SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

You have no idea what’s going on with him?

As a BH, I’ll tell you what’s going on with him:

YOU LEFT HIM FOR ANOTHER MAN!

That’s what’s going on with him.

You told him he’s not enough, and you’re looking for what you want elsewhere.

That’s what’s going on with him.

He sees you with your arms and legs wrapped around another man, having the best sex ever.

That’s what’s going on with him.

You’re worried he might divorce you?

His insecurity is 100 times yours. You’ve already divorced him, in the most meaningful way. He’s just waiting for you to pack.

This isn’t about messy cabinets. Good grief, there’s you, him and a daughter. How messy can the house be?

And every time you fuss about this shit, it just reminds him how unhappy you are.

But if I’m wrong, and this really is about messy cabinets, then you both need therapy of some sort.

Best wishes.

One of the conditions of the marriage prior to the affair is that he would go away in his head for much of the time we were together, instead of sharing his inner world with me. It was emotional distance instead of connection…When the affair started, I wasn’t 2700 miles from home looking to sex with someone else. I found a "friend" who wanted to connect with me and talk for hours every day, without having to have a spotless shared home, and that lead to inappropriate intimacy and feelings, which turned into sexting and plans to meet up again, "Not Just Friends"-style. (The A was discovered and ended before that meet up happened.) The whole time I wanted that connection and sexual desire to come from BH instead of AP, and I wanted to end the affair much sooner than I did… I was just terrified of going back to the silence. (InB4 "why didn’t you just *communicate* that to him?" I tried! I’m still trying!)

That same terror is creeping back in, as he’s keeping his thoughts and feelings to himself. I feel shut out, isolated, alone, and powerless to change anything. I can’t support and comfort him if he doesn’t share anything with me. I can’t make him happy with a clean house unless I’m allowed the time it’s gonna take to catch up with it. I can’t give him the quality time and companionship he wants if I’m spending that time and energy on housework. It’s reinforcing the beliefs that I only deserve affection, desire, and connection if the house is clean, and that I’ll never be "good enough" for him, which is also part of the deeper "whys" for the affair.

We spoke about why he’s keeping his feelings to himself, and he said 1) he often feels that they are "petty" or "dumb," and 2) that he worries the conversation will blow up again, as it has in the past. I told him his feelings are not petty or dumb; they’re just his feelings and they’re a result of some major traumatic happenings. I think it would be better if he just recognized those feelings, meet them with self-compassion, let himself feel them, and really process them instead.

I told him I’m the past, the conversations blew up not because of the subject matter or because I didn’t want to hear his thoughts, but because the way we were communicating was triggering to me as a result of my childhood trauma. He said he doesn’t think that makes a functional difference, which I disagree with but am having trouble articulating why…The last few deep conversations we had remained calm and productive, I thought, but I know often the mind hyperfocuses on the negative experiences rather than the positive, until there’s enough subsequent positive experiences to convince it otherwise… I just don’t know how to do that last part if he continues to keep his feelings to himself. I just want a chance to prove that I’m a safe space for those feelings.

And I can hear it now: "But Ghostie, you’re telling him to go fuck his feelings with regards to the state of the house and wanting to spend time together." But I’m not. I understand those feelings. I am trying my damnest to eliminate the source of the negative feelings that the mess brings. (And yes, it is genuinely about the mess.) I want to spend time with him too, and I understand he feels rejected… But I also want him to know that I feel overwhelmed and I’m struggling, and for him to have a better understanding of the rock and hard place he’s forced me into. I can’t fix this by myself. I need him to work WITH me. I want to be on the same team again.

The cabinet metaphor isn’t meant to be taken literally. The point was that I can’t clean the messy, disorganized,overstuffed cabinet without taking everything out of it, temporarily making a mess of the space around the cabinet, in order to set it right. Something has to temporarily be sacrificed (either time together or the standards at which he wants the house kept), because the situation is currently untenable.

