SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

For you, VioletElle. You need to figure out your whys. That will help you get better and your husband to feel like it didn't just come from no where.

I was having a lot of trouble with getting older and feeling a lack of identity. In short I was feeling apathy and self-pity in a juvenile vicious cycle.

This might help. It sounds like you are putting one foot in front of the other. That's not a way to live. I think you're misplacing being really engaged with life to being engaged with your AP and the fiction of excitement. There are other things too, but see if this resonates. No wonder you think you don't deserve your husband's love and Mother's Day attention, or that of your children. You are wondering what your life is worth, and the answer you are coming up with is nothing.

Our Shimmering Self (edited)

For what shall we do when we wake one day to find we have lost touch with our heart? Starting very early, life has taught all of us to ignore and distrust the deepest yearnings of our heart. Life, for the most part, teaches us to suppress our longing and live only in the external world where efficiency and performance are everything. We have learned from parents and peers, at school, at work, and even from our spiritual mentors that something else is wanted from us other than our heart, which is to say, that which is most deeply us. Very seldom are we ever invited to live out of our heart. If we are wanted, we are often wanted for what we can offer functionally. If rich, we are honored for our wealth; if beautiful, for our looks; if intelligent, for our brains. So we learn to offer only those parts of us that are approved, living out a carefully crafted performance to gain acceptance from those who represent life to us. We divorce ourselves from our heart and begin to live a double life. Frederick Buechner expresses this phenomenon in his biographical work, Telling Secrets:

[Our] original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all...rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather.

[This message edited by Pippin at 10:28 AM, May 14th (Tuesday)]

VioletElle the one thing you do not want to do is rush things with your husband.

Letting him see you be proactive in getting to the bottom of your "whys", getting into counseling for yourself, learning why you allowed yourself to drop your boundaries and risk destroying a good marriage and then establishing strong personal boundaries to never let yourself get lulled into those situations again... doing this and letting your husband see you doing them will mean far more to him than words.

To put it simply: words are cheap. You've been lying to him for a long time now, so don't expect him to take anything you say at face value for a long, long time.

Buckle yourself in because you have years of re-building to do, and there will be times when it will get ugly. Unless your husband is a total rug-sweeper, you are going to watch him change as a person on many fundamental levels. You may have to watch the easygoing man you fell in love with turn into a jaded, distrustful, bitter man. That could very well happen, and you need to be ready to deal with it. You need to ask yourself what will happen if he does go in that direction.

Are you in it for the long haul? Do you have what it takes to stick it out for years and consistently show that you are doing everything you can to change? Do you have the strength to stand and take it when he hurls angry words at you? Are you willing to be honest with friends and family about what you did, and defend your BH when people come down on him for being angry at you?

You have to ask yourself these questions.

And one more thing, when you do get into individual counseling, make sure you get a licensed counselor who actually knows something about infidelity and how it impacts marriage.

Stay away from the feel-good, new agey snake oil salesmen who are just there to take your money and tell you are a good person and how misunderstood by everyone you are. No, you need someone who will hold you accountable for your actions and call you on your crap. If your counselor is not doing that, get another. Counseling should not be enjoyable, it should be life changing.

I'm such a fuck up.

You've said a bunch of things that indicate continued selfishness, and been called on them.

The above, though, you got just right.

Every time you are pitying yourself, worrying about you, repeat the above over and over.

NeverHealed, the welcome page of SI says

We ask all members to please follow our code of showing respect, patience and compassion through this very difficult time you all are facing.

I don’t see how your post shows respect, patience or compassion for any wayward.

I'm such a fuck up.

You've said a bunch of things that indicate continued selfishness, and been called on them.

The above, though, you got just right.

Every time you are pitying yourself, worrying about you, repeat the above over and over.

And worse, this particular wayward is despondent. She may be selfish but more importantly she feels worthless. She is not the Pharisees in the temple using clever argument and sophistry to get away with what she wants to do. She’s not manipulating you into saying she’s not a fuck up. She is the adultress, face down in the dirt, knowing that she deserves the stones being hurled at her. She wants to get up out of the dirt and go home to take care of her husband and children, who seem to want her. There are people holding up a mirror, which is fair but not so helpful when you are face down in the dirt, and others holding out a hand to help her get on her feet. Can you step aside for a minute so someone can offer her a hand? If we’re lucky she’ll be here for a long time and there will be plenty of time to hold up the mirror and let her know how BSs really feel and for her to see and examine her flaws and understand her selfishness and figure out how to take care of herself and her family.

