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Same as my husband. He struggles with being angry because apparently he was the chilled out one. I was the one who got cross then forgot about it 10 minutes later.

His defensiveness and anger pisses me off. ‘You chose for us to be here. I didn’t’. Or ‘You chose to destroy our marriage, why the fuck do you think I want to be here talking about this shit’ or ‘if you can’t deal with it you shouldn’t have done it’ or ‘do you really think I have any desire to be talking about x/y/z?’ Are typical phrases.

I do get angry. I have got more angry than I ever remember being. But funnily he is far more worried when I’m quiet and unresponsive - he worries I am giving up.

Maybe explore that? Silence - is it safety or does the anger mean she is still fighting for your marriage?

So ive done a few bouts of IC however it never covered the anger or frustrations. It dug more into my people pleasing ways and my need to feel validated and liked by everyone so more my reasons for why I did all this in the first place.

IMO, IC works best if the client wants to change something about themself.

My bet is that people-pleasing played a big part in your cheating, so approaching a good therapist with something like, 'I want to stop needing to please people' would be a good way to start, as would 'I want to deal with anger in a different way.'

I also think you might benefit from reading about co-dependence.

Bottom line, though, if you want to heal, you'll need to change lifelong patterns of thinking and acting, and that's much easier to do with the help of a good therapist.

Changing lifelong patterns is difficult work, but the payoff is great.

Thanks sisoon, the people pleasing I covered off in my sessions and I feel that element of me has been well explored and I've been digging at that aspect for a while now discovering all the whys and what not.

I've seen the changes in that aspect though and I am certainly more aware of what not to do etc and how to keep that in check. The anger aspect is something I'd like to work on as it ties into the defensiveness which really doesnt help for obvious reasons.

Hi Tiny Tim,

Fellow reformed people pleaser here. I know exactly where you are.

There is no quick fix to it but you have to come to a place that you believe you are worthy of being loved for exactly who you are.

The challenge post infidelity is for the first time you are not actually worthy of being loved for who you are, at least rightfully so in your wife’s eyes. It would have been so much easier to be authentic and feel your needs and feelings before making your wife question who the fuck you really are.

So now, she doesn’t know what to believe and you are trying to show up authentically/ she has no baseline to know what’s real and what’s not. Its just going to take a long converted effort of being authentic and balancing your wife’s needs.

I found it better to consider my needs and feelings at a separate time from when my husband and I were interacting. I made a strict line in my head that when we talk, no matter how emotional or angry he was that I never forget why. I made myself be in his shoes as much as possible. I gave him what he needed, calm reassurance, I imagined his feelings kind of flowing out like he’d been snake bitten. The venom and the infection was draining and that would continue until the inflammation was gone. As long as I could be there to soothe him to my best ability and provide the honest truth and as much compassion as possible, the more he could let out the better he would heal.

You have to do it in a way that you also aren’t letting that venom enter you. Let it all to the floor while you comfort your wife. And in your own time you need to be planning how to create a new recent history where you are doing as many of the right things as you can for both of you. The things that will make you feel good about yourself are the exact things she needs to see. Make a commitment every day to do something nice for her that makes her day easier.

But don’t do it to earn love. Do it non-transactionally, giving her unconditional love and seeking nothing in return. Always be honest and authentic. You truly love her and want her to heal, keep that front of mind always.

People pleasing is doing things to be seen a certain way, often to earn love. Doing things out of love doesn’t have the same motivation. It’s unselfish. And by learning to live in the way, you must do the very same for yourself. Pay attention to the way you think of yourself, speak to yourself. Make as concerted of an effort to be kind and patient with you as well. As much as you can give to yourself will allow you to have the energy and sanity give it to her.

My advice for new ws used to be make sure you are doing self care every day. Whether that’s exercise, a hobby, something that makes you feel good even if it’s only for five minutes. Keep building that relationship with yourself. The more you expand in that area the more brave you will be towards connection and vulnerability.

It’s like an oxygen mask in a plane. You put your gas mask on with self care and working towards having compassion and love for yourself, and then you will have the needed oxygen to give to her.

Otherwise you will find yourself in this loop of hating yourself or thinking you are so daft and then it comes out in non loving ways towards her. The reason you couldn’t stand sitting there having that conversation is multi-faceted. You are not seeing her need to let the poison out, instead you are sitting there in your shame and allowing that to build. Shame is a useless emotion when it comes to helping you or her. Let that go and focus on who you want to be in that moment. The more you show up in the moment the better about yourself you will feel, and the more she will trust you to sit with her and give her what she needs.

