Hi 20yrs,
Thanks for the update, and apologies for not replying faster.
The point about the pace that comes through to me is that you are not dropping things, which is good. You wouldn’t say this, but a point that could be made to your wife is that if she wants to make the work last twenty years (no pun intended), then you will still be asking the same things twenty years from now; that slow motion is not making anything go away, it is just making the period before true reconciliation can begin last a lot longer than it needs to. And if a slogan for a t-shirt is required: Slow Motion is Better than No Motion. What you need to make her understand is that you are not giving up on this, she is just dragging it out.
I was not aware of Eckhart Tolle, but here’s one for you to put on a t-shirt and wear around the home:
“Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it's no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”
It’s one that I think is applicable to your situation as an individual in the unhappy aftermath of infidelity.
Some of the guy’s other quotes seem tailor-made for rug-sweeping, though, and I do not think they will help your wife ‘develop’ or learn to take responsibility or own the things that she has done. If anything, they will encourage her to think that as long as she ignores the past, everything will be fine. That is not learning, or development, that is letting herself off the hook. Stuff like…
“The past has no power over the present moment.”
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.”
“Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
And this absolute doozy could be on a motivational poster to encourage infidelity:
“Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.”
Yes, give in to the moment, don’t give a sh*t about right or wrong, or anyone else…It’s all about you, and if you can get your jollies, that’s all that matters.
Your wife surrendered to the present moment for a year and half, with no inner resistance, and didn’t it all work out wonderfully well for you? Do you really think a mental diet of “Everything you do is just great, and you’re a wonderful person who owes no loyalty or responsibility to anybody as long as you are getting your kicks, and just forget the past”, will help your wife take the responsibility you need her to if you are going to be able to ever reconcile with her? Or is that stuff taking her in the opposite direction?
It is a shame that while she finds time to consume, memorise, and quote that kind of self-excusing, past-erasing, responsibility-free material, she has barely made any progress on “Not Just Friends”, a short and brief book that many people read in a day. It’s not hard to see that she only wants to focus on stuff that excuses what she did, rather than trying to grasp and understand why what she did was so wrong, and why it caused you so much pain that you still have moments where you feel like chucking the whole thing in. Who wants to feel bad about themselves, right? However, recognising and owning the harm that was done is a valid part of the reconciliation process, because it helps the person who committed infidelity to understand and empathise with the person who was betrayed. And taking ownership of the infliction of that pain shows the betrayed person that the cheater does feel remorse and regrets having caused the pain. The Tolle stuff goes in the opposite direction, and is helping her avoid developing an adult sense of responsibility for her actions, or understand that if her pleasure is bought at the price of another’s pain, there is actually – sorry Eckhart – something bad about it. Far from keeping her grounded, that material is keeping her head in the deluded affair fog.
I think what you need to do is buy a copy of, “How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair”, and tell her that it will be the next book you will be working on after “Not Just Friends” is finished. See if she can start memorising some quotes from something more productive. And please do make time, one evening a week at least, to do this work. It may not matter to your wife, but it matters to you, and she owes you big time.
For all the pap she is wasting her intellectual energy on, you can ask her, regularly, if she doesn’t care that you are unhappy, and why she isn’t willing to do what you need. Remind her that she isn’t married to Eckhart Tolle, she is married to you, and that if she loves you, she should be doing what you need, not tranquilising her conscience and neutralising her morality with the kind of self-focused “give in to life” platitudes that imply that all that matters is whether an individual enjoys going with the moment, and if they leave a trail of pain and destruction in their wake it doesn’t matter, because it will soon be in the past, and as Yoda tells us, the past has no power over the present.
Your wife’s perpetual focus on herself is actively preventing her from doing the work on the marriage that she should be doing. She is effectively gazing into a mirror and telling herself that she is lovely. You aren’t even in the picture. Does she think she is married to herself, or that she is the only person in the marriage that matters? There are far more important things for her to be doing than gazing at her own reflection, ignoring you, but she lacks the courage to face up to what she did. The longer you allow her to remain in that fog, the longer she will avoid developing an adult sense of responsibility, and owning what she did. That is not good for you, her, or for the future security of the marriage.
