SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have something of a dilemma. I don't think that this is something anyone can really help me with but I have this great resource so I am going to give it a shot.

HT and I are 15 months into R. Well, actually a little over 12 if you consider all of the TT. We've been doing well respectively. I've peeled more layers on this old onion than I ever thought even existed. But some layers are harder than others to peel back and once again I find myself struggling.

We have been able to dig through the mess of my LTA with a fine tooth comb. We are both to the point that we can discuss it very matter of fact. I can own it. When it comes to the A itself, we can both really see how my perspective of things and justifications could get me to that slippery slope and then just keep on sliding. The time that we are really struggling to get through the most is DDay. It's a day that for the most part has been packed away, until recently. We both knew it was still there but just didn't look at it much because there were so many other things that needed to be worked through first. The time had come to unpack it now and we are hitting some walls.

Our DDay was pretty brutal. My actions were absolutely criminal. MOM outed our A very publically. I didn't do anything about it and just let BH walk away. I spoke to BH briefly about an hour later but was monosyllabic and closed. I admitted to a PA when he asked, but offered nothing else. BH was obviously hurt and angry and told me to leave, so I did. I ran right into the arms of MOM. I mean this in the most literal of terms. I ended up f***ing him that night. MOM and I made plans for living arrangements. Remorse and empathy for BH was going through was nowhere to be found. The next day when we got back home (separately) BH asked me if I loved MOM and when I replied "yes" he told me to leave. I silently packed up my bag and left. Not knowing what to do, I stopped at the closest parking lot, grabbed a cup of coffee and tried to get a hold of MOM. He called me back shortly to tell me that he was working things out with his wife. At this point, my MIL knew and I called her because I didn't know what else to do. She talked to BH and convinced him to let me come back home. It took two more months of TT and torturing my poor BH before I was able to get my head out of my ass and start to work on myself and put some effort back in our marriage.

A lot of growth has occurred over the past 6-9 months. But that day, those actions are Almost impossible to work through. HT has said to me that he can see how I could compartmentalize so much of the A. But when I was faced with it head on like that, I could see how badly he was hurt, HOW was I able to act the way I did. How can I possibly claim to have loved him and still do what I did. So it's no longer about the why but the how. The answer that he keeps coming back to is that I didn't love him. He is also concerned that I have become such a convincing liar that I am fooling myself that love is there. He is concerned that once I get all my shit worked out in therapy I will figure out that he isn't what I wanted afterall.

So here I am, trying to figure the how. I don't have an answer other than what relates to my whys. I don't have a way to fit this piece in the puzzle in a way that makes any sense. When we discuss it I find myself getting frustrated and defensive. I can't admit that I didn't love him. When this happens it is just reminiscent of those early days and not owning my shit. I can actually see how that looks to him. I can also see how those actions that night and the next day gave him the message that I do not love him, that his feelings are unimportant to me. If I were in his shoes I would feel the same way. I know I can't undo my actions. What I can do is try to figure out every way I can disprove them. My actions now can't disprove my actions then. My words are meaningless on this particular subject. I've been doing some work with my IC on this but no break through yet. I'm willing to take any suggestion that you may have. I need to figure out a way that both of us can look at this and say "yes, that's what happened" and be ok with it, or at least feel as if some stone was not left unturned.

[This message edited by WalkinOnEggshelz at 6:05 PM, November 9th (Wednesday)]

Walking - Thanks for the great topic. I'm on the other side of your dilemma. After D-Day, my WGF left to be with MOM. After several weeks when MOM was done for whatever reason, she was stuck. I've always felt like her 2nd choice.

I know I can't undo my actions. What I can do is try to figure out every way I can disprove them. My actions now can't disprove my actions then. My words are meaningless on this particular subject.

Yep. You've identified the problem correctly. I've always been told that is well more than 50% of the way to solving it. Sadly, I can't help you.

I'll be watching this thread closely. Thanks for starting it.

You were still living in the fantasy that you and MOM was going to be together.

You were convinced that you and MOM were going to sail off into the sunset.

When MOM outed the affair..you thought..this is it. This is the time.

You had obviously been biding time and compartmentalizing. Doing the "wife" thing with your BH and then also doing the "off to a better life to build with OM" fantasy.

When the two worlds collided..you chose fantasy.

