SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Look, I'm a BS too, but this IS the wayward forum, and I don't think SI approves of wayward bashing here.

The OP came here for advice. She says she is hurting and in despair. My WH was VERY much in the same mindset after dday (and he STILL doesn't have the cajones to give me the A details, which OP did pretty quickly after her 1st post). 8 months after dday, I found him unconscious, hanging from a rope in the rafters of our garage. He died - literally - in my arms while I called 911. EMT worked on him for several minutes and were able to - miraculously - revive him. He's had a full recovery, but had I walked in on it 30 or 60 or 90 seconds later, I'd be a widow.

I say this because a WS that is in despair - no matter how "foggy" she may be, no matter how devoid of empathy the posts may appear, no matter - anything - is on the wayward forum and does not need to be shamed more than I suspect she is ashamed. It sure seems that the vitriol is counterproductive.

I didn't cheat for any one reason. It was my vanity, it was a mid-life crisis, it was bad timing and it was my weakness of character.

The problem is... what can you fix in that list to prevent this from happening again? Your husband would need that in order to feel secure. Your vanity, is it still there? Your weakness, what can you do to be stronger? Bad timing - well that doesn't help, bad timing will always be possible. Ditto for midlife crisis.

I think you could be doing a better job of trying to understand your husband's POV. You seem to look down on his reaction to the betrayal.

I thought I wouldn't care if my H cheated on me. Then it happened. I cared. A LOT. People aren't always good at predicting what they will care about. You like to think you would not be as devastated. You like to think things would be black-and-white, you'd either lose love and leave or keep it and stay. It doesn't happen like that, and I think you owe it to your husband to assume that you would react the way he is reacting if tables were turned.

I have to say the one thing that makes infidelity worse than it already is, is having a spouse who is uncomprehending and smug about the damage. It's not a good sign for reconciliation, unfortunately.

I've honestly never seen a more openly callous, selfish, uncaring WS on this site before.

I was thinking the same thing. After 18 months on SI and reading hundreds of threads........

VioletElle,

I believe you would be well served by listening to your BH and giving him all of the details. Do what he wants. Give up control to him. This is what you addressed in your first post on this thread.

Also, if you still have fond feelings of AP and your relationship/affair, he needs to know that as well. Since you mentioned that, it means you have far to go in your recovery as a couple.

But be honest with the man, let him have his control. You need to give up control of the outcome.

VE's total lack of empathy reminds me very much of my exWW, and makes me so glad I burned it all down on DDay. I've honestly never seen a more openly callous, selfish, uncaring WS on this site before. Even the foggiest ones usually express some concern about how their BS feels and what they can do to help, but this one is all about how she can make herself feel better and has made it very clear she's going to have R entirely her own terms and her BH can go to hell if he doesn't like it. Fortunately for her, she seems to have married a man with no spine who will let her have everything her way.

And now you’re insulting her husband? The person who you stated was the victim? This is going off the rails.

Honest question: Do you really want to help the OP or do you just want to troll this thread? If it’s the latter, that’s not a good look. Trolls typically lack strong backbones as well or they wouldn’t need to hit below the belt from their keyboard in an area that’s designed for others to express vulnerabilities.

I wonder if we can reboot here.

Your first post was not lacking in empathy. It was lacking in understanding of why your BH needed specific details of your affair (presumably sexual ones, though that's an assumption on my part). However, your stated reason for coming to SI was in fact worry over your BH internalizing blame for actions that you recognized as your own fault. You expressed guilt for the affair (which is why you ended it and came clean voluntarily), and you voiced a very typical wayward confusion over how you even got into it in the first place. Yes, it was exciting; yes, you found the guy attractive, but you know that's not really an explanation. That's why you wanted to do it, but it's not what actually enabled you to do it. You need help to start figuring out the difference.