I don’t believe he has any reason to fear me leaving. There was never any thought or possibility of that. I dropped AP like a hot potato on D-day. I’ve told him I might just die if he ever left me, that I simply couldn’t handle it emotionally. I’ve been putting in so much effort to work on myself and fix things, and he said he recognizes that… But maybe I ought to check in with him about whether he fears that or not.

There’s a lot to unpack here but I’ll try to make this as clear and concise as possible.

Before your marriage, your husband didn’t feel safe opening to you and sharing his feelings.

The fact that you cheated on him completely validated his fears.

The true "why" of what led up to your cheating isn’t your husband’s failings as a partner, but why you sought solace in another man rather than the myriad of other options available to you, which include divorce.

I don’t think you’re as close as you think you are in terms of understanding your motivations and behavior.

I also think you could’ve handled the situation with your husband inviting to the outing with your daughter much better than you did. You already told him, when the conversation first came up, that you only stay home to clean the house to make him happy. He decided he wanted you to come out with him anyway.

You could’ve just enjoyed the time you spent with him and, if he complained about the house afterward, argued with him then.

Instead, you stewed in your resentment and started a fight with him. It was more important to you in that moment to be "right" than it was to be with him.

In fact, from what you described, it seems that you have a tendency to make everything that troubles him all about you. He tries to be open with you and when he does, you’re triggered… then he clams up again and you’re upset about that.

If you want to rebuild your relationship, it’s more important not to squander the opportunities that he gives you to reconnect with him than it is to stream your activities 24/7, never travel, give him access to your devices, etc.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 8:18 PM, Sunday, November 23rd]

Before your marriage, your husband didn’t feel safe opening to you and sharing his feelings.

I'm pretty sure it was the opposite: that he felt like he could tell me anything, but he just didn't feel the need to. I asked him, early on in our R&R journey, what "companionship" meant to him. It turns out, we had very different definitions of that. He felt connected to me as long as we were physically together in the same space; he doesn't need much in the way of conversation. I definitely do, however. I could be across the country, as I was, and still feel close to him if we were having a deep conversation over text, certainly much closer than sitting in the car, 5 inches apart, in silence... I don't think he realized how often he goes away in his own head, either, though I would try to pull him out of it by asking him "What are you thinking?" and saying "I feel far away from you." When I got home from my work trip, he suspected something was up, and I told him that I had met a "friend," and that it was really nice to talk to him so much, and that I missed that in our relationship... And then of course because he was still suspicious, he withdrew even further from me... It is still persisting as a problem in our post-affair marriage.

The true "why" of what led up to your cheating isn’t your husband’s failings as a partner, but why you sought solace in another man rather than the myriad of other options available to you, which include divorce.

Again, I'm not blaming my decisions at all on my BH. They are 100% my responsibility. I will maintain the point that I have made on previous threads, which is that it is important to read WS' words as they are and with the specific intent to hear them instead of to respond. It is perfectly possible and absolutely fine-- important for R&R, even-- for waywards to be able to talk about and analyze the specific conditions in which they chose to commit infidelity, and the correlated factors. The choices don't happen in a vacuum... If I'm talking about the condition of my marriage before the infidelity, specifically, in this instance, to explain why I feel anxious when he retreats into silence, then that is the truth of what I felt and experienced, and it is not said with any intention at all of blame-shifting. Respectfully, please stop reading it that way.

Divorce was (and still is) the last thing I wanted; I was desperate to connect with my husband, and I very heavily mourned the perceived "death" of our marriage. Again, that is not to say infidelity was the morally correct choice or to justify it in any way; I am simply explaining my feelings from that time.

You already told him, when the conversation first came up, that you only stay home to clean the house to make him happy. He decided he wanted you to come out with him anyway

You could’ve just enjoyed the time you spent with him and, if he complained about the house afterward, argued with him then..

I said that, but what he heard was "I want to be home cleaning the house and not spending time with you, and I will be angry that you're preventing me from cleaning." It was very evident in the way he said "I just don't want you to be angry at me later for taking you away from cleaning."

I was expressing to him that I didn't feel he understood my initial explanation of the problem at all. What I was hoping to hear was some acknowledgment that yes, he would be taking me away from cleaning, but he prefers to spend time with me, and that won't complain and act angry and resentful at me later on when the house isn't clean.

