There are always the standard (but true) answers. I was stupid. I was selfish. It felt good to be desired. You were good enough, I was the problem. You weren’t able to meet my unrealistic expectations for my life.
Hi -
BW here.
All those answers are true, but they are superficial in the context of the deeper problem. In other words, there are WHYs underneath the WHYs.
“I was selfish.” WHY?
“It felt good to be desired <by someone other than you>.” WHY?
One of the reasons reconciliation takes so long (when it’s the type of reconciliation that is built in a firm foundation) is the layers and layers of WHYs.
Lots of times the breakdown in the process comes when you stop asking why.
Why did you choose to be selfish? Note that there are numerous questions that need to be answered to get a true, honest, laid-bare response to that single question. Questions like:
What made you think your desires were inherently more important than your integrity and commitments and his feelings?
Why didn’t you go to your husband and say “I need something, I’m feeling something, something is bothering me, something is missing?
Were you always selfish?
If so, why do you think that is the case?
None of those questions are easy to answer. They are actually gut wrenching. They suck. You are going to feel like a bad person. You are going to sound like a bad person. That said, you are also going to be an honest person. A person worth loving and staying with. It’s how you become a genuinely safe partner.
This process from both sides is ugly (no one ever wants to eat the sausage after they’ve taken a tour of a sausage factory because the process through which the sausage is made is horrible). You have to face some gritty ugly truths about your personality and your betrayed spouse will too. Affairs don’t happen in a vacuum. The affair is 100 percent on you, but if your husband is giving you the gift of reconciliation, he has to be able to get to know the genuine you and accept the genuine you. That takes work also. He will have to reframe how he communicates with you knowing that you both have this difficult history. He will need to be able to understand this new deeply examined IAT (I fucking hate your username).
It’s hard. What did I learn about myself and my FW in all this?
I hold grudges.
He can be petty.
I have to make him a priority.
He has to make me a priority.
I do things to annoy him and he bottles up that stuff instead of telling me I’m annoying.
I have to make him tell me when shit bothers him.
Mr. Conflict avoidant has to grab himself by the pants and communicate calmly.
He’s annoying and I tell him so.
Neither one of us are good drivers, so we both get in the car and declare a moratorium on criticizing each other’s skillz.
I am the absolute center of his world and I know it. He is dead center of my world.
We are very different from each other.
We both wish we were more like each other.
We talk past each other sometimes and one of us has to stop and say time out.
Nobody ever died from crying.
We learned that perfection is boring and unattainable.
He thinks he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for feeding the dogs once a week.
I think he deserves a middle finger for only feeding the dogs once a week.
The hardest parts of all this for him were the deep and profound shame, knowing he was a capable liar, understanding that he nearly broke me, and that he cheapened us.
There are so many things I love about that man. Even knowing the real answers to the WHYs underneath they WHYs. It made him more human to me and real. I like that he shows me all the ugly parts too. It’s because he decided to be honest. Ugly honestly. Some of his deeper WHYs had to do with his parents and he felt deeply disloyal even telling me some of that, but he did so I could know him. None of it changes the fact that he did something shitty to me. It did allow us to both understand his horrible choices and how they can never be the choice he makes again. I’m safe with him as long as we keep talking and he continues to be honest even when it’s scary.
I could write volumes on how this could all turn out for you, but I’m sure you’re overwhelmed by all the advice givers, so.... some more.
I wish you well and I tried very hard to not project my experience with cheating onto you. My goal was to help.
[This message edited by Lieswearmedown at 12:39 AM, September 25th (Wednesday)]