You are also struggling because you had no idea of the magnitude of the damage your cheating would do. You're watching your BH fall apart at a level you didn't suspect was possible, and it scares you. You dont feel that therapy is helping. You were hoping there would be a formula here that would help him just leave it all in the past. TLDR, there isn't, but you're far from the first person who came here searching for that holy grail and found out that it didn't exist. Some stalk off and continue the fruitless quest elsewhere, while others stick around to start the work. I had you pegged as one of the latter sort, because you forged ahead and gave him the details that he wanted, not because you wanted to tell him, but because he needed to know. You trusted that we have some idea of what we're talking about and took our advice.

Is it possible that we could just declare the issue of your sister a no-go zone and get back to the substance of your original post? Because I feel like we're dying on that one hill, at the expense of making progress in far more critical territory.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 6:10 AM, May 17th (Friday)]

VioletElle - Okay, fine. Forget about your sister and BFF. Let's go back to your H, since you talk and listen mostly to absolutes.

You cannot just check off a list of things to heal him or your M. You won't find that here or anywhere else. There ain't no quick fix, sister. I see that you're the type of person who likes to control the narrative. No wonder your H internalizes his feelings. The fact that you have been very combative here speaks of a deeper issue.

Are you used to being in control? Are you used to having things your way? Is R on your terms or his or both? Yes, you have described what you want in R, but you've made decisions with only your self-interest in mind and disregard for your spouse. You are heavily defensive on this thread. You stand your stance with little compromise. What makes you think that you will not apply these SAME destructive methods to how you handle recovery? People don't just change without deep, often painful introspection. I do see that you're trying though.

Look, I know you're struggling and I'm glad you've come here for help. I was as well early in to this. But my mind was a lot more open to the advice I was given here. It literally saved my relationship. Yes, some advice might not be helpful or apply to your situation, but they should give you food for thought, always.

This obsession you have of trying to control the outcome of your situation will not lead you to self-growth or change. It will keep you stuck in a perpetual downward spiral. It will keep your spouse stuck in misery. Honestly, He sounds heavily traumatized. I hope he's getting help for that.

I do wish you luck though. This stuff is never easy.

[This message edited by MrsSouthAfrica at 2:00 AM, May 17th (Friday)]

Everyone, please remember the purpose of this forum. If this thread is a trigger for you, please step away. Post respectfully or don’t post at all. Insulting and shaming will result in a loss of posting privileges in this forum.

I seriously told myself it would just be one time, then it became two and so on. I told myself that I'd regret it if I didn't take a risk and that I hadnt taken a risk in so long.

The slippery slope. You can see this pattern in countless threads here. The fundamental flaw with this thinking is the "just one time" part. In most marriage vows, you make an express promise to your spouse that you won't do that, ever. In your case, you decided to break that promise. You created a one-sided open marriage, in secret, without your BH's consent. And you did it for reasons that were utterly selfish.

I was charmed by him too, I was attracted to him and he treated me like I was a person I remembered being years ago. Only I wasnt that person and I shouldnt have wanted to be again. I'm not going to pretend that I didn't like him, I did like him. We had a relationship. I can't just say we didn't because it was illicit.

There is a difference between explaining a thing and excusing or accepting it. I completely understand reaching a place where you feel you've lost a part of yourself, something essential you used to have. When people are under the burdens of being married, with careers, children, this sometimes happens.

As an aside, I wonder if you realize how utterly cliché this narrative is. If you spend time spelunking threads here on SI, you'll find dozens with exactly the same storyline. Through the lens of infidelity, you're a walking meme. This is true of your AP as well. There are men out in the world who know that a wife, married a decade or two, with children, who finds herself in an existential moment is often a source of easy pussy. All he really needs to do is be a bit persistent in terms of uttering saccharine words to make you believe that you feel good. In the end, it's actually rather pathetic.

The logic hole in your narrative is where you say it "was not about" your BH. I know why you say that. Your decisions were driven by internal demons. It wasn't your BH who pushed you away. But that statement belies the fact that, in heeding those demons and heading down the road to perdition, you had to decide to break the promise you made to your BH as you looked him in the eye on your wedding day. You knew you were doing this because you concocted lies and schemes and alibis to make it all work. Quintessentially, everything you do after that choice is about your BH because it is you choosing to inflict injury on him. You made dozens of individual choices through your A to do this, possibly hundreds.