Your post is arguably abusive to her husband and children, if it prevents her healing.

VioletElle, I'm reading through your posts again and I am starting to be worried for you. Are you OK? If I am reading correctly you have been feeling like this for a while, it's not getting better, and it is taking a turn for the worse since you answered your husband's final questions which were for you and for him the most painful. This should be the inflection point but you are getting worse?

I know that they have a big day planned for me today and I'm sitting here feeling like I'm under a mountain of guilt. And I don't even feel like I have the right to that emotion because it makes this about me again.

I simply can't live with being made the victim in all this. I'm not the victim and I never pretended to be.

It's just eating me up inside. The pain is almost unbearable today. And yeah I get the overwhelming response that I'm an uncaring bitch and I know I'm not a good person.

They took me out from brunch today and he did everything perfect and the kids were perfect and I am just so overwhelmed with not being good enough for him.

I promised him not to talk to anyone about this so I don't have anywhere to turn.

I am inferring a couple of things into your posts and wanted to check to see if I'm right. I don't read your husband's actions as the typical pick-me dance where the betrayed spouse tries to compete with the affair partner. I see them as his fear that you are losing it and he's being careful because he is scared that you are in such a dark place that he doesn't want to push you over the edge. If that's true, I don't think you are being selfish or manipulative. I think you need to get out of that dark place in any way you can so you can start to heal.

And these quotes that look callous:

I'm not about to wear a scarlet A for the rest of my life

If he can't handle it then that will be it.

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

I told him I'm only going to come to bed if he invites me. It wasn't an ultimatum, i just didn't want him to feel like he has to sleep with me.

I think you feel utterly worthless and hopeless, and they reflect a very basic self-protective need to preserve your life by keeping can option to leave the life where you feel worthless (note: that's also probably what your affair was).

I had a similar thing happen when my husband found the worst evidence of my affair. I wanted to leave the earth. Sink into the ground. I was paralyzed and numb. I wasn't being manipulative or controlling the outcome. My entire being was frozen. Is that what you feel like? Do you feel any sense of self-worth in any way right now? You need something to hang on to.

Pippin

Nonsense.

If my WW had said to me some of what Violet is saying, we'd be done.

If Violet wants to save her marriage, she needs to get her ego out of the way.

I think most agree that her husband will get to the angry phase, and she doesn't sound ready for that.

She needs to humble herself.

I think her “I am such a fuck up” is the first sign of that, and needs to be encouraged.

Hi VE,

Betrayed here.

Have done a quick read of your posts, and not much of the others, as I usually want to focus on the OP.

Do you want to stay in the M? Why I'm asking this is because from the tone of your posts so far, they read of a petulant child, who has had to confess to something naughty they did. The child, when given a smack on the wrist, is not happy, but sad for themselves, and not really considering what damage has been done to others. You 'threaten' to leave the M if you BH asks you to sever ties with people who knew about your A. Very entitled Wayward thinking there.

If you are keen on R, it might help t change your thinking. Think outwards, and not inwards. What are the repercussions to your BH and to your children? Yes, you lost a 'connection', but you have actually lost more than that if you look outwards.

You have lost:

- the trust of your BH

- the way your Family was

- the devotion from your BH

- your morals

- your BH's respect

- your integrity

... amongst many more.

You always had your 'identity'. You were a wife, a mother, a daughter, and sibling(?). One thing you were not, Content.

Hence the need yearning for 'something more'. You possibly were not happy with yourself. Not because of anything anyone else did, but how you perceive yourself. Basically, you will need to get out of the Victim mentality. Stop acting as if something bad was done to you. For goodness sake, your husband took the massive effort to overcome his own hurt, to go buy ice-cream for you, because you are hurt?!?!? That is empathy. It would be good if you developed some for him and your kids also.

VE, how are y'all today?

