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After a few months of what seems to have been the dreaded POLF, feeling mostly flat in all ways, I am now finding myself back in rage and disgust-land again. I had hoped this wouldn't rear its ugly head any more this severely 19 months from DD.
Past few months I have felt mostly just meh towards my WH, sort of fed up and hopeless, and now that feelings are back, it seems it's the really ugly ones that returned.

I feel such utter disgust and contempt towards him once again just find him so morally corrupt, irredeemable as I feel infidelity really is a character issue more than anything. I have always felt that and I feel such disgust that he could stoop so low, and then follows disgust with myself, for choosing a partner, and spending 20+ years and building a life with a person that turned out to be capable of something so disgusting, and then, disgust with myself for staying after DD. Just disgust and contempt all around these days.

I'm not dealing with it very well unfortunately. It comes out in ugly ways towards my WH. Snide remarks, hurtful words, I think I really want to hurt him at the moment. I want him to hurt like I do. It's like I'm taking out some kind of revenge by being hurtful and mean. I'm trying to reel it in by going to the gym and pounding it out on the treadmill and the weights in stead. It helps, a bit, always does. I am in IC weekly and I have done a LOT of painting as we are redoing part of our house. And then there's the crying, rage crying and deep sadness that follows. How I hate being on this bloody rollercoaster still after so many months. I know healing takes way longer than 19 months but I really had hoped these intense periods were in my past by now.

I hope this passes soon as I am not liking these feelings and I don't like who I turn into with them. And also, if they don't pass, that'd obviously be the death knell to our M. Staying M to someone that you feel disgust for just isn't something I can do longterm.

How do you guys deal with times when you are overwhelmed with rage and contempt? How can I (is it even possible?) start seeing him with more empathy and slightly less judgement? Not rug sweeping or condoning, just a slightly less black and white view? I really want to change my view of infidelity as an unforgivable character flaw to something also a generally good person can stoop to and come back from. How does one start to question one's own moral convictions? Is that even something I should want to do?

I’m so sorry Misery. Have you considered his adultery was in fact a deal-breaker for you?

I know healing takes way longer than 19 months but I really had hoped these intense periods were in my past by now.

Wish I could say it gets easier, but I'm a decade in, and still feel the same way you're describing most of the time. It never goes away or gets better, tbh. You just develop coping mechanisms and suppression strategies. The rage and disgust come in waves for me.

Have you ever done anything you are ashamed of? Maybe not toward him but just in general? I think there are some BSes who would answer yes to this, and their task is easier. But, it is probably just as likely that you would answer no to this, and then your task is harder. I have definitely done some things I regret, some things I am embarrassed of. No, the « things » don’t rise to the level of cheating and lying to my spouse about it for years. But when I remember my own desire for forgiveness (not so much from my WH but from some higher power or from myself) then I can offer him some grace. If that is not you I would imagine it would be more difficult.

I’ll give an example of one crap thing I did (and this is definitely not the worst one). We had a nanny. I needed her desperately cause I was working like 100 hours a week with three little kids and truly it seemed like we’d have lost everything if it all fell through. Mostly she was good, but gradually it became clear she wasn’t. She was not nice to my oldest child. One day he said she grabbed him by the hair and dragged him across the room. He sometimes told tall tales and I let this become a justification not to believe him. I didn’t get her out of there for maybe four months. I CHOSE not to believe him. I distorted my reality to make an immoral choice. He has forgiven me but it is most definitely grace on his part. I chose myself, my career, my aspirations over his needs. I didn’t believe the person I am charged with believing always no matter what. I completely failed as a mother.

Anyway, like I said. That is just ONE crap thing I did. Forcing myself to recognize my own « sin » (I’m not religious but whatever you want to call your wrongs as a human). That helps me give him some grace. Then over time he has made many many many acts of atonement.

And I can STILL (8 years later) fall into rage and resentment. But it usually passes like a wave. Usually I feel some guilt afterwards. That I have not offered him that grace…

…anyway for what it’s worth…

I’m so sorry Misery. Have you considered his adultery was in fact a deal-breaker for you?

Yes I have. And I would say it is, was. And still here I am. It always was an ultimate dealbreaker for me. My moral convictions is such that infidelity is unforgivable irredeemable and something boiling down to basic characterAnd still here I am trying. Wanting to make it work. It's a struggle, fighting two equally strong convictions within myself. And since I want to try to stay, I want to try to change my view of people that resort to infidelity, so that I can let myself stay as that is what I feel I want to try to do. If I am going to stay and not stay bitter, I need to develop a more human view of him. I need to find a way to see him as a generally good person who did a bad thing instead of being him as a bad person. I hope that's possible.

If that is not you I would imagine it would be more difficult.

