SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

VE, you're missing the point. It's not about making your miserable, or isolating you, or punishing you. In fact, it's not about you at all. I realize that someone as remarkably arrogant and self-absorbed as you probably has difficulty with that concept, but maybe one day you'll get there.

If my husband cheated on me, my reaction wouldn't have been nearly so extreme.

With all due respect, you have no idea what you would do.

With that being said, my wife has worked her tail off. We are happily in R, thank you very much.

That doesn't mean it doesn't still piss me off to this day.

I've said it from day one, drop your defenses here.

We only have the best intentions. Many of us can see the accident up ahead that you can't.

I also come back here to pay it forward. This site and the nearly lifelong bonds I've made here are invaluable to me.

You remind me of a 2 year old. A 2 year old child hasn't quite got the grasp of empathy.

My suggestion, only a suggestion, is to just listen. Read and reread the post(s) that offended you. Think long and hard to yourself as to why they've offended you.

Many of us question your friend and your sister's involvement because they didn't do the right thing. The right thing would've been to either out you to your husband or try and convince you to do the right thing by being honest with him.

This isn't a "pile on" VE session.

We just really want to wake you up!

[This message edited by Wool94 at 1:03 PM, May 16th (Thursday)]

I'm going to add to my post here.

Much like myself, you need people in your life who will call you out on your BS.

I've got brothers in Christ who will not hesitate to tell me when I'm doing something wrong. These same brothers won't hesitate to help me in any way necessary. I'm the same way with them.

If your sister or friend aren't those kinds of people, maybe it's time to find those kind of people.

Posting as a BS; VE, to change the subject what does your life like on a day to day basis? Are you taking the time to talk to your BH about the affair, taking the initiative will be appreciated by your husband.

Has your husband indicated any activity that would help him heal? Remember you need to take care of your own healing too through all of this.

in some bizarre attempt to isolate me

need to make me miserable to prove my love for him

I have never seen anyone so completely and utterly miss the point.

You are still all about YOU.

Its not about you.

Its about what you are willing to offer to do FOR your marriage and your BH's healing.

If his pride can't handle that,

True wayward thinking, drop someone into a shitty situation then blame them if they don't do what you want them to.

So he really has no say on that issue

An arrogant attitude like that, after having an affair, will result in;

A shell of a husband, a dogsbody trying to do the right thing but being destroyed on the inside.

OR

a divorce.

But no worries right? it'll be his fault...…

The only person you ever really have to live with is yourself. Once you stop caring about yourself you have given up to depression. I am still part of this relationship and my happiness is still important.

As for empathy, it is not lacking empathy to recognize scenarios in which a separation is the best thing for BOTH of us. I do not have a false sense of pride telling me that I need to control the outcomes. There certainly are things I would not voluntarily live with, some have been identified in great detail.

As for our day to day life, we are not at each other's throats. Or even overly distant. I've had a rough couple days since we had the extended talk. I've taken a few days off work, but I will be fine. I went to yoga last night and am going to go for a walk in a bit. We even had sex last night. I encourage him to talk and have not lashed out at him. I can't help getting emotional, I'm an emotional person. I'm probably spending too much time here and reading too much about infidelity in general, but it is what it is.

It's hard to stress how much it took out of me to have that talk with him. My muscles wouldn't move the next day. But we will get through this. We still enjoy each other's company, plan for the future and speak in the long term. I don't expect him to ever like that another man touched me in that way, but he does have to come to terms with it.

All the cards are on the table and he knows, in every gory detail mind you, exactly what happened and how it happened. That is fair and he gets to make his decision in full knowledge. If that decision does not work for both of us then the marriage doesn't either. This is not blackmail. So far, he has handled as well as can be expected. If it's all an act and he really has actually stopped loving me, the only empathetic response would be to file for divorce. Not start looking for enemies of the marriage and all sorts of other nonsense that would have nothing to do with anything.

What concerns me about your post is that you seem to feel that your work is done. "He knows what happened; now it's up to him to either forgive me or divorce me. It is what it is, and it's not reasonable to expect me to live in guilt or depression about it."

In most cases on SI, I think this attitude would indeed, more likely than not, result in divorce. It doesn't seem like that prospect especially disturbs you, though. You devote far more writing time to what you won't or wouldn't accept than to your husband's suffering.

