you a written timeline? Told the truth? Has she done any of that on her own without prompting from you?

My xwh tried that too - the "I don't know what to do" stuff. This, coming from a man that would literally google engine parts for an imaginary engine he wanted to build for hours. Told him the same thing I suggest you tell your ww - "You figured out how to have an affair all by yourself like a big boy. So now figure out how to fix it all by yourself." IMHo the 'I don't know what to do" is just one more example of a complete unwillingness to take accountability.

MC did point out something about AP that helped explain the role he filled, so that was nice.

Sounds dangerously close to unmet needs.

The rest sounds like potential blameshifting and minimization. With likely goals of rugsweeping. "That was in the past, focus on now".

If you don't feel like the MC is helping you, stop going. Opt for you and your WW to go to IC first. Your MC is not qualified to help your WW if she is indeed crazy. She needs someone who can.

Maybe we should start a "back after XX years" club. I'm in a similar situation but I think I'm fortunate. After I met with a lot of resistance answering questions early in R I decided that I didn't want to keep agonizing over it. I didn't want to keep torturing her. So on advice of my therapist I swept it under the rug and "moved on."

I guess I'm a bit more fortunate because other than resistance to answering questions, my FWW did a lot of work to show remorse and make amends. In every other respect she was a model FWW. It does make me sad that with all the time she spent here, seeing how important transparency is, she never questioned whether I had all the information I needed. Heck, I had things so well tucked away within a year or so that I may have thought it better not to go there anyway.

But because she worked so hard to make me feel safe and loved, the "move on" strategy worked to a point. We've had a genuinely happy 15+ years since then. But now we're in the latter stages of middle age and I'm feeling reflective and a little vulnerable over what comes next. Add in some triggers from going through old papers and I'm suddenly sad that I'm looking back over 20 mostly happy years with a big hole in it that I can't fill in. We lived different realities during that time and we never reconciled them. That's not acceptable to me anymore.

This seems to be a theme. People coming back because they never got enough answers to be satisfied. My advice to any BS who is wondering just how much detail they really want is to collect all of it. Insist on it now while it's fresh. If you don't know if you want all the gruesome details then write out two sets of questions: one set that you definitely need answers to, and another that exposes every nook and cranny of the A to fully eradicate all the stolen intimacy, illicit secrecy, and romance of it. That second set you can keep in an envelope and never open if you never feel the need to know. But you will have it when that time comes.

Something I learned about WW (with help from therapist): The AP manipulated and weaponized Words of Affirmation. Words of Affirmation now mean less than nothing for WW; she doesn't trust them and she refuses to use them...so I don't get affirmations.

I am curious about this statement. What you are saying is that something that happened 14 years ago is still affecting her in the present. Perhaps she is "never going to get past this".

Gottman says for every negative interaction when you are in conflict, you need to have five positive interactions. Perhaps this is something your WW can work on so that you can see progress that she is "getting past" her own trauma (that she willingly participated in) and maybe it will help you "get past" the trauma she created for you.

I feel sad for you that she is withholding affection from you in this way. At some point I think you will need to insist that she works through these feelings so that she is not holding on to and punishing you with baggage from her poor life choices.

Thanks for your responses.

Seeking2Forgive,

Agreed, there do seem to be a lot of people who return after years. Issues do not go away by ignoring them. In my case, as time went by, the Affair seemed less and less important, and I felt worse for bringing it up, so I buried my resentment.

But when people deliberately hide things from me, or falsely blame me, I don’t think about the problem at hand; I think about the affair. The unresolved issues never went away, even if I got better at managing them.

ThisIsFine & LadyPheonix,

I’m not known for affection or being generous with Words of Affirmation (but I have deliberately tried to work on it for years). So, yes, there was an unmet need. The Therapist has recently helped me understand the AP filled this need, oftentimes dishonestly, and in the end caused a crisis (no, I am not apologizing for WWs choices). WW has tried to reverse this and no longer trusts any Words of Affirmation without backup.

This makes sense to a degree, but when every word is negative, it wears you down.

Ellie & Neko,

I hear ya. It was nice to hear I’m not crazy. Our MC is helping me understand some things about WW; hopefully she is understanding those things as well.

I hear ya. It was nice to hear I’m not crazy. Our MC is helping me understand some things about WW; hopefully she is understanding those things as well.

I don't think she is because her response wasn't a healthy coping mechanism. Swinging in the opposite direction and having that cause marital issues is the LAST thing she needs right now. Which is why the MC is not qualified to help her. She needs an IC to unwrap that with her and focus solely on it. Not one who explains to you her symptoms without treating the problems causing those symptoms. Would she be willing to get an IC if you asked?