SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Sure she can say "I won’t listen to this music, or read these kinds of books" but she is doing it to placate you rather than showing empathy. That’s not a changed person, thats someone trying to stay out of trouble. Thats a parent/child dynamic rather than a husband wife dynamic.

This is possibly the single most important thing when you are evaluating the safety of your wayward.

You always feel it.

Here it is named.

Yes, HikingOut again displays her hard-earned wisdom. I think she articulated it perfectly.

Last night I gingerly brought up the subject, because I wanted to ask the question GTM posed: "why consume this?" and before I even got there, she started talking about how much it bothers her that I don't believe her (I tell her that I believe her about 85% of the time) that neither of the two nights spent with the realtor were penetratively consummated. When she starts thinking about my disbelief, she is thrown into a spiral and reaches for the escapism of her dark romance AI movies.

So I guess that answers that.

So basically, according to her, it’s your fault that she consumes smut because she can’t be bothered with your questions.

Some trash can’t be recycled into something else. Best to leave it on the street where it belongs.

I don't know if that answers anything. Maybe try again with the preface that you want to genuinely understand what she gets out of the media she's consuming, and that you're not accusing her of anything? Often times when my H and I preface things like that, when we expect an emotional reaction to something we're not saying, it does genuinely disarm us and make us more willing to listen to what the other is actually saying...

Because personally, after my infidelity, I can be enjoying a song/video/tv show/movie, etc., but when infidelity is brought up, no matter whether it's romanticized or treated with appropriate disgust, it ruins the content for me, because I'm reminded of how I hurt my H. But like HO said, there could be other reasons why she's consuming it, and we don't know what kind of internal reaction she's actually having, to be able to say whether it's any indication of the amount of remorse she feels. That's why I think it's important to have the answer to the question before drawing any conclusions about whether it's reasonable to want her to stop consuming such plots and what her reaction to that want says about her remorse. Y'know? It's all very tangled.

Edited to clarify: I don't think that wanting her to stop consuming this content is unreasonable if it causes you distress, and I think she should want to minimize your distress. But your feelings about it might change with more information about her internal experience of the content... Or it maybe make no difference at all. But more info is always better.

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 4:10 PM, Saturday, October 10th]

I don’t get bothered by cheating or references to infidelity. Maybe b/c it’s 13 years or maybe it’s just my decision to not let the affair take any further enjoyment from my life.

I can watch all the movies and hear the songs in the radio. No impact. Lucky me.

So in other words, she is rebelling like a child. Rather than seeing natural consequences and reactions.

What did she do to rebuild when these things were first revealed? It was all rugswept?

The solution really just lies in changing the dynamic. Go to the macros of what’s wrong in the relationship and state them. It’s not that she listens to music or reads books you find objectionable.

And the boundaries she needs to fix those things. Treating you like the punishing parent 8is not good for your marriage even had there been no infidelity. This comes down to a lack of a strong relationship with her proclaimed values and a profound lack of empathy. You do not really want her to just follow rules, you want her to guide her life in a way that is inherently expected of a married woman.

Marriage should mean that you are taking the other partners well being as important as your own. This means empathy, this means providing emotional protection. I think of you can present the umbrella of where the problems lie, she needs to look at the details herself and understand the misalignment. She needs to become a safe partner.

I wonder how she would feel about you viewing pornography. After all, isn’t that essentially what she is consuming, only in literary rather than visual form? It’s a $1.2 billion industry marketed primarily to women.

No judgment intended. Some people are perfectly comfortable with either form. But whether literary or visual, pornography generally invites the consumer to enter imaginatively into the sexual experience being portrayed. Perhaps that is the source of your concern, and why you find yourself wondering what she gets out of reading it.

After all, thought is the seedbed of behavior. What we repeatedly entertain in our minds can eventually influence our desires, attitudes, and actions.

There is also an interesting double standard worth considering. If she objected to your viewing pornography, I suspect few would question the legitimacy of her concern or characterize her objection as an attempt to police your behavior. Why, then, should your concern about her literary consumption be treated any differently?

Here is what I learned in the aftermath of Dday... I had no control over my fWW. The only thing I can control is me and my behaviors. I cannot completely control my thoughts or feelings. And feelings are not a good basis for making decisions, so don't make decisions based on feelings. Finally, at some point I have to forgive my fWW if we are going to move on and create a new marriage. We had to agree on shared values and shared boundaries. The key was agree, not dictate. If she could not do this with me, we would separate.

There are lots of definitions of forgiveness. The one I like is figuratively releasing my hands from her throat. It does not mean that I forget, or that we are "even" it does mean that I don't take it out on her anymore. That did not happen right away. Forgiveness was a practice that required me to say it and practice it a thousand times, and ask God to help me achieve it. But I did. It also did not mean that the scars from her infidelity went away. But my need for vengeance went away. My need for answers filled in that part of my heart. I became curious and I changed the way I asked or looked for answers. Slowly the shame that she felt for what she did and how wrong it was turned into guilt and her own curiosity about how she got there. How did she become a slut? (her words). Why did she need that validation? What created this terrible resentment in her that allowed her to do something so destructive. And finally, she started looking for ways to change these behaviors so she could be healthy and become the person she longed to be. In many ways, she had to shake that inner voice that told her she was never good enough. The voice that for a short time when someone was interested in her, quieted. Which is really why she had affairs, and allowed herself to cross boundaries that she new should never be crossed.

Early on, she could not get to empathy, because our approach to dealing with her infidelity caused her to go into a shame spiral. She would turn in on herself so badly, she could not even begin to see my pain. All she could do was collapse on herself and just try to follow the rules I set. It was not a marriage, it was survival. It was not love it was dependance. She could not become the person I knew she could become, because she was always in fight or flight mode fully in shame for who she was in her mind.

The only way that changed was understanding that she was safe, loved and cared for. She was not a horrible person, she had done horrible things. Inside that scared girl that would do anything to quiet the voice that always said she was garbage was a wonderful, warm woman that wanted to be accepted, but never knew she already was accepted. That meant that I had to change my approach from demanding answers to coming beside her and giving her unreasonable amounts of empathy and letting her know who the woman I fell in love with was worthy and not worthless. I had to find the strength to do that, but it paid off.

I am rambling. The long and short is that you need to ask if your pain is causing her to shame spiral. If it is, control what you can control, and try a new approach. If you cannot do that, end it. You are both in survival mode. That is no way to live. My marriage now is high fives and football games, climbing mountains, great meals and every once and a while, dealing with a little friction. But it is a marriage even she is proud of. We are getting to thriving. But we got there because I controlled what I could control.