The statement that breaking marriage vows and having sex with another person is less offensive and traumatizing than breaking a prom date... that simply leaves me speechless.

VioletElle - You are not listening. You are choosing to fall into the trap that many of us WS's fall into. The "I did a horrible thing. There, I admitted it. Do not give me consequences for my shitty behaviour, because if you do, I will be angry at you for making me uncomfortable."

This attitude will not solve anything. Your BS may be complacent now, but that doesn't last very long. Sooner or later, you will see the REAL damage you have done to your relationship. You don't see it now because it's clear in your posts you think your situation this early on is special. It may take years, but halfassing your recovery will come back to bite you in the long run.

Cutting people who were complacent in your affair, at your BH's request, should be a no brainer. My partner did not know other people knew of my A early. When I told him, he asked me to cut them out, and I did not hesitate. Only when those people apologized profusely to him and asked for his forgiveness, after we were well into R, did he allow them back into my life. He may have known them, but they owed him no loyalty. Still, they wanted him to understand that they were sorry for not stopping me from doing something truly stupid. They wanted to be friends of the marriage. This was before we D'd BTW, but the dynamic hasn't changed from then. They respect my relationship with my exH.

Through this time, I did not feel isolated or controlled. I had the choice, my friends or my partner. Answer was easy.

I could never imagine how painful it would be for my partner to mingle with people who knew about my A and supported it. I would never want him to have an inkling of further humiliation. At least in my case, my friends were brazen enough to want to ease the tension.

You see the sentiment of "Enemies of the marriage" as being nonsense. I see you as being selfish.

[This message edited by MrsSouthAfrica at 4:05 PM, May 16th (Thursday)]

“If my husband cheated on me, my reaction wouldn’t have been nearly so extreme.”

Of course not, seeing that you are still very much in wayward thinking mode. For you to experience what we BS have experienced and are still experiencing, you would need to love your husband as much as he loves you. And the simple fact that you had an affair is an indication that you may not have loved your husband as much as he does love you ... for the moment.

Talking of reconciliation is far too early for him and for you. Well, for you, it is evident that this reconciliation must be on your terms and tough whether he accepts them or not. That is is not what a BS or a remorseful WS would deem reconciliation. As for your husband, he will be for many months to come in trauma recovery. Once he’s gone through all the stages an infidelity trauma survivor goes through, then he will think of reconciliation. Maybe or maybe not.

“I don’t expect him to ever like that another man touched me in that way, but he does have to come to terms with it.”

A remorseful WS would have written: “And I do hope with all my heart that he will one day be able not to suffer from the terrible pain I have caused him.” No, what you wrote was in the same vein as the rest: he has to come to terms with it, his problem, not mine!

You should try Kleinian psychotherapy: it allows people to move from the paranoid-schizoid position (the Freudian anal stage) where you seem to be very much stuck, to the depressive stage, where they can learn and feel empathy. It is just a question of wanting to grow up or not.

Good luck.

I'm not saying he has to forgive me, but if we can't get there then we don't stay married. This isn't blackmail.

If we split he will be completely responsible for moving on as the world won't wait. If he stays bitter after that, well that's on him.

If he cheated on me, the first question I would ask myself is: Can I forgive him? If the answer was no, then there would be nothing left. Then I would figure out how to move on.

I've seen versions of this in several of your posts. I'm curious what you think "forgive" looks and sounds like. From your posts, it seems like you expect he will wake up one day, fairly soon, and say something like: "VE, I understand what you've done, I love you, and I forgive you. Let's live happily ever after." And then the subject of the A will never come up again.

Everybody heals differently. This could be a possibility in your marriage. I don't know your BH.

If he did that, it would make him highly unusual. Unlike most other men. The experience here is that a scenario along those lines is unrealistic. For most BH's, a WW's A is a trauma. Imagine that, in his sleep, you decided one night to smash his kneecap with a sledgehammer, just because you were feeling juvenile and selfish. He is going to walk with a limp, for life. He will ache on cold wet days. Every time he is slowed down by his limp, or he sits with his knee aching, he will be reminded that you are the one who did it.

I don't know how to tell him to leave it in the past.

That is from your first post. It's highly unlikely this will ever happen.

