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Just putting this here because, TBH, I don't have another safe place to put it.

I feel like I don't even know my BH sometimes. Or, rather, like I do know him but that we're so apart in our worldviews that I can't conceive of a way to bridge that gap.

Things are "fine" most of the time...we watch shows together, spend time together, chit-chat, discuss issues he's having at work, all that.

And I know that two people shouldn't think the same way about everything, but hmm...our differences feel so limiting.

I value intellectual connection, debate, all that, and I can't get it at home very often because we're so far apart that actually getting to the root of our beliefs about whatever topic may truly cause me to lose respect for him or him for me.

Most recently, it centered around medical marijuana. One of my close relatives is stage 4, on chemo, dangerously low weight. I can get her pot with miniscule-to-no risk. BH's first reaction was "no, it's illegal" paired with "you want to put our family--me & the kids--at risk to break the law for one person?"

He knows I'll do it anyway if she asks. I just watched my dad practically starve to death last summer (he ultimately shot himself when the suffering was too great), & I know how painful it was for him to lie on his bones all day. I am not trying to "heal" her...I know she's dying. But I will do anything in my power to help ease her suffering.

Anyway, we came to a reasonable understanding on that issue, but there was a moment....several moments...where I thought, "Who the hell did I marry? Why would he let anyone suffer because of a "law" that's changing & that hasn't caught up with her state yet?"

It honestly never occurred to me that his initial response would be no. My sister knew it, other people knew it, but it had never entered my mind. And before we came to a common ground (recommending consult with palliative care doc to make sure her symptoms are being managed first, getting the OK from her doc should pot be the best option, making the trip without the kids, etc), I had the realization that these opposing world views could cause irreparable harm in our marriage. Had he not been willing to bend, I'd have either had to let her suffer & resent him for forcing me into that position or done it anyway without his consent & had him resent me for being willing to break the law & put our family at risk.

Anyway...just rambling, I suppose.

BS here.

Not sure if you're asking for thoughts on the specific issue, or on the disconnect with your BH.

I'm thinking the medical marijuana question gets too close to "no politics," so I'll stay away from that.

Here's the thing. Your BH didn't just say, it's illegal. He posed it as priorities: which is more important to you, your relative, or your BH and children?

I don't know how recent your DDay is, what you are doing to make your BH feel safe, what you are doing to get at why you had an A. If it's pretty recent, can you see why this would be upsetting to him?

The experience with your dad colors the situation, to be sure. But still, why is it your job to ease her suffering -- to be the KISA? are you her closest relative? does she have doctors? is her care good?

Are you as eager to ease your BH's suffering from your A, as you are to help this relative? (That sounds harsh, but I think that's what your BH is getting at.)

It may be that you and your BH are really different in terms of values or worldviews. And that in itself may be enough to D. So worth considering.

But please do also consider that your BH may find your worldview, particularly where it affects him and your family, disheartening as well.

Worth exploring...

im NOT opposed to medical marijuana, actually think it should be de-criminalized with possibly a small fine for smoking it, and ive lived in countries for almost a decade where this is exactly how marijuana is handled legally.

but ... WHY is "He knows I'll do it anyway if she asks" acceptable to you? that one sentence screams alot out to me.

its a pretty self entitled way of seeing the world. more it also shows that you view your husband with some contempt and that he has learned to accept and live with it.

why does a differing opinion on medical marijuana cause you to lose respect for him? its a topic that smart people who care have widely diverse opinions on. its not clear cut like saying "pedophilia is wrong" in which someone who tries to say "its okay" is a moral monster.

your husbands perspective was "mom can go to jail for buying pot" regardless of how "noble" the cause was. your persective is "im willing to risk my family to help this person". he might be called insensitive but equally you can be called selfish for being willing to put everyone in your family at risk.

when you make statements like

"actually getting to the root of our beliefs about whatever topic may truly cause me to lose respect for him or him for me"

it comes across that you are very dogmatic and perhaps what you want is an echo chamber instead of someone who has different perspectives. have you asked him if your opinions truly cause him to lose resepect for you or are you assuming?

because what i see from your post is selfish justification wrapped up in morality and altruism.

