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Walloped,

First, please believe me when I tell you that you will be fine. You will. Yes, what you are going through truly sucks and the depressive state seems as if it may never end. But you will be fine.

I am going to offer some unsolicited advice. Just let it be. I usually beg BHs to take action because they've been destroyed upon finding out. But in your case, you were fairly decisive and have taken just about all the action you can to put your feet back under you. You just need to give yourself some time.

You are dealing with emotional trauma. Your mind needs to process. The flatness you are experience is all part of the healing process. Don't force yourself around this. You have to go through it.

Sorry it is not a great prescription. No magic pills here. Just know it DOES get better.

Now for solicited advice - DO NOT invite your wife here. Not yet. There are many, many other ways of communicating your feelings. I made the mistake of leaving SI open on my computer and my WW found it and it made things unnecessarily "tense." (That is the polite way of describing it)

However, you do need to let her know how you are feeling. I know part of you wants to protect her. But being authentic is scary, but necessary. You do not have to be mean about it, but she needs to know your struggles.

Strength and blessings to you.

It was after a year or so that we were planning for my daughter's wedding, where I was not very involved and perhaps it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I have to be misreading this. I know you can't possibly be suggesting that you believe you were in any sense responsible for your wife's choices.

Foley - no, I am NOT suggesting that. I was responding to the comment about me being a bore. No, I do not believe I am even a little bit responsible for her affair. Not at all. She doesn't say that either, for the record. She has, in SI terms, owned her affair.

That is me ruminating on what I was doing during that time period. Something was missing or off. I didn't see it and she didn't communicate it to me. And during that time, when she should have told me how she was feeling, she allowed herself to get caught up with attention POS was lavishing on her.

Cause and affect? Not at all. But as we say around here, I own my portion of the issues in our marriage pre-A. I am not Mr. Wonderful and have my own faults. That was one of them. That's all.

Aubrie,

Thank you for your post.

So, I have a question for you. Are WW's allowed to be a little bit self-indulgent?

Meaning, I know what she's doing is unhealthy and a little bit of woe is me. No, I do not think she is being manipulative. I do think she is wallowing in her shame and misery. But the rest of the time she is working on workbooks and exercises and reading whatever her IC prescribes. I have asked her not to share so much of that with me. I don’t want to hear a volley of “Guess what I learned about myself today, honey? Isn’t that wonderful?” Because my response, at the stage I’m in, will likely be along the lines of “Hoo-fucking-ray for you. I am so glad betraying our life and family turned out into a beautiful finding yourself exercise. Glad something positive came out of it.” She gets that.

So, she does this. Spends about 30 – 45 minutes. Again, she says she wants to remind herself of what she threw away. The tears flow. Are they crocodile? I don’t think so, but who knows?

So, is that allowed for WW’s? No one is perfect and we, like anyone else in the mess, are muddling our way through. We will not do everything by the book or perfectly. Should I put a stop to it or is it okay to indulge that a bit, as long as it doesn’t become excessive or a replacement for real work? My feelings have been that people sometimes need a security blanket or something comforting. This might be hers. Hopefully, I can become that for her and she can become that for me, again. But we are not there yet.

Long winded, I know, but I’d appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks.

I think sharing your posts with her could have any of the negative and positive outcomes suggested above, and there is no possible way of knowing until you actually do it. I would suggest that if you decide to share them with her that you cut and paste as others have suggested, or even read them to her if you are worried about her being able to track down the exact verbiage on the internet. As of now this is a safe place for you and despite how comfortable you think you will be or how respectful you think she will be, you just don’t know that. If you think she needs some similar support, there are many other websites out there where she can find help (or in-person support groups, therapy, etc.) Put your needs first for a good long while.

That being said, I do not necessarily think you should share them with her. Think about your reason for doing so…is it to help her understand you better so that she can better help you heal? Is it to help yourself begin to open up to her again? I would like to highlight this that Marie wrote:

Just remember she can't heal you any more than you can heal her. And frankly it's not your job to heal her. Focus on you and your well being and let her figure out how she is going to come back to the table.

