SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

We dealt with this. Less overt, maybe? H had a porn addiction and solicited nudes. Although I'm not sure that the level of "in your face" matters. Not trying to minimize, at all, because of course it hurts for you in very personal and specific ways. I will say that I followed the trail of what hurt about his actions and that led me to find the root hurt, although it took me a long time and a lot of healing. We're both still working it in my M. I think it's still so early for you. The two of you are understandably not on a "team" at the moment and that's why I agree with Oldwounds. It won't work unless you're on the same team - are you ready for that? I wonder, because when I read

He's not special to me right now. It hurts me to my core to admit that. Brings tears to my eyes. It's this knowledge that tortures me of how I lost my special to him as well.

I remember what I struggled with the most and still do: self-compassion. H and I grappled with this cycle of 1) he does something I find hurtful, 2) I feel fear (attachment panic), 3) I eventually communicate my emotion in a reactive way, 4) the reactivity triggers attachment panic in H, and then 5), we fight.

You have experienced trauma. He broke your trust. He has experienced trauma. You broke his trust. I think you both coped with it imperfectly as humans tend to do. Knowing that doesn't help with the pain, necessarily, although it does help me with mine these days.

I think it's Sisoon that I see posting about anger being helpful because it can help us find a direction (I'm sure that's a big bastardization) and help us ask for what we want. I think MC would be really beneficial here. I read that you communicate well but wonder, if communication is so great, why is he disconnecting like that? This statement of yours to Buck:

But you are kind of telling me that I might be wrong there.

I would say, based on my experience, that your H is hurting big time. If you wanted to, MC could help establish a safe space for the two of you to learn or relearn how to attach to each other. I had a really hard time asking for what I wanted because I Cheated First but it was also because of a longer pattern of avoidance. I could be projecting but your posts in this thread feel very familiar to me.

Thissucks had a great post!!! What if you explained that it hurts you and why? What would his response be?

My h actually performs much better without the porn.

I’m not your husband, but if you told me I perform better without it, I’m going without it. If you didn’t tell him this, you should. If you didn’t tell him he rocked your world earlier this week, you should.

So, after my affair I think part of the reason I had a hard time getting past the AP is I just really couldn't believe I was so stupid. It was hard for me to understand I had been lied to and duped. I get you really can't be duped into having an affair, I do not mean to diminish my accountability. What I mean to say is maybe I have some sort of blind spot when it comes to pride that it becomes hard for me to believe that I am not this strong woman who I always saw myself as. I am not sure if that makes sense or not.

This has been the hardest part of confronting my A. How do I get past the shame of these destructive decisions and come to a point of accepting that, while these decisions exist, they were a pattern of a fractured self that operated from somewhere other than authenticity?

I have arrived with the help of lots of posters here at the following- I had needs that could potentially have been elaborated and articulated to my STBXBW and worked through in an honest manner.

Where I fell short was in lacking the self-awareness to effectively identify and prioritize those needs. I duped myself in that regard, and my true act of omission was in stopping far short of the introspection an adult owes themselves and the world around them.

I don’t know if that is any help, but I that is a way that I resolve my blind spot with the knowledge of the harm I caused.

Regarding sexuality being potentially sinister, I think you’re spot on that it becomes apparent how others “wield” it in the wake of an A, especially in light of the nature of your WH’s betrayal. I can relate that as HB began to wane and I allowed the SAME resentments to creep in again, I found myself withholding in order to “settle the score.” Very juvenile and as shame inducing for me as anything else I have done, but echoing all of the assessments of this as another symptom of your BH’s avoidance of the matter...

A final thought- Porn is, IMO, monstrous. When you remove the ethical implications of the coercive and predatory behavior of producers, it still does such psychological damage by virtually guaranteeing resentment of a healthy and balanced intimate relationship. Simply put the (exceedingly sexist) belief that a partner should “always be willing” paints a bogus picture of real life- Same as “Stepford Facebook Families” but with extra layers of serotonin. I hold my tongue a lot on this when it comes to the “what a WW owes” BS threads, but if the demand is an inauthentic level of desire, then I would tend to doubt one’s capacity for R- That desire for ersatz comes out in all manner of unreasonable ways based IMO on an inability to recognize porn as false. Shirley Glass cites early exposure to porn as a frequent indicator of susceptibility to the corrosive decisions that brought us all here, and that seems like a logical connection based on what I describe- Based in turn on what I experienced over a lifetime of reliance on porn.