Fantasy far outweighs reality as far the "better life" is concerned.

You were convinced that the OM loved you more than your BH did. You wanted that "better life".

Pure selfish act of course.

Your desire for that better life far outweighed how your BH felt.

I have asked you before..what was your reaction when your BH just left. You say just as you did here..you let him and ran to the OM.

Whatever love or empathy you had for you BH was trumped by your fantasy life of betrayal with the OM.

At that time..NO..you did not love your BH. You dumped him. Told him you loved another man and left to be with that man.

Only when that other man said he was going to work it out with his wife did you look to come back.

You had no feelings of empathy for your BH at that time..you had spent a long time giving those feelings to the OM. Only going through the motions with your BH.

You had essentially replaced your BH in your mind with the OM..so when the time for that "replacement" came to happen you went with it.

No you didn't love him at that time..what love you did have for him was buried with the affair you built with the OM.

JMO

A simple answer is that due to your mindset before and during the A you didn't see the man your BH truly was. Your history states that you demonized your H. I know it sounds ridiculous to you now but during the A you believed the things you were saying about him. You may have loved the REAL HT, the one that has always been there. However in your mind all that was there was the FAKE HT that you created to help validate your A.

If this rings true to you then I would agree with FRM. You couldn't have loved the FAKE HT who is horrible monster nor could you have loved the REAL HT who did not exist to you.

FRM:

You know I always appreciate your insight. So my question is, if I didn't love him then what am I left with now? I feel strongly that that I loved him until I had the A and I feel strongly tht I love him now, probably more than I ever have because I truly understand what it means to love another. How is it possible to love someone, stop, and then decide to love again?

You ask me what I was thinking when BH walked away. I felt fear, relief, and numb (BH hates this last feeling, btw. Thinks its a cop out).

I think what I am trying to get to is how can I show HT certainty that what I felt for him before and what I feel for him now is the true emotion, not what I felt on DDay?

When we discuss it I find myself getting frustrated and defensive. I can't admit that I didn't love him.

I think this is important....as frustration and defensiveness are usually signs that we pushing against an idea we do not want to accept.

I want to offer another way for you to think of this...and it is along the lines of what FRM says above, when he says that you were not loving your BS.

Would you really want your BS to accept that "kind" of love? Would you really want him to accept a lack of loving action as "love"? It seems to me, that you want him to value himself, and you value him. I don't believe anyone would want someone they love to accept something so unhealthy and so disrespectful, as love.

I absolutely could not accept my fwh's insistence that he still "loved" me during his A, when his mind, his words and his actions said otherwise. He continued to insist and I continued to feel hurt by his insistence.

It wasn't until I told him that I would have to believe that I have absolutely no value at all, if were to accept what was given by him at that time, as love. I can not and will not accept any part of that time as having been "loved" by him. It's not out of stubbornness or bitterness though, its from a place of wanting better and knowing that I deserve to feel healthy love. So does he for that matter.

It did make me sad to see him accept my view. As he surrendered to the idea, I felt like he was finally understanding and validating the true depth of my pain. It also gave him something to think on, in terms of what he can and should expect from me.

It's no longer a sticking point in R and I think the acceptance on both of our parts has helped us to move forward toward our healing (both as individuals and as a couple)

I feel very loved now.

BS chiming in...

Many folks, BS and WS alike, don't really know what love is. Our concept of "love" is tainted by Disney and romance novels.

Love is not a "feeling". Feelings come from love, but it really isn't a feeling in and of itself.

The "love" we feel in a romance is not love at all. It's infatuation, basically a combination of obsession and lust.

Real love is both an action and a state of being. It's a way of life. It's a foundation from which we define ourselves and the relationships in our lives. We love our parents, kids, siblings, friends, and spouses, not because of an overwhelming, obsessive "feeling", but because they are part of who we really are.

We share common history with our loved ones. We share dreams, hopes, ideas, experiences, memories, misery, sadness, loss... We share life.

Marital love is the strongest love bond (or should be) because a married couple shares more things than in other relationships. Shared bank accounts, responsibilities, children, bills, home, cars, etc. all create a closer dependence on one another. This bond is further strengthened by the couple's physical relationship, something that is not shared with anyone else (in theory).