But please do also consider that your BH may find your worldview, particularly where it affects him and your family, disheartening as well.

This is an interesting perspective. Have you talked about your differences with each other to see how he deals with his opposition to your view points internally?

BH and I certainly disagree about some things, and I can think of one issue in particular that got really heated between us, but I still appreciate other points of view and sometimes find fun in trying to debate him to my side.

It sounds like both of you are very certain (and stubborn maybe?, but I don't mean for that to sound so negative) in your stances on certain things so I can see how that may cause friction. Part of me also wonders if you are focusing in on this too much to sort of either justify your A, or look for reasons to get out of M.

Anyway, I'm glad that with this issue in particular you were able to come to a sort of compromise in understanding.

I really should post my story somewhere...

We have no Dday, as that is something I do know for sure. My A would not be something our M could survive. My A is also over.

I think I'm stuck on the disconnect, which is why I put it here. I can debate medical marijuana all day long on political forums...that's an easy outlet to find.

My relative is like a mother to me, and she views my sister & I as her kids. That also colors the situation, no doubt.

And I hear his concerns. Once we were able to talk it through & I could give him the specifics re: how minuscule the risk would be as well as assure him it was the last line of defense not the first, we could find a place where we could agree about the action.

It feels--that disconnect between us--like an untenable situation. It's all fine in theory...he can have his worldview, I can have mine. But when life happens & we have to bridge that disconnect, it occurs to me that there very well will be situations that we can't find that middle ground on. And when that happens, then what?

I don't want to D. If I did, I'd have a Dday re: my A, and that'd be that. Hell, I wouldn't even have to do that; I could just spare him the pain, D, and we'd both move on with our lives. We have a stable life that's good for our kids though, and we do get along well most of the time, so for this phase of life, it feels like maintaining our M is the right thing to do.

But please do also consider that your BH may find your worldview, particularly where it affects him and your family, disheartening as well.

I have no doubt that he does, though I suspect he doesn't think about it often. But perhaps that's my fear....I have a background understanding that we might hit one of these issues down the line & our inability to bridge it may be enough to cause a D anyway. It's just...hmm. ugh. I don't know. There's no win here.

WHY is "He knows I'll do it anyway if she asks" acceptable to you?

Why should it not be? My family matters to me. Their suffering matters to me.

From my POV, had he stuck with "No. It's illegal." then he'd basically be telling me "f* her. She can suffer." And frankly, I've seen enough of that to last a lifetime...mom died a long death, dad suffered a long while before suicide. It's cruel. It's inhumane. And I'm not OK with allowing someone I love to stay in that state if they know of an option that could help (in this case, get her to eat enough to have enough skin so she does not have to lie on her bones) & I am in a position where I can make that happen.

self entitled way of seeing the world. more it also shows that you view your husband with some contempt and that he has learned to accept and live with it.

This is a part of the nuance that's difficult to communicate. From my husband's POV, if I bring something up, he'll respond, and then I'll want to debate. His opinion is that my desire to "debate" makes the question I posed empty. That I didn't want his opinion, that I am just going to do what I want to do, blah blah. In truth, I want to debate. I want to understand his POV. I want him to defend it, shoot down my logic, all that...challenge me to change my mind. If I don't blindly accept his response, he views it as dismissive of it. I can't see how it's fully thought out if he hasn't communicated the reasons for feeling that way, ya know?

That's what helped us come to understanding re: pot with this relative. Once I could get him to articulate his concerns point by point, I could mitigate those concerns. And once he saw the big picture of all the other variables involved re: making sure her docs have explored all legal options, getting her docs on board with the decision to use pot should it be deemed necessary, all of that, then he became OK with it. But his initial reaction was his trademark: "Why do you ask if you don't actually want to know my answer? It's illegal. Period." I asked because I do respect him & his POV. I could just feign a trip, lie, do it anyway. But I want to be able to come to an understanding, come to a decision, as a family.

