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i love what you just said Tiredgirl. i hope it helps Trying, but it helps me as well.

Thank you mike7, I think this is a very fundamental thing that waywards need to understand before any progress will ever be made.

The problem here is that you are still focusing on the M and him. The focus should be on you. You are the issue here. It took me nearly a year to get to that point. And then the light bulb went on. I had the problem, not my M not my H.

Were there huge issues in my M? Yep. Is that what caused me to fuck up? Nope. Quit looking everywhere else. Look in the mirror.

I hear you tired, I really do and I understand this intellectually. I know I have issues and insecurities that need deeper working on, but without sounding defensive so does he.

What I keep hearing is I can't make him want to develop, he has to want to do this himself, which I agree with. I can only work on myself. I know this. Alot of the problems in the M lies with me. I accept this. The EA was me. All me. I did it. I chose to allow it to continue. I decided it was ok to tell another man I loved him. There are some serious malfunctions in my brain that allowed me to justify this behaviour. Cake-eater come to mind. Selfish and Entitled are the two most words that resonate with me.

I am focussing on myself as I need to be strong and deal with my wayward tendencies before I can do anything else.

It's a process and by what I can tell, it's going to be a long one...

Your WS may be confident you will never do it again, but you mentioning it time and again makes him question why he didn't leave the first time, and makes him think that YOU believe he was a wuss for not leaving and don't respect him. That he is a compartmentalizer who prefers to go all-amnesia on the affair to where doubts and pain don't intrude upon his life and work, and you bringing it up won't allow him to do that.

As frustrating as this is, I must respect the way he is choosing to deal with this. Thanks for the input.

but without sounding defensive so does he.

Why are you even still looking at him? He is not the reason that you gave yourself permission to do this? What was it inside of you that said it was ok to betray yourself and your M and him like this? He didn't make you do this, it was all you. And until you come to that conclusion and get your eyes off of him and your M, you will just be making excuses.

For me there were a lot of questions that I didn't ask until about a month out. I am a fairly inquisitive person so I wanted information but I didn't want to work on my marriage until I figured out who I was married to. Quite frankly I was open to staying married but I could not invest myself until I felt confident that the man I was looking at was worth being married to. D day was terrible because I was looking at this person that I had married and I felt that I didn't know him at all. Once I got to know him again and accepted all of him then I was ready for everything and able to actually start moving forward. Maybe you can try just stepping back to get to know each other again and if you both like what you see then maybe you can work things out. He gets to decide how much he can take, you get to decide if you can live with that. If you can't live with that I guess you have your answer...

Noescape wrote in response to my post:

I had an A because I needed affection and sex and my husband absolutely would not give either regardless of how I asked or how hurt I was by their absence.

Would such a choice make it ok for your H to respond in a similar manner to things he percieves to be missing in his M? I dont think you have the 'because' worked out yet. It is rarely an issue in the M and has more to do with holes in the WS/unhealthy coping skills. I am surprised that none of the vets have chimed in yet. Sorry, but just giving some honest advise here. And I wish people here would stop demonising/laying so much blame on the BH/BS.

Well, in my case, I will certainly admit that my A happened when the rest of my coping skills had been exhausted. I will also say that my coping skills were many and quite well-developed and they got me absolutely freaking nowhere. I respectfully and lovingly pointed out my concerns, problems, desires; I asked for what I wanted; I tried to find out what was going on with him, why he was withdrawn and checked out, what he wanted, what I might do differently. No dice, no interaction. I practiced my gratitude, I focused on the good. I read books on how to build a better marriage and asked my husband to read them. I thought about my marriage and put the experts' recommendations into practice. My husband didn't. I suggested we go into counseling, but my husband refused. All the while we grew more and more distant, I grew more and more lonely, I saw more and more clearly that my husband regarded me and my thoughts/concerns/loneliness/ppain as completely unimportant. I would have divorced but I was not able to support my kids on my own when they were little. After literally years with no warmth or connection, with no apparent prospect for making positive change in that direction after repeatedly, respectfully trying to do so, yes I did get relief by looking for sex and affection elsewhere.