There are people holding up a mirror, which is fair but not so helpful when you are face down in the dirt, and others holding out a hand to help her get on her feet. Can you step aside for a minute so someone can offer her a hand? If we’re lucky she’ll be here for a long time and there will be plenty of time to hold up the mirror and let her know how BSs really feel and for her to see and examine her flaws and understand her selfishness and figure out how to take care of herself and her family.

Pippin and I frequently differ in our perspectives on this site, sometimes radically, but I agree with her on this and think she worded it beautifully.

Violet followed our advice. She was reluctant to disclose details to her BH but trusted that we knew what we were talking about and apparently answered his questions honestly and forthrightly. The man she's spent her marriage with may not want her in his presence, for reasons that she caused, and she knows it. This is a long, dark night of the soul for her. But she's trying, which is more than some waywards ever do, and she's not going to benefit from any more advice if we beat her so hard on the next points that she never comes back.

Please remember that this is the Wayward Side, not General, and some protective rules do apply here.

Violetelle, from what I've read here, I appreciate a lot about you.

Yes, you screwed up in a big way. But you found the sense to end your screw-up by yourself. That is more than many people who commit adultery do. On top of that, you confessed to your husband even though he did not suspect anything had happened. And most recently, you have joined this site and exposed yourself to some helpful but painful feedback and criticism. Rather than shrink away from it, you have followed the most common message and decided to share the details of the affair with your husband.

I really hope this is going to pay off for you in the long run. Your husband seems very devoted to you and he is a forgiving person which is too often a rare quality. By taking this extra step you are making an investment in true healing for him. Without it he may have harbored insecurities and doubts that weren't necessary and this could potentially have come back to harm the marriage months or years later.

I do want to remind you that there is still work to do. It appears as if your husband is healing from this from what you have shared. But it is also likely that he is rug sweeping to some extent rather than confronting some of the issues that he may actually be feeling deep inside. We know that people process pain, trauma and emotional anguish in very different ways. My guess is that your husband will be struggling with your affair for some time. My concern is that he may not be good at identifying his own feelings and perhaps even less effective at sharing how he feels with you.

What could happen is that you will feel like your marriage is getting back to normal and you are seeing very real signs of it with your husband's behavior. But internally he may be struggling with things and not able to express them or burying them to avoid causing conflict or pain. This could cause you to revert to normal marital patterns and not realize that your husband still need you to actively work to heal him. Does this make sense?

Many people have pointed toward resources for you to read and I hope you will take action and look at the books on healing your spouse and establishing boundaries. People have also mentioned that it normally takes multiple years before a marriage can really be healed from an affair. The great news is that your husband seems more than willing to reconcile. But that doesn't mean he won't need active healing from you for much longer than his outward appearance might otherwise suggest.

I might have missed it but I haven't heard you speak a lot about your own self work to understand how you got into this situation in the first place. And how you are going to become safe again for your husband. My praise was sincere at the start of this message, but your ownership and action doesn't replace the need to understand how you failed and what it will take to avoid failing like this again.

Last, I also appreciate the balance you've displayed here. By that I mean you have accepted some of the core feedback and acted on it but you have pushed back on some of the advice given to you. Others May disagree with me but I appreciate some of the push back because a lot of the advice and feedback offered here is often out of context. I am specifically thinking about the comments about your best friend and sister. Again, I might have missed it but I never read where the two of them encouraged your Affair and spurred you on to do this. But people, having experienced that type of thing in their own lives, will often give some harsh advice based upon what they went through with their spouse. So advice can fall way out of context for what people bring to the Forum and you pushed back on that in an appropriate manner, in my opinion.

I wish you and your husband the best of success in your marriage. It is clear you are seeing his selfless behavior and devotion to you in a very positive way. I hope this continues to energize you and you will put in the same energy and thoughtfulness into actively working to heal him. As well as doing the hard work to make yourself safe again for him and the marriage over the months and years to come.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes, from Dostoevsky: "for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.”

NeverHealed, do you see a difference between these two statements?

I AM such a fuck up.

I HAVE fucked up so badly.

To me, the first is paralysis. You walk around all day saying I'm such a fuck up, I have hurt everyone so badly, there's nothing I can do, I am worthless, I might as well just sit here dying a slow death. I hear that in VioletElle. She is hanging on to a few lifesavers (her sister, she can leave the location of her shame) but otherwise she sounds pretty hopeless.

