violet09 posted 10/4/2020 23:31 PM

H and I were married barely a year ago.. I had an A with a cow. D-day was about 6 months ago. I came clean about it to him while we were in quarantine. We have had good days and we've had bad days. I want to work this out. I've been doing IC as well as couples therapy with H. I've tried to be more present with him. It seems like we are progressing in to recovery, sometimes I wonder if he truly believes he can move forward with me. I continue to try to be better and prove to him that I want this. He seems undecided lately which makes me want to withdraw and come up with plan b if we can't salvage this.

[This message edited by violet09 at 11:31 PM, October 4th (Sunday)]

BraveSirRobin posted 10/5/2020 07:47 AM

I know it feels like six months is a long time, but it really isn't. Infidelity hits the BS like a linebacker who's crushed from every angle. They lose the marriage they thought they had, they lose the person they believed you were, they even lose the person they believed they were. They thought they were a decent judge of character and had the ability to choose a trustworthy partner; they never imagined you were capable of hurting them this way. It's not surprising that it takes a long time to sift through this and figure out what they can have, who you can become, and how they themselves have fundamentally changed.

I get how you feel. At about the five month mark after D-Day, I said the same thing to my BBF -- "If we're just going to make each other miserable, is there really a point to this? Maybe we should just admit that I killed us, and walk away." It wasn't intended to be a manipulation tactic. I meant it. We weren't married, he lived in a city I would never have moved to if we weren't getting married, and we'd been together for several years. I thought that if we were just going to torture each other indefinitely, and probably break up anyway, we should cut to the end game.

What that turned into was rugsweeping, and it's not a solution. My BBF was terrified of losing me, and so he looked around for some magic bullet to heal himself quickly. He chose an ONS revenge affair. It felt validating, which he mistook for healing. All it did was paper over his wounds and let them fester. It takes time, repetition, and constant pain to come back from this. There are no shortcuts, as we discovered years later, when all the buried pain came roiling back to the surface.

Honestly, walking away isn't a Get Out of Jail Free card, either. You're taking that same broken, impatient, wayward brain into your next relationship. It's pretty rare for a WS to internalize real change, to confront ourselves, and to establish healthy behavior patterns in a matter of a few months. You're likely to end up back in the same stew of resentment, entitlement, and self-justification when confronted with adversity in future relationships. Even if your current marriage doesn't work out, the hard and painful work if facing why and how it happened isn't avoidable for either of you.

Sometimes R doesn't work. Maybe it won't work for you. Maybe you should break up. But the fact that you're still suffering hard at six months isn't proof of that; it's just par for the course when honestly facing the enormous damage that infidelity wreaks.

[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 7:48 AM, October 5th (Monday)]

foreverlabeled posted 10/5/2020 07:53 AM

Hi and welcome.

I understand how dispare reaches into every corner right now. I also understand that you may not fully grasp the situation.

6 months ago you had an affair 6 months into your marriage. I don't even know what to say about that.

I'm going to assume dday was anywhere from 5-3 months ago(ETA: sorry I see that now).. And it would be helpful to know exactly when. Because, right now your BS is most likely going through the grief process. How familiar are you with that? It would be very wise to educate yourself especially concerning infidelity.

Typically our BS could take anywhere from 2-5 years to heal from this kind of betrayal. Heal, not forgive, or forget, just to get past the crushing day to day pain. Its not going to be easy for him or you.

And of course he isn't decisive, he's experiencing severe emotional trauma. Trauma you just threw him into. You just nuked your world, his world, he never saw this coming and you're not giving him any time to recover and expect him to have his mind made up already? It just doesn't work that way.

The man needs time. And it would be helpful if you weren't so quick to throw in the towel at the slightest hint of his all consuming pain. Again, I can understand how someone with very little to no knowledge of this type of trauma can want to put a healing timeline on it.

I just think it would be important if you did some research to see what you are really up against here. There is a lot of resources here on SI that would be a good start for you,

The Healing Library, its in the menu box, to the left of the screen. Read every.single.article there.. the pinned thread at the top of our Wayward forum. And order the book "how to help your spouse heal from your affair" Linda J Macdonald

[This message edited by foreverlabeled at 10:11 AM, October 5th (Monday)]

MrCleanSlate posted 10/5/2020 11:24 AM

Violet,

You don't really pose a question or offer much in the way of what you are hoping for. It may help the gallery to have a little more background and maybe shed some light on what help you want/need.

You were married barely a year ago, and you had an affair D-Day 6 months ago. How long have you and your spouse been together? How long was the A? EA or PA?

Why did you have an A? That can be a tough question if you really want to start digging into things.

JBWD posted 10/5/2020 13:43 PM

It's pretty rare for a WS to internalize real change, to confront ourselves, and to establish healthy behavior patterns in a matter of a few months. You're likely to end up back in the same stew of resentment, entitlement, and self-justification when confronted with adversity in future relationships. Even if your current marriage doesn't work out, the hard and painful work if facing why and how it happened isn't avoidable for either of you.

BSR’s words here are critical. We can all use encouragement from time to time, and this journey is hard for all of us. But if you’re waiting for him to encourage you to change, that’s simply not likely.

Your incentive for change has to be the deep understanding that you have been doing things wrong- Until you can acknowledge your own knowledge of change and sanity, your prospects for change are far too susceptible to the pressures of others. It happens to a lot of people on this website early on, me included.

We’re pulling for you. That’s why we sign in.
Have faith in yourself, and learn from others here.

godheals posted 10/7/2020 17:28 PM

Everything your spouse is thinking and feeling is normal.

This sounds selfish as hell.

Your saying I am only going to be all in if you are.

The thing is he don’t know. His trying to see if R is possible for him to do. His not going to really know right now. 6 month is not long enough for him to know. It takes 2-5 years. You barely have your feet wet at this point.

You need to give him time to decide. You need to be all even if he can’t be. You need to do that work even if he can’t.

This is what they call the heavy lifting by the WS. It’s hard as hell but you can it. That’s only if you really want it

Sorry if you can’t be all in even if he can’t or your not willing to wait for him to make that choice then let him go.

BS already feel like plan B and your coming up with plan B. He needs to be plan A and if his not then do him a favor and save him from more pain and heartache and leave

Sorry if I am really blunt and too the point I been there and done that. It takes time.

Darkness Falls posted 10/7/2020 18:22 PM

I’m going to go against the grain: I think it’s smart for any spouse whose marriage is in danger of ending to have a plan B—as long as that plan B isn’t an OP, that is.

Whether that be going to an attorney to know what you’d be entitled to and what child custody would look like in the case of divorce, an emergency fund of $ in your name, getting a job or at least looking into qualifications for one if you’re a SAHP, I just think it’s smart whether it be the BS or the WS.

If though, as I said, you’re talking about a plan B as in a fallback relationship, well, that would just be more infidelity and not a good idea.