I wish I had more time to respond to more replies. Thank all of you for your support. It means a lot.
RomanticInnocenc:
Why do I want to love her again? That is a tough question these days. To be honest, I don’t want to love her anymore – I just still do. The original meaning behind the tattoo was beautiful. But now, it’s nothing but an excuse she is using to make herself feel better. I don’t want to see it because she has made it VERY clear she does not have remorse and doesn’t intend to. That tattoo is not for me or for our marriage like it was originally supposed to be. It’s now for her own guilt and regret.
What did I get out of the relationship? The marriage was not void of love. In fact, we had a lot of it. It’s just her depth of love was very limited. When she deserted me and had the affair while I needed her the most it did do some permanent damage. She sees the damage, and she even somewhat sees what it would take to make amends. But, she chose to walk away so that she doesn’t have to face the pain and damage she caused. She rationalizes that she’s doing me the favor. Her exact words were, “I stand firm in my decision to be apart. It’s the right thing.” She actually believes her running away is the right thing. In fact, I am certain she doesn’t even see it as running away. She doesn’t allow herself to see that our R was false. She’s fooling herself – and it is irrefutable. I DO NOT crave this part of my wife back. In fact, I detest it. It angers me, and I wish I had some sort of way to get this all out so I never have to care to think about it every again.
What I crave is the woman I loved before she bailed out of the marriage when things got tough. I lost the love of my life. I crave the love of my life back. I crave the woman I once knew. I crave the woman I used to have faith in. The choices she is making now she will forever regret IF she knocks out of her current insanity and delusional way of thinking. She is making excuses after excuses as a way to deal with the shit storm she created instead of actually dealing with the problem. That’s why she “stands firm” in her choice to bail on our marriage and the pain she left behind. I do not see her facing the real problems anytime soon (i.e., remorse). I see her continuing to put Band-Aids on everything, and doing anything to relieve the guilt and shame. As long as she continues down this path, she will be nothing but toxic to me and those around her. THIS is what makes me so sad because after this last stunt of guilt to Band-Aid the problem with a tattoo, she has unwittingly turned my anger for what she is doing into hate. This is a bad place for me to be in.
Forged1:
I honestly don’t know if the OM is in the picture. Logically, and with prior history to go off of, it is likely he is there if for anything other than as a way for her to numb her regrets. I don’t want to assume anything as it doesn’t help me in any way. I don’t think she cares if others see her as the bad guy. But, it is very likely she is trying to show herself she isn’t as horrible of a person as she believes herself to be. The lines she is feeding me is her own bullshit. It’s the bullshit she is telling herself. She is too blind in her guilt to see how much of a destructive force her lack of understanding and remorse truly are. This pisses me off to no end. Because while all her actions have nothing to do with me as a person, they have everything to do with me as the casualty. Her actions post affair have been 1000x more damaging than the affair itself. And she has no clue or understanding of this.
I doubt she will come back somehow in November. This is because I think she will have convinced herself to such a point that being apart and divorcing is the “right” thing to do. She is going to convince herself, if not already, she is being the martyr. This will let her at least sleep at night. Especially on those nights when she isn’t distracted and she sits with the horribleness of who she’s become and what she’s done.
SBB:
You couldn’t be more right about her compartmentalization. And damn does this part of her hurt me so much. The collateral damage of this part of her personality has no end to the amount of pain it brings. I don’t believe she is vile – her intent has never been to hurt me directly. I believe she is just so blind from guilt that she has no damn clue of the collateral damage she causes by her impulsive actions. Her constant mode of operation is that she sees the damage immediately after the fact and that’s when her real character comes out – she packs her bags and runs as fast as she can because she gets a glimpse of the horror she caused. I can almost bet the moment she got my text back she woke up from her compartmentalization for a moment and saw the bomb she just fired. That’s why she packed up again and ran fast – telling me to just forget it and she never should have showed me. It is cruel –there is no doubt in this. It is insanely hurtful on so many levels. It’s literally like someone wanting to take a drink of alcohol because it feels good, then they get in a car, kill a family, are horrified with what they just did, and instead of taking responsibility, they run from the scene. She has done this time and time again with my heart and my very life.
Blocking her is the best possible thing I can do. I have to get myself away from her as much as possible. I can’t take much more of her recklessness. She keeps slowly taking away parts of my soul. She may be ruining me, but I have the choice to allow it to continue or end it entirely. Blocking her number was so hard to do. I felt like shit for 3 days after. It’s hard not allowing yourself to be someone’s victim anymore.
I know what you mean how your husband created some sort of fantasy around his love for your home when in reality it was filled with your misery and pain. My wife, like your husband, is incapable of remorse. They don’t, and likely will never, deal with the pain they caused us. I think it is a survival mechanism because if they allowed themselves to be vulnerable to the pain they caused us it would very well break them. To say we are stronger than they are is an understatement.
How you feel about your wedding photo being displayed in his house for all to see is exactly how I feel about her tattoo about me. The authentic love I have for her, the endless moments of pain and suffering I endured because of her, and all the lies she has concocted about me are all on display for everyone. It is pure bullshit. Her tattoo is bullshit, how she shows her care for me now is all bullshit.
She got a tattoo of a sailing ship floating on the flowers of one of the islands we went to early on in our relationship. It symbolizes a poem I wrote her and a song about how we can rebuild our marriage ship and sail back home together because we’ve still got time. This was true back before she broke NC with the OM and CHOSE to end our R. This was all true before she PURPOSELY lied to me and KNOWINGLY ran over my heart. There is no excuse anymore, no amount of brokenness, and no apology needed. It was spelled out clearly. It is no different than her purposely taking a gun and firing it right into my heart. Why she did it? I have don’t really know. It doesn’t matter – because in the end she CHOSE to hurt me. But, what she is too self-involved to see is that her choice to not be remorseful has pushed me off our ship and ended any time we had. What hurts me is that she prefers it this way because she ultimately doesn’t want to deal with me, the damage, and all the pain she’s caused. She’s content to just walk away from the scene of the accident she caused, knowing fully that I am bleeding out to death. I do not want to love a woman like this anymore. I do not want to think about a person who can so carelessly play with my life.
[This message edited by justme1264 at 12:25 PM, August 12th (Tuesday)]