SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Today, I feel like my WH just does not get it. I guess I can't expect him to understand my pain completely. But it sucks.

Here are a few comments he made this morning:

"You act like you want to be in a funk."

"You act like you don't want to feel better."

"You should be asking your counsellor how to get through all your depression."

"Your attitude is so negative. You really should try having a more positive attitude."

"Don't you feel any better than a month ago (DDay)? No? I'm starting to feel a LITTLE better at least..."

"Do you mope around at work like this?" (No) "Well then why do you do it at home?"

I'm so glad that my husband has now become a therapist who thinks he can give advice on how I should be feeling. He just doesn't have a clue as to the depth of my anger and sadness. Who the hell would WANT to be in a depressed state, all day every day? Trust me, if I knew how to feel better, I would have done that a month ago.

Thanks for the support and letting me vent. This forum is a lifesaver these days.

Oh, that makes me so fucking angry. He had an affair for a fucking YEAR AND A HALF and he expects you to be Pollyanna after a fucking MONTH? Fucking DELUSIONAL, he should be thanking his stars that you didn't leave his ass, and helping you with whatever you need to heal.

Is he in counseling? He needs to get his head out of his ass. I'm so sorry.

Oh really? Yes it's been a month....you should be totally over it by now! Please!

Yeah, he doesn't get it. He's being an ASS! He doesn't want you to punish him anymore and he is only thinking about himself! Of course you don't want to feel the way you are, he DID THIS TO YOU! He has no right to tell you how you should feel. Tell him to F'off!

He sounds like my WS who tells me he doesn't understand why we can't just move on for this and work on our marriage. Then last night he mentioned that he can't take much more grief. REALLY???!! You can't take anymore grief?

I guess we're just supposed to snap out of the funk right??

(((Broken)))

I just posted in a similar thread that I found in the Reconciliation forum, and I'm going to post the same information here in the hopes that it may help you.

I found this book helpful: How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair, by Linda MacDonald. It's a quick read. I bought the paperback and read it first, highlighting the parts that were the most important to me. (Trust me, I could have highlighted the entire book!) Then I gave it to WH to read. The book put into words the things that I couldn't. Also, I think it was more meaningful that it came from a "third party." It wasn't me telling him what would help me heal. It wasn't too long after that, that I began to feel like he got it, and was truly remorseful.

Good luck.

This just sounds like a guy with ZERO remorse for what he did.

Absolute, dead ZERO.

If he were truly remorseful, your sad demeanor would be understood by him and he would empathize with your pain, not ridicule it. He's basically telling you what a buzz-kill you are and what an inconvenience it is to have to deal with your big old bummer of an attitude every day. You're just bringing him down Broken, and messing with his mojo. Shame on you.

Apparently, he doesn't APPRECIATE the gift of forgiveness that you're trying to give him nor does he appreciate the effort you're expending in order to NOT stick an ice pick in his temple every time you see him. So much for gratitude.

He needs to come down off his high horse and start thinking about someone OTHER than himself. He's been selfishly catering to Number #1 for so long now that he's completely forgotten that the world DOESN'T revolve around him.

I'd tell him he can expect your "unhappy attitude" to continue for another 500 days or so..about the same length of time he was engaged in his affair and lying to your face every single day.

That sounds about fair, doesn't it?

My WH said that I deserved what he heaped upon me because I didn't meet his needs...He said that he thought I WANTED to stay in the dumps (similar to what you are saying about yours) and he was giving me time limits to snap out of it and be a better wife or he would leave...

Consequences ? I told him to leave me alone and am doing a 180...I do not let him touch me...I told him that I wasn't interested in R on his terms..

Ditto what NeverAgain2013 posted. I was about to say basically the same thing. Your WH is thinking of only himself.

I agree with everyone. . .makes me mad for you and no remorse and worse yet, no empathy what so ever. Don't let him dis-respect you any more.

Yep, mine tried to to that too, but to a lesser degree. She would couch those comments in, "I'm trying to understand your process," or, "I just handle things differently." It was her own guilt and shame that wanted to see me move past it so she didn't have to wade in her shit every time I got angry or depressed. Ugh! I'm sorry you are going through this. Her lack of compassion and pressure to move on pushed me into a further funk that unleashed all sorts of anger. She's paying more attention now to her responses to me, but I'm still not getting everything I need to move toward trust. I'm so sorry that you are there. Be strong (even though it sucks that you have to) and don't let him minimize the consequences of his actions, which are directly related to your emotional state.

I’m sure that you know this by now, but your WH is an ass. Big hairy one.

DDay is equivalent to being hit by a bus which then backs over you for good measure. Broken legs, arms, crushed chest, head wounds. You go into shock, are rushed to the hospital, somewhat stabilized, and have casts put on. It takes time to heal from these wounds. The time needed is not a CHOICE, it is the physical TIME that it TAKES to heal. If you decide after one month that you’re OK to get up and go for a walk, you are going to re-break those bones and set your recovery back even further. And even when you start to recover, and start to do physical and mental rehab, you are going to go through a long process. Because your muscles have atrophied, you have phantom pains, and just learning to walk again will take more TIME.

