I am so sorry you are going through this Dadhurt. It is hard not to lose your temper when your spouse betrays your trust. Don't beat yourself up too much. While you might not have helped your sitch, you were justified in losing your temper.
Thanks destroyd. DBing is sooo hard with all the emotions you are supposed to act counter to. I need to be stronger if I’m going to have any chance.
This is such a difficult thing to go through, DadHurt.
I will share this with you. Last year I discovered my H in an emotional affair. He'd already pulled away from me, was very distant and hostile and withdrawn, and was extremely critical of me. My self esteem was in total tatters but I'd managed to convince myself that a) he was just pressured at work and b) if I worked on being a better wife, he'd want me more. He didn't confess to the EA, I discovered it by looking at his phone, and he denied the extent of it and gaslit me until I went into his email account and found more evidence. It was one of the most painful things I'd ever experienced. I get where you are.
I was living on anger and fear for months. Months. I dragged us to therapy but we made no progress because I was so hurt and furious and just wanted him to jump through hoops to comfort me. Whatever he did didn't comfort me, because deep down I knew he was just placating me and because we never dealt with the ways we were both responsible for our marriage getting to the place where he had so many unmet emotional needs that an EA became a viable option for him. BD didn't happen until a good few months after the EA was discovered, and I am sure it happened in part because of the way I was unable to handle my pain and anger.
You are allowed to be angry and hurt. Your feelings of betrayal are totally justified. It's what you do with them here on out that matters. Even if she were to offer complete remorse, you are still going to have to process those feelings - she can't do it for you. I've had to learn that the very hard way. You may decide, once you've processed your feelings, that there's nothing left to save. She may decide that while she's remorseful for her EA, she still needs to be out of the marriage that wasn't meeting her needs. There are no guarantees. But right now you need to concentrate on yourself. I really wish I'd done things differently in the aftermath of the EA - I did my best, but I didn't have the emotional resources to really look inwards and handle my own feelings in a healthy way.
I think the advice you've been given to stay away from drink for the time being is very wise.
Thanks for your thoughts Alison. We talked more about it last night. She said that it’s not what I think but she still admitted it was wrong. She said he’s just a client that is nice to her and makes her feel good when she hasn’t felt good about herself in a while. She claimed she has never cheated on me in our almost 20 years together. I believe her but there’s still the huge weight of hurt and betrayal that’s is so difficult to process.
We’re now back to up in air on remaining in the house together. The advice here has been to stay but think it’s going to be hard due to lack of trust on both sides - I violated her privacy and she had a pretty minor EA. Even though she says she is going to stop, I’m always going to be wondering when she’s on the couch or in her room if she’s texting him and she’s going to be wondering if I’m snooping. It’s going to be tough. She also says she is angry that I’m changing and bettering myself. She’s angry and hurt because she has tried to get me to change for years and I’m only now doing it when she is leaving- says I will now be a great partner for someone else but couldn’t do it for her. She is right, I feel terrible for how I’ve been in our marriage. I will be a better person and so wish it could be with her but she has given up.
We’re now back to up in air on remaining in the house together. The advice here has been to stay but think it’s going to be hard due to lack of trust on both sides - I violated her privacy and she had a pretty minor EA. Even though she says she is going to stop, I’m always going to be wondering when she’s on the couch or in her room if she’s texting him and she’s going to be wondering if I’m snooping. It’s going to be tough. She also says she is angry that I’m changing and bettering myself. She’s angry and hurt because she has tried to get me to change for years and I’m only now doing it when she is leaving- says I will now be a great partner for someone else but couldn’t do it for her. She is right, I feel terrible for how I’ve been in our marriage. I will be a better person and so wish it could be with her but she has given up.
I know exactly what you mean. If I'd had my time over again (hindsight is a wonderful thing) I'd have taken and allowed a LOT more space in the aftermath of the EA. I wish I'd have done DB in the aftermath in order to concentrate on healing myself. An injured, damaged, mistrustful and deeply hurt person is in no fit state to do the delicate and often painful work of repairing a marriage. For me, I was in no place to accept any responsibility for the hurt I'd caused my H, or I was so eager to have his love and attention again that I accepted too much responsibility. Both are unhealthy and more importantly, ineffective. It does you no good to leap into repairing a relationship while you're still understandably hurt and betrayed. And perhaps this applies to your wife too. However minor or otherwise the EA was, your feelings are your feelings (and I hate to say it, but you may not have the full truth - bits and pieces were still trickling out in my situation for months after my initial discovery) and that needs to be the most important.
If you feel you can do this healing and introspection while living with your wife, I think it is better to do that. I couldn't. If you can't, then perhaps a more physical separation is best. Are you in the UK? I went to a solicitor when my H left and my solictor told me that while he could argue he'd been primary carer in the past, and so would be the obvious choice for residency of the kids should we divorce, given that he'd left and over the months since he'd left the kids had been with me and I had been doing all the school runs, that it was clear I was their primary carer and he was unlikely to be granted residency of them should be want to apply for it. I think that's worth bearing in mind too.
