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Is it possible I have developed an intolerance for my wife to make mistakes? It recently occurred to me that I obviously do expect her to not forget simple things like garbage day chores, etc. because I find when she does drop the ball, I trigger that this also happened during the affair: things I had come to depend on, and even expect, after years of her doing them.

Can the hurt go so deep that the BS becomes inflexible? And then how flexible should we be willing to be, in light of the fact that most of us gave our spouses the benefit of the doubt in spite of red flags?

I’m at six years out, and just now realizing that all the encouragement to raise the bar on our expectations of our spouse and our marriage — or at least insist it remain where it was before the affair — may have led me to become inflexible. I make mistakes. I should expect my wife to as well.

Maybe it is because she isn’t always very prompt to acknowledge and say she is sorry when she has missed something. I don’t know anymore. I just know I am tired, and I’d love some peace.

OITS,

Sometime I feel something like that, I feel like if I accepted her falling out of love with me, then anything else I am critical of is trivial.

[This message edited by survrus at 12:14 AM, Wednesday, September 29th]

Maybe it is inflexibility or maybe it is the lack of empathy and ability to just admit that she was wrong or not accountable or forgetful. That's the growth you seek in her but somehow haven't gotten so every thing is suspect in your mind now.

Could this be the case or am I way off?

I don't know how you feel about her mistakes.

I know that an A is not a mistake. I know that forgetting to take the garbage out on garbage day is.

If you WS had given real recompense and remorse, you should have returned to some level of "positive sentiment override" as Gottman calls it. This allows you to have that flexibility when there is some minor error.

If you have just been exhausting yourself with hypervigilance and feeling unsafe for 5 years, you aren't going to have positive sentiment override.

This0Is0Fine
"If you have just been exhausting yourself with hypervigilance and feeling unsafe for 5 years, you aren't going to have positive sentiment override."

The first three years she was slow to understand remorse, and continued with defensiveness and minimization. That further ingrained that sense that she was not caring enough. My scars from TT and her slow growth are pretty deep.

We're 4+ years out from DDay2.

I've seen very little humility from my husband, with respect to his choices. It hasn't lead to me being intolerant of his mistakes. I just don't think that he sees my full value like most other people in my life do.

For me, thats OK. I don't rely on my husband to fulfill all of my emotional needs. And really, it's just my husband that is missing out.

I've mostly come to accept that either he doesn't want to repair the damage he caused to our marriage or can't repair the damage he's done to the marriage because he isn't far enough along on his journey.

Maybe he'll come around, maybe he won't.

I don't really notice, because keeping my end of the street clean, and making sure I'm the best me I want to be is enough.

Can the hurt go so deep that the BS becomes inflexible?

In short, the answer is "yes". Yes, that hurt can go so deep that we become inflexible, that we expect perfection, and when perfection is not achieved, we hold it out as "one more thing" against our WS.

The real question is: is that wrong?

I think the answer to that question is "it depends".

The depth of the pain and the "work" being done (or not being done) on the part of the WS is really the groundwork for the intolerance. I'm not a psychologist, but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, so take it for what that's worth.

I believe that a remorseful WS who is trying their best to do all the things (and there are a lot) needed to foster healing will likely get more leeway than the one who doesn't put forth effort.

The lack of effort is a breeding ground for resentment, contempt & bitterness on the part of the BS (and for good reason). Welcome to the land of natural consequences.

Certainly, as the BS, we could be doing things to fight against the resentment, contempt & bitterness. Sometimes it is easier than others.

Ultimately, though, unless the WS suffers from some sort of cognitive disorder, I am a believer that people remember what they care about. My wife can "remember" every little thing that I have said against her or that I've done wrong, but she can't seem to remember things like my birthday or during what part of the year her A happened (though she ran into AP SHOPPING FOR CHRISTMAS PRESENTS).

The memory is selective and suits their purposes. And that's why it hurts so much when they "forget" things. Especially the things that matter to us.

I am a believer that people remember what they care about.

