Every since my “DDay2”, https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/text.forums.asp?tid499569, I have been struggling hard with being able to trust anything my FWH said. On the cold/hot rollercoaster, one day feeling very connected and close, the next day numb and distrustful. We had a breakthrough moment at our last couples meeting https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/text.forums.asp?tid501197 that helped draw us together. And I realized that I just simply could not, could not, face another year of living in limbo. Deciding if I was coming or going, trusting or un-trusting, staying or separating. I just could not do that again.
And it threw me, us, into cycles of depression. More cycles of up and down and never seeming to get THROUGH to each other. Fear in both of our eyes. Anguish in both of our eyes. Unspoken touches, downcast eyes, waiting for the next dam to break. It just had to stop.
I thought long and hard, and decided last night that I would have a talk with FWH. That I would offer him amnesty if he would take the time from then until Friday evening, to bring forth anything at all that he could possibly have not told me. That if he would lay it all out for me on Friday, I would absorb it, deal with it, and we would both move on. That I could commit to believing him when he said that there was nothing else that was there to disclose. Further, that I forgave him for lying to me. That I could no longer hold the hurt and the anger that it had to go. I thought that he would be relieved that I had found a way that we could move on from this impasse.
And he said nothing. Just looked at me. I waited. Nothing. And I thought, I have made one hell of a mistake here. Don’t you have anything to say to me, I asked? He said, now I wish that I had taken up IC’s offer to see me sometime this week. I need to talk to him first.
I went from concern to full-blown, red-eyed rage in about .002 seconds. I had offered him the gift of R and he had, in my eyes, rejected it. I expected a thank you, quite frankly. What I got was an IDK if I want this or not.
We had a rather headed discussion at this point. Mostly heated on my side and long-drawn out pauses on his side. He told me how much he felt like no matter what he did, it wasn’t enough, no matter how much he tried, there was always something that he messed up, that he loved me and wanted to be with me, but he was afraid that I had already left him mentally, and that he didn’t know if I would ever acknowledge that he was trying and was human and fallible. And as angry as I was, when I looked at him as he was talking, I had a deep and clear voice in my head that said, you need to talk. This is real. This is important. You need to pursue this.
So I sat down beside him, held his hand, and tried to explain again, that yes, I had seen real improvement and these were the specific areas. And that gave me hope because he wasn’t going back to self-destructive previous behaviors. And that I had been so happy with him and so relieved that he was doing X-specific things that I was letting down my guard and relaxing my vigilance. But because during this entire time that I was doing so, he had been lying to me right in front of my face. That the entire time that he had done all of this good work, he had also lied to me, undetectably by me. And that because he had so successfully lied to me while looking me in the face with eyes of love and pain, just as he was doing right this second, that I could not, for my souls sake, for my mental health, believe his words entirely. That I was split to my very core with wanting to be safe and prudent, and wanting with all else in my being to believe him and to be able to adore him as the husband that I had loved and adored for so many years. That I was desperately searching for a way to believe again. And his entire face changed.
He looked at me with utter astonishment and said, so, this isn’t about the porn? This is about lying? This is about your inability to believe me because of my lie, and not because I hid porn from you. YES, I said! It’s the ability to successfully LIE to me that has me conflicted.
He never put that together. In his mind, it was all about the porn, my reactions to it, and his inability to articulate what it meant to him. When he actually “got” that my anguish wasn’t about the printed material but that he could lie to me and sustain a lie while trying to be trustworthy, I almost literally heard a THUNK come from his head. And he got it. And understood.
And we talked for over an hour afterwards. He opened up to me like he has never before. We talked about life issues, what symbology was behind that box of stuff, the fact that it was his feelings of fear of being abandoned and left behind, and not the stuff because you could get more of that stuff anywhere. How deep his fears were. How deep mine were. Our different ways of coping and how those different ways set up such an intermeshed tangle of unhealthiness between the two of us. We sat on the couch, holding hands, and talking, really talking, like we’ve never talked in 21 years. Exposing dark and abscessing wounds to the light and if not healing them, for that will take time, acknowledging that we needed to come back and nurture them.
I may have my beloved husband back. I pray God that it’s so, but I may, just may, have had my dearest friend, walk towards me in sunlight vice shadow. It’s a new, early day but today, I dare to hope.