Also, I don't want an echo chamber. But there's a difference between being here....and here or here......................and here.

your post is selfish justification wrapped up in morality and altruism.

Perhaps.

I am distressed that your BH doesn't know that he's been betrayed.

Wow. You're asking him to work out, in detail, step by step, what is the ethical thing to do in a difficult situation.

But not that one. The one where he doesn't know who you really are, whether you behave ethically, whether you do things (or don't do things) based on whether they hurt others, whether they hurt people you love. Your family.

Wow.

I can't respond to your posts any more, sorry.

(Mods, if this post is inappropriate coming from a BS, let me know and I'll edit.)

im not saying that leaving your mom to die in pain is a real option.

i am saying that in a true marriage it is a 50/50 partnership. that means equality. over-riding or vetoing your partners wishes in favor of your own isnt equality, it requires having at least 51%. that your husband would expect you to ignore his wishes and just do whatever you wanted to do and that is precisely what you would do = you expect more than 50% and hes become accustomed (or resigned) to it.

that is sure to breed resentment and hostility over time from him as well as a sense of entitlement from you (as the power broker with 51%+ control of the marriage).

this same attitude can also be seen in

"We have no Dday, as that is something I do know for sure. My A would not be something our M could survive. My A is also over.

I don't want to D. If I did, I'd have a Dday re: my A, and that'd be that. Hell, I wouldn't even have to do that; I could just spare him the pain, D, and we'd both move on with our lives."

this is another example of the same entitlement. you deserve to know the facts. you get to decide what facts your husband gets to know. you have decided he doesnt deserve to know the facts. then justify that with "i know what he'd do and since i dont want that result ill control his information flow".

thats selfish. thats entitlement. thats, again, wrapping whatever you want to do in a sense of morality, altruism, and trying to justify the unjustifiable.

You can leave it, StrongerOne or mods or whoever. I left this post open for either side to respond to; it helps me to hear other POVs.

I'm well aware of the hypocrisy that I've left the A 'off the table', yet expect BH & I to discuss other things on the morality spectrum.

My A was never about leaving my M nor about my H. And I am working on me to fix my broken parts, of which there are many. I realize that most on SI are in the "confess" camp; I am not.

We spent about 6 months in MC to improve our communication. And during MC, he also revealed he felt like he was staying for the kids, going through the motions. We're working on our connection. It was broken on both sides. Things are improving overall; we're growing more connected, too.

Of the things I do know with certainty, BH doesn't want to damage our kids' worlds. Call it justification for not confessing if you wish, I'll own that, but that's one thing I will do. I quit the A, I'm working my way out of the f*ed up place I was in. I am focusing on fixing me & my M. And I'm going to do it by preserving the family unit to the best of my ability, as I know via MC that, at times, is his motivator for being here, too.

[This message edited by splitintwo at 8:57 AM, April 22nd (Tuesday)]

I do agree with this:

in a true marriage it is a 50/50 partnership

For me, that partnership involves discussion & debate re: major decisions. I don't broach the difficult discussions from the "I'm going to do it anyway, f* you" POV. I broach them because I want to have the discussion.

And his response to any questioning on my part is often along the lines of "you don't really want to know what I think, you just want to do what you want to do & have me sign off on it."

That, however, is inaccurate. I want to come to a consensus when real issues surface. Yes, we're both stubborn & dogmatic, as a few of you noted. But that doesn't mean I'm not open to hearing alternate POVs...in fact, it's just the opposite--I want to hear your POV. Tell me your reasoning. I need to consider those variables, too, when I want to come to a conclusion re: how we handle something.

BH hears that questioning differently, and he can be difficult to engage in discussion because of it. If I were truly 100% entitled, I would just do what I want to do, when I want to do it, f* it all. In fact, I'd D because it'd be much easier to foster my entitlements were I single. But that's not what I want. I want us to be partners, to make major decisions together.

And yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy of "all major decisions but this one re: my A."

If that's too much of a trigger, then perhaps I should resume stop-signing my posts.

As gently as I can...

It is not just hypocrisy. You are very much still in the Wayward mindset. You cannot have an authentic, intimate relationship with secrets and lies. You are lying to yourself. Do as much work on yourself as you want, but until you stop lying to yourself and your BH it won't fix anything.

You are choosing to stay with this way of thinking, justifying to make yourself feel better for not making real change. My only question is this: why don't you want better for yourself?

BH's first reaction was "no, it's illegal" paired with "you want to put our family--me & the kids--at risk to break the law for one person?"

He knows I'll do it anyway if she asks.

This is the part right here that really concerns me....because basically, you've shown through your actions that you are going to pursue whatever course of action YOU deem best, everyone else's thoughts or feelings on the matter be damned.

You did it with your affair, you did it with your lack of confession, you're doing it with this.

Listen, in my marriage I am you. I will debate, and debate, and debate. I like arguing...in my FOO it's how we hashed things out. My wife, on the other hand, does not like to argue and isn't particularly skilled at it.

One thing I had to learn in my marriage (and boy, it took me a while) was that just because I can argue more effectively, make a better point, present my side of the issue more clearly, does not mean that I automatically 'win' and can do whatever I want: You (and by 'you', I mean 'me') can technically win the argument and still be an entitled bastard.

Just because we are more effective debaters at 'scoring points' in arguments for our side does not free us from the responsibility to be respectful of our spouses opinions, thoughts, and feelings. It's possible to be correct and still be a bully, KWIM?

I know that you've effectively said over and over in your posts (and tagline) that you haven't confessed, and don't plan on it. I'm not going to try to convince you that you should (although, you know, you probably should), but people's responses are going to keep coming back to that ad nauseam because the entitlement underpinnings involved with keeping that kind of info from your husband are going to flavor every other issue.

I wasn't going to comment on this...until you said this:

For me, that partnership involves discussion & debate re: major decisions. I don't broach the difficult discussions from the "I'm going to do it anyway, f* you" POV

This is exactly what you are doing to your BH who doesn't know he's a BH. You've taken away his ability to be 50/50 in a partnership because he can't debate and discuss the facts of your marriage because he doesn't have them. Take your medical marijuana debate- one side cannot debate and discuss if they don't have/know/understand the facts right? So how do you expect your marriage to improve if one side doesn't have all the facts?

It feels like, while reading this, you are still in the fog. You expect your marriage to be healing, you expect your spouse to understand your needs (ie debate/discussion) and yet he has no idea what's truly going on. You seem to be justifying your behavior/looking at your marriage through foggy glasses.

Hey splitintwo. Betrayed Child here. No triggers here. I've been following some of your posts. Not sure I want to debate you as you seem very bright and articulate. You seem to like to debate all the avenues of the topic at hand. I respect that. However, I do have a question that I wonder if you've given any thought to regarding the A. You like to have deep, meaningful, and introspective discussions where there is plenty of thought given to topics that you like to debate about. Not judging at all and hypothetically speaking, I'm curious to see if you have ever give that same thought to your past catching up to your future? Do you ever have the fear that your kids could find out someday? That you can't control your AP and there's a chance that this could all still come back. Your A is out there. I'm the one that found out about my mother's A at the age of 16 and had to sit my father down and let him know what was going on. Needless to say it didn't go to well for any of us. My FOO was blown apart. Granted every situation is different and I don't want to imply that would happen if someone in your family were to find out, I'm just curious to see if you ever thought that far ahead with all of this. Not just the fallout with your H, but with your family as well. How do you see that scenario play out? What, if any, is the debate on that hypothetical?

Just curious.

yop

why don't you want better for yourself?