The choice a healthy married person makes is to talk about this with her spouse and work on it. She does not decide in secret to break the promise her trusting husband thought she meant when they got married. It's not okay to secretly decide that the marriage will be an open marriage, but just on your side, and just in secret. No matter how much we understand why you did this, there is never going to be a point of accepting that it was okay.

Acceptance is the key in my mind. I need to find acceptance. This really is about myself, I'm not sure how else to say it because it is self acceptance that I need.

Acceptance of what? By whom? It is totally unreasonable and unrealistic to expect your BH to accept it as okay that you decided to break your marital vows, to lie to him, and to cheat on him. If you figure out what was broken in your moral compass that enabled you to make these wicked choices, if you permanently change yourself into somebody new, somebody who deserves to be a wife, he might accept that new person. That is what R looks like.

Getting past this for me means getting past it.

There are a lot of posters here who have "gotten past" a LTPA. Some of them "got past" by divorcing. Some "got past" by reconciling. Time is linear, so in some fashion, it will be increasingly in your past. The question is what your present will look like.

If you want a marriage where your A is never again a presence, never mentioned, nothing changed, that desire is totally unrealistic. I am a BS and I try very hard on this Wayward forum to be helpful to waywards who post here, yet time and again you say things that are so utterly selfish, callous, despicable, it almost beggars the imagination to think that you have any illusion that there is even a remote chance of healthy R with your BH. It is possible that you might stay married. Your BH sounds, from the few things you've said about him, to be highly passive, possibly submissive. But it can almost be assured that if you don't help him heal, he will secretly revile you for the rest of your lives together.

Healthy reconciliation from and A like this takes years. Years. Even then, the A in some manner is a permanent presence in the marriage, forever. And in the end, it only works if you change yourself into a different person than the one you were before, a person who would not choose to lie and cheat, a person who is a safe spouse.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 7:38 AM, May 17th (Friday)]

Not finding out what the appropriate price it is for me to pay. If we get into that nobody will win.

Healing from infidelity is not jail time with an appropriate sentence. There isn’t a penance you can pay to move forward. It is not a punishment.

There are however, consequences of a betrayal. One of those consequences is the loss of trust. It will take time and a lot of work to earn that back. It’s been said already, but I will say it again, it takes 2-5 years to heal from infidelity.

You want to gain acceptance. I get it. I will tell you that the road there isn’t laid out with smooth pavement. It will take blood, sweat, and tears to get there. You will have to dig deep within yourself in a way that you have never done before and work on how and why you got here. There is no single answer either. Each answer will lead you down to another layer. It’s a painful process, really but one that has an incredible benefit if you allow it to.

It will be nearly impossible for you and your husband to properly heal from this if you don’t roll up your sleeves and do the work. In order to get there you will need to have compassion for the pain your husband is in, humility, honesty, and most of all some vulnerability.

Read “How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair”. I promise you, it will help you understand where many are coming from in there responses to you.

There’s no quick fix to infidelity. If you become open to the process of healing you can come out of this better and healthier...safer.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:03 AM, May 17th (Friday)]

The thing that makes everyone think I'm callous here is that I have the expectation for him to get past this and I'm not allowed to expect anything. (Well the other thing has no basis in reality so best it stays in bed)

How can anyone not have this expectation? I didn't say it had to be today or tomorrow or any fixed date but it has to be a goal. If it isn't then why would I want to torture him and myself by staying married? This isn't a lack of empathy (a word that's thrown around here a lot more than it's understood) I can understand and empathize with his feelings and yet understand that there could be conditions in which he is better off without me. One of those conditions would be if he can never come to terms with what happened. That is very serious and not a selfish concern. It involves his mental health as well. If we got to a point where we were no longer trying and he couldn't possibly get over this then it would be completely lacking in empathy to stay together. He may be able to move on and find happiness otherwise and if it came to that I would be happy for him. I do not think I am his only possible road to happiness. That is what empathy is, not believing that I am the centre of everything.