As I explained, he seemed to conveniently forget that he is the one who wants the house clean, and his reaction to it is why I'm anxious to be home cleaning. He was flipping it around to make it sound like I'm the bad guy here, and I was expressing that I was upset about that flipping. It was honestly incredibly triggering to me, and I wanted to make sure I was understood, not that I was "right." There is no "right" or "wrong" or "winner of the argument" here; there is only a problem, and so far no solution (and maybe only half an acknowledgment of the problem in general.)

In fact, from what you described, it seems that you have a tendency to make everything that troubles him all about you. He tries to be open with you and when he does, you’re triggered… then he clams up again and you’re upset about that.

He wants me to do something impossible, which is catching up with the house while also spending a ton of time with him. Like I said, I understand why he wants those things. I'm not vilifying him for wanting those things. But is not going to happen, and I NEED him to understand that and stop punishing me for having to pick one or the other. That's why I asked him which he would prefer; I wanted him to pick and take responsibility for the outcome, but instead he flipped it around on me, entirely unfairly... Am I supposed to just shut up and take that? I want to make things "about him" but he again, HE DOESN'T TALK TO ME. Am I supposed to just make assumptions about his feelings and start one-sided conversations about them? I'm not sure how that's supposed to work.

If you want to rebuild your relationship, it’s more important not to squander the opportunities that he gives you to reconnect with him than it is to stream your activities 24/7, never travel, give him access to your devices, etc.

That would be good advice to give to someone whose spouse doesn't have a whole meltdown about there being dishes in the sink.

[This message edited by Ghostie at 12:31 AM, Monday, November 24th]

You work

He works?

Why isn’t he doing dishes?

I only physically go to work one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer time, but there are administrative tasks, personnel to manage, and mandatory professional development to do throughout the month. So I make a couple hundred dollars most months, with a lot of unpaid hours of work. But we get inexpensive family health insurance with good coverage, so there’s that.

He works pretty long hours to pay all the bills and give us a very comfortable life, and he’s tired when he gets home. I want him to have time to relax and recuperate, and not to have to do any of the housework. He does help care for our daughter and does some things, like taking our garbage cans to the curb and the cleaning the gutters and an occasional, urgent load of laundry. But most everything else is my responsibility, and we both think that’s fair and agreeable.

I certainly don’t mean to come across as ungrateful or unhappy about having to manage the household. It’s just a lot, and I’ve been behind on it for a very, very long time. I get set back by vacations, my work weekend, hosting for the holidays, if the child (and god forbid, my H) is sick and has to stay home and be attended to, being out of the house all weekend long… I just don’t want to be made to feel like crap about it.

I really think you that you got so defensive that you completely missed the main points of my last post, so I’m just going to try again.

Your husband was deeply insecure and didn’t feel safe sharing his feelings with you before the affair.

The chasm of disconnect that you felt is now the size of the Grand Canyon because of your affair.

If you want to save your marriage, then you will have to try to refill the Grand Canyon by one grain of sand at a time.

Case in point:

Yes, your husband was being passive-aggressive in the way he invited you out. You already called him out on it on the spot when it happened; you could’ve left it at that. But you didn’t.

Instead of enjoying the time you were spending with him and your daughter, and giving him the reassurance that he needed that there was nothing you would prefer more than being with him, you called him out yet again at the end of the night.

This is what I meant by squandering the opportunity to rebuild trust.

If you were already unhappy in your marriage, I can see why all of this feels unfair and daunting. But that’s why the question of "Should this marriage be saved?" is the question you need to answer for yourself before addressing the question of "Can this marriage be saved?"

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 3:11 AM, Monday, November 24th]

Ghostie

You sound a lot like my wife. She has assumed a similar attitude to yours with respect to making sure I hear her side in arguments, and with looking back at the conditions of the marriage before the affair.

Quite frankly it has slowed our recovery down quite a bit, and caused me a LOT of stress and uncertainty.

Instead of addressing her betrayal, and working to convince me she really wants to be in this relationship, she spent far too much time trying to be heard instead.