The second is where you own what you do and not do it again. SI is valuable when people point out just how badly waywards have fucked up, because I think that no one understands the extent at first. When we don't leave space for people to do better, it's destructive.

BraveSirRobin, I'm not sure what you are talking about, other than I think that referring to anything in ASOFAI to understand GOT is just an exercise in madness at this point

[This message edited by Pippin at 8:16 AM, May 15th (Wednesday)]

BraveSirRobin, I'm not sure what you are talking about, other than I think that referring to anything in ASOFAI to understand GOT is just an exercise in madness at this point

I admit that I'm probably grasping at straws, but maybe there's something left to salvage from this travesty of a season! Even the actors are struggling to find a plausible defense of the plot.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 8:22 AM, May 15th (Wednesday)]

Violet, gently, do you see how your current attitude is making another no win situation for your husband?

If he is nice, you feel guilty. If he is cold then you feel like running away. You are not giving him a lot to work with right now.

It is clear he wants, heck, needs something to work with. In absence of anything else he will feel frustration. Frustration turns into anger very fast. He will use that anger to detach and then you will gt half of the guy you see before you right now.

I am not telling you this to hurt you or make you feel any worse. It is all about you right now, and while that is understandable to us, it might not be to your H. He needs a window to what you are feeling. No matter what is in there. Let him see everything. Be open and vulnerable. I'd bet that is what he is really looking for right now.

The coming to bed thing? Do you know why that really set him off ? You made a decision for him without involving him. He clearly wanted you to come to bed, but you put up a wall to sabotage it? Why make it harder than it needs to be ?

I really think it would be imperative that you talk to someone. IC would be my first suggestion, but it wouldn't hurt to see your doctor either. We've all had hard times where we get maxed out to the point we don't see what to do next. You need to get back to a point where you can be more stable. At the beginning the only things that helped my W were meds and talking to her p-doc. Absolutely the right thing for the situation she was in.

You aren't going to be able to do anything if you don't get your feet back under you. Do that first. One thing at one time. Put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others with theirs.

Again, I might have missed it but I never read where the two of them encouraged your Affair and spurred you on to do this.

Neither were overly impressed. But I have been through a lot with both of them. With my sister, by a lot I mean: life. We took baths together, she let me wear her clothes, told me about boys, hugged me when nobody else would, etc. So yeah, she's taking my side in the end right or wrong.

favorite quotes, from Dostoevsky

I love Dostoyevsky too :) My favourite is (paraphrasing): Everybody needs a place to turn, everyone needs a place that they can go. Do you know what it means to have nowhere to go?

The coming to bed thing? Do you know why that really set him off ? You made a decision for him without involving him. He clearly wanted you to come to bed, but you put up a wall to sabotage it? Why make it harder than it needs to be ?

I just didn't want to assume. He called me a really nasty name earlier. He said he was sorry but I don't know. I didn't want to impose. I don't know how to act all the time and yeah it upset him that I had to ask.

how are y'all today?

Better than the night before. Thanks for asking that.

[This message edited by VioletElle at 3:12 PM, May 15th (Wednesday)]

You're still foggy. It's going to take time.

Took my fWW six months to pull her head out of her ass. She's done well so far, but I had to file D on her to knock her back into reality.

It is a shame that is what it took.

My favorite from Dostoyevsky:

"Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’ The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’ he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away."

The onion in the Brothers K symbolizes empathy. We must all remember that no WS is perfect. VE's onion is enough to pull her out of this as long as she continues to not make excuses and hold herself accountable for her actions. She is trying to do the right thing.

I agree with BraveSirRobin that you deserve kudos for taking the first step of telling your BH the deets.

Here is the thing, though, that other posters are noticing. R is really hard. Like running a marathon on a scorching hot day with no water. Like the hardest thing you've done. We wonder if you have the heart and the desire and the strength to do it. You have to really want it. Among other things, you have to make yourself humble and transparent and devoted to your BH.

You should expect him to ask questions about the sexual and other intimate details of your A over and over and over again. This is a very common thing for BH's to do. It's not because he wants to rub your face in it. It's because he's trying to wrap his mind around that intimacy continuum, the one you stole from him and gave to another man. He is trying to embed it into his own linear memory as if he lived it, so that he restores the continuity of his knowledge of you.