I knew it was a huge indicator that my marriage was in deep shit. But it was *also* a way to confirm that yes, in fact, connection and affirmation and affection and sex and compliments and warmth and closeness really, really matter to me, and I absolutely could not stay in a marriage where that was absent.

In fact I came totally clean about my A, and demanded that my husband either engage with me in this marriage or get the hell out. Thus ensued a hellish year, followed by a year of separation, and a rocky year of reconciliation since then. We still struggle. But I am not sorry to have "gone nuclear" and I absolutely credit my affair for waking me up that we--HE-- needed to FIX IT or END IT.

I am in no way a perfect person, and I accept that I am human. I suppose it's possible to have had the patience of a saint and continued on satisfied in emotional isolation forever because that's the only state my husband would allow. But I don't think it would have served *anyone* to have put up with it, including him.

The nuclear meltdown was absolutely awful for everyone, but in hindsight, it really did serve to awaken him to some really damaging FOO issues he had never ever ever considered before, and also to the extent that he was damaging *himself* by being so isolated and checked out in all parts of his life, not just his marriage (including parenting and career also.) Disengagement and denial were at the core of what he was living and in fact all the normal, rational, healthy modes of trying to resolve conflict that I tried, repeatedly for years, absolutely DID NOT WORK.

I write all this not to offer an apologia for myself--I am totally at peace about what I did, and why, and the outcome. But I offer this to the OP who, it sounds, has been lost in loneliness for a really long time and the situation now is still distant and lonely. Look, you are be human and you may have done something imperfect. By all means, focus on yourself, learn about yourself, think about what you did and why. But an EA is not the end of the world, and if your marriage was really that empty, I think it's really worth considering that it may be a wakeup call that things really do need to change in your marriage--for both you and your husband. Being human and imperfect does not mean that you don't ever get a voice from now on. The marriage you are in needs to work FOR BOTH OF YOU if it's going to be healthy, and it sounds like it is still NOT working for you.

"Never speak of it again" isn't going to work for you and is NOT healthy for any marriage. John Gottman calls that stonewalling and it's one of the signs of a marriage's collapse. Look up "Gottman's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" for more on that.

This post is way too long. Suffice to say that 100% of the A is on the WS, but sometimes way more than 50% of the marriage problems preceding are on the BS's side of the scale. Really.

[This message edited by BostonGirl at 9:35 PM, May 27th (Monday)]

Double post, sorry.

[This message edited by BostonGirl at 9:36 PM, May 27th (Monday)]

But I am not sorry to have "gone nuclear" and I absolutely credit my affair for waking me up that we--HE-- needed to FIX IT or END IT.

I am in no way a perfect person, and I accept that I am human. I suppose it's possible to have had the patience of a saint and continued on satisfied in emotional isolation forever because that's the only state my husband would allow. But I don't think it would have served *anyone* to have put up with it, including him.

The nuclear meltdown was absolutely awful for everyone, but in hindsight, it really did serve to awaken him to some really damaging FOO issues he had never ever ever considered before, and also to the extent that he was damaging *himself* by being so isolated and checked out in all parts of his life, not just his marriage (including parenting and career also.) Disengagement and denial were at the core of what he was living and in fact all the normal, rational, healthy modes of trying to resolve conflict that I tried, repeatedly for years, absolutely DID NOT WORK.

It never ceases to amaze me the bill of goods that waywards will sell themselves to keep the justifications going as to why it was ok to do what they did.

Boston girl you had options, other than betraying yourself and your H and your M. If your H has bought into the fact that it was his fault then I feel bad for HIM.

Well then, my all knowing friend, please enlighten me about what I should have done differently of better!