I agree with this. You both have to heal from the inside out and only then can you work on your marriage. If you are doing this to help her learn to better help you, I fear it will be in vain. She cannot help you heal. She CAN be there for you and support you while YOU heal yourself and she can do that without reading your posts. She has to understand that the best way to help you is to heal herself. That is it. It is painful to wait for that to happen. It is painful for both of you to have to wait for yourselves to heal, but also to have to wait for the other person to heal knowing that you can’t do anything to help speed up the process. She is, understandably, trying to “fix it”. She wants to help you. She hates seeing you in pain. She can’t though.

If you want to share them in an attempt to help yourself open up to her again, I would also advise you to not share them. You are not opening up to her yet because you do not yet feel safe doing so. Whatever is keeping you from being completely vulnerable to her is your body’s protective mechanism. This is something that needs to be worked through individually also. She has to work on herself to become a person that you can fully (or 99%) trust and YOU have to get to a point personally where you feel comfortable trusting. So many times (I know I said this above) we want to expedite the healing process and we force ourselves to do things despite our instinct because we think it will help. Gently, there are no ways to expedite this process, only ways to delay it.

Ask her to be patient with you and take the time that you need. Ask her to continue working on herself to again become that woman that you know she can be. Tell her that you will open up to her when you feel ready, and that until then, she needs to just focus on herself and being there for you in other ways.

She is trying to be there for you in a way that SHE wants or thinks will help and NOT being there for you in a way that YOU need right now. I think she is the one that needs to figure out a different way for the time being, rather than pushing you to help her.

ETA: Boy am I late to this party! I didn't realize there were 4 pages when I posted, so sorry if I am a little behind.

I want to add that I agree somewhat with Aubrie about her displays of self-deprecation. They are what I would think are cries for help. She is still looking for you to "help her" rather than taking the reins and fixing her shit. Kissing you and thanking you is one thing, if it is genuine, but putting on displays of depression in front of you is selfish. While you are not asking for her to be a perfect person, you are asking her to do the work (by agreeing to stay M and consider R).

Basically there is a line between letting you know she is sorry and putting her problems on your shoulders. She needs to find it and STAY ON HER SIDE.

[This message edited by StrongHeart at 10:21 AM, January 6th (Wednesday)]

That is me ruminating on what I was doing during that time period. Something was missing or off. I didn't see it and she didn't communicate it to me. And during that time, when she should have told me how she was feeling, she allowed herself to get caught up with attention POS was lavishing on her.

Based on everything you're written, this is really the heart of the matter and is the thing that the two of you ultimately have to find a way to talk about. It's not about what you were doing or what's broken inside her but about how the two of you interact. Whether it's mediated by MC or on your own, you have to do it.

That neither of you can do so at this point actually sounds like a good thing to me (well, relatively, compared to the rest of the stuff in the pile) - it's something that, as you've characterized it, is hard for both of you, and that you can do together and will benefit both of you. It's also something that may have shown itself in contexts other than her A, and, if so, that may present a way to approach it as a separate thing, if that makes any sense.

Hi Walloped.

You write,

I know her character. It is why what she did is such a slap in the face to me. Because it was such a contradiction to who she is. It was horrible, but it doesn’t change her essential character. She disagrees with me, by the way.

Gently, friend, I think she has the nub of this right, and you don't, yet.

When I am lost deep behind enemy lines in my own mind, I have learned that it is often the thing I flich from, the thing my mind tries to slide off of, the thought that provokes the immediate DefCon5 resonse of NO. IT CAN'T BE THAT-- well, that is exactly, precisely where I need to look. When I am able to.

I will venture a guess that this is the deep pocket where you are still in self-protective shock, five months out. No quite ready to look yet. That's OK. You'll get there.

