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I'm eager for anyone, BS/WS to help me find the words to communicate this.

My wife wants to know why it's so bad to want to shut the door on the past and not think about it. She knows she compartmentalizes. It's a survival mechanism from youth. Wants to know why this isn't a healthy mechanism.

She doesn't refuse to talk about it. She even took me to affair related places this weekend to fill in some gaps. She accepts that I say I find acceptance easier with details.

She seems impatient with the process. It's been 2 years. She has recently confessed an EA. She accepts that her messed up thinking let her file that away as not cheating since they never had physical contact.

She says that there is the old her and the new her and she is confused that I think she needs to integrate these two parts into one whole.

So, maybe I'm the one that needs a new/better perspective.

But BS or WS - am I making sense that the compartmentalizing is an unhealthy mechanism?

If so, how have you described it that makes sense to your WS?

Or WS, when and how did you come to understand this?

I think she's asking from a place of honesty and transparency - that she doesn't get it.

I'll fill in other details if you need clarification. Trying to keep this opening post brief

I am 15 months out from one affair that lasted two months. I struggle with this as well. I can see it. But I am not sure what to do with it yet.

I think that as a wayward some of my coping in life has been placing an over importance on positivity and good feelings. My coping growing up was to escape my household situation with being overly bouyant and joyful. I hid in those feelings. And I think to some degree having a happy healthy family for me was my way of breaking the cycle of my family’s dysfunction. I took a lot of pride in being a good wife and a good person.

Rectifying that image of myself and then taking the affair into consideration, it’s hard not to want to cling to “I am a good person who did a bad thing” mentality. And truth be told at this point in my journey I would be very happy to throw the memory out and move on from it.

The other part of me knows that there was an unhealthy house of cards inside of me that would have always allowed me to cope in an unhealthy way. I would have drank more but I watched my dad do it growing up. Drugs would have been an option, but my mom scared me of them. In other words, esacaping as a coping mechanism is part of me. I am trying to gain courage by continuing to show up, be vulnerable let myself be seen for all my flaws and strengths. It takes practice.

The urge to rugsweep as a wayward I think would always exist to a certain extent. Because we do place such value on happiness. My h is getting better and keeps seeming to be wanting to put it behind us. I recognize that we can’t. I still have to reconcile all of this being me and framing it in a way that is honest but that I can move on from.

I don’t think I have answered your question but maybe there is something there to grasp. Seems like to me that your ww would like to still hide in happiness. I just wanted to validate you are right she needs to reconcile all of it without hiding from it or you will keep finding yourselves in this boat. Her way didn’t work before or you wouldn’t have 4 ddays. I will be interested if someone further in the work has a good answer because personally I am thinking about this aspect a lot currently.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:07 PM, October 8th (Monday)]

Hello, WW here. First, I'm truly sorry your living through a betrayal and hope that you and your WS find your way through a successful reconciliation.

Please note that I am in way in any position to speak for your WW (or any other person) and can only offer how, in these early months of discovery, I have come to interpret my own compartmentalization. Compartmentalization may be a useful tool, it allows me to focus on what I should when I should. But for me, it was so well practiced, the opposite applied, meaning I could also avoid focusing on the what and when. I shut out (my M) so successfully that I was able to justify that the path I was on didn't break boundaries. I wasn't exchanging anything lewd or "intimate" with OM, we were "just friends" until it became a ONS.

The issue with my compartmentalization was that I no longer had to process what needed to be processed (my feelings, my shortcomings, my unhealthy needs for validation and whatever else), I just boxed it up, and looked for external distractions or gratifications. The "friendship" being one of them. Is this type of thought process and compartmentalization that contributed your WW ability to justify and bend boundaries? In my hopes to recover, I am leaving no stone unturned. It is important, IMO, to explore every possible avenue to determine my whys, even if it turns out to be an noncontributing factor, in order to be a safe person for our loved ones.

[This message edited by destroyedwayward at 4:14 PM, October 8th (Monday)]

Thank you ladies for taking time to respond.

hikingout -

I think that need to avoid bad feelings is very present as is the desire to feel the good feels. Given what I know of the family, I can see how this could become a coping mechanism. There was so much negative and not much positive from the parents.

And you're right. Her old ways didn't end up working out for her.

destroyedwayward -

I agree that compartmentalizing has utility. I'm a first responder. Sometimes I compartmentalize in order to focus on the emergency before me for my safety and the outcome of my patient.

But even then, if the call turns ugly, we de-compartmentalize it on purpose as a crew to process the emotions of it.

And I think you have accurately described the situation with my wife. What she has described is very much inline with that.