From this foundation, feelings arise. Obsessive or lustful feelings can come from love when appropriate. Loyalty, devotion, and a true sense of caring should certainly arise from a foundation of love.

Affairs are an illusion of love. An affair couple only shares incomplete experiences, lust, obsession, and sex. There is not enough substance here for a true love foundation.

Unfortunately, people often confuse this incomplete bond with real love, especially because of the intensity of the feelings generated by the bond.

When your AP outed your A, you fell for this illusion. You mistook the intensity of your affair bond for real love. Throughout the affair, your real love foundation with your BH had been allowed to erode to the point where it was no longer stable.

The love foundation was still there, though, or you wouldn't have had anything to build off of. You did love your husband, but that love was overshadowed by the artificial "love" feeling of the affair. Basically, you couldn't see the candle light while blinded by a flash bulb.

Look at your history with your husband. Identify and make note of the love you have for him and why. Express this love to him in a meaningful way, explaining that you are aware of how love works now and that you never plan to be blinded again by an illusion without substance.

Let us know how it goes.

SLH

[This message edited by ShallLoveHer at 9:06 AM, November 10th (Thursday)]

Why wasn't what you felt on DDay a true emotion? Emotions are not constant. If they were we'd be angry, sad, happy, scared, anxious, all the time.

Love is an emotion. It's also a verb. You may not always love your spouse in an emotion way, but loving them as an action can bridge the breaks when you have emotional maturity.

Many adults have the same type of emotional maturity children do. Children view how they feel at that moment as reality. That's where the "I hate you" comes from. They don't have the understanding, skill set, maturity to understand it is possible to feel strong negative emotions and yet still love someone so the conclude they hate you and their actions match for that moment.

You felt you didn't love your husband any more and were willing to go off with the OP. At that time you felt what you felt. That was real. At that time. That may be something your husband will not be able to accept. Hopefully with time and consistent actions that will happen.

So my question is, if I didn't love him then what am I left with now?

You love him NOW because it is not going up against the affair or fantasy.

He is not being compared or compartmentalized.

He has your full attention.

I'm a minister..so if this offends you I apologize.

In Matthew it says this:

Matthew 6:24

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

This was in reference to loving God and surrendering to Him.

In the same sense..it can be compared to you trying to give love to 2 people. You cannot do it reasonably.

You may not have despised your BH..but you chose to love the OM..that left nothing for your BH except routine.

I think what I am trying to get to is how can I show HT certainty that what I felt for him before and what I feel for him now is the true emotion, not what I felt on DDay?

Consistency. There is no way to go back and change what you did that day. You have to accept that what you did on that day was a culmination of the affair you were having.

The disrespect and betrayal you were living for the time you were in the affair came to a head.

You have to live with now and what you are doing now.

Your actions on that day proved where your loyalties were.

Your actions now, today and in the future have to prove they lie with HT.

Even after that day..it took you 2 months to be truthful. Your loyalty still rested with the OM until then.

HT will have certainty that you love him by not what you say or even what you feel, but it will be by what you do.

[This message edited by floridaredman at 7:34 PM, November 9th (Wednesday)]

WOES,

My FWW's affair was very much like yours. It was a LTA, double betrayal, very public, deeply intimate deception. In the end she chose him. After she told me she was in love with OM, taking my child and leaving me she called all the members of her family and told them the news. Many of our friends already knew and were part of the betrayal. It was a small town so everyone knew.

A few weeks later she had a change of heart and ask to stay but the damage had already been done. She had very publically prononced her love for OM to everyone who was important in my life. The humiliation was complete.

35 years later we are still married and I love my FWW more than ever.

You have described your actions as brutal and criminal. When I think about my FWW and her behavior during the affair the hardest thing to deal with was the deliberate cruelty. There were times when her and OM went out of their way to hurt me as deeply as possible. It is impossible to understand, justify or comprehend on any level even by my FWW.

My FWW maintians, just like you, that she loved me during all of this. She says she "never stopped loving me". I have no way of "knowing" if this is true but I don't believe it. I just can't wrap my mind around the idea that she could do this and still love me.

The only way I could deal with this is to simply learn to live with it. I had to accept that for a period of time my FWW became someone who I just couldn't understand. I also had to accept that my marraige, my friends, and my own home became parts of a world where I wasn't safe. It's a hard journey. You take it one day at a time. You slowly rebuild the trust and feeling of safety.