But gently again, show me a man who says firmly No Pedistal, and I'll say, "if you so brother." But the thing is, if it's not a pedistal, I am seeing this vertical Doric column here, in fact I can see it so clearly I am almost leaning on it. But we can call it a neoclassical load-bearing device if need be for now.

Wal, I hear you on her good qualities and I beleive you completely about them. The categorization error I think you may still be making is attributing a specific inner motivation to her outward behavior.

There are people, and at times I have leaned this way myself who -- well, we do good things, good acts, but not always for healthy reasons. Being kind, going the extra mile always for a friend, becoming involved with civic causes and charitable organizations.

This stuff can be what it seems, it can come drom a spirit of generosity and empathy.

But it can come from other places as well. It can come from fear--I know in my heart how selfish I am and I don't like that about me and don't want to be seen that way so I choose to be overtly selfless, to assuage my fear. Or, I have always felt small and unimportant and I always will, but by taking on public roles of kindness and importance I can get a little ego kibble from that to quiet my deamons. And so on.

And these selfish motives can braid in complicated ways with altruistic ones. And the more clever or disciplied the person is, the more intricate the braiding.

Walloped, she isn't quite who you thought she was. The outer kindness was a glittering mansion built on a cracked foundation of self-esteem. Her inner life was darker, shot through with veins of selfishness, fear, or resentment.

I've been like her. In me the cracks came out as major depression and finally flagrant defualt on many of my public duties and roles, and public shame. In her it came out as a default on her private duties of love and empathy.

The good is there, Walloped. But it was shot through, and ultimately strangled by, the fears, resentments, or insecurities, whatever they were.

I think when you are ready to look at it, and accept that you innocent and kind girl at some point became something different and much more shadowded and broken and selfish, you will begin to be able to see her whole. When you do, if the love for her is still there, some of these other things will,start to solve themselves, or at least become amenable to work.

Lastly, and changing the topic, FWIW, I would share the threads. Knowing the risk I would still take it were I you.

Walloped,

Affairs by design are self-indulgent. Being wayward is self-indulgent. The time for destructive self-indulgence is over. I understand that you say she is doing everything right, that she's doing the hard work, blah, blah. Good for her. However, this is an almost nightly ritual for 30 to 45 minutes, correct? If at 5 months of doing this, she hasn't figured out or it hasn't stuck with her what she stands to lose, you have bigger fish to fry. Kwim? It's kind of the equivalent of a dry drunk. There's WS who have to wallow in their actions to keep them "sober". They have to constantly remind themselves of what they did to their BS, what they did to their family, to keep them on the straight and narrow. That isn't real change, ya know? (This may or may not be the case for your WW. But it is an option.)

The bigger question I have is, what is she getting out of that action? How is it helping her to become a better person? Really. How is it molding her character? How is it rewiring her brain? How is it helping her to become a more productive, healthy person?

Can a WS be "self-indulgent"? Sure. Eat a brownie while reading a self-help book. Find a project/hobby that you enjoy. Learn a new language. Write a children's book.

Self-indulgence that is destructive, even in the form of self-punishment? No way. It's just a continuation of wayward behavior.

[This message edited by Aubrie at 9:54 AM, January 6th (Wednesday)]

I think you should remember how unique SI is and how helpful it has been to you. If you get a shitty therapist, well quit and pick another one. If you confide in a friend and they aren't supportive, you can confide in another friend. I don't know of any other place quite like SI. You have the amazing ability to see waywards making TRUE efforts at reconciling and healing themselves and sharing their vast knowledge (like Aubrie, among others - her posts just stand out to me). You could always still read here but I think your posts, if you knew your WW was reading them, would change. And once gone, you'll never get this place back as it is now.

Walloped i told my WS about SI a month or so ago and printed some of the articles for him because I thought it would give him some guidance. I regretted it later when I posted things that I didn't want him to know about. I hope that he isn't coming on here to find out what I'm saying. I doubt he is but your WW would probably be more likely to do so. Just saying to think twice about rather you want her on SI yet.