He spent well over a year screwing you over. It will take, with his complete cooperation and buy-in, at the very best, that amount of time for you to be able to walk without limping too badly. And every time he makes one of his ‘hurry up and heal” comments, he essentially whacks one of your broken bones with a stick.

If he cannot get that through his head, then concentrate on your own healing and leave him to fend for himself. 180 for your own protection. (((hugs)))

I ditto foolishlyclueless

The book gives some real insight into what you are going through from WH perspective.

I read it as well and it helped me understand that my feelings were normal.

My personal favorite WS comment to anything I might say about OW, and I do it rarely, is

Don't you have anything else to do or worry about?

Gotta love that.

I just want to remind you and the other posters who find themselves in similar situations that there is a big difference between not understanding and just not caring. From what you have posted it sounds to me like he just does not care how you feel. Nor does he even want to deal with the issue at hand. An issue that he himself has created. He wants this to all go away with not an ounce of work on his part. Sweep it all under a rug until sometime down the line it happens again. And trust me with an attitude like his it certainly will happen again. All of you need to keep in mind that how you proceed in the upcoming days, weeks and months is going to dictate your future. And if you continue to allow your WS to behave and act in this manner life will never get better for you. In fact it will only get worse. Its imperative that you take a very hard line against this type of behavior. This is not remorse, shit it not even close to regret. And without real and honest remorse you cant even begin to attempt to R. My god people, its a damn struggle to even try and R if your WS is the most remorseful person in the world and shows their remorse in actions. Simply getting lip service, and piss poor lip service at best, simply will not cut it. You really need to think about and demand what you need to heal. And if your WS can not, or will not make those efforts your better off filing for D. Personally I'd rather be alone for the rest of my life with a chance at happiness. Then to be stuck in a dead end relationship with someone who simply does not care. Your future is dictated by YOU. Not by your WS.

Amen Stronger.

She's right about life getting worse, as you bang your head against the wall over and over and over again, still in continual disbelief over WS's lack of empathy, bewildered by uncaring attitude. We think at some point he will finally get it! But on and on it goes. Sometimes glimmers of hope, small signs of remorse show, and we continue on, hopeful that the light is shining in.

I've already decided to separate (as soon as practical things are sorted), but STILL i hold hope that he will actually respond emotionally to me, and I'm continually hurt that he doesn't.

It's my fault at this point for staying, hoping, i know that. And at the same time, it's not my fault for being human.

That's how I feel I don't want the swine but would appreciate empathy and some respect.

Empathy and respect would be nice. Yep, exactly what I keep hoping against hope for. It's what has, in part, kept me here. Now it's financial, for a few more months, but I won't last that long. I'll likely take the financial hit to save my soul.

I cannot still believe it, but empathy and respect don't seem to be possible. I still cannot believe it because he looks human to me. He's a human imposter. They look just like humans, and at one time, acted like them too. Or at least we thought they did. Or they did, until some life stress revealed their true colors, and those colors are so not pretty.

there is a big difference between not understanding and just not caring.

This is EXACTLY what I was going to say!

He is indicating that he wants you to be better, not for you, but so he doesn't have to deal with you. And he doesn't want to help. You and your therapist should handle it.

Last year at this time I was exactly in your shoes and I was a zombie. And honestly, FWH wasn't much better off.

This is not a case of not understanding your pain. He is not even trying to understand your pain. He is being an active jerk.

He needs to do some infidelity reading and see what this is really like. And if he doesn't like your "attitude" in the meantime, I'm sure he knows where the door is.....

From what you have posted it sounds to me like he just does not care how you feel. Nor does he even want to deal with the issue at hand. An issue that he himself has created. He wants this to all go away with not an ounce of work on his part. Sweep it all under a rug until sometime down the line it happens again. And trust me with an attitude like his it certainly will happen again[/quote]

^^^ I totally agree with this^^

What an a-hole, I am sorry for what he has done to you. He is not remorseful at all, and he does not appreciate that you offered the gift of R.

Please do not tolerate such disrespect.

One month? I was still lying in bed in the dark all day at one month. Even now, at 6 months out with a very remorseful spouse, I only have "good" days about 1/2 the time, and the bad days are still pretty awful.

Infidelity is one of the hardest things that anyone will ever have to deal with in a lifetime. It is completely unreasonable (one might even say abusive) to demand that someone move on from infidelity in a month.

I agree with the other posters - he wants you to move on so he doesn't have to face what he did. It's continued self-interested, self-centered behavior on his part.

Fuck him. You should take all the time you need. He bought and paid for his life the way it currently is (angry, sad wife and all), and it's not your responsibility to fix his problems for him. It's your responsibility to do what you need to do for yourself, whether that means "moping", implementing the 180, seeing a divorce attorney, etc.

Also, as someone else said up-thread, R after infidelity is extremely difficult even with an understanding, remorseful spouse. I can't imagine that it would even be possible at all with someone who has no remorse about what they've done or empathy for the BS. It would be like throwing yourself against a brick wall.