For most couples here, the A remains a permanent presence in their marriage much like that smashed knee would. Your BH has a real trauma. It can heal, but he will not likely ever be "whole" in the sense of being his old self again. It's far more likely the A will remain a permanent presence in your marriage.

Forgiveness is generally viewed as the act of deciding you no longer want revenge. If you two pursue R, you may get your forgiveness. You may rebuild a love and trust. But experience here is that for most people, this takes years of hard work, and the new marriage looks and feels different than the old.

As to your sister, I think I was overly harsh in my last post. However, consider that every time your BH sees your sister going forward, he will know that, in real time, she was aware that you were sleeping with another man behind his back, making him an unwitting cuckold. Most men would feel humiliated by this, and betrayed that she didn't tell him. He may imagine the two of you snickering behind his back about this. He will at the very least understand fully that he rates, in her eyes, a very low second behind you, that she would rather participate in you cheating on him and keeping it secret than telling him. You don't need to banish her from your life, but your marriage will be difficult if you pretend that everything can be okay between your BH and your sister going forward.

A heartfelt apology from her to him might go a long way. "Mr. VE, I'm sorry I let this go on without saying anything, but she is my sister and she asked me to keep this in confidence and I had no choice but to do that. I love you as a brother-in-law and I want you to know that I am here if you need somebody to talk to." Something like that. Put the blame on you. Just a suggestion.

The way you describe your BH in your first post, he sounds extremely passive. What he is doing is what is called the "pick me dance" here on SI. Men like that are prone to rugsweep their trauma from the A. This is as much or more a danger to you than it is to him. If he stops talking and obsessing about the A any time in the near future, you should actually worry. He is internalizing all of that trauma and letting it build. It will become poison in your marriage.

One more suggestion. I think the best thing you could read right now is "How To Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair" by Linda MacDonald. I know others have recommended it. If you actually want your BH to heal, it will give you a lot of insight into what that looks like.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 3:08 PM, May 16th (Thursday)]

VioletElle

This will likely be the last post on this as it's really clear that few comments are coming from anyone who actually reconciled and moved on in life.

Ok, I’ll bite. My wife and I have been on SI for going on 9 years now. I would call us successfully reconciled and I can happily assert that our relationship now is better and stronger than it has been at any other point in our 23 marriage. I don’t know if that qualifies as “moving on with life” in your book, but I’ll go ahead and assume to take it as such. So there you go, my bonafides, hopefully that qualifies me to give you advice.

I think that in this discussion with regards to the situation with your sister and your BFF you are massively missing the point that most posters are trying to make. Try and put down the defensiveness and knee jerk reactions for a moment and realize that nobody here is trying to separate you from your support network. Frankly I could not give two shakes of piss wether you have those people in your life or not. I don’t know them, I don’t know you, I don’t know your BH. I have zero investment in how you structure your social life. Honestly matters not one whit to me.

Further more, I for one do not necessarily think that you need to cut these people out of your life. What I do think you need to do though, is actually empathize enough to be able to see that there is likely going to be an issue with regards to them going forward.. The problem that I think most posters are seeing here is your inability to stop defending your position enough to even see the problem.

Statements like these:

If he's looking to be the Josef Stalin of matrimony then it wouldn't be with me.

If I even thought he was capable of thinking that way, the next words he heard from me would be from a divorce attorney

act like a controlling psychopath.

Are knee jerk, defensive, and demonstrate a lack of empathy that is frankly alarming. You are so quick to squash even the idea that you might need to alter your relationships with these people that you are not even taking even the briefest moment to consider why having these people in your life might eventually pose a problem for your BH.

You keep insisting that you have empathy and yet, despite the fact that BH after BH has tried to tell you that this could be an issue, I have not seen you ask a single question regarding why they think that might be so. Perhaps, if you could understand it, you and your BH might be better equipped to navigate some solution other than “they are out of your life” vs “learn to live with it or we get a divorce” should this issue actually come up in the future.

So, if you can be open to it I’ll try and give you a perspective from a BH that has “moved on in life” as you put it.

In the first year of our R I was pretty well obsessed with discovering exactly who had known about my wife’s affair. Thing is she was secretive not only with me but with everyone when it came to her affair. She had told almost no one when it was going on. But I had a very difficult time believing that. I was extremely suspicious that lots of people had known. I figured her mom must have know, her best friend must have known, her aunt (who she had used as a cover story once) must have known. It seemed inconceivable to me that she wouldn’t have shared this major aspect of her life with them. And this suspicion that they knew the whole time?