I do want better for myself as well for my M. I've learned quite a bit from being here re: the importance of NC, of getting to a state of indifference toward AP, etc. I understand that for many of you, healing involves confession of your A. That is not the case for me. And while I understand your POV re: confession; it's simply not a route I'm going to take. What was "wrong" was in me, not the M, and destroying the M & crushing BH isn't going to fix that.

And if not being willing to go the confession route forever brands me as "very much still in the Wayward mindset," then perhaps this is simply not the proper forum for me to use while I work on me & my M.

if you have ever give that same thought to your past catching up to your future?

I do think about this; I've played it out many many times in my mind. It's certainly possible. There's an e-trail.

If my A were to be discovered, I'd own it. I wouldn't lie about it, try to hide it, go into denial mode. And I'd pick up the pieces as best I could with my family, from BH to my kids to my other relatives who will judge me very harshly for my behavior.

If my A were to be discovered, I'd own it. I wouldn't lie about it, try to hide it, go into denial mode. And I'd pick up the pieces as best I could with my family, from BH to my kids to my other relatives who will judge me very harshly for my behavior.

I suppose then, the logical next question is this: Let's assume that you follow through with your plan as it exists now...fixing the marriage, etc., and your husband finds out somehow. All of this work, all of the MC work, communication-skill-building...it will all mean nothing to him. He will be angrier at that point, because he will sit there, every day, thinking about how you sat in MC sessions discussing truth and honesty while withholding this information from him.

And I hear his concerns. Once we were able to talk it through & I could give him the specifics re: how minuscule the risk would be as well as assure him it was the last line of defense not the first, we could find a place where we could agree about the action.

To me this just sounds like a M. You are going to disagree, but you talk it through, gain a better understanding of the others perspective and you decide together what the best course of action is. That is just life.

Maybe this was just one example and there are harsher ones, but this is what a M is. Communication and coming together about things you may disagree with initially.

A good M has differences. communication and compromise for both parties.

At the end of the day what did you want ? The option to help your Aunt out if it came to that. At the end of the day he agreed with you, but only after his concerns were incorporated into that decision. So I don't really see where this situation ended badly for you. He should be able to raise concerns with you, right ?

No matter who you are with, you are going to have differences or disagree at times. When one party is not willing to compromise or at least hear the other out, therein lies the problem.

Good M have to be nurtured and worked at. They just don't happen.

This

BH's first reaction was "no, it's illegal" paired with "you want to put our family--me & the kids--at risk to break the law for one person?"

He knows I'll do it anyway if she asks.

Contradicts this

For me, that partnership involves discussion & debate re: major decisions. I don't broach the difficult discussions from the "I'm going to do it anyway, f* you" POV

And you wonder why there's a disconnect?

How can you ever expect to connect with a man who you are not being honest with?

You don't know your BH? Gently, he is living an authentic and honest life. It is he that does not know you.

All of this work, all of the MC work, communication-skill-building...it will all mean nothing to him. He will be angrier at that point, because he will sit there, every day, thinking about how you sat in MC sessions discussing truth and honesty while withholding this information from him.

The timeline isn't here. We were in MC when I wasn't even aware that I was in an EA, so that was years ago now. AP was a "friend," nothing more at that point, BH & I had lost touch with each other & we were in MC hoping to reconnect & learn how to communicate. There was no lying during MC, as there was nothing to hide at that point.

For various reasons, I "broke" rather epically after MC. Things escalated on many fronts, and it took a long time as well as some meds from my doc for me to get my shit together enough to figure out what the hell had happened, stop some hellishly self-destructive behaviors, and refocus.

When/if the A comes out, the result is the same--D. I know this. MC work or not, it will all mean nothing to him. But I want to continue to work on me, on our M, because I value the M (and yes, I can hear it in my head as I type this "how the hell can you claim you value the M if you had an A?"...I know how absolutely absurd that statement reads, but that doesn't stop it from being true). Like I said, my A has nothing to do with my M, and everything to do with a very broken me. I could explain what happened, but it'd come off as trying to justify my behaviors during the A, which I'm not. So I'm skipping that part.