[This message edited by JBWD at 6:38 PM, March 12th (Friday)]

It's all about what works for both of you. DH and I watch a lot of porn, and sometimes he'll even put on a VR headset and watch porn while I'm giving him oral sex. To us, I don't feel any less connected. I watch porn while he's returning the favour.

But it depends on our mood. Sometimes we have very intimate and connected sex. Sometimes we have playful sex. It's not specific actions that are right or wrong, it's about what you have negotiated between the two of you. It doesn't have to be considered non-intimate just because you're focusing on giving your partner an experience of one sided pleasure! It's still YOU that is doing it, after all.

I can understand not feeling sexual when you're hurting, on both sides. At some point when you feel disconnected, there really are only two paths. Connection doesn't magically come back. You can sit and talk about your hurt on both sides and make an agreement to genuinely try and move past it, or walk. Because it won't come back unless you both want it to, and make it come back. You can't do it alone and he can't do it alone, but if you both don't try then you'll never get past it.

Over the course of a relationship people feel more or less connected to each other, depending on current life struggles, hormones, even the weather. But the one key lesson my counselor taught me and it rings so true is that when you're spinning out of your relationship orbit, the only one who can bring you back is you, making that decision to check in rather than check out. That's really the bottom line.

[This message edited by PSTI at 9:08 PM, March 12th (Friday)]

Thanks, but real wisdom only happens after we've experienced and understood the pain we've survived.

Respectfully, oldwounds, I disagree.

Real wisdom comes in the form of fart joke metaphors.

Hikingout. What the hell!?

You have literally psychoanalyzed the shit out of this. Like, you could almost write a doctoral dissertation based on the analyzed factors.

You have literally gone over more ground than I think I could cover without missing something.

So, let me make some broad responses to what's come across as the major issues:

1. Your guilt. You call is self-flatulation or something sophisticated, but ultimately you have allowed your guilt to drive you into a corner your just now seeing. You know it's not healthy. This guilt is controlling you more finely than when I turn one big fart into machinegun tiny ones because I'm at church and afraid the big ones gonna interrupt the choir.

It's okay to feel guilty. It's okay to do things because you feel guilty. It's NOT okay to let so much of your life be overtaken by this guilt.

2. Your relationship with your husband. I'm not gonna get into the porn bj thing. That's actually a fantasy I have, and would love it for my ww to do that. In general, though, I like to be sexually served.

That's not what's going on here.

I can’t read minds, so I don't know what your husband was thinking. Me, I'd be thinking 'hell yeah'. But I could also see it being a 'this bitch' or anywhere between.

Fucking shit, if you two can't discuss sexual stuff without the history making it a warground of dominating and paybacks, well... idk, take turns or work on writing erotic novels together and roll dice to pick out the scenes.

3. Your dday is much much more recent than his. That doesn't mean he isn't still fucked up by his. But it does make the wounds a little bit fresher.

What it really sounds like is that he STILL hasn't made the decision to truly r.

Which is okay so long as it's okay with you.

4. This isn't the top of the list, but I noticed you lacked a sufficient number of fart jokes. That's unacceptable. I have placed a call into your states farters anonymous to have a speaker come out to your house. Now, I know the gal, and she's a real squealer, but don't be surprised if covid masks prevent you from getting a full dose of the odor. That's just the times we live in now.

HO,

A lot of people have said the things that I was thinking, but a couple things jumped out. The first is that you speak as if your codependency is kind of a thing of the past, but I don't think you are being very honest with yourself. You still seem very codependent--comfort in blaming yourself, discomfort with blaming him, terror at the thought of not having sex with your H (even though it feels degrading), and cutting your H a lot of slack on poor behavior (your A has given him a permanent excuse in your mind).

Your codependency, in my view, is obstructing your view of your H--he is not doing the emotional work necessary for R, for any M actually. I'm not so sure he would not have cheated with another marital crisis other than your A; it was beyond a revenge A. His was an entitled, coping, fully avoidant A. So was mine, so I know how that goes. And his avoidance and lack of self-awareness are not your problems to own, and yet you are taking them on to keep the marriage viable. (His pain from the A. Um, no.) But you have to be willing to lose the M to save it, particularly when your partner will not leave their emotional comfort zone and do the hard work.