If you feel you can do this healing and introspection while living with your wife, I think it is better to do that. I couldn't. If you can't, then perhaps a more physical separation is best. Are you in the UK? I went to a solicitor when my H left and my solictor told me that while he could argue he'd been primary carer in the past, and so would be the obvious choice for residency of the kids should we divorce, given that he'd left and over the months since he'd left the kids had been with me and I had been doing all the school runs, that it was clear I was their primary carer and he was unlikely to be granted residency of them should be want to apply for it. I think that's worth bearing in mind too.
That is the true question, Alison. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to do that while living with the wife. Obviously I want to R, she is not in a place to do that now and is probably a lot farther from any change of R after I unleashed all my hurt and anger on her Saturday night. We haven’t told our D6 yet and a separation will force that. I know there is a small part of her that wants our marriage to work but she is so far down the path of D by telling our friends and family about her choice and plans that I don’t see her turning back. I feel so guilty and so much regret for not being the husband I could have been but I do know some of this is her fault too. I could have fixed this years ago but I wasn’t ready. I’m ready now but have no control and it’s scary.
People wiser and more experienced than I am will have better advice for you - I can only give you my experience of being the person on the receiving end of an EA. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I'm not sure I was capable of doing what it took in those months. There's no shame in that. Perhaps we'd have a much better marriage now if I had have been able to. Perhaps we would have separated more decisively and more quickly, and I'd be much further along the path to recovery than I am now, if I had. I don't know. And regret is futile. The only right answer is to focus on yourself, and as far as you can remove yourself from behaviour that is unacceptable. If she's not out and out abusive to you, perhaps you can manage your feelings by having as much time and space away from her, and no R talks, and no booze (!) until things become clearer.
Well, update to my sitch. Last night I really screwed up.
W, D6 and I went to pool together, had a good day. Had some drinks at pool and back home, BBQ, etc. good family day. Ended up talking to an old friend on the phone who went through a divorce several years ago. He basically said “hate to tell you but if she is having an EA then she is done with you, you need to lawyer up, protect yourself and file and move on.”
I’ve been holding so much anger in due to the (texting) EA, I confronted my wife last night and let it all out. I really let her have it verbally. At first she denied it, then when I told her I had gone through her work phone she admitted it apologized. I yelled at her about the disrespect and betrayal. I told her we need to tell our daughter, she needs to move out and I’m going to file.
After sobering up this morning I realize how much I screwed up and let my anger take over after drinking. We talked more about the EA and she confirmed that she was just looking for attention, apologized and told me she would stop texting him. She now is considering moving from the state when previously she was going to stay for a year.
I feel terrible. Part of me is glad I confronted her on the EA but I did it in such an angry way, any small goodwill I built over the last couple of weeks is undone and then some.
I so regret this- please help!
Not the end of the world. Just move forward and show consistent actions.
Don't try to teach her everything you are learning, she's not ready and she doesn't want to hear it from you.
H 34 W 29 BD 3/12/18 Divorce Busted Spring 19
It is not things that bother us, but the stories we tell ourselves about things.
Not the end of the world. Just move forward and show consistent actions.
Don't try to teach her everything you are learning, she's not ready and she doesn't want to hear it from you.
Thanks. Not trying to teach her anything but she knows I’m serious about being a better man and is angry that it’s not for her. 2 steps forward 3 steps back.
The “cake eating” stuff is interesting though. All the stay in the house together and play family while she is determined to leave. She says it’s for the benefit of our daughter and I agree with that, but can’t help feel it’s a little bit of cake eating while she feels out how we are going to get along or how things with the minor EA (that supposedly is now over) plays out.
I struggle with the concept of cake-eating myself. It feels very transactional to me (I'll only be nice to you if you do what I want you to do!) and totally opposite to the way I think love and care work.
For me, I guess, a helpful definition of cake-eating is where you give someone something that you don't want to give them - when it's part of a secret manipulation tactic and isn't given freely.
If I do some wifely service for my husband (I don't know - like cooking and looking after him when he was sick) knowing full well he's an abusive so and so who doesn't respect me, I am feeding him cake. I am giving him the benefit of my care and attention when he offers little in return. But it isn't about him - it's about me. Because when I did that, it was clearly a pretty manipulative move on my part. I'm angry with him. I don't like him much at the moment, and instead of withdrawing and acting with honesty - making my actions congruent with my feelings and the facts of our relationship - I pretended to be a nice wife. I stuffed all that down and played nice in the hope that it would make him be nice to me. It's grim and unhealthy.
If she was determined to leave she would. She's legally, probably, entitled to be in the house. So perhaps you just work on making sure that your actions are congruent with your feelings, and anything kind you offer to her is offered freely, whether or not she is cheating, whether or not she wants to divorce you.
I no longer share any finances with my H and I don't financially enable or support him in any way. We did that while we were together because we were working towards a shared future. Now we aren't working towards a shared future, so my responsibility is to support my children and myself. That feels honest and realistic to me, though obviously to him it feels like punishment (he still wants me to pay some of his bills) his feelings about what I'm doing or not doing with my money aren't my concern.
