SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

She is horrified by what she sees in herself.

This stuck out to me. I wonder what she really sees in herself. Her actions don’t match that of someone who is actually horrified, more like someone that has very little awareness of not just herself but how her actions affect others.

She does not seem to have the awareness that what she does will hurt you. When you point it out, she uses avoidant behavior.

There is a huge difference in self deprecation and remorse. I’m struggling to see that she is remorseful.

Superesse mentioned something that I have been thinking for awhile but don’t have the degree to mention. All I know is what it is like to love someone with BPD. My daughter was diagnosed 2 years ago and our lives made so much more sense. It didn’t make it easier, just made sense of it.

I have no idea if this is what you are up against, but I feel there is something going on that is not typical.

Fair to say, I am not sufficiently impressed by her honesty.

Yeah, you’re right. It’s like kicking the cat across the room and then expecting to be rewarded for admitting "I kicked the cat."

I think WOES might be onto something with the BPD hypothesis, or another personality disorder.

Ps I love you new signature, and I miss your old one.

"Let the world feel the weight of who you are, and let them deal with it" is my favorite quote in the whole wide world. It’ll be back, I’m sure. I saw this one on Facebook and thought it’d be great for SI.

I’m struggling to see that she is remorseful.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think she feels shame and guilt, but hasn’t tapped into the empathy needed.

Personally, I think what’s kept her from remorse is holding all the past resentments. I think she has a lot of resentment over the span of your marriage. I think we own our resentments and they are ours to work through. If we choose not to do the work in a marriage, to communicate, then those resentments store up and form callousness.

I believe that after the affair she has had a hard time letting go of that callousness. She’s understandably been in trouble since DDay (though pretty comfortably if you ask me)- still definitely knows she is the bad guy in the situation) and I think rather than facing it she holds up those resentments kind of as a shield. It becomes tit for tat, with little recognition of how deep this wound she inflicted is.

I also believe that lately she has come a bit closer to glimpse over the wall at it. And it’s too much, she now retreats again.

And that’s why I don’t see remorse. There’s no space for it amidst all those resentments and shame that she carries. Every time she gets close to the damage she caused she shuts down and takes up space with her feelings, making them more important than yours. Marriage requires taking both peoples feelings into consideration, and finding a way to proceed that works for both of you. I don’t think anyone is perfect at that 100 percent of the time, but when the chips are down and you are about to lose the game that’s when it’s most important to lock hands and say "I got you. We are in this together". The theme I have seen here is a game of solitaire.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:54 PM, Saturday, March 16th]

when the chips are down and you are about to lose the game that’s when it’s most important to lock hands and say "I got you. We are in this together". The theme I have seen here is a game of solitaire.

Yes! That’s it exactly. Great insight (your whole post.)

Why does "letting go of the outcome" feel way the fuck more like determining the outcome?

Why does "letting go of the outcome" feel way the fuck more like determining the outcome?

Do you mean the sinking feeling of dread that the relationship will end the minute you stop trying for the both of you?

If so, I know that feeling very well.

If so, I know that feeling very well.

I believe you do, my friend.

Blue, you have also been trying to warn me of this day for a long long time. You have been forceful and blunt, and there was never anything wrong with it (edit to clarify, I mean there was never anything wrong with your forceful messaging). Thank you for caring to stick with me thru this.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 11:01 PM, Saturday, March 16th]

I gotta ask man, how much more of this nonsense can you even put up with. I mean damn, your WW knew what she was doing was wrong and how much pain it would cause you...and she went through and did it anyway.

And are you positive your WW disclosed to you everything that happened and everything that was said in her encounter w Creepy Dude. Because I sure as hell would not be!

You can be on your way to getting that shard of glass out of the wound and start really healing, you know...Or cutting yourself free from the ball-n-chain, whichever metaphor you prefer

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 9:22 PM, Saturday, March 16th]

You can be on your way to getting that shard of glass out of the wound and start really healing, you know...

I honestly think I’m there, man.

I am glad my friend, you deserve a helluva lot better than this. A helluva lot better!

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 9:25 PM, Saturday, March 16th]

Deal with the facts IH. Never mind what might have happened, what could have happened or even what you WW thinks happened.

I'm not sure you need this warning since you seem to be pretty level headed but adding supposition, assumptions and what if's to your story serves zero purpose.

What she has done has hurt you and made you doubt her growth. That's all you need to determine your actions from here.