When I say acceptance, I am talking about self acceptance. Something in me felt this need for external validation because my internal was failing me. I need to find a way to be accepting of myself even when I don't measure up to my ideals. This stuff is not about him. It makes him collateral damage and I do not say that in an effort to minimize the impact of such.

I know next week I'm going to get back to work and life will move on. I got about 2 hours of sleep last night and I need to take control of that too. He wants me to be happy too. If he didn't that would be a much bigger problem.

I can't really describe the full hurt I caused him. I know it's effected him to the very core of his masculinity and there isn't any way I can make that up. I don't have a time machine and I can't undo that. It's impossible. He still loves me, so we need to work with what we have. It may not be fair, but he needs to put work in too. That's part of being married to someone, you fail together too. Life isn't fair and as much as some can't accept that, that won't level the surface. The alternative is that he puts no work into fixing his damaged ego and stays broken. Is that any good for anyone?

Please note that the stop sign has been added to this thread.

Hi VioletElle, I want to check in to see if I understand what you’re thinking so I can give better feedback.

*****

Where you are right now

I think you have been stuck in the same place with your husband for a while so you are assuming that’s what you have to work with and you are trying to make the best of it. You’ve changed as much as you can with the tools you have, so the only other change has to come from him. Then it will become clear what happens in the marriage.

I think you are frustrated with your husband taking the blame because it keeps you both on that drama triangle and in a place on the triangle that you don’t like (TBH I am surprised no one has brought that up and I don’t know much about it. I wish someone would give you some thoughts on your situation through the drama triangle lens).

You are honestly representing your feelings and beliefs. Some of them are incomprehensible to betrayed spouses, but I don’t see anything in any of what you wrote that doesn’t make sense to a previous version of me. I don’t see you as bad, wrong, terrible, uncaring, irredeemable or anything like that. I’m very sure you are capable of a great deal of care and empathy. Just not in the current dynamic. I think you are in a very early stage of figuring stuff out in yourself, and frustrated that it’s not moving along, and blaming your husband for it because there has to be a reason for your frustration.

Did anything up there make sense? What what wrong?

*****

Where to go now

When I got here my question was - how do I get over AP? And I was told a lot of stuff about needing to take care of my husband and needing to have empathy and needing to be honest and needing to do this and that and it was all true. But my question was how to get over AP, and in working on that, a lot of other stuff came up and I started to deal with it. Your question is how do I stop my husband internalize the blame? The answer is, you don't, that's up to him. What's the next question?

Let’s assume your husband isn’t going to change – what do you want to change, in yourself? Do you want to be able to be more sanguine and peaceful when he is expressing sexual frustration? Do you want to be able to soothe him when he is upset? Do you want to be less jerked around by the dynamics between you two? Do you want to be able to say what you need and express disappointment when you don’t get it? I know there are things you SHOULD want, but let’s talk about what you ACTUALLY want, because in working on yourself in any way, I think you’ll get closer to the things you should do for your husband.

VE .... There are many resources for your to draw from. The most obvious is the start of a thread, like this one and the responses by other SI posters. A second resource, are the condensed versions of years' long stories and experiences many have drafted in the "my story" section in there membership profile.

I would encourage you to read the stories of WW's who post frequently with high post numbers, as they've not only been in your shoes, but have traveled a journey in there reconciliation that you have yet to experience. Here's the link to one... WalkingonEggshells....

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/profiles.asp?UserID=29447

There are many others. The "my story" entry enables readers to see an evolvement at a higher level almost as if looking at themselves out of body or 3rd person. Many can't believe what they see in their former self. While much detail is left out, they all express the moment(s) when their 'lights came on' and why. You can take a lot away from those moments and apply them to your situation.

Clicking the smiley button at the far right of each post, will take you to the profile of that poster. It is there where you will see a synopsis of there story for those who added that content to their profile. You will experience through their eyes, massive transformations that have taken place. The experiences in the transformations are the basis of them being able to see in you things you can't see in or for yourself.