Hopeless ,I dont mean to be condescending to you and your comments about Wallopes wife preceptions of thier marriage while she was having an affair as "beyond laughable" , but perhaps you would do well to read what I wrote again . As it clearly states her thinking PRE A .

Walloped, I'm struck by what Redsox13 posted:

My timeline:

6 months of blinding pain

3 months of white hot anger

3 years of pretty much being numb

In YEAR 4 - the start of real recovery.

The numbness isn't really living. My guess is you are about to get pissed as hell - many do at the 6 month stage.

What I invite you to consider is that there are really two different things going on simultaneously with you--first, the shock and trauma of what happened to you; second, that you are still together and at least open to R.

The reason I quoted Redsox13 is that his timeline correlated so directly with mine--even though R (I think) is what he went through, and I never had that chance. That's why I surmise that you are simply going through the shock and trauma of your betrayal. Period.

As I've stated in other places, I was in shock for 8 months. It took another two years to get to some point of understanding and acceptance with WTF happened. Only now, 3+ years out, is sadness really the predominant emotion. And even though you've got the added R component thrown into the mix, I suspect you may simply be going through your own process--irrespective of whatever is happening or not with R.

It takes years to recover, now matter what the ultimate resolution is. All you can do is heal you. Period. As to how to handle R while going through this? I don't know... It's not what I was dealt in my journey.

I invite you to suspend judgment about where you "should" be with respect to all this going on, and accept that you are exactly where you are supposed to be. All of what you are feeling is okay; it's part of the journey.

For all your struggles you enumerate so well, I know that you know--YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE IT. Find a peaceful place and spend time there. For me, it was in chapel. I could go there, completely break down and surrender, and in time feel better THAT DAY. Find that place for you.

You are where you're supposed to be. God doesn't create suffering. He gives us the grace to be better off in the long-run from it, though. Let go of judging yourself and where you "should" be and TRUST Him and you that you're going to be okay, no matter what happens.

Blessings, LA

sorry brother this shit sucks but I can honestly say I would never be able to forgive that was a huge boundary for me , not that I was ever given the chance as you are. My ex showed no remorse at all , I actually thank her now for this . I can tell you that every decision I made throughout my 3 year battle since d day I have made by asking myself a simple question , that question was what advice would I give my kids If this was happening to them ? and every time it pointed to leaving and respecting themselves more because they deserve better. Of course a lot of SI members would disagree but this worked for me. In the end you have to look in the mirror every morning and live with your decision.I wish you the best in whatever that decision is . strength

How are you (two) doing today? Bro-hugs!

Walloped,

I may be late to post in this thread but I would like to share my POV

From my experience, the worst thing that may happen is to be stuck in limbo, as I believe you are, for a long time.

R is a process and has different faces that you need to go through, but you really need to keep moving.

Regarding if your behavior, and hers, is healthy or not, all I can think is that infidelity is not healthy, period, Not for you, for your W or your kids.

I would like to ask what are you doing to heal besides going to IC?

I am asking because IMO your need to take risks. Maybe have sex, maybe open up more, Split for a while, etc, but you should start doing something.

How could you expect your wife to have a different behavior (beating herself) if you are not giving her a different feedback? I am sorry but R is very hard and at this point your wife is totally waiting to go in any direction you tell her, and I believe you are not giving her any.

Your situation is very unique as your WW is beating herself up too much and she needs you to support her while, IMO, her affair was “almost” a deal breaker for you. She needs you to heal so she can move on.

You also need to consider that as a parent your teach your kids a lot of things, but most of them comes from your example, this is the tricky part as You teach them to forgive, forgiving your wife, but your teach them to be doormats by staying with her, among others (you get the idea) but the matter that concerns the most, in my own experience, is:

Your teach them to be happy and honest by example, and being in limbo is really sending the opposite signs.

Last thing, R is not for everyone, maybe her affair was a deal breaker after all. You should consider taking some risk and defining a time frame until you decide if R is possible or not, otherwise the hell you both are living (limbo) will only get worse.