So........if this is incomprehensible and unjustifiable.......is it unforgivable? Can HT forgive you? Can you forgive yourself? I love my wife and my family and I wanted my marraige. It's not easy to forgive but I have a wife now who I love more than life itself and 3 beautiful young adult children who will never know what almost happened to their family. I would make the same choice to forgive again.

Let me know if there is anything I can do for you or HT

Borderman

What an awesome post Borderman. Thank you.

Borderman, your post moved me to tears. The wisdom and grace you learned thru your painful experiences make me speechless. Thanks for sharing.

WOES,

Are you by nature conflict avoidant?

Wow, Borderman, thanks for that. Not a cure-all for any of us, but just what I needed this morning. Thanks.

When your feet were put to the fire with OM, and he went back to his W, you didnt fight for that relationship.

But the marriage, you are fighting for even though he told you to leave.

Why is that?

I think it is because your heart lies with your husband.

From another BH perspective:

One of the hardest things to come to terms with for me is the knowledge that my FWW would have chosen the MOM had he not thrown her under the bus immediately upon my notifying his BW of the affair. Although their A wasn't outed publicly, which would have been even harder, my FWW made it clear that she didn't want me anymore. I suspect you've tried to imagine how it would feel if your BH would do that to you, but it's nearly impossible to imagine. It's devastating.

So this feeling of being the 2nd choice to someone you loved so much at the time is so very hard to deal with, especially when your BH was once your first choice. I'm sure he valued that immensely, and made you his first choice, and you and OM worked together to take that away from him.

I'm years out from d-day, and although I'm still legally married, I can tell you that my FWW was unsuccessful in repairing the damage. She just didn't put the effort in, because she's focused more on how acknowleding the truth would make her feel instead of how her behavior made me feel. She says she loves me now, but she says she became involved with OM because she wasn't happy with our M at the time and didn't love me before the A. The fact that she was comparing the way she felt in an A with a decade old marriage is lost on her. The problem now is that I no longer love her. It's hard to love someone who has shown that she'll only love you until something "better" comes along.

I can tell you that there were paths my FWW could have followed to help me deal with the cruelty she dealt out in the months befor and after d-day. Her failure to at least try to find her way down these paths has, I think, really doomed any chance we may have had for R. For one thing, she could have dug deep in IC and reading to discover why she was blind to the glaring flaws her OM was exhibiting simply by being involved in an A with her. Of course, this requires her to admit very ugly things about her own character, but it is what it is. The thing I least needed to see was her trying to defend herself. Someone who has engaged in infidelity has no right to become defensive about their behavior. What would have helped me in recovering from that was the truly blubbering acknowledgement and admission, not only to me, but more importantly to herself, that the OM's sheer behavior made him a complete piece of shit compared to the integrity that I showed through the whole process. I know that this man is a piece of shit. She needs to truly recognize that and ask herself what the fuck she was thinking.

What could have helped me is having my FWW show me through her actions that she's not just here because I'm all she has left, but because she truly recognizes how valuable our marriage is. You have to make your BH feel special, because your actions have made him feel pretty low on your list of priorities.

To help your BH feel like he's not 2nd best, you really have to prove to him through your actions that you would marry him all over again today, and throw rocks at any man who threatened your relationship with him.

I cannot overstate how hard it is for a guy to overcome the damage that's been inflicted on him by the behavior you've described. I wish you both healing.

Like you and HT, the question of how he could have done what he did and claim to have loved me was the ongoing issue that couldn’t be resolved. And like you and HT, we’d put it on the backburner and work on other stuff.

There was no way in hell that I could accept my WH’s claim that he never stopped loving me before, during or after his A. Every single time we talked about this it always ended the same way- me accusing him of not being emotionally honest with himself.

Borderman asked "is it unforgivable"? For me, the answer was/is no. Every time the topic came up I’d tell him that I didn’t need him to have loved me during that time in order for me to be able to R with him.

All I need to be able to R with you is for you to have the courage to be emotionally honest with yourself and with me. Just F'ing say NO RAS, I DIDN’T LOVE YOU so we can move on!! He’d look me in the eyes and tell me that he never stopped loving me. Fuck, okay, let’s move on...and back on the shelf it went.

The last time this issue came up was right around 2yrs out and it hasn’t come up since.