When we talk about the affair, she spends the majority of her energy trying to get me to "take responsibility" for my part in the conditions that led up to her choosing to betray me. She has made similar comments to yours. This one stands out to me in particular "affairs don't happen in a vacuum".

Here's the kicker though, and the question that needs to be answered, why did whatever was happening in the relationship result in a very serious betrayal? How is that being addressed so it never happens again? How are you communicating that to him?

This is just a warning flag to hopefully warn you against sabotaging your own progress.

Theevent,

Just wanted to say thank you for articulating the point that I was trying to make much better than I could! Very well said:

This one stands out to me in particular "affairs don't happen in a vacuum".

As a BS, this is happens to be my favorite saying, albeit not in the way your wife (or Ghostie) intends. Affairs are usually part of a pattern of selfish, self-serving, and/or avoidant behaviors on the part of the WS. They aren’t the natural outcome of a bad marriage.

In your case, Ghostie, it seems you have a host of resentments against your husband, some valid, some not.

But if you’re going to reconcile you’re going to have to let them go— for the time being— in order to put out the fire you set.

Also, as I said in my other posts, whenever your husband does try to communicate and open himself up to you, you get defensive, get triggered, or get upset about how he says what he says.

That’s just going to perpetuate the vicious cycle that you hate of him shutting down, you feeling lonely, him feeling rejected, and you feeling justified in making choices that hurt him (like having an affair).

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 2:25 PM, Monday, November 24th]

Bluerthanblue,

I will try to explain one more time before abandoning the shit show this thread has become. Please try to listen this time.

I really think you that you got so defensive that you completely missed the main points of my last post, so I’m just going to try again.

You have made a great many incorrect assumptions, and I have corrected you. Let me assure you, I know my situation and my internal processes far better than you do. So many times on this website people will think that they know everything there is to know about other people, and if those other people set them straight or disagree with them, they jump to "You're being so defensive!" No, sometimes you're just off the mark... That is not to say that you can't help others to see things from a different perspective, or consider things they haven't considered; only that thrusting out these assumptions and insisting upon them isn't the way to go about it.

Your husband was deeply insecure and didn’t feel safe sharing his feelings with you before the affair.

Again, this is quite simply false. In his own words, he has told me that I am the first person to ever make him feel heard and seen. (I have it in writing on a Valentine's Day card from a few years ago.) He said he "treasured" the way we communicate and work through things before the affair, after which he started to think maybe we are not as good at communicating as he thought, if there was this issue that he wasn't aware of even as I was trying to resolve it.

The chasm of disconnect that you felt is now the size of the Grand Canyon because of your affair.

Shortly after D-day, we started spending a ton of time talking about the affair and our relationship. Like, hours and hours into the night. Maybe it was a result of hysterical bonding, but I felt closer to him than I did in a long time. Our marriage might be incredibly damaged right now because of the infidelity, yes, but the "chasm of disconnect" is re-opening because he has ceased sharing his feelings with me. Communication takes two willing participants. I am actively trying to learn why he has retreated into the silence again, and show him that I want to know about his feelings, that I care about them, and that want to help and support him. There are limited opportunities, and I am trying to be encouraging and patient until he opens up again... Part of the reason he's stopped seems to be how he feels about his own feelings-- that they're "petty" or "dumb." That's not my doing, and while I can nudge him towards thinking about them differently and giving himself permission to experience them, I can't force him to do it. But I will be here if (hopefully, "when") he does.

Yes, your husband was being passive-aggressive in the way he invited you out. You already called him out on it on the spot when it happened; you could’ve left it at that. But you didn’t.

I don't think that we properly discussed his response at the time that he made it. IIRC, my response wasn't to call him out; it was more like "Please, can you just make this decision!!" I think if we had talked about it thoroughly, I wouldn't have felt upset about it later on. I am generally pretty good about letting things go after we talk about them.

Instead of enjoying the time you were spending with him and your daughter, and giving him the reassurance that he needed that there was nothing you would prefer more than being with him, you called him out yet again at the end of the night.