I do think she may not naturally move to processing and acceptance, but habitually moves toward boxing it up and distracting herself.

jlv

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”

I used to think that FOO issues really had no place i think r infidelity discussion. Hey, it’s in my past so don’t worry about it. Be forward looking, the past is in our rear view so lefts keep it that way.

Now when I think about it, I liken it to paving a road with a questionable base. Sure, you coat it with a new layer of blacktop and it looks great. The ride is nice and smooth, everything is wonderful.

Fairly quickly, the road starts to crack. Over time they get bigger until chunks of pavement come out. Before you know it, the whole damn thing comes tumbling down.

But had the base been suffiently repair, the road would last a very long time and is easily maintained. I get this might be a bit of a silly comparison, but I’m sure you get where I’m coming from. She needs to understand why she did what she did, otherwise....

That's a good word picture FF.

Thing is I like the old philosophical adages:

The unexamined life is not worth living

I think, therefor I am

My wife can demonstrate a pretty superficial attitude in regards to self thought, self awareness. She's smart, but lives in the moment. That's scary because I know what a single moment in time can lead to for her

Her initial whys were very superficial. She didn't move much past the surface.

It's almost like laying asphalt on an open field with no preparation, just asphalt.

Her fear is that I'm just trying to change her. In some ways that's accurate. I'd love to see wayward ways changed. But she doesn't see introspection as a tool for her to use.

For now she's doing it, and she is willing, but she's not self motivated. She's only doing it because I asked for it.

She's only doing it because I asked for it.

Unfortunately my WS is also this way. I believe he is a good compartmentalizer because he was able to carry on a 3 year A continuing well past the first D-Day.

My wife wants to know why it's so bad to want to shut the door on the past and not think about it.

You guys can't really shut that door yet because of this...

She has recently confessed an EA.

And that kinda sets your clock to healing back to day 1 I'm so sorry.

Has she ever been in any IC?

Yeah that was a sticking point last week. The EA.

We were at a retreat for my work. Quite a few folks know about it. Short story - I over heard her tell a lady she didn't know why I was stuck since it's been two years. I had to go over with her that a recent DDay means going back and doing early recovery work. She was minimizing to this woman.

She doesn't like it when I point that out as wayward behavior. For her, wayward means the act of sex of some sort. For me, wayward behavior continues at least until the last lie is revealed.

She did IC for about a year. Then we did some online courses with Affair Recovery. And she stopped IC since the course work plus work was time consuming.

I have been hinting, implying, outright asking for her to go to IC again.

A good friend at the retreat told me he thought we were at a point where we both needed to return to IC or take a work sabbatical and get into a program.

Shared that with her. She will agree to IC if I go - which I'm good with, making an appointment this week.

She listed off what I need to work on

1. Learning to live without all of the details

All of her infidelity was committed 20 years ago. I just found out about half of the APs and the unsanitized, unminimized version of the other half 2 years ago and now 1 month ago.

I have more details than some want at all. I'm a detail oriented person and want lots of detail. It has helped me where it might hurt someone else. But I know the total of the minimum amount SI folks say you need to heal.

She says she can't remember some things. But these details are usually not major items - except the Oops, forgot an EA. But again, for her no sex means no affair. She is more accepting of EAs being "real affairs" - not wanting to diminish anyone's pain, she just has had an unhealthy way of seeing it.

2. Letting go of the past and coming to acceptance.

As long as this isn't rugsweeping, but genuine acceptance, I think I do need this help

3. Dreaming a new dream

I'm a romantic. Wanted a romantic life with a true love that wasn't shot full of infidelity and years of lies. That was my dream. She asked if I can dream a new dream. Not so far.

She also doesn't like it that I won't renew vows. I won't celebrate Valentines (DDay 1), or anniversary. She thinks I can't see how I could have that dream now, with the new her.

Thing is, she can't uncheat. And I can't have a marriage free from infidelity entirely if I stay married to her.

Wow, this is cathartic.

Thanks for responding to me and asking a few things so I can get that catharsis.

With 6 APs and 4 DDays it is frankly cruel to be impatient with your process of healing. Is she in therapy? Compartmentalization is something most therapists can expound at length upon.

I am of a similar mind. I approached this knowing it was going to be a multi year investment with no guarantee of R or D.

She is not in therapy again yet. She is supposed to be getting it set up this week. Getting back into IC is a condition for continued recovery work. A new old boundary.

Well, I'm booked for IC to begin again for me.

I can't make her go to IC. Don't want to make her do anything. I want to be a partner and not a parent.

So, back to IC. IC is one I've seen before for non infidelity things. Last IC for infidelity, she was okay, but I like the method of the one I see next week.