Dday marked the beginning of my total preoccupation with dissecting my WH's mind and with my own pain. The bulk of the heavy weight of pain I carried since dday lifted right around the 2yr ddayversay which was shortly after the last time we talked about the love issue.

When the pain lifted, my preoccupation with it subsided and so did my preoccupation with trying to figure out my WH's mind.

When that happened, my thought process shifted from focusing 90% on what, why, how, could, does, is, HE, and 10% what, why, etc., ME, to 90% ME and 10% HIM. And when THAT happened, my understanding of a whole bunch of things became clearer. Looking back, it's amazing to me how much influence pain, even a little pain, has on the thought process.

I haven’t revisited this issue until I saw your thread. Your beginning post made me smile because after I finished reading it, for the first time, my very first thought on this issue wasn’t how my WH can claim he loved me and do what he did to me.

My very first thought was how can I claim that I loved or love my WH after he did what he did to me. How can I possibly claim that I still loved him even when I was calling him the most evil things or throwing things at him or puking in the bathroom or unable to get out of bed or...

Thank you.

Like you and HT, the question of how he could have done what he did and claim to have loved me was the ongoing issue that couldn’t be resolved. And like you and HT, we’d put it on the backburner and work on other stuff.

This was a big one for me. I had even resolved it myself that whatever...maybe he just didnt know what love was at the time or any other types of excuses. I ended up just forgetting about it and filing it away as one of things I would not understand. It just did NOT make any sense to me.

Then I read your post saying

My very first thought was how can I claim that I loved or love my WH after he did what he did to me. How can I possibly claim that I still loved him even when I was calling him the most evil things or throwing things at him or puking in the bathroom or unable to get out of bed or...

I'm stunned... Totally stunned....

Totally makes sense now!

[This message edited by jewel123 at 2:06 PM, November 10th (Thursday)]

I want to take the time to personally thank you all for your thoughtful replies.

EnigmaticInk:

Wow! You have no idea how many thoughts your "simple answer" has stirred!

You may have loved the REAL HT, the one that has always been there. However in your mind all that was there was the FAKE HT that you created to help validate your A.

The fake HT was not very lovable in my mind. I take full ownership of taking the issues we had in our marriage and turning them around back onto him. I think it's this vicious cycle, because I'm a good person at heart I have to make him the demon to justify my actions. So of course i didn't love fake HT, in fact, I was really pretty pissed off at him. I thought that the real HT was gone for good. Thank you so much for this insight!

refuz2bavictim:

I have to tell you that after a year of attending Al-Alon meetings how much the word acceptance resonates with me. The idea of not having loved BH at that time seems unacceptable to me. I think the idea that I did not love him (or actually who I thought he was at the time) is something that I need to come to terms with. I keep telling him that it was there just buried underneath all of the crap that i had piled on top of it so I could no longer see it. I can even accept that I let my internal dialogue get so out of control that my reality was no longer reality.

borderman:

I always appreciate you coming out of the wood work for HT and I considering how similar our situations are.

The only way I could deal with this is to simply learn to live with it.

I don't want him to have to learn to live with it, I want him to come to a place that he can narrate this in a way that works for him. So that 15 years later he isn't the one beginning to have an internal dialogue that portrays me unfairly and he is left feeling unloved for all that time. I want him to feel loved today, tomorrow, and 40 years from now. I want him not to have to question it the way that I did or any other way for that matter. I want for us to be able to say years later "Wow, we love each other so much that we made it through THAT".

tired girl:

Are you by nature conflict avoidant?

You better believe it! I am really starting to learn to put myself out there now. It's not easy but HT and I say that "If it's uncomfortable, it's right".

BrokenRoad:

I think it is because your heart lies with your husband.

I can't believe that you wrote that. Just earlier today I told him that my poor judgement "came from my head, not my heart". Although I am starting to get a better head on my shoulders, I need to listen to my heart much more often.

Thanks again to all, I have a lot to ponder. Luckily it's just a few short days until my next IC session.

Another BW here... I have just got to say THANK YOU for this post! We too had an excessively traumatic D-Day... For the past few days I have been tormented by a nonstop replaying of the events of that hellish day.

FRM & ShallLoveHer, thank you. I haven't read all the responses yet but I am so thankful for SI and all of you...