This is what I meant by squandering the opportunity to rebuild trust.

More incorrect assumptions. We had a pretty nice family night out. (There was, of course, the stress of being in a super high stimuli and crowded space as a mildly autistic person while also trying to manage a toddler who is prone to wandering off and losing her belongings, in addition to some standard teenage emotional volatility at play. But otherwise, it was nice.) It wasn't until after we dropped my stepdaughter off at her mother's house and were sitting quietly (quietly !) in the car that I recalled and processed what he had said earlier. Then I expressed how it made me feel and wanted to make sure he understood the larger issue.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I am hearing from you is: "Waywards are not permitted to have and express their own feelings about everyday, non-infidelity related marital issues. They must be focused on their infidelity at all times and express nothing but self-flagellation and contrition forever! Lest they 'squander the opportunity to rebuild trust.' How dare you re-attempt to communicate if you weren't understood the first time? Don't you know that after cheating you cease to be a functional person in a relationship, and you have to prostrate yourself at your BS's feet and cater to their every whim, no matter how impossible? Are you even trying? Do you even want to be married?!

---

Theevent,

She has assumed a similar attitude to yours with respect to making sure I hear her side in arguments

Spouses are supposed to hear each other out and make every effort to understand each other. There are not supposed to be any "sides," but rather that there is an issue that you are working through together. I would not want to be married to someone who doesn't feel that way, and I feel fortunate that I am not.

I'm sorry if you feel that your wife got stuck on the surface whys and didn't explore (or hasn't explored? You oscillated between the past and present tense) her deeper whys. However, I have done that, and am still doing it. I'm in IC for my issues. I do not feel the need to rehash the deeper whys in every single one of posts, but that doesn't mean I'm not exploring and fixing them. Here, I am talking about the pre-affair conditions of the marriage specifically because those issues are resurfacing and causing me anxiety. (More on that in a bit.)

I will elaborate further on "These choices do not happen on a vacuum," as I think you are interpreting it as blame shifting again. It's not.

- The choice to commit infidelity is still the unilateral choice of the WS regardless of the conditions of the marriage, and as such 100% of the responsibility for the infidelity falls on the WS.

- When I say that these choices are not made in a vacuum, I am referencing the fact that in the majority of cases, the WS isn't just waking up one day and randomly deciding to cheat.

- People have these internal issues, which are generally not related to their marriage, often times of which we are not aware. (This is why finding the deeper whys takes so much exploration and work to figure out. These are things such as childhood trauma, shame, sex addiction, low self esteem, fear of abandonment, questionable moral beliefs, etc.)

- These sleeper issues can be triggered (or, maybe I should say "awakened") when there are certain factors at play (unfavorable marital conditions, life stressors, identity crises, etc.)

- The surfacing internal issues and external factors combine with an arising opportunity/temptation, and the choice is made to commit infidelity.

- Again, that is not to say that anything the BS was doing in the marriage caused the WS to commit infidelity, as there are always other choices the WS could have made. It just means that often times martial issues are a correlated factor.

Because these internal issues can take a long time to work through, and infidelity has to be stopped immediately, it is important for WS to examine the conditions of the marriage and the related factors surrounding their infidelity in the meantime. We can recognize patterns and identify those conditions which make us more at risk of committing infidelity again, especially if one is a repeat offender and has more data to work with, and if they arise again in the future, that becomes an indicator that we need to be extra on guard, even more closely monitor our thoughts and behaviors, and take extra precautions to avoid temptation or compromising situations... When WS are discouraged from doing this, they miss out not only on a greater understanding of themselves, but also on a valuable prevention tool.

So, in my case:

- External conditions: Before the affair, I felt distant from my H because we weren't talking and connecting. I felt lonely and at risk of being abandoned. I felt like a failure who wasn't good enough for H's love until the household responsibilities were immaculate because he withdraws when the house gets bad. I felt undesirable because it seemed like he wasn't excited about sex with me anymore.