At this point,I'd say the most important thing you can do is to adopt a conscience of extreme humility and humbleness, as both are required to allow you to break through the impenetrable barrier you have unknowingly created for yourself.

You have strong feelings of your BFF and sister, so for the sake of progress, I'd suggest each meet with your husband and express thoughts similar to the one offered by a poster on this or the previous page. He/She said it perfectly.

It was a perfect compromise for your husband to restore lost dignity and you to keep them in your life in a mutually manageable way. This will enable you to get by one of the obstacles preventing you from getting where you want to go and where SI posters wish to help you get there.

Right now, it's sticking point for you and in the name of progress, deal with it in a way that your husband can reconcile and recover and that can be done with heartfelt expressions of empathy and apologies (if appropriate) from your sister and BFF, who will be in his life for as long as you are in his.

One key thing about your husband. Betrayed spouses appear and sound like something that they are not. Emotional instability, confusion and despair often can't be detected. I know this because I've been there. Processing infidelity in an organized way when the synpses are running amok is impossible.

After putting on your humble and humility hat, I'd recommend listening really, really closely to the BS on here who can recount their thoughts at a similar juncture after DD. I would be careful to basing opinion on what you see and hear from your BS, as he is probably not in the healthy emotional space that will provide you with a clear and true read. Former BS can accurately share with you the space they were in shortly after discovery. This will get you closer and more intimate with where he might be.

Your husband may seem ok with somethings, but in actuality, not only has he not fully processed what is happening, but in his traumatic state, is incapable of doing so. Not sure if you've ever been traumatized, but there's nothing that can prepare you for it and while experiencing it, you simply ARE NOT YOURSELF even if you appear to be. I functioned for a long time traumatized, but had lost a significant amount of myself and wondered where was that part of me. Where did it go? It wasn't until years went by,

I was sitting at my computer and my wife said something to me and my response was so zombi like that she could tell I wasn't myself.It wasn't until many year later did I reveal outward clues of 'not quite being right'. I went to a psychologist and it was there that I heard the term PTSD. In looking back, I know exactly how and when it happened, but the story here is that I functioned for years looking and acting normal, but I was ANYTHING but.

So getting in his shoes is to feel trauma. If you haven't felt it, it would be nearly impossible for you to get there. But, the next best thing is to be humble and have an enormous amount of humility. It will get you to the soft space of understanding and your actions will follow.

It's a breakthrough every person on this thread wishes for you, believe it or not. They understand you are hurting, but what they really want is you to feel the depth and despair of your husband's pain and more importantly how to alleviate it. People that have traveled your path know where the obstacles are, hence are quick to point them out to you when you don't see them or mischaracterize them.

Former betrayed and waywards are uniquely intimately informed with things no one else can have except for those who have been wayward or betrayed. This is why the "I can relate' forum exists. It's an open Q&A and sharing of people with a commonality or those who seek to obtain info that they could never have because they've never experienced it.

For instance, your husband may appear to be accepting and understanding of some aspects of your reconciliation. The fact is, many WW thought the same thing, only to find out months or years later, that this was not the case and even their husband didn't know it due to the confused and unhealthy space following discovery.

If anything is to come from this post, at a minimum, read the summaries of the moderators and WW who have high post counts. It's not always the case, but more times than not, high numbers indicate a long standing commitment to finding new things about themselves, that in turn enables them to be better spouses and posters to help others like yourself. So, if you can read the journey of those whose first thread is similar to yours and subsequent threads reveal dynamic breakthroughs, they will serve you well.

So,if the back and forth of this thread isn't conducive to your learning right now, which could be among many things, just sheer stubbornness and pride, then stay on SI and read of others, and then come back to tell us about it in an update. Should YOU allow it, your path to real self discovery and your husband's path to recovery could be one of the many models on here for others to learn following you.

WS ONLY

[This message edited by SI Staff at 12:21 PM, May 17th (Friday)]

It's beginning to sound like a lot of the problems that you are dealing with regarding your husband is with sexual insecurities and performance issues.

