SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Woah, I’m sorry, infidelity is horrible, and so is deliberate mental & emotional abuse. OP admits to being an abuser, OP described being abusive, he didn’t deserve to be cheated on but his abusiveness shouldn’t get rug swept or minimized b/c his wife also did something heinous. OP I recommend, like others, you and your wife take a trial separation. Abusers should not be in MC together. You and your wife have some intensive work to do individually. Your marriage has been toxic for quite. Your wife definitely needs some distance, nothing justifies what she did, however context matters. Both you and your wife are very mentally unwell people. OP you admit to purposefully systematically working to break her down, only people with a specific scary psychosis could do such a thing. And her boss preyed on a very wounded woman. Wife needs to quit, HR should be notified and so should any OBS. Good luck OP, I applaud you for admitting to your actions and not using your wife’s infidelity to evade accountability. But now it’s less about your marriage, but becoming healthy people for your children.

Those ups and downs you describe in your relationship, to me, a serious lack of relationship skills on both your parts.

At this point, cheating totally aside- you two sound completely unable to have a healthy relationship.

Rather than clinging to the marriage, I think you both need to focus on breaking your negative patterns and learning healthier ways to deal with issues. I don't really believe that would be possible when staying in a relationship where these poor patterns are so entrenched, honestly.

I don't think you can do it on your own. I think you both need intensive IC to help you become a healthier partner for future relationships.

To me, the cheating is just the icing on this very dysfunctional cake. I'm sorry.

Quoting for emphasis, this is excellent analysis and advice.

[This message edited by Aletheia at 5:11 AM, Monday, December 20th]

This was hard to read.

I’m 20 years out. I no longer feel that infidelity is the worst possible thing, worse than the death of a child (in the thick of it, you do feel that way). Infidelity on the part of someone who is being abused seems excusable to me as long as the person ultimately gets out. Your wife almost qualifies… except that it seems like there is a possibility the relationship was mutually abusive.

The main thing you have going for you is your willingness to change and a capacity for self-awareness. You have some understanding of what you did. I hope you can use that to remake yourself into someone who wouldn’t threaten a mother with losing her child in order to get more frequent sex. You have no idea what the rush of hormones does to you during the early years of motherhood. Say you broke your leg and your wife berated and punished you because you could no longer go on your daily jog together. That’s sorta what it’s like.

I wish you the best.

[This message edited by annanew at 11:05 PM, Tuesday, January 11th]

I want to be 100% clear that there is no way you are healthy enough to be married.
I want to be 100% clear that there is no way she is healthy enough to be married.

But you are married and you have a child. Please understand that every time you have a disagreement and that child sees it it gets put in their memory bank. You and your wife were children at one time and your childhoods must have stunk. It appears, from your writing, that you brought a ton of anxiety with you. Someone who suffers from that much anxiety has absolutely no skills in maneuvering through relationships because everything is a threat. Reading what you said you had done to your wife tells me that you operate from anger but it is just disguising your anxiety. I don’t know what your wife is like because we only get your description of her but she sounds like she tries to keep the peace but for some reason keeps screwing things up. In a relationship it is always give-and-take to try to maintain homeostasis. In lots of studies about family systems one of them is you cannot have one person as a bully and the other person using denying sex to get back at that bully. All it does is just make everyone miserable.

I’m not going to write in caps because it looks rude but if I could I would do it because I want desperately for the two of you to get EMDR but separately. It is a short term intense therapy to go in and unlock those memories that are ruling your life. Your wife needs the same thing. Once you have discovered what’s controlling you then you use talk therapy to learn behaviors to get you what you need without harming another person either emotionally or physically.