If the answer is, "you should have divorced him first if you were so unhappy", that definitely got put on the table. But then other stuff happened that got in the way (like, oh, having to make major life decisions for the family as the breadwinner, since my also husband couldn't and wouldn't deal with the fact that he was being massively exploited at work and his paycheck wouldn't keep us afloat... I'm talking he had a PhD and ten years of work experience in the field and was paid so little we would have qualified for food stamps if I lost my job... This with two kids to support...)

There are many, many ways to betray a spouse other than by getting involved with someone else. My husband had broken every single one of our wedding vows, for years, while I had taken them to heart and made concerted effort to live them (had them on the wall next to my bed every day.) Please do enlighten me as to what a person should do when greeted with indifference upon even invoking one's wedding vows.

And--getting back to the OPs situation--if you are dying in your marriage due to your husband's indifference, and his response is yet further indifference ("Don't speak of this again or bad things will happen") then yes, I think your H has tossed you out of the frying pan into the fire.

What he wrote is classic conflict avoidance, classic passive aggressive. What "bad"is going to happen? He's going to reveal his anger? So what? is he "too nice of a guy" to let that happen (Which of course means his dissatisfactions ooze out in other ways, which he also denies?) or maybe: He's going to slip up and accidentally reveal to his wife that she matters to him? Of course that won't do!

Unless he is in fact a combat veteran, the comparison to WW2 vets is far overblown. If your husband can't deal with anger or conflict, that is HIS weakness, and he inflicting pain on YOU because he is unwilling to deal with painful issues himself.

Please check out Patti Henry's The Emotionally Unavailable Man, or Terry Real's How Can I Get Through To You for more on how to cope.

FWIW, in hindsight, my husband is now absolutely mortified to realize how he had treated me. He was brought up in an incredibly emotionally neglectful environment and thought that was what love was. He now realizes that what he thought was kindly "giving space" was actually abandonment of care, concern, responsibility to the people (me and kids) he purported to love.

The fact that you are on a surviving infidelity website and defending your decision to cheat on your H because you felt that he didn't treat you right blows my mind. Especially since you are here in wayward doing it.

My H blew through boundaries with other women for 18 years in our M prior to me doing what I did. I even told him what I was going to do before I did it. I am still not going to sit here in wayward defending my decision to do what I did because I betrayed myself, I betrayed everything I ever believed in about me and about what I wanted for us. If you haven't realized that yet for yourself then you have a long way to go.

BG, are you serious right now? The A was a savior? A shining beacon in the blackness of your marriage?

If your husband has broken every single marital vow, then why in Grimm's name would you R with him? If he's such a burden, not much of a man, and such a jack-off, why stay? Surely your AP was all that and a bag of chips? Your AP was the one that showed you "intimacy" and what a "real" relationship is like right? Or at least, that's what you're saying. So if your AP is the one that "enlightened" you to new and wonderful things, why not just leave your deadbeat husband for him? It seems, from your description, that the AP is the "better" man. Oh wait. You love your husband right? You cheated on him because you love him...

It never ceases to amaze me how WS will justify every angle of the A. It's always the BSs fault. Always. They don't want enough sex, they want too much, they aren't adventurous enough, they're too adventurous, they wear flip flops, they snore, they watch too much T.V., they don't do enough household chores, they don't make enough money, they make too much money and are away from home too much, they don't plan enough vacations, they don't talk enough, they talk too much, they aren't creative enough for holidays, birthdays, and special occasions, they're too creative for holidays, birthdays, and special occasions, the BS is depressed, the BS is cruel, the BS is emotionally cut-off, the BS is a jokester, the BS is a douche. Shall I go on?

Look, I get it. There are some people that are very hard to live with. (Whether BS or WS) Some people are mean by nature. I know a woman that is a real witch. Like seriously. Nobody likes her. Does she deserve to be cheated on? Nope. Her husband still has options. But he stays for the classic, "We work it out for the kids" crap. Yeah, they're not working it out for the kids. They are in complete dysfunction and passing it on to the kids. Their kids have no clue what a healthy relationship dynamic is because all they see is chaos and that their parents are "trying". (If you call resentment, zero intimacy, fighting, backbiting, and a "You-do-your-thing-I'll-do-mine" attitude "trying")

No person deserves to be cheated on. EVER. For any reason.

