SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am a WW and my BH and I have been working on R for a few years now. He has an alcoholic father so has co-dependent tendencies and so do I. The problem I have now is that I have a feeling he is rug sweeping the A and refuses to talk about it at all due to his anger and depression. I do not know his triggers or how to soothe him and I have a hard time trying to support him without knowing what is happening in his head. We've been in MC since 04/2015 working on our communication issues and I had been in IC since before the A ended. He was admitted to the hospital for his depression in 03/2015 which was also hard on me. I think I had the A because I felt he didn't love me he wouldn't say it for 2 years prior to his breakdown and I felt like I had done my best to support him and had gotten nowhere. I feel my AP just fed my ego and made me feel like I was smart and sexy in a very stressful point in our marriage. I feel terrible about not being strong enough to stay by his side in a very difficult time in his life. I was so selfish. I struggle with how to bring the A up. I feel like since we do not talk about it he has not processed it. I want to build something better and more healthy marriage. I love him more since we have become parents to my son but I feel like our R is shaky at best and I desperately want our marriage to strengthen and become successful. I am the child of divorced parents myself and do not want that for my son. Please tell me any advice you may have for me.

[This message edited by FrenchScotch at 11:02 PM, September 2nd (Saturday)]

I would try to talk about it with the marriage counselor at first.

I think there is definitely a fear by WS at times that if I bring it up I will cause more pain or break the mood, yet from reading here, it seems a lot of BS appreciate the WS bringing up the A. Remember to focus on what he needs to heal when you do bring it up.

Also, with your husband's struggle with depression, it sounds like he may be some one who really needs his feelings validated. Just a guess....I have been in a very similar situation. My H was in a deep depression for about two years prior to my A. Of course, I dealt with it in the worst way possible. Of course you must learn to take care of your needs now in healthy ways. However, it takes two people to make a relationship work and my H recognizes this more now and I really appreciate it.

I recommend readind in The Healing Library and reading Howto Help Your Spouse Heal from your Affair to start

Sending healing thoughts

Welcome to SI. I'm sorry you find yourself here.

I agree to have your MC help with communicating about your A. I imagine that with his depression he will find it very difficult to trust an feel vulnerable with you.

Have you been working on healing yourself during this time?

Some people heal in very different ways. Let him know that you are there for him. Let him know that you want to support him in any way you can.

Maybe he doesn't want to talk about it because you blame your choice to have an affair on him. If you have been in IC before the affair,and ever since,and your IC hasn't encouraged you to dig deeper,and figure out why you really cheated, then you have a lousy IC. If your MC had allowed this line of thinking, I can imagine how much more damage has been inflicted on your husband.

I also don't understand how you could be in reconciliation when you're still blameshifting.

I did not mean for it to sound as if i was blameshifting but giving my perspective since it's all I have. I have taken full responsibility for my actions and have told him everything he wanted to know. We had issues with communication before the A as my BH has the tendency to stonewall and avoid talking about topics that make him angry like our house or his work situation. I should mention our MC is also his IC and he tends to want to talk about work with her at this point, at least from what I can tell from our joint sessions. I am still in IC working on myself and I have read a lot of self-help books on the subject trying to get through this. I even tried to include him in some of the books. He was willing to read "Too Good To Leave, Too Bad To Stay" but I couldn't get him to read "I Love You But I Don't Trust You" or "Not 'Just Friends'" because he gets too angry. I don't know... I'm just hoping that we're rebuilding a relationship that can last. He has told me he worries about telling me what goes on in his head because he worries about my reaction. I have tried to do more of the things he says help him but these are things I see that make me think he is rugsweeping that cause me to worry (this is from a post in the BabyCenter Forums that led me here):

Indicators of rugsweeping by the betrayed:

* Betrayed spouse doesn't ask questions because they are afraid of wayward spouses reactions or scared they will be left for affair partner.

*Betrayed spouse doesn't set boundaries such as no contact because they don't want to seem crazy jealous to the wayward by not allowing the wayward spouse to keep the "friendship".

He actually tried to do this in the beginning but i went NC willingly.

*Betrayed spouse doesn't discuss triggers or feelings because of wayward reactions or fear of reactions.

*Betrayed spouse doesn't make requirements to be met to stay in the relationship such as counseling.

Although he has not required conseling i have done it anyway. I did it during the A because i was very confused and did not know how i even got to that point. IC made it clear that i did very much care about my BS and the AP (who was also married) was just as selfish as i was.

Our MC/BS IC made it clear in the beginning that we could have a better marriage if we worked on our communication and it has gotten better but there are some topics that are frustratingly off limits. She also helped me to see the A as the selfish act it was and said even if we split we would have to work to fix our problems individually or our chances for success in our next relationship would be greatly diminished.