That shit ate at me.

Cause, you see, I had interacted with them often during that time. Everyone all getting along nicely and everybody friendly. And the idea of these people possibly knowing while spending time with me, embracing me, breaking bread with me, being guests in my home.... All while harboring a the secret that my wife was fucking my friend behind my back? The very thought of that was literally like a knife in my chest. I cannot stress this enough: It was like a physical pain in my chest.

The fucking humiliation of that, the betrayal of that, the actual literal shredding of what I had perceived to be the reality of my life and my relationships with these people at the time.?

It is almost impossible to impart what that feels like to anyone who hasn’t been there.

And your husband has actually given you a window into the fact that he is suffering the early stages of some of those feelings already:

He is too embarrassed to talk to anyone else and has made me swear to never let anyone know about it.

Can you not read your own words there and see that, retroactively, you have already failed at this request? Just because it already happened and it’s too late to undo it doesn’t change the fact that it is going to need to be addressed at some point if you are wanting to stay married to him and keep these people in your life? Every time these people are around he is likely to feel uncomfortable and embarrassed and separate and secondary and terribly, terribly awkward.

And if you give even the slightest little fuck about his happiness at all then that should really, really concern you.

Does that mean you have to cut those people out of your life? Not necessarily (although that would be the least complicated solution). But acting as though the very idea that he might have a problem with them is unreasonable is lacking in empathy to a degree that is, as. I said before, alarming... bordering on cruel.

Josef Stalin of matrimony

controlling psychopath.

some bizarre attempt to isolate me,

Your words used to hypothetically describe your husband, who is in an unspeakable amount of pain, pain caused by you and you alone.

Those words are the reason that people are having a hard time letting this issue go. Not because any of us have any damn stake in your social life. All that’s anyone here is trying to do is minimize future pain for the both of you. But sentiments like the ones you expressed above indicate a future full of pain for you both..

Take some time and really think about that. Try and understand and empathize with why this is likely to become an issue in your effort to Reconcile. Express that understanding and empathy to your husband, without prompting. And then maybe, just maybe, the two of you can work together to figure out a plan for healing that particular damage that doesn’t have to involve cutting important people out of your life.

Or, just throw down a bunch of absolute nonnegotiable ultimatums, see how that work out for you. It might, everyone is different. But my 9 years of reading here would lead me to say that would make you guys outliers in the most extreme sense.

Best of luck,

HT

I think that VE is looking for R along similar lines as Shadowfax offered to Pippen. Unfortunately, for VE, this is not the standard blueprint for R, at least for members here (WS and BS both).

SI waywards and betrayeds tend to belong to the school of hard knocks and hard work which (hopefully) leads lasting R.

You are speaking in absolutes. A. LOT. What compromises would you be willing to make for R? All M require negotiation and compromise. What doesn't result in an immediate D ?

The thing is you made a choice that impacted your H life, without his input, knowing full well he never would agree with it. That was your choice, not both your choices. From now on all of them are both your choices ? What about just his choices? Is there any space where things like amends and atonement would be part of your R ?

Your H blames himself because you refuse to change that narrative. If the very apparent defensiveness is your go to coping mechanism with him too then, yeah, that is why.

If you really do own it, then act like it. Align your actions with your words.

For the record, Shadowfax and I are 14 months from the first DDay, 10 months from the last, 5 months from last of the trickle truth, the fog has cleared but only just, and I would not represent our story as final by any means. Gotta have a tough conversation tonight, in fact. I encourage him to post for many reasons but not because I think it's the final story.

Edit: misspelled "tough" as "touch" and that really was an important edit to make

[This message edited by Pippin at 5:00 PM, May 16th (Thursday)]

To me this reads like an exit affair. You are expanding your blame shifting to include posters who are offering sound, tried and true, good advice. You post threats to leave your husband as if the folks here were invested in that outcome. You have made it quite clear that if your BH should stray one iota from your view on “reconciliation”, you will drop him like a hot rock. Then in your mind, he will be to blame. Simply absurd.