If you can read or listen to the audiobook called "Rising Strong" by Brene Brown. The focus of that book is how to overcome shame and be vulnerable instead and how it is important to forming deeper connections. I applaud you for coming here and really trying to figure out what to do, that says a lot about how much you want to heal and help your wife to heal. So be gentle with yourself.

You aren’t trying if you aren’t feeling your failures as deeply as you are. But expect that you will fail many many times in this process. It’s a steep learning curve and the reality is that your wife has a lot of trauma to process and some of it ain’t gonna be pretty no matter what you do. She is struggling to know what she needs as much as you are.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:19 PM, Thursday, February 15th]

The challenge post infidelity is for the first time you are not actually worthy of being loved for who you are

Struggling with this here too. I don't want to love myself right now--I shouldn't love myself right now. But somehow doing it is also how I fix the things I shouldn't love myself for? It's such a paradox.

I found it better to consider my needs and feelings at a separate time from when my husband and I were interacting.

This is vert helpful advice. Thank you.

People pleasing is doing things to be seen a certain way, often to earn love.

This is so, so hard to not do as someone with abandonment issues.

The challenge post infidelity is for the first time you are not actually worthy of being loved for who you are

I’m going to dare to disagree with HikingOut here. I personally feel this statement is too strong. I believe that all people have inherent worth and value. I personally derive that from my faith, but it is a conviction that I would encourage anyone to adopt even if you have a different foundation from me. An affair is a major fuck up, we all know it’s terrible. But I personally don’t believe it goes so deep that it corrodes the value of the person and makes them unlovable. I believe the core is there and remains untouched. I believe in you guys, and I believe in myself.

Edit to add: going back to the source material I see HikingOut added a caveat of “in your wife’s view”, and that I can understand to a degree. But even then, I need my wife to change to R, but even if she doesn’t she is still a fully dignified human being. I don’t want her to internalize a view of herself that is informed by my pain, that would be too harsh. I want her to look truth in the face and come into the light.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 6:02 PM, Friday, February 16th]

I’m going to dare to disagree with HikingOut here. I personally feel this statement is too strong.

Oh I did not mean to imply he wasn’t loveable. I used shorthand here. What I mean is this is how we view things post infidelity. We believe that we do not deserve our spouse’s love and we see that as how they view us. And honestly, justly so.

But I will push back here, someone who has just cheated on you - you may still love them- but they are in a sense unworthy of that. They took it and disregarded it and injured you in one of the worst ways.

I believe we are all divinely loved, and we are here to learn to love ourselves, and that is the source of how we love others.

I believe everyone is redeemable.

But in the wake of the discovered affair, we already feel we are unlovable and now we have a pretty good idea our spouse knows it too. Like being busted while having imposters syndrome. it takes some time to see the fact they stay and try is a powerful act of love.

I don’t want her to internalize a view of herself that is informed by my pain, t

I think that what you are saying here is virtually impossible for most ws to separate for some period of time. The goals are to grow beyond that. When we find ourselves worthy, we can let go of those notions.

As part of this work, we begin to realize where we end and others begin (the basis for setting boundaries) and we learn what we are accountable for and what we are not. It becomes clearer and we are able to take the wheel because it’s not as overwhelming.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:04 AM, Saturday, February 17th]

Struggling with this here too. I don't want to love myself right now--I shouldn't love myself right now. But somehow doing it is also how I fix the things I shouldn't love myself for? It's such a paradox.

Yes, I didn’t get it either. Not for a long time.

Your story is very similar to mine. Your affair was on the shorter end (3 months versus mine which was two) but both of us hyper-bonded with the AP. I truly believed I was madly in love with him, and I read that is basically how your affair went down.

That is called limerence. It happens more frequently with those of us who have abandonment issues. In my case I was emotionally abused and neglected by my parents and then experienced SA repeatedly by other sources.

As an adult, I did the same things as you are saying, I went along to get along. I didn’t consider my needs a priority. I people pleaser everyone including my children because I never felt worthy of love. And I don’t think all this was a conscious thing, this is something I became aware of after the cheating.

