Crazycatlady is right: you continue to find red flags and lies of omission. And we all know that every one of them sends a BS spiraling.
Oh sister, I’m sorry to write you an essay every time I post, but I just see so much of my own tendencies in you and your relationship with your WH. You are really doing well and making progress with every little aha moment that you have along the way. The more time you can give yourself without being focused on him, the more clearly you will see and love yourself, and the more you will understand the life that you’ve been living. Looking back with new information and insight is a big part of the post A journey.
It is painful and difficult and also ultimately, super important to understand better how you got here and what YOU need to change going forward to take better care of you. It can’t be said enough that only he can change him, and he has to really, really want to be different from what he is to do that because it is f-ing hard and painful. And waywards have made a life out of avoiding the hard and painful truths. But your journey now is to heal you and to go forward treating yourself better and healthier.
I read something the other day that said something like ‘I wonder how many mothers have realised that they overcompensate and do as much as they can to stop their husbands resenting their lives’ and I felt like it knocked the wind out of me.
Ugh. I don’t know about anyone else, but that quote is triggery as all get out for me. My WH actually told people that having kids ruined our marriage. It wasn’t that he didn’t love our kids—he just resented me paying attention to them and expecting him to be my, um, partner and adult support instead of my first and most important child. And there I was running my ass off trying to be everything to everyone.
But HE was busy complaining to his AP about how he had no time to himself to do things that were important to him, poor muffin. He would literally come home from work and lay in the middle of the living room floor with headphones on, oblivious to the world. Meanwhile, having taken care of our kids all day to save us daycare and, I don’t know, actually be with my kids, I would then be getting ready to go to work all evening teaching college students and hoping that he wasn’t sleeping in the middle of the floor while my toddlers set the house on fire.
His resentment of me not indulging his every horrible habit and pursuit and focus on keeping him happy like I did before the kids were born, was his huge excuse for having an A. He never quite got around to feeling differently in his heart of hearts even though he did a lot of mopey, sad, I’m-a-terrible-person shame spiraling, it ultimately started to feel like that too was just trying to manipulate people (including me) to feel sorry for him. And i just didn’t have it in me anymore to feel bad for how hard it was to be him.
BUT, even with all of that realization (you know, the kind of realizations that keep occurring to you when you read quotes like that or realize that you’re afraid to express your actual feelings to the person who is supposed to be your most trusted friend?), it was hard for me to just speak the unvarnished truth to him.
First, I had spent years protecting him from hard truths (for example, hey dude, you act like staying home with your family will break up the Beatles. You’re in a freaking cover band in middle age.) and having to feel difficult feelings. It was so very ingrained in me that his feelings were much more important than my own and that he was much less able to handle life’s difficult and unexciting responsibilities than I was. He didn’t have to do anything to make me feel bad for demanding equal time. I didn’t demand it of MYSELF. I conceded my own space before it was asked.
That truth really got me when I realized it. I hardly knew how to demand personhood status from my own H. And I felt guilty for doing so, like it would be taking something from HIM. This was grossly unhealthy for our whole family. It was a bad example to our kids. And it truly reinforced the worst in him, to everyone’s detriment.
And when I looked back, I saw the things that you are seeing now: there were a thousand little selfishnesses and self-indulgences and dismissively disrespectful behaviors in him, and a thousand self-negating, peace-keeping behaviors in me. And honestly, in every other area of my life, I was a strong, assertive, bad-ass. But I was raised and groomed to be the kind of wife that I was in the same way that he was groomed and raised to be how he was and to find someone who would enable his worst tendencies.
The result was I was completely invested in preserving our family at any cost, and he was disconnected and unable to invest in anything but indulging whatever ego boost or external validation or confidence-boosting role-play that made him feel important and special.
This all may or may not be true of your WH. The most likely is that he is his own unique bundle of selfish self-indulgence, and you and your relationship have your own unique idiosyncrasies, but so many of us on this site are part of the self-sacrificing invested half of the relationship, while our wayward spouses were/are on the less-invested, self-focused half. And many can not find the motivation to completely let go of those completely ingrained and almost subconscious settings in their psyches.
So I’ve done it again. What I really want to say right now is that you don’t know yet how what you’ve written has struck him. You can’t know until he comes home, so try not to obsess on what you don’t and can’t know. DO focus on continuing to think and examine and especially to notice and honor your feelings. Quiet time without the noise and anxiety of a wayward’s presence are invaluable.
You do know that you’ve found a couple of other hidden truths that he didn’t mention to you. In my case, I just kept finding and finding little shit like this that my WH would dismiss as irrelevant or unimportant. He would try to turn it back on me (why are you still spying on me?) or tell me I was paranoid over nothing. He couldn’t seem to get that every lie and "omission," no matter how stupid or unimportant he thought it was, every lie degraded our relationship and made me respect him less. Everything that he hid after the A, even if it wasn’t A related, accumulated to make me understand that sneaking and lying were a part of him that he had something invested in that he wasn’t willing to give up. That was it for me. After his A, I couldn’t live waiting for the next big or small shoe to drop all the time.
As much as you can, let him go right now. Try to feel what it’s like not to care if he’s going out, not to care if he’s drinking or anything else. Let yourself feel what peace could be like if you didn’t have to live with the fear. Because ultimately you don’t if you choose not to. Whatever you ultimately decide, you should take your time to understand the real truth of what each choice means for you and your kids going forward.
Sending you all these words, lol, and a huge hug of support and strength. Do what you need to for you and the kids.