BTW, I am totally for D but I would like to see that you can make it.

Good luck

[This message edited by Mrhealed at 6:55 AM, January 8th (Friday)]

W, I remember quoting Forged1 in your original thread, regarding how we lose so much of our identity via our spouse's infidelity.

Here's another one from him (found it on a SI quote thread, which is very enjoyable, by the way), on the art of "moving on"...

People are forgetting in this age of instant gratification that friendships and relationships take the most hated word on SI - time. We all just want the crap through which we've been wading to be over already, and to move on and feel awesome and have a billion friends and all the rest of it but, fuck it, guys - that's just not even close to being realistic.

Any new beginning, whether with a set of friends or a move or a job or a new SO or a house or whatever is going to take some time. Not only do we have to walk before we can run, we - given our particularly crappy circumstances - have to learn to crawl all over again before we can even contemplate walking. And we learn to crawl by learning to be our own best friend.

http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=529899&AP=41

[This message edited by livinganew at 8:42 AM, January 8th (Friday)]

I just wanted to pop in and say thank you to all of you who posted with concern and fantastic advice.

I've thought about what you have all said a great deal - really, I don't think I've thought of much else other than work. Here's what I am taking away:

1) Get my head out of my ass and get moving. Whatever that direction may be, although I have decided that it’s R. I know I was very active in handling the revelation of her affair post DDay (after the initial shock), but it seems that was more like a super sugar rush, which in the past month or so has dissipated to the point where I've more like a hibernating bear. No longer.

2) Communicate. This is going to be the biggie for me. I'm going to need to force the issue (on me) and just do it. I will not share my threads here on SI with her. I'm not worried her about using this place against me, but as many have pointed out, I can be me here and I don't want to feel like she's watching over my shoulder if I need to vent or ask for guidance. I will print out my portions, edit them, and use that as a basis for conversations. I will hopefully start this weekend.

3) Fully commit to R. To be honest, and after a great deal of introspection, I realize I have been vacillating. Not fair to me or her. I still may get very angry or despair, but I need to keep my eye on the prize – work toward the goal I have set. As other have pointed out – she’s waiting for guidance from me. May not be fair to have that dumped on me, but neither was her affair. Whatever. Gotta do what I gotta do – if it’s important enough to me. And it is.

4) Time. Give it time. I have been looking for a magic pill to make this all better but it just doesn’t work that way. Re-set expectations. Manage them. Understand this will be a very long journey. Am I okay with that? Yes.

5) Be more present for my kids. I kind of have been, but I can do better. Will do.

6) Let go of the outcome – Many of you have said this. I agree. I can work on me and do my best for her. The goal is R. But whatever happens, happens. My healing. Hers. Her work and actions. I can focus on what I can focus on. Again, related to expectations.

7) My wife’s behavior – I plan on discussing this with her and impressing upon her how potentially destructive it could be, and more importantly how it doesn’t really advance her as an individual of growth. I’ll also broach the subject of doing something with her time beyond staying home.

So that’s where I’m at right now. Feeling more optimistic. I always like have a plan of action and the inertia was having a real adverse effect on me. I expect this weekend to be both tough emotionally but rewarding as well. We’ll see.

-W

Solid post, Walloped. Communicate, communicate, communicate! It seems so obvious, so easy. It can be difficult.

Regardless, you'll grow.

My instinct is that your wife needs to back off. She is pushing you so hard, and you are curling up in a ball to get away. She needs to give you room, emotionally. So, if she wants to hate on herself and cry, thats great, but not around you. The thanking god every day for a second chance is another example. I really think if she can stop pushing, you will find yourself more able to open up. I think the same thing might be true for intimacy.

Trivial,

You may be right. I'll bring it up. But here's my take. There is no guidebook on how to live day by day in the face of this. I believe that she's not being manipulative on purpose. I think that she's simply trying to show appreciation and love in the ways she knows how. Similarly, I don't believe the crying is for show. It's her thing. But I do agree it's not healthy or productive and should stop.