Here you are posting, HO. Expressive and generous with your thoughts and wisdom as always. Working your ass off. Communicating. But you cannot do the work for both of you. Can I ask you a question? You say that you've been codependent, but codependents attract to those with a void to fill. Their partners drink too much, work too little, are too sick, have too big an ego or are too fragile--whatever the case may be. So what attracted you to your H? What was his deficit, the void you were filling with your overachieving? He had a deficit long before your cheating or you would not have seen a way to be valuable in his life. And that deficit, seemingly of the personality variety, means he came to this shit show carrying his own stuffed bag. You did not "do" this all to him, although if you talk to him the way you talk here, he probably believes you did. You can take too much ownership, you know? Another sign of codependency. He needs to work through his own stuff, that original stuff, for you guys to put this all together as it should be.

I relate a lot to your struggles. We've got the codependency, the MH thing, the hard work. I am rooting for you guys.

Sometimes it takes some time for a BS to realize that nothing they did or didn't do caused the affair. The What-ifs I think are just parts of the bargaining stages of grief. The reality of it is that all the things your husband did, he did because he wanted to, he felt entitled to...and that has nothing to do with you. I know it's hard to believe. Think back though, I am sure there have been times you haven't felt happy with your husband. You didn't cheat. Why? Because you didn't have the character defects that he does. It's those defects that he must work to correct in order to be a safe partner. See how that doesn't involve any what ifs on your part?

Hikingout, November 2018

Just want to remind you that you know a lot more of the answers than you give yourself credit for knowing.

HO - sorry you are hurting so much. I think there's a dance going on. OIN mentioned the co-dependency aspect and it is likely happening here. And the back-and-forth triggering is the expression of that co-dependency. You are filling each other's voids only in a new way - the after extreme trauma way which is building on the past orientations of both of you expressing itself in sexual struggles.

It's a spiral - a negative triggering spiral. In EFT (Emotionally Focused Therapy) it is an infinity loop whereby each party triggers the negative responses from the other. The key is to break that loop.

The infinity loop metaphor which Scott Woolley developed to illustrate the cycle between partners nicely illustrates the elements of the process of emotion in action: each side of the loops represents one partner as he or she reacts to cues from the other. The entire loop represents how, as a system, each partner triggers and reacts to the other.

You have to talk it through and that talk has to be how each partner feels when such a trigger happens. Once one party understands the other's interpretation (and vice versa), the cycle can break.

It could be that he doesn't realize looking at porn during satisfaction makes you feel objectified. If he knew that he could tell you how he feels when he engages in that activity while you are pleasing him - perhaps it is the opposite that he feels better knowing that you are there for him. Or perhaps it is that he is so ashamed at what he did (mad hatter-wise) that he cannot face himself and the escapism of porn allows him to disassociate from the self-loathing he feels from that action. You won't know of course until you discuss it in detail with him.

Having such discussions finally allowed WS and me to break our loop. We are a product of all of our experiences and even though the trauma of infidelity caused recent trauma, there still is an accumulation and a lot to unpack before rebuilding can truly be productive. The layers have to be peeled back. Each new one seems to unveil old ones lurking just beneath the surface.

I think the two of you should be easy on yourselves. The trauma suffering is so strong. Sex is so intimate and represents us bare and naked - physically and emotionally. It makes sense that it is causing strong reactions. Use those reactions to figure out how you can each work towards relieving those burdens. Big hugs.

[This message edited by ISurvivedSoFar at 8:16 AM, March 13th (Saturday)]

At the risk of jinxing things... I have to say this has been one of the most even, measured, thoughtful and respectful discussions of a sexual topic that I have seen on this board for a long time. Keep it up SIer’s!

How very refreshing!

[This message edited by HoldingTogether at 9:06 AM, March 13th (Saturday)]

Wow- I came in this morning and I just read the responses. Tremendous insight. I agree with all of it. I am on my phone right now so it’s too hard to comment on all the individual things with quotes. Let me hit some broad strokes.

Not the victim- you are right my guilt is supersized. I still connect my affair to his and that’s the flair up. I really did feel like I had gotten past that before being hit with his affair torpedo. I will do better with fart jokes moving forward sir.

Those that talk about codependency- yep. I realized yesterday that there was still comfort for me that Inwas married to someone so good, and somehow that elevated me. I think maybe this would be more obvious to a MC and we did skip over that. I think we will go.