Can a relationship heal after an affair? Yes. Can a relationship blossom into something it's never been after an affair? Yes. But to claim that a marriage benefited and was "saved" from an affair!? Not hardly.

Do BSs have problems they need to work out? Yes. Is cheating a way to get them to do that? No. What happens if the reverse happens? You cheat, and they get worse? Because they are already struggling with FOO and whatever all else, and you just piled it up on top of them. Why the heck would you risk that!? (Because you state he was a jerk already and you "couldn't" leave the M) What would have happened if you'd cheated and it was a dealbreaker for him? You damaged him further and nobody is "better off".

Does my husband have problems? Yes he does. (I do too.) Is it my job to make sure he addresses them? No. That's his job, his choice. He may or may not work on them. Doesn't give me a right to cheat on him. Doesn't give me a right to abuse him and tell him my A was HIS fault because he couldn't get his act together. I'm a SAHM. Leaving would have been very difficult. But it still would have been better than cheating on him. Even now, there are things that need worked on. At the moment, he has no interest on digging in. I have to decide how to react to that. Do I get pissed and cheat again? Or do I sit back, be patient, encourage him, and support him and come up with a game plan in the event he never does? I have options. I'm exploring them. Cheating isn't one of them.

Stop justifying your A. It was wrong. Don't care what excuse you come up with, or what color airbrush gun you use to make that excuse pretty. If your BS is a pain, leave. It's really that simple.

What I see is that you have demanded that your BS change to make you happy. You cheated, blamed him for it, and expected him to change in accordance with your "standard". Pretty sad really.

BostonGirl,

After literally years with no warmth or connection, with no apparent prospect for making positive change in that direction after repeatedly, respectfully trying to do so,...

Yep, I remember feeling that. Repeated MC had not worked, IC for me had not fixed the M problems. So I found other interests as I withdrew my focus on FWW. I volunteered, went back to old activities, started to clean-up finances so that when DSs were older we would be able to survive a D financially.

It never occurred to me to have an A (despite opportunities), and touch being the primary love language for me.

...a way to confirm that yes, in fact, connection and affirmation and affection and sex and compliments and warmth and closeness really, really matter to me, and I absolutely could not stay in a marriage where that was absent.

And yet you did?

So why did you stay with such a looser (from your posts) BS, why did you R with him?

...100% of the A is on the WS, but sometimes...

One of the communication skills FWW learned was that the word 'but' in a sentence has the effect of negating everything said before it.

FWW went into and out of DDay convinced I was broken and she was justified in her A. 2+ years of IC later I ask what is/was broken in me that I should be working on, and she says nothing. She realizes that it was her perceptions that made my actions seem unloving, just as her perceptions made her APs seem like fond friends she could love and be affirmed by.

Wow, y'all are sure enjoying filling in a lot of blanks with the wrong info. Knock yourself out.

I'll just point out out that the OP and I share the similarity that we totally own what we did, took it as a sign that things were fucked up in our respective marriages, and have picked it up as a charge to make things change for the better. We run completely counter to the stereotype of secretive, conflict-avoidant, cowardly WS who's unwilling to admit, discuss, disclose, be transparent.

The OP had an EA. sounds like that was limited to online contact.

Her husband was already disconnected and even in this crisis refuses to connect.

Who is betraying who here?

Aubrie, you did manage to hit one nail right on the head: I absolutely did not want my kids to grow up in a family to learn that people who "love" each other don't show affection, or respond to their loved ones' sadness or tears, or give help when it's asked, or expect or exhibit accountability. Their dad is a pleasant and genial man but behind that surface there was a lot, a lot, about that "nice guy" that really was not nice at all--deeply selfish, deeply disrespectful, unwilling to handle responsibilities.