Something I may need to work on is accepting that there are aspects of this she may never get. She's willing to talk; willing to dig into the whys, but only because I ask it.

I need to decide if that's good enough

Your posts say that you have certain requirements for R that your W won't fulfill, and she has some requirements that you won't fulfill.

Why not shake hands and go your separate ways?

I do not see how you can solve the conflict between your desire (which seems absolutely right to me) for details and her refusal to give them to you (which makes her a lousy candidate for R, IMO).

I see both R and D as legitimate. I prefer R but it's not mandatory.

I may have misrepresented her. While she intentionally kept things from me for years, I do not believe she is refusing to give details. At least, what she says is she wants to give everything she can, but she doesn't remember.

I am more than okay with setting boundaries. I think her actions have shown a willingness to give me the details she has. The two she is fuzziest on are from the summer of 1992.

I think the issue may be in me. Not trying to take any blame. What I mean is that I have a lot of detail. I'm wondering if I'm getting something out of focusing on what I don't have - something that lets me stay in pain or punish her or whatever.

I know AP names, duration of affairs, marital status, guesstimates of occurrence of sex (believable #s), where the sex occurred, where they met, where the APs lived, what movie she watched on a date with AP 2, physical descriptions, and some more. Trying to be vague to avoid triggering anyone.

One hangup is she doesn't remember introducing me to AP 2 by phone. And then there's hundreds of details.

She has been slow on her why's and it takes a lot of effort to work with her. We go over them weekly in small pieces as she is not introspective. Maybe 30 minutes.

We've talked some too. She is triggering and flooding about the coming silver anniversary. We've been saving for a while to go to a very nice resort. She wants to celebrate the anniversary. I don't. She's been struggling. She has vented. She has shown impatience.

She's also shown a lot of growth.

It sounds like I'm defending her, so I probably am. But I see your post as a good topic for IC to explore if there is any common ground on these needs and can we reach that ground, and if not, what's next.

Thanks sisson. I'll be mulling this over and it's going in my notebook of things to discuss with my IC.

Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

We've talked some too. She is triggering and flooding about the coming silver anniversary. We've been saving for a while to go to a very nice resort. She wants to celebrate the anniversary. I don't. She's been struggling. She has vented. She has shown impatience.

Take that money you have saved and put it in a money market account. Tell her the anniversary is off because the marriage itself is on hold. If she continues to trickle truth you, or you find out any more indescretions she has failed to disclose, that anniversary money goes to a lawyer's retainer.

This post changed to me as more information got added. I don't even think that my response made sense with what you were asking now. I thought the question was about how to reconcile the things that she did with the image she has of herself. I know it's our tendency to still try and hold on to the image of good person, good wife, good mother, good employee, etc..but that doesn't jive with what I have done.

Instead, it sounds like you have on your hands something different, and something I don't think I am even able to provide insight on. She isn't introspective, so you are kind of feeding her assignments so that she can make progress. And the A's span from 92 until when? 2016? Do you suspect when it's happening? Do you think she is a SA? I am sorry, I really thought the question was something else.

APs 1-3 were '91-'92. Confessed Feb 14 '94 because a mutual friend threatened to out her. I suspected one of these, but listened to sweet sounding lies.

AP 4 was weeks after that first DDay. Well, there was some physical contact (kiss) a few months before.

AP4 was confessed Sep 1 '16 after 6 months of IC

AP 5 was two almost ONSs except it happened twice about a year apart 97-98- confessed almost immediately.

She has not acted out sexually since. This was part of the polygraph. She eagerly agreed to the poly and paid for it. When she realized I had doubts about paternity given the timeline and her poor memory for dates and details, she gave all the kids a DNA test. She paid for it and told the oldest 2 that I deserved the same certainty she had. We had discussed the issue early on, age appropriate because I was facing some possible work changes as a result of this situation

AP 6 was an EA that she didn't think much about as there was no physical contact. Sexually explicit letters shared in 2000-2001. Confessed Sep 2 '18. She claims she told me within a few days of remembering it. This fits with what she has revealed about her values and personality then

She sees that as her old self. All the WW activity ceased when she stopped having sex.

My perception is that it continues until the last lie is ended and truth given.

SA, I don't think so and her IC has given no indication of it. We had some joint sessions.

She's a CSA survivor. Her mother is brutally abusive emotionally. I know this first hand and have seen in play out in my MIL's actions towards my daughter. Her dad is a WH. We limit contact with them to public places to minimize the emotional outbursts.

Compartmentalization and not thinking about bad things are how she survived. But she never thrived.