We had a very long, winding discussion last night. I feel like it was very enlightening, honest, it showed me he is learning some things about himself in IC. We don’t talk about his IC a whole lot but what he was able to express tells me he has learned a lot about himself. It not that I have been afraid to talk to him about things it’s that sometimes I keep a distance from him. Being vulnerable with him is hard right now. But I did it and I think we both got a lot out of it. We made some plans/rules for engagement on a few things. No porn for the foreseeable future, though it’s not banned if he is alone as long as it doesn’t infringe on our sex life or day to day stuff. We are going to do MC. We talked about whether sex was too much pressure right now, but we both agree we would like to continue with new understanding. I feel like we made a good foundation of dialogue that we can now build from. There is a lot of love here, and I do think he is in it with me more than it was feeling like. He said some of the things that I woke up and read in here and sees the guilt thing notavictim pointed out.

Oin- that’s an interesting perspective. I have to probably leave it at I will look for it. I am not sure. There has never been a lot about him I didn’t like but we did start our relationship in an unconventional way that left me feeling like I wasn’t enough on my own. And right now this overage of porn use has taken me back to that place. At the same time he has always had my back and built me up and encouraged me. I realize as I write this I still feel like I would have been no where near what I became had I not married him. Maybe where he was older, I feel a little like he gave me a raising that my parents didn’t. I think I idolize him like a parent because he gave me what they didn’t. I still did all the hard work my self and those things were my talents. Weird. That’s just a theory, I will think about more. What you are saying feels right but I don’t know why. I don’t think I realized how much on a pedestal O had placed him but I think that was exacerbated by my affair and feeling a debt of gratitude towards him.

PTSI - I agree you can use porn and still have intimacy. That’s why I never minded it earlier on. But we don’t. This is being used to avoid intimacy and we both now see that.

Holding together- it’s probably because someone shared a specific to them scenario, rather than general things that never seems to apply to anyone with sweeping generalizations. It’s hard to agree with sweeping generalizations. But it’s hard to get in a tizzy when the advice is directed to specifics.

Thank you all. There is so much good stuff in here to think about. I was in a bad place yesterday that I kept finding myself in. Sometimes we think we know what and why but we don’t.

[This message edited by hikingout at 10:00 AM, March 13th (Saturday)]

I agree with a lot that has been said about codependency. I do think it has been a running theme to this issue in that you've put yourself last in this equation for a long time and now struggle to put yourself first. There's also the element of control that you've mentioned which goes hand-in-hand with codependency. Definitely something worth digging in to.

As you delve deeper into codependency and face the harder truths of the marriage and spouse you have vs the marriage and spouse you thought you had and projected to the world, the knee jerk reaction to defend, minimize, or just plain feel guilty about others reacting to his poor behavior will lessen. It's related. It's your identity being neatly wrapped up with his as his wife and what a good wife to him should do. But you are your own person. What he does IS NOT a reflection of you. If he cheats, if he does the work, if he doesn't do the work, if he's nice or mean, none of it are about YOU. They're all about him. So trust me when I say there is no correlation to your strength as a woman and what he does or doesn't do. Strong, smart, savvy people get duped ALL THE TIME. We all know them. The person who excels in academics and business with a hellish, domineering, manipulative spouse at home. The wise person with a toxic best friend that they always cover for. The super kind and fun person who is too close to their family who devalues them. They're all over the place because strength has nothing to do with it. What matters is how you react to getting duped. Will you double down and place your proverbial savings into his hands again or will it come with boundaries and strings attached this time? Will you cut your losses and invest with someone else? The only bad decision is to do nothing and pretend like you're not going to get duped again.

I can't say I really know if your MH is doing the work or not. I believe you've said he is in IC. I'm curious to what he says his whys are and if they are the same as what you say, that your A has a lot to do with it, or if he takes full accountability for it. Look around, HO. This is a forum chock full of BSes who didn't choose to cheat after being cheated on so really your A had very little if anything to do with it. It's what he justified his A with but it's not the why and how of it.

