Again, thank you for all the replies.
I’m going to answer a few questions, and in the process, mention a few background things that are coming into play as well. To some, I’ve shared this privately although I’m pretty reticent to do so, but it’ll provide a little more color on me and my wife (I don’t think I’ve posted this publicly before, so apologies if I have).
Yes, I am in IC. Have been pretty much since a couple of weeks after DDay. He does not think I am depressed. He believes it's the POLF, although he didn't give it that name. He liked it and thought it a pretty accurate moniker when I told him though. His view is that I am holding back allowing myself to heal. That I am holding on to my bitterness and anger as some kind of security blanket. Not that I don't have a right to feel this way, but because I am doing so, I am not allowing myself to accept the changes in my life, what has happened, and look at my wife with a fresh pair of glasses. He says that perhaps it will take time, but I will truly heal and therefore truly R with my wife when I am ready to let go of the pain. And that it's okay if I'm not there yet. So the key for me to not put a timeline on anything or expect anything to magically happen, but instead to figure out why exactly I'm holding on to this anger. Do I need to feel angry? Is it a protection / defense mechanism? A form of punishment for my wife?
And here’s a major FOO issue of mine, which I’ve only shared with a few folks (anonymity is a wonderful thing). My brother does not know, but in short, my mother had an affair with a friend of mine’s father. My father never knew I knew. Neither does my mother to this day. And she killed him. I’ve said before that he died young – at age 46. He was a brilliant man, and very kind and warm hearted. Loved to laugh. Not a confrontational person, and was willing to forgo his own pride for the sake of peace. But utterly capable. Anyway, I was a teenager when I found out. My friend’s dad would show up at the house at odd times, etc. I do remember when his wife confronted my mother shortly after I figured out what was happening and my father went to their house to talk to them. They brushed it off to me and my brother as a simple neighborly dispute, but I knew what was going on. In addition, my mother would never sacrifice what she wanted for my father’s sake. My mother wanted to go dancing, he wasn’t the type. So she went herself. I was younger, so I didn’t fully comprehend what this meant, and I have no idea if it was innocent on her part or not, but she’d discuss what this man said or that one, at the dinner table. I’d ask who so-and-so was and she’d say, “Oh, one of my dancing partners.” It destroyed my father. I know he stayed married for me and my brother. That was him. And he became depressed. Perhaps not medically, but he became overweight and basically just gave up. He died from an asthma/heart attack at age 46. I hated my mother. To some degree I still do. And in my mind she killed him. Took away his will. His fire. Anyway, a key issue we discuss is that I’m scared to death that I’m going to end up like my dad. And so when I am experiencing the POLF, or any other major downward mood swings I get very nervous that this is my first step leading me down the same path as my dad.
And yes, my wife knows about this and the impact my mother’s affair has had on me. It’s one reason she was so hard on herself in the wake of DDay. She knows what this means to me and she knows she’s now in the role of my mother and she’s terrified I’ll see myself as my father. It’s one reason she’s always apologizing and telling me how much she loves me and for a very long time she berated herself constantly. Because my mother was never remorseful. Quite the opposite in fact. And my wife wants to show me that she’s not her, despite what she did.
Another item we focus on is along the lines of what some of you had said. The vision I had of my wife does not reconcile with her actions. This has been very hard for me to accept and come to terms with. I was definitely co-dependent and my sense of self-worth was wrapped up in her and my family and so when that shattered…well, so did my sense of who I am and the value I bring to the table. And similar to all those who talked about me being a romantic and looking for meaning in my marriage and how that person and that marriage no longer exists, we've discussed something similar. Basically I've refused to accept this reality because if I do, then the rest of my walls come tumbling down and that is a very scary thing. And while I’ve made a great deal of progress on that front (as you can see, I can write about it and understand the concepts on an intellectual level), I don’t honestly know if it has all sunk in. But it needs to if I want to be able to move on either with or without her. But I can't unless I fully accept the fact that we now are all different people in a different marriage. Anyway, these are the some of the things we've been discussing at IC. I like him – he’s a good guy.
Regarding my wife, she’s learned a great deal about herself and her motivations in life. Her need to please and nurture others – as a way of proving her own self-worth. Her FOO issues and how that’s impacted her and how she sees herself. Just a comment about her FOO issues; she never was valued at home, growing up with dysfunctional parents, products of the Holocaust who had a whole host of issues to deal with. They went through WWII and went to Romania after the war, which was a communist country back then. They lived under that rule for another 15 years before coming to America. They have chilled since, but their house was cold and uncaring. They were very broken people. And it affected the childhood my wife had to deal with. She never got praise. Was never validated. No warmth. And I could go on and on with the emotional abuse she was subjected to. Every time she did something wrong, the line from her parents was “This is why we survived? So you could do this? It would have been better if we were gassed with everyone else.” And as horrible as that sounds, I don’t judge them. I just don’t think they knew how to deal with people period anymore. My father-in-law’s job at Auschwitz (he was a pre-teen) was to shovel out the bones and ashes to clean the ovens. I can’t even imagine what that does to a person – his entire family was killed there. I don’t know that he actually stayed sane after that. What they did to her wasn’t justified or even remotely understandable. But I cannot, or will not, judge them for it.
Anyway, she’s learned how her altruism and desire to help others is motivated by two things: One, to receive the praise and validation from others as a result. That she’s done something worthwhile and helpful. That she’s to be valued and appreciative. And two, she made it a life mission to ensure others know that they are valued, the way she wasn’t. People who can’t help themselves or think of themselves as a burden to society, that they are cared for and loved and appreciated. Her charity work is a manifestation of both of these things.
She’s learned a great deal about her poor coping and communication skills and tendencies. How she was feeling after her miscarriage. Our daughter’s engagement. My attention being elsewhere (work) rather than at home. Her sense of loneliness and questioning her identity. How wrapped up she was in that and how she didn’t know how to communicate her sense of loss to me. How she believed it was deserved and she was “losing” her daughter and lost her babies and how she lost me and so she was going to be alone, which was to be expected because she wasn’t someone to be valued anyway. She’s never used any of the above as an excuse. Rather, she’s talked about how they framed her thinking and how she’s been working on opening up, sharing her feelings, communicating needs and desires, exercises on valuing herself not based on others or her actions but who she is as a person (all of which I’ve seen, btw).
And most importantly, she's learning to accept that she did a horrible thing but that does not necessarily make her a horrible person. She can still be someone of value and worthy of love and affection despite her actions. She has a hard time grasping this. Bu the key is while she wants that from me, she's trying to feel that about herself, regardless of how I feel about her. That is the hardest thing she's been dealing with, because it's wrapped up in everything she's about. Inner strength and self-worth that's not contingent on someone else's opinion - even if that person is me.
Sorry for the long post.