I think this is part of the problem. Obviously there are some things in life I'm not proud of, but I was raised very strictly, too strictly one might say, and my expectations and standards for myself have been set extremely high (this is partly due to the fact that people around me, the adults in my life did NOT have their shit together at all and did not live up to the standards they set for me, so I from a very young age learned to have my shit together, always, and so I never let my guard down and always have myself in check). But in general I haven't really done anything that I deeply regret and have ever felt a deep shame over or need for forgiveness. I never let myself do anything like that.
I've always kept myself very strictly and I have never done anything where I felt I violated my moral codes. So having empathy or understanding for how one wanders into doing that, is almost impossible. For me, my moral codes have always been so strong that they have hindered me if I ever wandered even remotely close to the fire. So understanding how he could act outside his moral codes, is just unfathomable to me. But I'm open to changing that view, if I can.
I understand it on an intellectual level, having read books etc on infidelity and the slippery slope etc. But that's different to understanding it with my heart and finding empathy for it. I can have empathy and understanding for him feeling the things he felt in our marriage, in himself, and even for becoming attracted to someone else. It's the ACTING ON IT I can not wrap my head around because that's where my moral code comes in. I have occasionally felt attraction to others over the 20+ years weave been together but never acted on those feelings so I can understand feeling tempted, but not the part of not resisting the temptation if that makes sense? So a lack of self control might be what's most disturbing to me? I feel like tough seasons in a long marriage happen, and some attraction to others may also happen over a long life together, but for heaven's sake, self-control is what separates us from animals. The ability to think further into the future, to anticipate what consequences our actions are going to have. And the fact that he did not have self-control, did not pause to think before he acted is what I can not get my head around. being an overthinker myself, it seems impossible.

Hi Misery,

I’m sorry I don’t really have any advice. I’m still only a few months in, I just wanted to say that I resonate with so much of what you wrote and am struggling with the same.
I can understand the temptation and finding other people attractive, but I can’t understand actually acting on it.
He’s said he wasn’t really thinking about me at the time because he was so drunk (lame excuse) but I was calling him repeatedly at the time he was taking this woman back to his hotel room and he actually turned his phone off, meaning he saw my calls and chose to ignore me and go ahead with it anyway.
That’s one of the main things I’m struggling to come to terms with. I’ve done a lot of reading to understand why a cheater cheats. Our relationship wasn’t amazing at the time, but it wasn’t that bad either. For him it was a low self esteem issue. He felt like I hated him at the time (a constant problem in our relationship) and she validated him, made him feel good about himself. I’m not taking blame for that in any way and he’s not trying to blame me, that’s the conclusion I’ve come to about why he did it. Understanding it still doesn’t help though. I would never be able to go through with something like that because I would constantly be thinking of him and feeling guilty before I even did anything.

I feel the rage in waves, it’s still very intense when I feel it. One small thing we’re trying at the minute is when I’m in those moments of rage, he’s been leaving me alone like I’ve asked, which I realised makes it fester more. I’ve suggested that when I’m like that he doesn’t leave me alone, he continues to talk to me like normal so that maybe I’ll come round and see the man who’s trying before me, rather than the version of him in my head who did this horrible thing to me. I haven’t had a moment like that yet since we discussed it, but I’m hoping it’ll work because sometimes I can go days without talking to him, just full of rage, crying all the time, wanting to tell him to leave and never come back.
I always said cheating would be a dealbreaker, and I often get mad at myself for still allowing him to stay too. I feel like I’m always being judged by people who know for letting him come back.
It’s a wild ride of emotions that I hate him for causing sometimes. I feel like he should be constantly kissing my feet for not immediately kicking him out and never speaking to him again.
I think the issue is, we know they’re capable of it now, so what’s to say they’ll be able to control themselves and never doing it again if the temptation is there.

I am right there with you Misery. I had been travelling so well than BAM all the hate, resentment, frustration is back. I just keep saying the same old shit over and over like a broken record.

I hate Australia in that I would lose half the custody of my child and I would be the one to have to pay him child support. It’s so fucked up! I’m just so exhausted from it all and to think I’m not quite a year out yet.

🤬🤬🤬

My experience included a number of rage/disgust stages. What I did was keep asking myself if I was ready to D. I never did - the rage stages never lasted long enough for me to think they would be around essentially forever.

My reco is to free yourself to be you. Monitor your feelings, thoughts, and intuition. Eventually, they'll align one way or another, and you'll know what you want and need to do. Really ... you'll know.

Being undecided at 19 months out makes perfect sense to me, because you say your H has made some changes. It's easy to fake changes for a matter of months. If you're going to R, the changes have to be real, and 19 months just isn't a long enough test of time.