- Internal issues: low self esteem, fear of abandonment, childhood trauma, perfectionism

- Opportunity/temptation: being away from home for two weeks with none of the usual household responsibilities and having someone who was interested in me, who wanted to talk for hours at a time, and eventually seemed excited about me sexually.

- Current red flags/increased risk factors: I'm beginning to feel distant from my husband again and at risk of being abandoned by him. I feel like shit about my inability to catch up with the housework and make him happy without sacrificing time spent with him.

- Preventative measures: Trying to get him to recognize this quality time vs. housework conundrum that I'm stuck in and cut me some slack while I focus on the housework, trying to get him to open up to me about his feelings, working on the self-esteem and fear of abandonment in IC, avoiding forming new friendships while the risk factors are present.

As I mentioned, I'm not going to put that on every post.

[This message edited by Ghostie at 3:46 PM, Monday, November 24th]

Ghostie-

I understand you probably get lots of good help from this site. However from the few threads I have read of yours, you seem to spend a lot of time correcting other people's wrong impressions of your situation/reactions. Honestly that would exhaust me and take a crap ton of tjme.

As a former messy who finally learned to conquer the mess, I am surprised how much I can get done in little bursts. I would guess that in less than the time it takes to post a response you could wash the dishes, or clear half a room. Sone of your responses maybe a whole room! Believe me I understand the struggle , I had to fight HARD to learn to get it all done and keep it done. I also value this abd other sites but there needs to be a balance.

There is a saying here take what you need and leave the rest. Could you try that??instead of spending ages trying to correct people's misconceptions of you, just leave it be. It just seems that often you spend more time trying to clarify your reality (which I get) and get very little helpful feedback for the time spent.

As you said you can't do everything and you need to decide what things to let go.by all means making sure you are heaed in your relationship is a valid feeling. Maybe spending time on this site trying to make yourself heard is one of these things that needs to be let go.

Just a thought...

Gently, I do think you seem to dig your heals in and weren’t getting to the heart of the last few posts.

I am going to try and illustrate it with these bullet points you made:

-

External conditions: Before the affair, I felt distant from my H because we weren't talking and connecting. I felt lonely and at risk of being abandoned. I felt like a failure who wasn't good enough for H's love until the household responsibilities were immaculate because he withdraws when the house gets bad. I felt undesirable because it seemed like he wasn't excited about sex with me anymore.

One thing is true, you are a newer ws and I think you see this as an external issue. But it’s largely an internal one.

YOU feel a moral failing at the household situation. If you didn’t, what he says about it would bother you less and you would feel worthy to receive love regardless of the difference.

Now, I understand he has a critical nature but if that was the only problem that would have been something to address before the affair and one that would not have been emotionally charged. It would not have been you feeling abandoned, it would have been a call to become curious and more assertive.

You think it’s him that is not ready to address this issue, but in reality there are things you will learn to address as you get further in your journey.

What blue and the event is trying to tell you, and you can’t see yet is affairs are trauma. And when trauma takes over with someone they are not as emotionally prepared to deal with the pre A issues.

This is an extreme example- It’s almost like you in a fight and he punched you in the face and you shot him. So you keep going to his hospital bed and saying "you need to see that I shot you because you punched me in the face!!! You need to admit that and apologize and never do it again!"

I don’t know how else to put it.

I think it’s hard for you to take that in because it’s hard for ALL ws to take that in at first. We also have emotional fragility in the wake of the affair. You have to let go of the house cleaning conundrum. I feel like every single suggestion to get a cleaner or let it go just goes no where.

Here is why I think that- if you hire a cleaner for example it simplifies the problem you want to point at because your resentment surrounding it is so big that fixing it would mean you would have to put down those resentments.

Why do I think that? Because I did the same thing. Holding into my resentments was the only thing I had still justifying the affair. In fact, I could not even be like you in realizing I had them. I claimed I didn’t have resentments.

Now, my husband isn’t all that critical. Though prior to the affair we were having a big issue because he wanted all this help with starting this business. I worked full time in a demanding career and did everything for the family. I too felt I wasn’t enough because I was now failing at everything trying to make it all work. And a perfectionist doesn’t fail well.