Your subtle, not so subtle hints, has the well worn issue of size, just right fit, pleasure, and endurance, as being top probably issues.

Hi.

Thread is a monster. I read the first and last.

Blah blah.

I have one question.

What do you want?

expectation for him to get past this and I'm not allowed to expect anything.

You aren't entitled to expect how his outcome will be. You chose to do a cruel thing and you are still trying to control. You are entitled to heal, grow, and learn. Hopefully change. To live with happiness and joy again. That may or may not be with him. You aren't entitled to anything as far as expectations from the people you choose to hurt and climb on their backs adding to their own burdens just to pursue some selfish wants. Period. You can hope and you can try to earn grace, mercy, and forgiveness. You aren't entitled to it. Those things are gifts. Your husband is not an object. He is a person. A human being with his own hurts, dreams, hopes, and issues. His own burdens in life and you added to them to releave yours. Expect = regret. You can't expect for him how he should heal. If it isn't within your boundaries on how you would like to be treated, then you do have every right to walk away. You can control your actions.

You don't get to hurt someone and then write the script on how they should react after you chose to do something cruel and hurtful to them. If you don't like how someone is reacting to being hurt by you, then hopefully you learned your lesson to not hurt someone in the first place. Instead of banking on jumping on the bandwagon and holding the shield of what is right in the name of reconciliation or how you should be treated after the fact. He is suffering from trauma still trying to reconcile his pain and the trauma. No where near any reconciliation of a relationship with you.

You should be focusing on your own entitlement. You ability to dish it, but not take it once you put your hand in the cookie jar before asking and then expecting to apologizing and feeling entitled to get forgiveness. It is like saying I am sorry all the time, but still doing the same shit over and over again for what you are sorry for and never changing. Focus on yourself. Focus on your need to control. Focus on your dependency of others to make you happy. If he is keeping you from moving forward, then divorce. Let him heal.

Perhaps he is trying to make you feel shamed because you aren't choosing to really face your guilt and shame and own who you became. IMO, we all became cruel, selfish, assholes, and monsters when we cheated. We were bad people. Not good people that made a mistake. The moment I faced that and owned that. Then acknowledged what my BS thought of me and admitted what I thought of myself, everything changed. Just because I became some horrible monster for a short time in my life, doesn't mean I couldn't become someone better. Yeah, I will always have that bumper sticker of A on my ass. I will always have others that outshine that.

Zug nailed it! You aren't entitled to expectations of healing from your BS. That is for him to decide and feel. You are only entitled to expectations of yourself. Your healing, growth and change.

Something else I've noticed is how everything you write (and I am assuming everything you are thinking and feeling) is about you. Your expectations of your BS healing, what you will tolerate as far as consequences of your own actions, your family, your friends, you, you, you. This selfishness will not serve you well in R, or throughout your life. If you are going to focus on any aspect of yourself to change, perhaps you should start here. You shattered your BS, then place an expectation of him to "get past it" or you are leaving. I can't even imagine what my BH would say if I told him he had to "get past" my actions. My BH is the most gracious person I know, but I know he will never get past my A. My BH never hit the rage stage that so many others here have at more than a year out and I have waited for it (and still do). But what has really helped our R was that I made him my #1 priority (yes, even over myself). My wants took a backseat to his for a good 8 months. Things have evened out a lot since, but I wanted him to feel that I had rid myself of the selfishness that opened the door to me hurting him.

I am not trying to be harsh, but to highlight an area where you might stumble along your journey.

Zugzwan has nailed it Violet,I think your husband is trying to find out how far down the pecking order he is in your priorities between kids sister friends affair partner .poor man looks as though he is paralysed by fear of losing you,my god what away to lead your life .

Again we can only pick up from what you are telling us ,and we for the majority could be so far off track,that all we seem to hear is how you want to be happy.

How are your kids doing throughout this ,coming from a broken home we could pick things up and I was 6 years old .