I guess I want our R to be as much of a success as it can be and I worry about handling it correctly. I will continue to try and bring it up in our MC but right now they are mostly working on his major depression and problems at work (which are mostly responsible for his being hospitalized). He has not been working for more than a year and we are working on getting him disability retirement through his work so he will not have to work there any longer. Maybe the work problem seems bigger than the A at this point.

You mention that you had been seeing your IC during the affair because you were confused. And that now your IC is your MC.

How does your BS feel about working with a MC who knew of your affair before he did?

Did your IC advise you to stop the affair immediately and confess to your BS? Cuz if those didn't happen, then I, personally, would feel that the MC was a party to the affair.

Yes, I get that they can't tell, etc., but it's just another layer on the shit sandwich the BS has been served.

No, our MC was my BS IC. So he was seeing her just before he went to the hospital and we've been seeing her ever since. She is familiar with his issues, not mine. However she did ask me for NC and for us both to agree to work on the marriage together. the affair itself was over at that point.

What does he say or do when the affair comes up in MC? What does he do when you bring it up? In what other ways do you feel like his hesitancy to bring the affair up has impacted your marriage? Im a WS and one of the things that i have to continue to work on in my efforts towards R is to bring up the A. I have done well in discussing it when my BS brings it up, but it is still an area that needs improvement for me to bring it up unprompted. I know that my motivations are that when things are going well between me and BS that I don't want to spoil it by bring up the A. But I also realize this is faulty thinking and I need to bring it up on my own. And by doing that I will help my BS to know that I am not rug sweeping what happened.

BS here. This apparently is not advocated for alot but I'm going to say it. You REALLY need to find a good counselor who can act as both MC and IC for BOTH OF YOU. There is the adultery and then there are the marriage problems that existed before and after the adultery. No, you cannot blame your spouse for the adultery for not being the best husband to you BUT there are things that must be addressed in the marriage both adultery and problems or else you both are ripe for repeating past mistakes. A good counselor can get from each of you the most pressing issues and in MC can help teach you both to communicate. The entire problem in almost every relationship deals with communication.

It won't be easy to find a good MC/IC as one person but they're out there, we found 2 of them. One at the place we were living and another after our move to get my spouse from her situation with men.

In my opinion, a good counselor will identify if you both want to move forward with your relationship and then will focus the discussions towards that end rather than just letting you two vent. Yes there is a place for venting in counseling but the counselor is supposed to be there to help me change or focus my way of thinking and not just there to let me tell them how bad my childhood was and that's why I'm so @#$# up today. Hope I'm not hurting too many toes but this is great stuff!!!

Our MC/IC met with us together as a couple to see where we were regarding our relationship. Then met with us individually for several months. He let me vent and that's all I did till he asked me one day if I wanted to be in a relationship where I didn't have to vent. He said he wad gotten my WW to open up and he'd like to get us moving forward rather than being stuck on past hurts. He asked me if I was done the grieving process or if I wanted to move forward. He told me his goals for our counseling and helped me to see milestones and see that us as a couple were reaching milestones... making real progress.

Too many counselors were willing to push pills or just soak your time letting you do nothing but vent for years on end and I'm glad we found the counselor we were with.

One other thing, he told me not to touch meds. Mind you he asked me alot of mental health questions early on and knew my state of thinking. He reminded me that pre d-day I was otherwise healthy mentally. He said the behaviors and emotions I felt were NORMAL and that normal people don't need mind altering meds to buffer them from reality. He said the purpose of the meds was to take someone who already had a chemical imbalance to balance them. He said he wouldn't let me use meds as a "psychological alcohol" buffering me from facing the emotions of reality. I'm sure some would get him to loose his license for his approach because it certainly was unorthodox from the pill pushers and money sponges but my wife and I are very thankful for him.

I hope you and your BH will learn to communicate with each other and have better lives together.

BH here. I would recommend that you just leave this alone. First, you can't help him unless he wants it. Second, he has to process this - or not - on his own. I know codependency and the overwhelming need to keep family life as "normal" as possible no matter the price. This is the world he has lived in for most of his life. This is his issue to deal with at his own rate and he'll probably never recover to the extent that you want him to. It's like you think if he truly processes this, forgives you and finds peace then you will be absolved of your guilt. It doesn't work like that - you are responsible for your own emotional health and your guilt is your problem.

I think you should consider that what you have now is pretty much as good as it's going to get. The price of infidelity is high and, for most, is a debt never completely settled.