But it isn’t why I had an affair. I had an affair because I didn’t know how to deal with all of it. I escaped instead.

The biggest part of a ws’s recovery is learning to cope, to be tuned into oneself and look after themselves emotionally. This means that we become a lot less penetrative when there is a criticism or a period of marriage where we have lost some of our connection and need to stabilize it. It also means we get better at enforcing boundaries in a healthy way.

So in essence until you learn to cope better, truly love yourself, figure a way to drain the shame down, this need to show him you are right is going to continue to be your impulse.

You should resist it. No one is saying that you should never have feelings or try and talk him through it, but a lot of this really comes off to him that you are saying he deserved the affair because he did xy or z.

I don’t for one second believe that’s your intent or belief.

However, from his point of trauma, that’s how it feels and that is why he is shutting down. And that is what the event and blue is trying to explain to you.

I did all this too, and it took a while to see what he didn’t need was logic and lessons. What he needed to see was I was lost too. I was broken too. I didn’t like what happened either. I didn’t have anything figured out. And so we were then more on the floor together saying how do we get up?

The answer isn’t "when he stops bitching about the dishes" and for whatever reason this is like a deep level of shame you feel that you can’t meet his expectations. You are trying to control the reconciliation instead of surrender to it- and that is hard to do. It takes some time to learn how to do that so that you make space for both of you. You keep saying you are but it’s not the way you are reacting to what he is telling you he needs.

So my suggestion is you learn to be okay with it. You find strategies that work for you in the parameters of what you have to work with. It is normal if your husband works all week that he wants to spend time with you.

And if you genuinely enjoy spending time with him, what’s wrong with figuring out another way to go about making that time precious and protected?

Certainly the answer is not to stay up when he really needs you to go to bed with him so he can feel less anxious due to the fact you stayed up all the time talking to the ap?

You asked how can you reassure him and then have done nothing here but dismiss the answers. So when we say you haven’t gotten things figured out- I think it’s normal you haven’t because you haven’t had enough time to. But you are so self protective that you are seeing all this as criticism.

Honestly, I get it. I grew up in an insanely critical household. No matter what I have done in my life my mother had always given me a compliment and then criticism on how to do it better. Or she verbally abused me when she wasn’t happy at all with it. And I had to learn that my inner voice was modeled around that. And I had to change my inner voice.

Now when someone doesn’t like something I do, I can plainly see that’s about them. I will often look to see if I agree at all and if I don’t I am not swayed. It takes a lot of hard work to get there, and the things that came with that was a lot of trying and failing.

So please know I can see you are trying but your focus is very skewed due to the shame you carry around. But you are going to need to be very mindful to stop litigating. You are going to lose him this way and that’s the only reason people are saying what they are saying. There are patterns to this.

Remorse is something that happens when you can take in the damage that you have done. Shame and guilt are normal stages for right now and they take up a lot of room. If you can figure out how to put down your sword, and become curious about the damage, read about trauma you will realize you are making all the room for your black eye and not nearly enough room for his gunshot.

- Internal issues: low self esteem, fear of abandonment, childhood trauma, perfectionism

I concur with this and experienced the same. You know these things are there but you do not yet see how they are in every interaction you have. And you are far from recovering from these issues and can’t see they are holding you back now.

- Opportunity/temptation: being away from home for two weeks with none of the usual household responsibilities and having someone who was interested in me, who wanted to talk for hours at a time, and eventually seemed excited about me sexually.

This was my affair too. Went on a business trip, was having fun. Didn’t want the fun to end. But In reality, when it’s about opportunity it’s more about your relationship with your values.

For me, I eventually could see I did things mostly that I thought I was supposed to but due to my upbringing, I was not up close and personal with my value system and integrity. Integrity is of course what you do when others aren’t watching and how good your word is. Right now your husband has a fear of what you do when he isn’t watching (this him wanting you to come to bed) and how good your word is because he is digging to find out what else you lied about to him.