What she has done has hurt you and made you doubt her growth. That's all you need to determine your actions from here.

Add to that that she doesn’t care enough to do everything in her power to repair the situation, and I fully agree.

For someone who self reports to not post on my threads, I’m hearing a lot of valuable insight from you.

She does not seem to have the awareness that what she does will hurt you. When you point it out, she uses avoidant behavior.

Yeah, I just don’t have any answers here, WOES. She wrote me an apology letter this morning about this interaction, saying she "took a risk". But this wasn’t taking a risk, taking a risk implies that there is a chance for something good to happen traded off with the chance for something bad to happen. If this was "taking a risk" then she was trading off some benefit that she alone could illicitly gain against the hazard of re-injuring me. If it was "taking a risk", then it is sociopathic reasoning, completely and utterly self focused with my life entirely meaningless in her calculus. And I can’t understand how that is possible, I can’t relate to it in the slightest.

If you are like me, you developed an uncanny ability to tell when your father had snuck a drink, before he was in the full blows of addiction.

This is a place where our stories diverge. I think my father was in the full blows of his addiction even before I was born, and he was so good at hiding it from everyone that even after he had been thru alcohol treatment and everyone was watching him and on edge, he was still able to get wildly drunk in the presence of his suspecting wife and parents, take 11 year old me in a car and get a DUI. That was my mother’s last straw. But even later as I became an adult, I couldn’t detect it. I later learned that was largely because he was always drunk. The times he was different was the odd time he actually sobered up.

I have almost as good a sense of when my wife is being wayward / cagey.

I worry the same model applies here. I don’t detect it in her because it’s the air she breathes. But she just let it slip that she hasn’t changed, that whatever it was that compelled her to get into an affair is still alive and well. If I stay, she will reoffend, I’m too sure of that now.

I find it a little harder to discern when that is specifically infidelity brand caginess or garden variety caginess.

This statement makes me nervous for you, friend.

So I guess I would like you to know enough to get whether your wife’s engagement with mechanic guy bears that addictive affair chasing quality or not. It looks like it from what you have written but you may as well know.

There are then a whole host of why questions touching on insight and judgement. The fact she knew he liked her is a problem for me, but if there was very little contact over a very short time, and the content was vanilla, I would consider that relevant, if it could be verified or I was convinced about it.

I’m coming back to my recovering alcoholic analogy. It would be like giving an excuse that she needed to go to the bar to buy orange juice, after all you know they have it to make screw drivers. That she initiated the conversation at all is highly problematic, like choosing to go to a bar. That she ended up even briefly discussing marriage problems with this known wayward childhood friend who carries a torch for her, it’s her ordering her favorite drink and staring longingly at it and smelling the sweet aroma. Do you really think that a recovering addict that behaves like that is going to get their 10 year coin? I’m not making that bet with my life.

Here is a thought for you that maybe you can dig on in IC.

If your father was an alcoholic, then what was modeled for you was likely a marriage fraught with codependency. As you explore your foo, it may help to look at where you learned those patterns because for me it helps me cement what to look for in my own thoughts and behaviors.

I used the example earlier that I expected H to read my mind. Well, that was the behavior my mother modeled and even reinforced in some ways. Knowing that it was toxic when witnessed her doing it, it gave me a set of benchmark example scenario is to sort though my choices to not communicate and intentionally push myself to try new approaches. The more that experimentation happened I was able to find things that worked better than me. I also have a rule that I can’t hide or not bring up things.

[This message edited by hikingout at 10:10 PM, Sunday, March 17th]

Hey @InkHulk. I'm not really around much anymore, but I remember your story and felt like throwing in my 2 cents. Probably nothing that hasn't already been said, but here it is anyway.

I am over a year past a DDay 2 with my XWS in which I finally said "that's it" and left. DDay 1 I tried to forgive and he promised to change. Years later, surprise surprise, he did the exact same thing. But even if he had changed, even if he had never cheated on me again, the relationship would have sunk into a shell of what it was. It would not be the type of relationship, with the type of love, I want to have in my life.