What concerns me is that it's clear to me that your MH has become very comfortable in his role as victim and I think that may be what OIN is picking up on when it comes to emotional labor. He doesn't strike me as someone who understands the gravity of his A despite knowing what it feels like. Perhaps he's in denial as if he has convinced himself that your A wasn't that bad so neither is his or maybe he just believes he still holds some moral high ground for not cheating first. Maybe both. It's hard to say with what you have shared but I too think this goes deeper because even allowing a clearly degrading and disconnected form of intimacy to continue after your DDay is just beyond tone deaf. He knows how humiliating and what a blow to your ego an A can be - thinking that maybe the WS wants the AP more no matter how lowly they may be - and at no point did he stop to think that maybe fantasizing about others in porn while getting intimate with you would be a problem? He expects you to come up with a solution instead of offering to try something else when confronted and acknowledging how messed up the situation was? Getting It 101.

Doesn't mean it's malicious but as I said - far too comfortable with the status quo. You know the one in which you bent over backwards in R while he cheated. That marriage is done. Toast. The new one, if he can help build it, should never have any intimacy in which either partner feels humiliated or degraded. Never. For any reason. It wasn't an acceptable thing for him to do to you as a BS and it sure as hell isn't acceptable now that he's a MH.

And it needs to be said - the fact that he was posting here as a BS to talk about your A while cheating is IMHO disgusting behavior. Sorry if that upsets you but it's twisted and manipulative. I don't know him as a poster but I wouldn't be surprised if some posters who interacted with him would feel cheated if they knew or question those interactions because when it's revealed that a BS was hiding their WS status, the public backlash here has often been pretty severe. That should not be rugswept and he needs to own that and answer to it with you because this is your community and safe space that he also disrespected.

I just don't want him to comply because I ask though. I want him to comply because I inspire him in some way. Tall order, and I do fear that part is too much to ask (WS hat comes on)

A former therapist of mine talked about 'compliance' and 'over-compliance.' 'Compliance' is agreeing to do something that you don't really want to do but feeling OK about doing the task. 'Over-compliance' is doing something you don't want to do and resenting doing the task.

Over-compliance is part and parcel of co-d, I suspect.

When I imagine cheating (probably because of over-compliance!), I know I'd feel beyond awful about myself, so I think I have at least a small sense of some of your guilt and shame.

You're a WS, but you're still a human being - lovable, loving, capable - and you still have human wants. Now is a great time to face your self and decide it's OK to want to be loved. That doesn't guarantee that you will be loved, but it's really important to accept that's what you want, IMO. I think this because I also believe knowing one wants to be loved opens one up to recognizing love when it's offered.

I've written that I wanted my W to love me, to be in love with me, and to agree to monogamy. I'm short, fat, bald, and I guess I'm old, too. I have no idea how good I am in bed, compared to other men. My career was pretty good, but much less than it could have been. Even with all my failings, I want to be loved, and I want my W to be in love with me. I'm entitled to that. I may not get it it, but as a human being, I'm entitled to that.

You are, too, even though you cheated. My bet is that all human beings want to be loved, although I realize lots of us suppress our desire. Stop suppressing it. Let it out.

I know it's immensely painful to realize one isn't getting the love one wants, but I am absolutely certain that recognizing the desire opens one up to having the desire satisfied.

*****

How do you tell the difference between compliance and over-compliance?

I think the answer is consistency and non-verbal communication. Compliance can be faked for months, but it probably can't be faked for years.

Non-verbals ... my W had many sexual hangups. She was ambivalent about sex almost all the time. She put the hangups aside after d-day. She just started to feel different. It took at least a couple of years for me to accept that she had changed permanently, but her consistency made me accept that she desired me.

(And yeah, I know that maybe we simply want sex and brain-wash ourselves into thinking we want just one person....)

*****

I'd be upset if either my W or I watched porn during sex, but that's me. If it's OK with you, so be it.

But know and accept that you really want to love and be loved. Know that you want a good deal of security around loving and being loved, too.

*****

I've put the soap box away, until next time.

[This message edited by sisoon at 10:57 AM, March 13th (Saturday)]

@hikingout Damn girl, I thought you were in way better sorts than that.

I'm a bit flabbergasted, it's sooo obvious there's a personality type mould that people that cheat are made out of.

What you said here was like an alarm bell going off.

The whole inability to "respond from the heart on the fly" is what I call it.

You ask me something and I will formulate an opinion or feeling about it real quick-like.

My wife freezes too, I call it "never safe, can't show colour" too sometime.