[This message edited by EarsEyesTongue at 5:52 PM, May 16th (Thursday)]

Came back to add to my post as I re-read it and realised it sounded that I thought Pippen and her BH were not going to last. That was not my intention, what I was meaning to say was there is more than one path to reconciling your marriage.

Ps hi Pippen, saw you posted just before me

The point about the "enemies of my marriage" has nothing to do with a sense of justice or what anyone might think is fair. It's simple really, if he asked me to do anything like that, I simply wouldn't be attracted to him. It would essentially be saying that he could not handle what I did and I would not blame him. He would have every right to feel that way. But the only reason I would have left for wanting to be with him is guilt and there is no chance of that working out.

I would not get into a situation where he feels like I ruined his life and now he gets to take stuff away from me to prove I'd kiss his feet.

The difference I created would be irreconcilable at that point. This is not blackmail as I have not threatened him with it. Like I said, there would be no discussion on the point if he were to show he is capable of that.

It's not just my sister, it's my nieces, upsetting my parents and basically making a drama out of his discomfort. If that discomfort is too much for that, then he doesn't have to see them, but we would not longer be married. This is an uncompromisable point.

minimize future pain for the both of you.

If it were that serious then a divorce would be the only way to minimize the pain.

I have given him zero ultimatums to this point. I respect his feelings in regard to what happened.

Does that mean you have to cut those people out of your life? Not necessarily (although that would be the least complicated solution). But acting as though the very idea that he might have a problem with them is unreasonable is lacking in empathy to a degree that is, as. I said before, alarming... bordering on cruel.

It really isn't lacking empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand another person's feeling without their frame of reference. I would understand his feelings, that doesn't mean I would stay in a loveless marriage for them. If he had feelings that extreme and made this an issue all the empathy in the world wouldn't make me want to be married to him. That could be lacking sympathy, but not empathy. And it certainly wouldn't be engaging in a hopeless attempt to save something I would no longer be invested in. Trying to do that would be cruel.

I only person responsible for my affair is me. If he needed to blame shift that to other people in my life while keeping me in his life, how would that work? It wouldn't. It would just show that he can't get over it. I would be completely understanding of that point. Far more so than most anyone here.

The narrative is that I cheated, it was my fault and I'm sorry. I'm want to be better in the future. If he starts punching walls, scaring the children or making tyrannical demands then the damage was too much. This does not mean I am not accepting of his feelings. I'm not sure where anyone gets that from.

The divorce would be my fault. Sure it would, but my life wouldn't be over. I would be sad about it, perhaps even depressed for a while, but I would get over it. The outcome to this is not bound to wrapped up in tit for tat justice. He does have a voice in this relationship and I respect his right to use it, but I have one too.

Guilt and feeling sorry are not reasons to stay married. I don't want him to consider me blameless, that is what bothers me the most. He can lay the blame at my feet and feel secure that he did not cause this without acting paranoid and seeking a pound of flesh.

Everyone has terms in a relationship. Some of us have different values and terms, but we all have them. My family is off limits.

[This message edited by VioletElle at 7:02 PM, May 16th (Thursday)]

You have no idea how much he is sacrificing. For you. Because he loves you. Because he doesn't want to give up 50% of his time with his children.

What sacrifices are you making for him?

What are you doing to become a safe partner for him?

What ate you doing to make him feel loved? Secure?

[This message edited by HellFire at 7:09 PM, May 16th (Thursday)]

What are you doing to become a safe partner for him?

What ate you doing to make him feel loved? Secure?

Look I get all that, but attempting to cut certain people out of my life would be a demand that wouldn't do anyone any good. It really isn't something that I couldn't love him after if he requested it. Therefore the result, even if I cut them out, would not be good.

As for what I am doing, I'm being open and honest. I'm working on some of the sexual issues we have, and that's not to be brushed off as unimportant, it's a big deal to him. And I'm willing to be his partner and to share in life, in the successes of our children and in growing old together.

Just not willing to be his serf. That would never work. And I'm not willing to wallow in misery until that old age.

If I did not love him, I wouldn't have told him anything. I would have simply divorced him. In Canada you don't really need a reason and infidelity is not considered in the proceedings. The government isn't interested in it. He knows me well enough to know this much. He really doesn't doubt that I love him. And he's right.

Nowhere in my post did I mention your sister,your friend, or your refusal to distance yourself from them.