Long story short, but neglect is exactly as damaging as abuse, but far more insidious to detect and address because it is the ABSENCE of action rather than clear and present boundary violations. I don't have time to fill in all the details but I will say that every single day I live with bitter sadness that being able to just talk things out straightforwardly and lovingly like two caring partners on the same team really just never ever ever worked. Only with a LOT of personal work has my husband even approached that and he will fully admit that he never would have dreamt of starting it if I hadn't gone ballistic. The A was what lit the fuse. Just telling it like it is.

Just making sure I am getting this right, your fix to your M was to go out and fuck another man so that your H could fix his shit and then your M could be ok? That is basically what this boils down to.

And just so we are clear, I had most of the same problems you did, and I don't see that fucking another man fixed jack shit with my marriage, or my H or me for that matter. The fact that you still think that this was a good fix after being on this site blows my mind.

It doesn't matter what kind of marriage you are in. BG, I did one better than you, I moved out, after asking for everything you did, I begged for a long time for MC, and got told it was my problem. So I left. And I can still see that what I did betrayed everything I ever believed in about myself. Maybe you just never held those things sacred to begin with.

ETA: And by the way, my H knew within 8 hrs of what I did. There were no lies, no secrets. I have always owned what I did. So no big difference there.

[This message edited by tired girl at 1:30 PM, May 28th (Tuesday)]

The OP had an EA. sounds like that was limited to online contact.

Oh so that makes it less of a crime? I had an online EA. Doesn't make my betrayal any better or worse than a ONS with a hooker. Infidelity is infidelity. Period.

Her husband was already disconnected and even in this crisis refuses to connect.

Who is betraying who here?

The OP still has choices. Just like you. You still didn't have to cheat.

We run completely counter to the stereotype of secretive, conflict-avoidant, cowardly WS who's unwilling to admit, discuss, disclose, be transparent

You want a gold sticker for that? I don't care if you warned your husband, "You go to counseling right now or I'm going to fuck the neighbor." you still took a cowardly path and cheated. A cheater is a coward. Don't care how you try to paint it.

So how exactly are you showing your kids a good example here? "Welp kiddos, it's like this. If you marry a person that ends up not listening or doing whatever you like or need, just fuck another person. That'll fix everything right up! Worked for me!"

Good luck with that.

Wow, you guys sure are fixated on the fucking, aren't you? Actually it was the lying that was the big red flag, feeling like the disconnect had gotten so great and so insurmountable that there was absolutely no reason to consider my husband at all.

Isn't that what you read time and time again on SI: the only thing worse than the sex was the lying, the total disregard.

It was when I realized that I had given up and was finally treating him the way he treated me that I stopped what I was doing, came clean, and demanded change. Yes, I do get a gold star for that.

To borrow an idea from Not Just Friends, I realized that I had stopped trying to open up windows in his walls and had started putting up a wall too. THAT is what I will tell my kids about, to be very mindful of the walls and windows--including, when someone puts up walls between you, it is not worth it to beat yourself bloody trying to tear them down.

I reserve the right to be human and imperfect too sometimes, and you are totally welcome to call me whatever names you like if that floats your boat.

You disconnected the moment you considered doing this.

No, you don't get a gold star for this, because the only change I have heard you talk about is your H's. Not yours. Not how you have realized that it was the worst betrayal of yourself and everything you thought of yourself. How could you become that person who lied and disregarded another human being so easily? You instead still put all of the blame on your H and your M, apparently all of your time here has taught you nothing.

Your H and your M had nothing to do with your decision to become a liar and a cheater. You made that decision all on your own. Don't blame him.

Was your M perfect, probably not. Was your H perfect, probably not. If you didn't like it, get out, make an exit plan, execute it. Don't become a liar and a cheat to force someone to bend to your will. Because that is what you have done.

I reserve the right to be human and imperfect too sometimes, and you are totally welcome to call me whatever names you like if that floats your boat

BG...no one has called you any names. Your attitude towards those that have questioned your posts is doing you the most disservice.

There really isn't any need to get snarky with them.