You should be with someone who makes loving and trusting them easy. Whose words and actions align every time. Who fills you with such joy that they are the last thing you think of at the end of the day, and the first thing you think of when you wake up, immediately bringing a smile to your face. Someone with whom you feel your heart beat faster at the idea of celebrating anniversaries and accomplishments with. Someone that makes you listen to sappy love songs, watch romantic movies, read loving stories, and think "This is how I feel about you, my dear." Someone that feels effortless to be around. I know all relationships have their hard spots, no one is perfect, but at the end of the day, when all of the little arguments and disagreements are behind you, THESE are the feelings your partner should inspire in your heart.

You deserve real, true, vulnerable love. Love that doesn't hurt you, love that doesn't lie to you, love that you don't need to guard your heart from. And it's out there, believe me it is. It's not in your WW, because real love does not intentionally hurt you. I need to say that this is all based on my own opinion and my own experiences. I know people here have reconciled and I am happy for them. I am not talking with those people in mind.

The moment I decided to leave my WS an enormous weight lifted from me. You mean I didn't have to go about each day with a level of anxiety about being hurt? I didn't need to worry about his poor coping skills and how they affect me, us? I didn't need to worry about him lying to me? He's not my problem anymore? I can't describe the exhilaration this fact eventually brought me. And the same can happen for you. And after the pain has ebbed, after you've healed from this deep wound, you will be excited for love again. The world will be your oyster, and you will look out into it and know that your pearl really is waiting out there for you.

All the best.

Given the mass of evidence we have to sift through to come to a conclusion, maybe our vocabulary should exclude all terms than mean 'indecision.'

Sisoon, this is uncommonly wise, even coming from you. Some day when the fire isn’t burning as hot, I want to have a community conversation about time pressure and what I see and feel as well meaning members pushing OP’s for an outcome before they are ready. I think I’m ready to D now, but I wasn’t even as much as last week. Many many things have had to get processed and sorted and observed to come to this internal state that I am in now. No internet friend, or IRL friend, or even brother, was going to argue me into this. All any of you could ever do was what most of you did most of the time: provide comfort, share your stories, give your perspective. But the urgency to make final life altering decisions, I really think we do a disservice when that shows up in our community.

I’m up for talking a little bit more about this, but could easily see pruning this branch in a bit if it gets a lot of hits, as I’ve got a burning house to deal with. And if anyone is really fired up about this, seems like a decent stand alone thread. If that doesn’t happen now, you can be pretty sure that I’ll start it sometime in the future.

Love you all.

Thanks for sharing your story, WanderingGhost. I remember you, but it’s been a while. What you describe sounds amazing, like what I thought marriage would be like as a youth. I like to believe that isn’t just a fairy tale.

saying she "took a risk"

What is her definition of 'taking a risk', and what outcome was she expecting from taking that 'risk'? Might be worth asking, not for closure (as I truly believe 'closure' comes from oneself, and not from an external source), but to ascertain how she thinks.

Am only proposing this as it will avoid any conjecture and you can gain clarity. Words like 'risk' is highly subjective. No need to consider this if you have 100% made up your mind....

Then there is this:

in like no time flat, she’s disclosing our marriage struggles to this asshat,

She was probably acting like that to build up her victimhood. She needed someone to empathise with her that she is in this terrible predicament (which I think she does not mention was caused by her). She is a junkie for attention.

If the interaction was purely to sell the car with no chit chat, it would probably have stung less. The issue I see here is that your WW is not able to keep her private life private, but needs to get affirmation from others that her life is shitty (by her own hand).

IH, you have endured much and for a long time. How much more and for how much longer are you willing to walk on coals for your WW in the hope that she will walk on coals for you?

What is her definition of 'taking a risk', and what outcome was she expecting from taking that 'risk'? Might be worth asking, not for closure (as I truly believe 'closure' comes from oneself, and not from an external source), but to ascertain how she thinks.

Am only proposing this as it will avoid any conjecture and you can gain clarity. Words like 'risk' is highly subjective. No need to consider this if you have 100% made up your mind....

I don’t get the luxury of clarity with her. I’m sure I just took a somewhat technical definition to the word, but what she did not do in this letter was say "I totally fucked up and did something unthinkable in our current situation." She said she "took a risk" in a very brief letter when she knows she’s facing down the end. This is all I’m going to get, so I’m making a narrative that makes sense to me.

IH, you have endured much and for a long time. How much more and for how much longer are you willing to walk on coals for your WW in the hope that she will walk on coals for you?

I am giving this a little time to make sure my current state is not fleeting. I’ve given it this long, I can make sure of that.

And also, see my second to last post.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 12:04 PM, Monday, March 18th]