When I went to therapy, I felt frustrated that the therapist didn’t want to talk about my affair, or really my marriage. She wanted me to see that because I hadn’t taken responsibility for my own happiness, and because I spent my whole life trying to earn love I had become tired and resentful. And that wasn’t the narrative I had been playing in my head at all.

The escape of the affair then caused high amounts of dopamine and I became addicted to it. When your brain is producing very little and then all the sudden you get big doses it skews a lot of things that will make you justify hard in order to keep having it.

I associated all that to my AP and thought I must have some crazy soul connection. But truth was I didn’t really know him like that, and the whole time I couldn’t make sense of any of it. I mean, I didn’t really find the person that attractive, nor did he really treat me all that great. It literally made no sense why I felt so intensely towards him. But it was all simple brain chemistry.

So she kept talking to me about self care, creating boundaries so I had space for myself, so I could practice being myself or at least trying to get in touch with who that is again.

She encouraged me to try new hobbies. She said that I needed to find the things in life that ignites that fire I was looking for in the AP. I wanted to ring her neck. I had real problems here and she wants me to try gardening?!?

And eventually by doing those things it started to become apparent the better I was to myself, the more happiness I could find, the more compassion I could start to hold for myself, then the more I had to give. The generosity and love I feel today with my husband, and virtually every single one of my relationships is genuine because it flows through me. I light my own fire, and look after my own happiness, and find ways to be excited about my life.

I started with a few basic things that at the time I had no idea why I was doing them. They were simply assignments from therapy and I stubbornly couldn’t see how it was going to help. But just as stubbornly, I realized whatever I had been doing wasn’t working.

Here is what it was:

1. I had to think about three things I was grateful for each day. Not just name them but deeply reflect on them. Usually this took 10 minutes. At first I wrote them down so I could focus better. In less than a month this can begin rewiring your brain. Google it.

2. Try to be present as much as possible. If you are focused only on the present moment, there is a place to rest there. So if I were folding towels, I focused on that being the best folded set of towels on the planet. I didn’t allow the chatter in my mind, I just folded the towels. I still try and do this as much as possible, in the simple little daily tasks. Joy only exists in the present moment. not all your moments wil be joy, but if you are present as much as possible you will at least tune into it more. It’s restful and will help you with your patience and being in the moment when you need to be with your wife.

3. Self care- get some exercise, eat well, get sleep. Your brain doesn’t understand much but it knows when you are taking care of yourself and this is what we do for people we love. Practice being gentle with yourself a inhad to keep asking myself: would I say this to my best friend? Or my children? Then why do I allow myself to talk to me this way?

Understand shame is completely useless. All it does is make things harder to face. Shame is about how we feel about ourselves. Remorse is more helpful- it has empathy for the person we hurt and it wants to make repairs. Right now you have both. Focus more on the remorse. Read the book rising strong, as I have recommended. Shame is working against you in this situation. It will be a while before you feel like loving yourself, but if you do these things you will get closer all the time. And the better you feel the better you can be for others.

Definitely counterintuitive because people confuse being selfish and self love. Selfishness comes from lack. Self love energizes, it’s abundant, it’s strong. And all relationships that we have are a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.

Your wife doesn’t need you to fix her by getting her to believe you. Your wife needs you to be in it with her. Be in her pain with her and experience it together. The shame is too big and it gets in the way of that, those are your feelings about what you did. Work on that so you can make the room you need for her feelings.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:10 AM, Saturday, February 17th]

@hikingout

I haven't had the time to properly respond to your comments yet but I just want to say thank you for the time you have put into them.

I'll try and respond at some point but with the kids off and being home etc I enjoy my time with them all rather than being on here lol.

Ps just downloaded the book you mentioned so excited for bs and I to start listening to that x

I don’t expect you to respond. I just wanted to answer your questions. I have been where you are and a lot of this was over my head at the time. But I was lucky enough to have other ws here to paint the bigger picture for me.

I think of it like they were the puzzle box with the full picture and I had about 1000 different pieces to put together. When I could snap more and more pieces in place, I understood that I was on the right track because of them. Enjoy your kids, and I think the book will be very helpful in illuminating some of the ways that you can begin having a true connection and how to identify when shame is getting in your way.

I know there is no shortcut thru The Work. I just want everyone of us on this healing journey to not lose hope as it gets long and dark and dreary. God bless us, every one.

Hikingout

I wanted to express my gratitude for you helpful and well thought out responses. I always find what you wrote to be incredibly helpful and uplifting for those of us still navigating the path