SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

You are doing well in the aftermath of this trauma dumped on your life. Time is your ally. Remember this is not a race. One thing I noticed in your list: "how long do I try to fix things?" Please drop the idea that you can control the outcome or fix things. You can only control yourself. You can work on yourself. You can’t control your WW. You can work on being a better partner for yourself, but you can’t make her want to still be in the M. I think the best thing that happened to me is that I learned to like myself. I knew that I would be okay whether I D or eventually decided to R. Always value yourself. I think this will lead you to see more clearly what you want going forward. Good luck.

Theevent,

I think I got the books off a site Langley has, not Amazon. They came by pdf, and they sure weren’t $100.

I think that by telling her you want to reconcile – basically no matter what – you have removed that fragility from her. She has no need to be careful.

I think that's true, and I think that may be a Good Thing. In committing with no strings, you gave your W permission to be herself.

The problem is that one needs to be ready to cut one's losses if the WS does not act remorsefully. You're not there yet. That's OK ... if you are getting yourself there.

IMO, you need to make D an option for your sake and for the sake of your kids. Many people say they'd rather be from a broken home than in one. D at least frees you to make the most of your own abilities without being bogged down by an excessively dysfunctional spouse.

I need you to convince me that you are never going to cheat on me again, and I need to see you doing things I ask to get me there.

I think you're setting the bar too low. I think what you may be - probably are - setting yourself up for an unhappy life.

You need to work together to define the M that you will build. If you don't come to an agreement on what that M will be, your best bet, IMO, is to split and to be the best co-parents you can be.

There's a difference between 'I'm pretty confident they won't cheat again,' and 'I'm happy to be with them.'

To commit to R, I wanted a remorseful WS, and I also wanted 'yes' answers to 3 questions:

Do you love me?
Are you in love with me? (I didn't realize it yet, but I really meant, 'Do you desire me sexually?')
Will you be monogamous from now on?

I feared the answers to those questions, but I asked them anyway. SI told me I had to risk the M to save it.

What answers do you fear the most? Those are probably the questions you need most to ask.

BTW, IMO 'commitment' to R includes that you'll split if R doesn't go well. That doesn't need to be said - D is ALWYS on the table in an M.

I think maybe she is just trying to communicate what she wants our "new marriage" to be, but it comes across as her criticizing me for everything.

A good MC can help you distinguish between blame-shifting and 'defining a new M.' My guess is that she's blame-shifting, but that's just a guess based on what you've written.

I was mostly complaining about how it would have been much easier to have waited to agree to R in the beginning, and only committed to that after seeing real change from her. She would have seen real consequences early on, and directly in response to her behavior.

The path to healing is through your internal processing, not externals. The shorthand way of saying it is: you need to set and maintain your boundaries.

On d-day, and for some months afterward, it's very difficult to know what one wants their boundaries to be. As others have said, you can change your mind.

*****

You ask a some questions that can be answered only by someone who knows what the future will bring. No one can do that reliably. (The mythical Cassandra could, of course, but nobody believed her.) My reco is to recognize your questions for what they are and to put the ones about the future aside. I suspect they're products of fear.

Fear of the unknown is pretty normal. Just don't let it drive your decision-making. You pretty much have to take risks to heal from being betrayed.

I don't want to paint the wrong picture here. I think she does think it was wrong. She was disagreeing with the part where I link that feeling it was wrong is necessary to prevent a reoccurrence of that behavior. She disagrees on that part, and I still think it's true.

Why is this a sticking point if it's not applicable to your situation?

I know that no more in person contact with the AP is a hard boundary for me. Any other contact of any kind would cause me to explain that it needs to stop immediately and would become another hard boundary.

Why aren't you setting boundaries preemptively? I think that's an important topic to cover with your IC, along with why you feel duty-bound to stick with R just because you committed to it in the beginning.

Are you an engineer? You are, aren't you?

1. Even if WW does all the things I need, will I ever really be able to trust her again? Am I just wasting both of our time trying to reconcile?

Q: Those who have reconciled, how did you decide that you could trust your partner again? What questions did you ask yourself that helped give you clarity?

My WH had a series of PAs back in the 70’s. We reestablished trust after that, yes. He had a PA in 2005, and we did reestablish trust after that. I recently discovered an EA online/text/phone, and that back in 2005 he had a second PA he didn’t disclose at the time. We are working on reestablishing trust. So, make of it what you will.

So we had trust for 30 years until we didn’t.

2. As I have said in a previous post, our couples therapist is not addressing the affair at all (going to find someone else), and my wife is doing a lot of the things recommended in the affair recovery books, not all, but a lot. I see her efforts, and appreciate them, but in the back of my mind I wonder if she is really digging deep to change, or if she is doing the superficial things in order to say she "gave it a good try".

Q: What did you need to see to convince you that your spouse really did change into a person that would never cheat on you again?

. Our couples therapists in the past made things out to be my fault. I wasn’t "meeting his needs". Our therapist this time? She laid it on the line. He has issues he needs to address, and made him do just that. There is no "try", only DO. She has held him accountable, he writes in to her regularly. He is doing the reading, takes notes, and there is visible and behavioral change. I am seeing the person I married reemerge.

3. Based on our conversations, the affair for her was a very positive time. She has many fond memories of it. She has said many times that she is sorry she hurt me, and that if she could go back in time she would not do it again. She assures me that she would never cheat on me again because letting go of that relationship was so painful for her, and seeing my pain was so painful for her. However saying those things is not the same as saying "the affair was wrong, and I will never cheat on you again".

Q: Should I be concerned about these positive emotions, and the fact that she seems upset by the fallout of the affair not the affair itself? Or is this generally expected behavior from wayward spouses, and part of the recovery process?

I asked my WH this same question early on. He was unable to verbalize a coherent answer, but it was kind of like your wife’s. He got "good feelings" from the interactions with AP. Once the fog lifted, and he stopped being so guarded and ashamed, he talks about how the fantasy was the thing. How he knows none of it was real, but that there was a feeling that went with it all that was uplifting for awhile that felt almost addictive, and it wasn’t really love but more like self-directed and self-filling. It was ego-driven, and had nothing to do with "giving love", but with "getting something out of it", and that isn’t love at all.

4. I love my wife, and really want to reconcile. The last few weeks I've been having a difficult time though. Every time I think positive things about her, the "she intentionally betrayed me" thoughts creep in and ruin my good mood. I'm having a difficult time getting past the idea that she intentionally had an affair, and that this affair really for all intents and purposes destroyed the part of our marriage that mattered - our vows to each other. Without vows we might as well just be friends with benefits.

Q: Is this a normal place to be 6 months out, and how did you move past these thoughts in order to really reconcile?

Normal at this point IMHO.

Am completely with fareast on this.

I feel you are looking in entirely the wrong place for the reassurance you are seeking. It can only be within you. Take your focus off your WW and bring it back to you. This is really about a journey to self, grab this opportunity to ask yourself some deep questions with courage and a growth mindset, it will be really worth getting to know, understand and accept yourself.

You say you are a people pleaser? Where do the roots of that lie? How can you change? What actions can you take? When you say you ‘want’ to reconcile, it feels like you are being driven more like some kind of ‘need’. Can you articulate that need? Is it a need that can be met in other ways? Perhaps see this period as an experiment, an investigation into what YOU want from a relationship. I.e. a commitment to experiment with what reconciliation might mean for you and not a commitment to reconcile at all costs.

Read ‘honey, they always affair down’ in JFO. I hope that will help you to feel better about yourself.

[This message edited by Edie at 10:34 AM, Monday, December 23rd]