The idea of just spitting self expression unguarded in my wife's case is a form of guardedness enshrined in dishonesty, but it could just as well come from being a conscious or compulsive liar I guess.

I

think it goes beyond conflict avoidance, though I do think he has that. This is what I have been saying in most of my posts regarding this situation. I do not think he is self aware. Throughout our whole marriage, he often could not put a finger on how he felt about something. Or once he went through a really big depression. It was maybe 13 or 14 years ago. Eventually I told him what I thought was bothering him, and he took that in and realized I was right.

So, not sure what that falls under? Lack of Emotional Intelligence? Hard to put that label on him either because he has always been good at reading people and situations. He's an excellent negotiator, and his communication/teaching skills in his career are exemplary. He is one of the most in demand consultants in his field.

He just really is out of tune with his own inner working and emotions. Until he figures it out, I don't think I will be able to trust him. It's not a lack of honesty issue (weird I feel that way, despite his affair) it's being able to trust him that he knows what he wants and feels.

Another example of that - ask him his favorite anything. It makes him freeze up. This seems unrelated on the surface, but it's all in the same vein of his issue.

Some of my frustration prior to my affair is we were definitely having problems getting on the same page about my workload. There was a great lack of empathy. And, when I would be upset about something and talk to him about it, he would always listen but never had anything to say back in return. He could just roll over and fall asleep and I never understood it.

Both of you respond to your feelings by stuttering and sputtering out.

He actually hasn't even started the reconciliation process.

When I dealt with my mind movies I didn't know it was common, and told her years after, found it too hurtful and embarrassing to tell about.

Let that sink in for one second though, "I found it too hurtful to share".

Your husband has not processed your betrayal at all, and hasn't processed his own either, he's probably rerouting his negative feelings towards himself, to you, that's overreach I'm only comfortable making based on your bedroom dynamic.

Watching porn during the act is savage A F, he is punishing you like I can't believe my ears.

I used to sneak off for my porn, to catch "my breath and get my space back" as my wife was very fragile about sexual stuff and got belligerent about, porn, even noticing some sexual disfunction.

She felt very unattractive and got mad, sad, desperate, she wasn't able to link it back to what she did, I did somewhat try to talk about it but didn't understand it so well either as I had it in times before due to a messed up childhood.

I know that my escapism was due to pain, anger, sadness, feeling inadequate, crushed, and degraded. But it led me to feeling painful stuff during intercourse and mind movies, but watching porn during the act is really digging yourself a fox-hole in the bedroom.

Especially if it isn't purposely used as a tool to reconnect to emotionally safe levels.

I wish I had more sensible things to say. But it seems whatever he's sitting on may be very ego-destroying/destroyed stuff.

Where he either loves you and is incapable as is to deal with what you did to him, or it's a senseless act to hold on.

Loathe to say these things, but that's heavy.

He needs to open up though, and I'd sit him down gently.

Have you shut him down in the past so much with attacks when he voiced his feelings?

because if you we're playing a game of "but you did it too, or worse even!".

Then you may have effectively removed all safety from the relation and he gave up.

duplicate

[This message edited by secondtime at 12:59 AM, March 14th (Sunday)]

I found this statement interesting:

We made some plans/rules for engagement on a few things. No porn for the foreseeable future, though it’s not banned if he is alone as long as it doesn’t infringe on our sex life or day to day stuff.

My husband IS a recovering sex addict and has used use porn to get high. Will use porn to get high in the future, if he chooses. Porn is not "banned." Neither is fantasizing, the other part of my husband's addictive behaviors.

If my husband is hell bent on getting high, he'll do it. It's not something I can control. I suppose I could try, but really, my husband has to choose his sobriety/recovery in a digital, technology-filled world.

I don't have problems saying "Your choice to get high through porn or fantasy. My choice to decide my response to that."

And, actually I have no problems being emotionally vulnerable with my husband. I am happy to speak my truths and be authentic, even though I know it's not going to cause any change. I like that I am finally now honoring myself. I didn't start doing it until my mid-late 30s. I'm 45 now. I've enjoyed the last decade of my life more than the first three that have proceeded it.

I'll be damned if I am sexually vulnerable. It's been clear that my husband really isn't r material for at least a year now. We've probably had sex a handful of times since I've accepted that my husband just isn't recovery material. I can't use him, and I hate feeling used.