Those are much deeper issues than you realize and is making him question his entire reality. When you are in the car after spending the day with him and he is being quiet, that’s a goood opportunity to say "how are you feeling?" Because that’s what’s weighing on him- how can he go out and have fun with you but then he doesn’t want you to think he is over it, but then he is also too exhausted to talk about it because every time it’s litigation instead of just listening and holding space for him.

And I understand that isn’t coming from an evil or bad place. But the things you are fighting with him about are all red herrings because you do not yet know how to deal with his feelings when you can barely deal with your own.

You are going to need to find a way to make that space and that is the only way to reassure him. The fact you railed against particularly what the event said- and he is a bh. You could use those opportunities to dig deeper in his post and find out more. He is actually going to be a good resource for you to understand dealing with your husband.

It’s natural that you are defensive. You need to figure out a way to allow what is being done and said with understanding that in the tender months after dday your husband is searching hard on how he can remain with you. That’s why people are saying put aside the resentments for now.

One thing that was helpful for me with my resentments was to recognize I own them and am responsible for them. My own coping and communication needed to improve before I could begin to address them and by recognizing that and becoming okay they might need to sit for a while more room for what he was going through opened up.

The main issue with your husband shutting down is you have to make the room for his feelings about the affair and they are the most urgent of all the feelings involved. Everytime you litigate you are pushing him away and trivializing what he feels and this is going to accumulate and become anger in him before long.

-

Current red flags/increased risk factors: I'm beginning to feel distant from my husband again and at risk of being abandoned by him. I feel like shit about my inability to catch up with the housework and make him happy without sacrificing time spent with him.

You need to see you abandoned him first. You need to work to become more comfortable with uncertainty. You also need to realize that doing what he needs has to come first for a while over everything else.

I personally think that you are putting all your shame in the housework, thinking if you could just be what he needed you to be there that will fix it. You will be worthy and have proven it.

Reality is the shame you feel is from the affair (and just accumulated through all your life until now) and even if you get caught up in the house it’s going to always be an issue for you. Not everyone is a domestic goddess, this is not a moral failing.

- Preventative measures: Trying to get him to recognize this quality time vs. housework conundrum that I'm stuck in and cut me some slack while I focus on the housework, trying to get him to open up to me about his feelings, working on the self-esteem and fear of abandonment in IC, avoiding forming new friendships while the risk factors are present.

This first one is backwards. The true thing you should be asking for slack in is the housework so you can focus on your recovery and him. And right now you are demonstrating your feelings about the housework are more important than his feelings about the affair. This is not going to be helpful to either of you. You can hide behind the housework long enough for him to be done with this whole thing.

If you want him to open up to you stop trying to talk him out of his feelings. Listen and validate and promise to work on it. And you are, I know you are doing that. We can’t make it go faster and that too is overwhelming.

I say all this with empathy and knowing I have been here and made these same errors in many ways. Please try and take it in.

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:11 PM, Monday, November 24th]

Ghostie,

It would be wise to listen to hikingout and bluerthanblue. They both know their shit.

I can’t add anything of substance to what they are saying, but I can tell you, you are writing the divorce document right now that you claim to be desperate to avoid.

In regard to the part of this thread where you described the condition of your marriage at the time you cheated.

I just wanted to share how I would feel if you said it like that to me. Maybe your husband is a bigger person than I am but…

I think every single couple on SI has had the « condition of the marriage » discussion a thousand times over. It is one of the most contentious topics. Yes, it is important for the WS to share their feelings about where they were in their head at the time. However, we made a lot of progress in recovery when my husband learned to include all the important qualifiers ANY TIME we had this conversation. When he would forget to do this it would definitely send me into the « I am definitely divorcing you » spiral.

To me the qualifier is something like…at the time I became vulnerable to cheating I was feeling X and Y and I felt very disconnected (BUT - I may have been intentionally disconnecting from you in order to justify the growing flirtation with the AP). I then started to blame you for X and Y (BUT - I now see how ridiculous that was given I wasn’t doing X and Y for you either). Then later I chose to engage in X and Y (BUT despite the conditions of the marriage, if I had the slightest integrity or character or loyalty toward the decades you had given me I would have addressed the conditions of the marriage without actually cheating on you).