Of course, if one has been disgusted for months without a break, maybe that's the signal one needs. If that happens to you, Mlc, your head, heart, and gut have probably come into alignment. In my own case, the alignment centered around a sense that R would work if life kept moving in the direction it kept moving in. We can't predict the future, though. It's too early, IMO, to know how the story of your M will end.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:55 PM, Tuesday, July 2nd]

My experience included a number of rage/disgust stages. What I did was keep asking myself if I was ready to D. I never did

This I would say is my whole strategy so far since DD. Both staying in a marriage with infidelity and D feel like almost equally impossible choices. And I just day by day ask myself if I am ready to leave? so far I have not been so here I am. For now

It’s a wild ride of emotions that I hate him for causing sometimes. I feel like he should be constantly kissing my feet for not immediately kicking him out and never speaking to him again.

User, this is exactly how I feel as well. I in some ways feel entitled to my rage and cruelness towards him. I feel like he needs to take any shit I deal him with a brave face and continue to kiss my feet and beg my forgiveness and thank me for staying. He is not doing those things obviously when I rage and get really mean, he usually just shuts down and leaves me alone until I calm down. Not exactly what I would want but quite normal I think for the situation being as I am not a nice person at all in these instances.
Also, I must say, and this I am NOT proud of in the least. I don't even feel I should need to apologise to him after going off verbally on him when I feel the intense disgust. I feel like after how he has utterly destroyed my life and so, so many sacred things in my life for ever - certain music I used to love I can never again listen to without my thoughts going to his A, certain special places, etc etc etc. having to deal with PTSD, losing most of my hair, my weight, my health, my relationship with him, turning me into a worse mother, friend, employee etc etc. - I feel entitled to my rage and hurt and taking it out on him. I know that's not a very graceful or kind or empathetic attitude. But I can't help feeling like that at least for now. I feel he SHOULD be punished. I can never level the score but at least I am entitled to being a shit towards him at times I guess is my emotional logic at the moment even if I don't like myself for it.

I don’t know if it’s right, but I also feel like we are completely entitled to our moments of rage and they shouldn’t be allowed to forget what they did, at least not for a long time. My partner told me that if it had been me that cheated, he would never have stayed with me. I remind him of that often. (Although, I would have said that once.)
I’ve been such a people pleaser all my life and constantly apologise for everything. Literally the first thing a therapist said to me when I tried IC a couple years ago was ‘So have you always been a people pleaser?’
I don’t apologise anymore. I feel like you, he’s caused this and he’ll have to deal with the effects of it. I just let him know when I’m feeling better after a dark moment. I refuse to apologise for how I react to everything he’s caused.
The pain that’s come from this is really like nothing I’ve ever felt before. So many triggers, sometimes they come out of nowhere, sometimes I get mad at him for not recognising them.
He was watching that episode of Friends a few weeks ago where Rachel finds out Ross slept with someone else and they have the big argument. Honestly couldn’t believe he was watching that with me right there. That set off a two day rage and I was just like how can you not see that that may upset me?!
Again, not really advice, just an ‘I’m here with you’.

I don't even feel I should need to apologise to him after going off verbally on him when I feel the intense disgust.

If one berates the WS as a POS, a terrible person, irredeemable, not worth the air they breathe, etc. - that is, if you attack the WS - maybe an apology once in a while will be appropriate.

If, however, you express your rage in terms like, 'I'm furious that you did _____,' you may never need to apologize, because all you're doing is sharing what you think and how you feel with your WS. If you're honest about your thoughts and feelings, what apology is necessary?

Besides, telling your WS what a lousy person they may be gives just a moment of relief. Sharing your anger lets the anger go.

'Sharing feelings' means using words, tone of voice, and body language that show your feelings. Anger, grief, fear need to be shared with more than just the words.

Also, being betrayed brings on a LOT of feelings, so expressing anger, grief, and fear may be necessary again and again and again.

I feel like he should be constantly kissing my feet for not immediately kicking him out and never speaking to him again.

I think a big portion of our success in R came from my W's focus on solving her own problems, and that took energy away from catering to me.

IOW, she cheated to get external validation, and she cheated out of co-dependence. She was afraid I'd leave her if she didn't read my mind and give me what she thought I wanted - and she misread me time after time. In the end, she healed because she asked herself why she wanted to do something for me. Was she giving it to satisfy a need of her own? Did she need to give it whether I wanted it or not? Was it a real gift, or did she have an ulterior motive?

If she wanted to give me something, she learned to ask me what if I wanted it. She learned to say 'no.' She learned to ask for what she wanted. By asking explicitly, she recalibrated her reading not of my mind but of my non-verbal communications and allowed my to recalibrate my reading of her non-verbals.

Some examples:

She might say,

'I want to _____. Is it OK for me to do that now?' Or,
'You look like you want a hug. Am I reading you right?' or,
'I can't interrupt what I'm doing. I'll be with you in 30 minutes.'

My point is that kissing the BS's feet may not be the best approach where the WS's co-dependence is part of the reason for infidelity.

BS heals BS
WS heals WS.
Together, they build a new M, if they want to and if they do the necessary work.