Contemplating the past or thinking about herself and her inner world are new to her.

She experienced an epiphany when our daughter was born in 98. Experienced maternal love. She became a Christian just after the letter writing and when our daughter was young.

She stopped acting out, but she sanitized and minimized what she confessed and hid two APs entirely.

I'm complicit in rugsweeping. I was young and had no idea how to handle it. After finding religion, we Jesus-swept it in the name of forgiveness, but it was empty and not really based on regret or remorse of healing. Her revealing more in my 40s, and I had a much different response.

I want to be a healthy person in a healthy marriage to a healthy person. But only one of those do I really have control over.

I neither want to rugsweep nor punish.

And this issue of needed to kind of lead her by the hand or spoon feed her is a good illustration. How long that should happen before she gets it? I don't know. I am committed to the 2-5 year process. I'm counting from Sept 16 because while it may be naive, the EA I really believe she hadn't thought of due to compartmentalizing and because for her infidelity is always physical.

I hope this illustrates for some folks the additional complexities of finding out years later. And rugsweeping until years later. We've got both.

Any way, that's a lot to dump out in a single post. Trying to be thorough because I want to do the right thing. I want to be fair to me, and to her. I want my boundaries and conditions for R to be rational and restorative to me without making them punitive for no reason except punishment.

I appreciate everyone spending time responding. I am contemplating it all

Yeah, I definitely didn't know what you were asking or dealing with when I responded the first time. Apologies.

I will just say that I don't think it's a "new her" if she can not find empathy for you over the latest disclosure. I will give her some credit that she told you as soon as she remembered, that would be atypical behavior of a wayward. But, it leaves you in a place where you don't know where the next bomb will drop. It would be no wonder why you would be now seeking out to find out if there is anything else at all that you don't know.

I think her impatience about the trip being cancelled comes from some sort of childish thing. When our parents told us as children "If you just tell the truth you won't be in trouble" and so she feels like she remembered something, told you in the spirit of honesty but expected you to have some minimal reaction to it. Empathy. She lacks empathy. There have been many on the boards that talk about cultivating that. Maybe she can start there?

She lurks here and on another forum. She doesn't post much. Only posted a few times here. It was early in the process and when she didn't get a lot of interaction, she gave up.

On the other forum, she helps take couples through a 13 week program to unpack the essentials of the infidelity and learn some tools. We took the course and now she's led it 3 times.

As for empathy itself, I see her demonstrate it in other places. She finds it easy to empathize with children. She does pretty well with adults. Where she hangs up is the infidelity. When she empathizes, it hurts.

That said, when she took me to the apt AP 3 took her, we parked there and she shared what she was feeling. She didn't run from the pain.

Historically, she avoided pain at all costs and could be a real people pleaser. In conflict she prefers to run and withdraw.

Her parents are all sorts of messed up. She seems to mimic the norms of her parent's relationships, especially her mother who was her early model for a wife and mother. So she demonstrates some destructive habits, but these lessened dramatically when she confessed in 2016 and they have gotten better.

So it seems to me that the compartmentalizing and wanting to see herself as two distinct people (then and now) may well be her standard avoidance.

But these are things for her to figure out. And I likely need to spoon feed her less. That's now on my list to discuss with IC.

I think I have felt that I might be wrong about the opening post's question.

Am I wrong to still be asking for her to stop running? To stop hiding? To stop compartmentalizing.

I don't think so, but doing it is her responsibility.

Am I so worried about rugsweeping and compartmentalizing that I'm pushing too hard and dwelling on the past in unhealthy ways?

Maybe. I don't think so. But it's on the list for IC

Am I taking too much responsibility to lead her and prompt her to work on the past and whys?

Probably. In early recovery, I think the BS often has to lead and point and all that as the WS is not getting it and not owning it.

But now we're two years out/30 days out from the EA confession.

And you're right, I wonder every day now if there's going to be something else she remembers. She tried a hypnotist, recorded the appt. Nada. He said there's nothing more for her to get out unless she spontaneously remembers. I'm not even sure I believe in hypnotism

If there was a way to explain it better to her, that she might get why compartmentalizing is not healthy the way she's done it - then I wanted to know.

And I'm trying to decide if it's good enough, at least for now, that she digs at the whys but only because I asked and not because she sees it as healthy or beneficial to her and also for me.

[This message edited by jaynelovesvera at 3:21 PM, October 11th (Thursday)]

I honestly don't know what to tell you, things you describe are all positive things. Led a class about infidelity 3 times? You make as much of a picture of healthy as you do anything else.

You are reeling from this new bomb of information. You are not crazy to have a reaction to it. That's all I can say for certain.