Wow, she feels frustrated when you want a more detailed timeline? Does she not understand that you could file for divorce and expose the affair to everyone around you? She has got away with what she did with no consequences at all, and all she wants to do is rug-sweep.
Seriously, 20yrs, you need to be firmer about her doing what you need, not wasting her time with a load of pointless, counter-productive pap that is irrelevant to your unhappiness. What you could say to her is that is that she does not have forever, that you have your own internal clock ticking, and that time is running out for her to start making an effort. Be no more specific than that; the point is to unsettle her, and to disempower the weapon she has been using so successfully since discovery, which is dragging her heels.
You say: “The rugsweeping is frustrating and I will bring it to a head eventually (find the cattle for my hat so to speak).”
“Eventually” is her enabler. You need to step up your game. You could even try a conversation starter like:
“You cannot avoid this forever, but if you keep trying, I will be gone. Do you want that?”
Isn’t that how you feel sometimes? So why not be true to yourself and say it?
It’s good to hear about your new job, and I am sure everyone here wishes you well with it. You’re a bright guy, and you deserve every success.
It’s also good that the effort to get your wife out of the office with OM is continuing. I hope you will update us about how the latest interviews.
“For myself, I still find the situation sucks of course, but it does suck less over time. I still flip flop from wanting to say fuck this bullshit and file to the other side of the spectrum where I believe in who she is now and could see moving forward with that as part of our history. Mostly I am on the latter end of it but at times have those dark moments.”
20yrs, who she is now is a person who chose to have a year-and-a-half long affair, abusing your love and trust and endangering the family her children rely on, and who still refuses to grow up and address that like an adult, or take responsibility for it, and all the pain that it caused you. Instead, she wants to live in a child-like state of denial, as if nothing bad happened, and even if it did, it should be ignored because it happened in the past. It is great that you want the marriage to continue, but can you really do that before she proves that she actually understands what she did, and what was bad about it? Or will it be fine for the affair to morph into some kind of rose-tinted, life-affirming experience that should be celebrated because your WW and the OM really enjoyed seizing the moment and going with it on a regular basis, with no responsibility, scruples, conscience, honesty, discernible indication of morality, or loyalty to you?
My point here – for you, your wife, and the future of the marriage - is this: until your wife faces and takes responsibility for what she did, and does what you need to be able to heal, then in what way is she any different to the person who was fine with having a year-and-a-half long affair? All she will be is the same person who now quotes authors whose philosophies let her off the hook.
Remember the old motto about exercise: No pain, no gain.
Think about that; it is hugely relevant to your wife’s personal development, and for your marriage to actually move on honestly, rather than in a state of denial.
I’m sorry if stuff in what I have written sounds negative. I would actually like you to reconcile meaningfully with your wife, and obviously to preserve the family and the security it brings your kids. What I have always tried to do is advocate truth and meaning in your reconciliation, by facing the unpleasant facts and elements and neutralising them using tried and tested methods, so that the new phase of your relationship with your wife will be safe from the parts of your wife’s psyche, boundaries, and value framework that enabled her to cheat for many months. What is frustrating, for you, me, and several other posters here who want the best outcome for you, is that your wife is devoting so much energy to avoiding the process that has the potential to make her a safer life partner for you, a safer parent for your kids, and a truly more developed and wiser, mature human being with a sense of personal responsibility that will – hopefully – keep her out of trouble in future. Tolle’s ‘live for the moment, ignore the past’ platitudes won’t do that. Denial won’t do that. Avoidance won’t do that. Yoga won’t do that. Running won’t do that. And taking the next forty years to read a tome as brief as “Not Just Friends” won’t do that!
The question is, how serious are you about doing the motivational work needed to enable your marriage to reach the higher, safer plateau that is within its reach if you can get your wife to stop wasting so much of her energy on denial and avoidance?
The journey continues, and I am crossing my fingers for you, but what worries me is that you will just give up on your healing, and pushing your wife’s development, and instead pretend that nothing needs to be changed because it is easier.
[This message edited by M1965 at 6:27 AM, September 15th (Friday)]