So. We don't have sex.

Those are the "terms" of staying married to me, right now.

If my husband doesn't like those terms, he's free to leave.

Or. My husband is free to do the things that I've asked him to do to show that he's really in recovery/reconciliation..That would most definately help me to be more vulnerable in bed with him. That's not a path he's choosing to take.

What concerns me is that it's clear to me that your MH has become very comfortable in his role as victim and I think that may be what OIN is picking up on when it comes to emotional labor. He doesn't strike me as someone who understands the gravity of his A despite knowing what it feels like.

Yes, this. Thank you, nekonamida.

Maybe where he was older, I feel a little like he gave me a raising that my parents didn’t. I think I idolize him like a parent because he gave me what they didn’t.

Sure, this could be the attraction. In my experience and in everything I've read, codepency is a yin yang. There is no codependent attraction without a deficit on the other side. Yet when you speak of your H, he has no faults. He was a fantastic person and partner, and you were the broken one. Why would a healthy, fantastic partner want a broken partner? Why would he choose you, if he was so healthy himself? Why did you want to marry a parent? And why, HO, did he want a daughter to raise, as you say, instead of a true partner? Consider what that says about him. Consider the power imbalance inherent in this dynamic.

There is only one reason I bring this up, even though there are many threads I feel it applies to besides yours: both partners need to understand their role in the marital dynamic before true R takes place, in my view. It is typically, if I had to guess, that the generous, codependent partner is cheated on by the selfish, ego driven partner. But there is a second dysfunctional cheating dynamic where the powerless, codependent partner cheats on the more selfish, ego driven partner in an effort to find themselves and/or passive aggressively lash out against their powerlessness. This was the cause of my A, and from what you have written over the years, it seems this was the cause of yours.

I am not saying that I am correct because there is no way I can truly understand your H or your dynamic, but your posts continue to suggest that you have been the weak, lost, codependent one while he has been perfect. And I have never been able to understand why a perfect person would marry a weak, lost, codependent partner. His attraction to you suggests that he needed your adoration, needed to hold the power position in the M. But that's a problem. Those who need to be in the power position are not good about helping others to have equal self-esteem in an R, unless they can take credit for "helping you become what you are." Especially if the partner has chosen a paternal marital role. How can you ever be an equal to a wise parent?

I realize as I write this I still feel like I would have been no where near what I became had I not married him.

Geeze, HO. I'm not sure that I like the sound of this. It's beyond appreciation. It seems he gets to be everything in the M, while you get to be nothing without him? That cannot feel good, and I wonder if it contributed to your need to cheat. The dynamic feels so unequal. What do you think?

But beyond that, in my experience, when someone who married to have the power position in the M and have their ego fed (which clearly your H did in choosing a younger, codependent, admiring-type W) gets cheated on, their ego cannot handle it. Period. They absolutely have a revenge A to get their power back and get their ego fed. His A is not at all surprising in this type of dynamic.

These are patterns that I have seen on SI and elsewhere, and you may feel this does not apply to you, HO. Take what you need and leave the rest. But if this in any way rings true, then you need to see that your H's role is beyond that of BH or WH or RA. His role is to get all of the self-esteem, and your role is to make sure of that. I'm not saying he didn't build you up and encourage you, but as his mentee. THAT relationship dynamic was most likely the problem in the first place, long before you cheated. That dynamic allowed your codependency to linger and your low self-esteem or feelings of low marital value to cause you continued pain. You chose badly and weakly by cheating to cope with those feelings, and then your H also chose badly and weakly to get his ego fix fixed. Because he is as broken as you are, HO. He is not a victim. He is as problematic as you in all of this.

Until you step up and feel, "I am and would always have been something without him," and until your H actually believes that and allows you equal worth, I feel this dynamic will remain problematic. I feel the dynamic has actually reverted back to the original M, where you felt kind of like nothing and he had all the power. It's only because you've learned that cheating is horrible coping that your mind is not right back there, but what will you do with all of the renewed powerless feelings? Because I sense them coming out in your posts. Ever since your H cheated, the tone of your posts has changed. They sound so empty now. Instead of guilt and remorse they sound void of personal value or self-esteem, not uncommon after being cheated on. But as a codependent, you were already suffering from too much of this. And the whole allowing yourself to be devalued with the iPad thing fits into this continued minimizing of your value. It breaks my heart.