So true! This has given me a lot of grief. I also think people prioritize those they care about. It becomes painfully evident that cheaters only care about themselves by how duplicitous and self/focused they become during an affair. That is how we betrayed spouses often find our special/important days trampled on their timelines.

And probably the most uttered phrase by a wayward spouse is "I was sure you would never find out about the affair." Funny how 99.99% of affairs are "found out," but my spouse is the really clever, super careful, or miraculously special one that won’t get caught!

And then they expect us to believe they can’t remember anything about the affair. My wife has a memory like a steel trap, but it mysteriously disappeared on D-Day.

My wife has a memory like a steel trap, but it mysteriously disappeared on D-Day.

Me too. It's old, rusty, and nothing gets out. 😁

Have you ever read the spoons theory? It's usually applied to illness, but I apply it to my marriage, especially in the years closer to D-Day.

Imagine you start every day with 12 spoons to represent your energy for dealing with everything. Before D-day, you could get up in the morning, get ready for work and get out the door and maybe spend 1 spoon. Go to work, there's another 4 or 5 spoons spent, you still have 6 spoons of energy. Home, dinner, kids, spouse, maybe 3 spoons still have 3 spoons left....

Now, after D-day, you may spend 3 spoons just getting out of bed and getting dressed. Dealing with a remorseful WS 6 spoons right there even more if they are not remorseful sometimes before you have even gotten to work, you've only got 3 spoons left in your tank and the whole day ahead of you.

If you apply that to just dealing with your spouse I used to have many spoons left at the end of the day... after d-day and WH became a jerk, I might be out of spoons with him by lunchtime!

I don't know if any of this makes sense... you can google "spoon theory illness" and get a much better description.

I'm still super early into this and I can say that my frustrations for small things that used to bother me, bother me 10 fold now. I almost have an intolerance for them and I tend to just shut down.

SadieMae, I know the spoon theory very well. I had been living it with chronic illness for about 12 years (we had been together 16 years when the affair took place). In fact I have often described the feeling that my wife was giving my spoons to her AP (who is her ex-girlfriend who also has chronic health issues!). Early on my wife said she started to see her because her ex was dealing with extreme anxiety due to her own family’s neurotic issues, and "just having my wife there calmed her down, soothed her, helped her." I felt a change in the energy she was giving me as my caregiver. She had been so very attentive, unselfish, and supportive for so long. Then one day it felt like my spoons were diminishing, only to learn that was due to her shifting her attention and support to her ex.

I even told her many times during our numerous battles that it felt like she had given my spoons to her ex by devoting so much time and energy to the affair.

So true! This has given me a lot of grief. I also think people prioritize those they care about. It becomes painfully evident that cheaters only care about themselves by how duplicitous and self/focused they become during an affair. That is how we betrayed spouses often find our special/important days trampled on their timelines.

This was true for me even before the Period of Whoring. He was so excessively involved in volunteering and showing everyone what a great guy he is that our marriage and family were neglected even before he discovered online whores. I suppose it was easy to make the move to outright betrayal since I wasn't a priority to begin with.

At first I thought that his excessive activities, along with missed events and occasions, were what made it easy for him to disconnect and risk destroying me and our life together. Now I see that his prioritizing everything else came from that same selfish place. It didn't lead to betrayal; it was the beginnings of it.

As to becoming less tolerant of mistakes, I know that for me it comes from that place of feeling like I am not important to him. My mind goes overboard wondering why, and what it could mean. Did he neglect to do a promised task because it just isn't important to him, and therefore I am not important to him?

I definitely feel like I’ve become intolerant. I pick apart everything he does or doesn’t do. I question his routines and why he did someone on one day but didn’t do it on another. It’s become really bad. The other night we watched a movie and he spent the first half sitting on top of the comforter near the end of the bed (he usually snuggles with me like a normal person). I became silently enraged and scared that when he suddenly says "oooh it’s cold" and gets under the covers with me and tries to hold me I push him away. We have a terrible argument. He said he was too hot in the beginning (it’s been still Summer temps here) so he didn’t want to get under the covers. Anyway, I don’t this all the time. It sucks. Just one more burden for me to bear I suppose.