I fact, you should worry if he doesn't do this. That's probably a sign that he has stopped caring.

You should expect that his emotions will be a roller coaster for a long time. Like even up to a year. One of the emotions he will cycle through will be anger. It will likely be a deep, profound, hate-filled anger, enough to frighten you that he might harm you. He may use awful words like "slut" or "whore" and he may say that with venom, like he really means it, looking you in the eye with his own eyes burning with rage. You should be prepared to accept those bouts of anger with humility.

Your sister is an enemy to your marriage. Period. I understand that you are tight with her, and have roots. But she is also your BH's family, and she betrayed him when she failed to take steps to stop the A and/or failed to warn him. She also betrayed your marriage when she did those things. By extension, if your marriage is important to you, she betrayed you too.

It is quite possible your BH will loathe and resent her for the rest of his life. She deserves to be loathed and resented by him. You should expect your new reality will include making sure that there are no family functions where both are in attendance.

As to your toxic friend, not related to you, all of the above, times ten. She is an enemy to your marriage. At some point you ought to decide whether your marriage or your toxic friend is more important to you.

Through it all, remember that you do him the greatest honor by being honest. If you don't feel like you can remain humble through his rage, be honest about it and leave him. If you feel an urge to elevate your fealty to your sister or your friend over your marriage in terms of importance to you, do him a favor and tell him this so he can have agency to make his own decisions about what he wants to do.

Keep in mind this. My observation here on SI is that most women significantly underestimate the profound degree to which the sexual humiliation and emasculation of a WW's PA injures a BH. It cuts to his very sense of himself as a man. He may ask you questions about what the AP's penis was like, whether you enjoyed it, why you decided to go back to it again for another helping, etc. He will likely be trying to reenact in his mind exactly what was going on at home while you were having sex with the AP. What was he doing when you left. What lie did you tell him about where you were going. Did you kiss on the way out? Was he doing dishes or reading the kids a bedtime story while you were on your knees giving head to another man? Did you kiss when you returned? Had his dick been in your mouth before that kiss? it would be normal for your BH to be thinking about stuff like that. My observation is that most BH's think through that level of detail.

My strongest possible advice is: do not try to minimize or avoid any of this. If you had orgasms with the AP, be honest. If you liked the sex, be honest. Again, your BH will feel respected and legitimized as your husband by the frankness and honesty, and this will outweigh the hurt he feels.

Also, no matter what, do not try to say anything like "it was just sex". Women say this a lot, and the reason they say it is because they fundamentally misunderstand men. For betrayed men, this is among the most hurtful things a WW can say. The BH isn't worried about whether you enjoyed the sex. If you went back for seconds, thirds, etc., you probably did enjoy it. What hurts him is that you invested time, energy, imagination, etc., even to the extent of lying to your BH, for the purpose of giving sexual pleasure to another man. By saying it was "just sex", you make it seem as if giving sexual pleasure to another man is a normal thing you would do regardless of being married.

What his mind will be doing through all of this is trying to wrap itself around the magnitude of the sexual humiliation part of your A. Whether he can get past it or not. A big factor in that calculus is whether he feels in his heart that your desire for him is true. So show him your desire, in the strongest possible way, as often as possible. I can't emphasize that enough.

Finally, the corollary to this is that R will not work unless your BH believes in his heart that your love, lust, and sexual desire for him as a man is deep and true. More important, deeper and truer than your sexual desire for your AP (or, in the parlance of SI, your desire to trade sex for the good stuff you felt you were getting from your A).

I do wish you luck. The tone of your initial comments, quite frankly, made some of us feel that you lack the depth of character needed to R successfully. I hope you prove us wrong.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 5:05 AM, May 16th (Thursday)]

Your sister is an enemy to your marriage.

If he's looking to be the Josef Stalin of matrimony then it wouldn't be with me. Maybe we can even have show trials of all our friends and one by one he can find a way to completely isolate me. I used shoes to leave the house; enemy of the marriage. I can just stand barefoot in the attic never to be seen again.

Seriously, enough with this crap. He wouldn't request something so outlandish so it's not even an issue.

VE, it is not crap. It is truth. You are wrong on that count. Period. End of.