I hope I have not offended you in any way because that is not my intention, Hikingout. I have a lot of respect for you. I just wanted you to consider some things, maybe look at things from another viewpoint. I am not trying to say that I am correct, only that this is what my gut is telling me about your situation. Take what you need and leave the rest. I wish you both peace and healing.

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 4:05 AM, March 14th (Sunday)]

Until you step up and feel, "I am and would always have been something without him," and until your H actually believes that and allows you equal worth, I feel this dynamic will remain problematic.

Yes. Definitely. And I'd like to add - I don't believe for one second that you wouldn't have grown into who you are without your MH. Why? Because of how you have thrown yourself into self improvement here. It probably would have looked different if you had flown solo or been with someone else but there's no way that someone as smart and dedicated as you would have accepted less for yourself in that regard longterm. Please give yourself some credit for that.

What helps you be a model WS hurts you as a BS.

What jumps out at me is the lack of empathy when you were upset. Your husband needs to develop empathy as a WS wile you need to work on the self respect that a BS needs to develop to heal.

Standing up.for yourself was step one.

I have similar thoughts to some of the things OIN and neko have said.

In many ways, your A was textbook: a WW who had low self-esteem and conflict avoidance and allowed her resentments to lead to entitlement and cheap validation. The catch is that you rugswept the final stage of your work. After you explored your FOO, after you became more self-aware, after you took accountability for your toxic decisions, you didn't circle back around to properly examine the legitimacy of your resentment. You adopted the narrative that your anger and frustration were almost entirely a self-manufactured byproduct of perfectionism and approval-seeking. The payoff for this work appeared to be a healthier, more evolved marriage where you were both reconciled and healed. Why rock the boat when it finally reached calm waters?

Then that illusion of calm shattered. You had as much right to be stunned, angry and hurt as any BW on this site. Even so, as a madhatter, you felt like you could understand what your H did. After all, you knew all the moves and all the steps on the road to having an affair. Although you weren't sure whether you could forgive him, you felt that at least you knew what you were being asked to forgive. You felt that this terrific man had been broken by your cheating, and while his choices were unacceptable, his motivations were an outgrowth of the pain that you inflicted.

Now here we are, saying, "Uh, hikingout, you do realize that what he just did was deeply disrespectful and borderline dehumanizing, right?" This is a complicated message to absorb. On the one hand, it's validating, because that's what your gut was telling you about what you just experienced. On the other, it could be terrifying, because it goes to the heart of a lot of what you believed about the work you've done here. What does it mean if your resentment was not primarily a byproduct of brokenness? What if it was the voice of your authentic self, saying that it was past time to take off your rose colored glasses? What if, because of where that message led, you shot the messenger?

There have been other times that I have wondered if this was happening. In your original thread about your H's A, in the very first post, you wrote "And I didn’t even want to tell you all. I didn’t want to tarnish him to you all. How fucked up is that?" I don't think it was just the WW in you wanting to protect him. Somewhere in there, I believe you feared hearing from us that you deserve better. For someone whose default state is self-flagellation, the work is a double edged sword. You're supposed to take complete responsibility and leave your spouse with no share of the blame for the affair. But since WS are such crappy judges of reality, so talented at blame shifting and rewriting, it's intimidating as hell to trust ourselves enough to claim a legitimate grudge in the marriage.

You and TTP are dissimilar people in a similar space. Both of you love each other and want to stay married. Both of you are struggling to accept treatment that is inconsistent with what you believed a strong, independent person would tolerate. Both of you are exhausted at the prospect of working to reconcile, and both of you suspect that it really wouldn't be any easier to divorce and find a life with anyone else. And so both of you are drawn to rugsweep back to your pre-affair dynamic. He tried to believe that your A was an isolated breakdown, a temporary insanity that you purged to return to a desirable status quo. You tried to believe that your sense of not being seen was a construct of your own imagination, and that you could fix your issues with the marriage without significant effort from him. Unfortunately, to paraphrase HT, you're discovering that it's ultimately just as exhausting to hide from reality as it is to face it.

This has been a ticking time bomb for a while now. Putting an iPad between you during a blowjob was the straw that broke the camel's back, but the issue goes way beyond sex.

BSR,

That was one of the most honest, real and insightful posts about the "WS in R mindset" that I've read in a long time.

Thank you.