SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So after all that, he wants to come home now. He says space wasn't helping him feel better after all, he just missed me.

Notice this all about what he wants. He doesn't give a fig about what's actually good for you.

True, you didn't want the space initially... but it's pretty clear at this point that when he requested space from you, he wasn't expecting you to call his bluff. He expected you to back down.

I had suggested we instead of space, we focus on each other and having some good times instead of always talking about the A or how I'm feeling hurt.

Quite honestly, I can't think of anything worse you could possibly do then have him come back under those terms. You're basically saying "Let's just sweep this under the rug, pretend you're not still actively having an affair, and didn't stab me in the back by resuming contact with OW."

You've seen this movie before and know how it will end. Do you really need spoilers?

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 9:42 PM, Monday, March 24th]

You know that scene from Talladega Nights where the kid wet his pants and said "I'm sitting there in my pee pants right now"? LET HIM SIT THERE IN HIS PEE PANTS. Let him miss you. Let him feel what life would be like without you. Let him face some consequences. Let him really experience what he thought he wanted.

Very often, when a WS wants space, it means "I want to be able to do what I want without you breathing down my neck". It would not surprise me if he thought he was going to be able to spend some time with the AP while you're apart, especially since they've been in such recent contact.

I will say that he has several weeks scheduled out for his therapy appointments for once, he usually just does one and then a few weeks will go by and he'll schedule another. But now he has least a month of them scheduled.

What you don't want to happen is for him to come back home, flake out on keeping his IC appts, and love bomb you, which is what you just invited him to do by suggesting that you "focus on each other and having some good times instead of always talking about the A or how I'm feeling hurt". Don't bake for the cake-eater or lift the edge of the rug for the rug-sweeper.

For YOUR recovery, you need to work on setting boundaries and enforcing them. That's YOUR homework.

I said earlier that you were telling him it was all going to work out for him, just fine.

And lo and behold, it is.

Sorry.

It’s just hard to watch.

I often consult with a therapist before commenting but I have enough info from this forum now. My first question to BSs is what were your childhoods like? The therapist has told me many times just how important they are to a persons ability to grow up emotionally. Chaos, toxic behaviors, molestation, impaired care givers, hunger, no safe place, etc, etc, etc. They are all stuffed in a burlap sack and hung on people’s back most of their lives. In fact the best gifts any child should have are dependable adults, and a safe environment. Instead of emotionally maturing they expend all their energies trying to survive.
Two of the most powerful hormones are designed to get us to safety(Adrenalin is one). People in danger often soil themselves and urinate. It is their body’s response lightening the load by releasing every bit of weight it can. Imagine a child, who has no defenses, or words to describe it, trying to make sense of it. The first thing out the window is ever letting their guard down. They carry that into adulthood. So they get educated, get jobs and meet someone they love, and want to marry. Their reactions, emotions, fears are not those of an adult. They never got out of the hell that was their childhoods.
Now back to those hormones. It takes seconds to flood the body and hours to leave. Suppose you always feel in danger? You never are free of fear so your body is wearing you out by continuing to release them.
Human beings are sexual animals. It is one of the most pleasurable activities we have. It gives a short term euphoria and then sadness returns. It is my opinion that our western countries are loaded with lonely people. Even those who are married. So putting together a sad childhood, a desire to FINALLY feel ok, no way to heal, and nothing gets people out of sadness that grabbing that cookie, stealing that candy or finding people who will fix it for a few minutes. This is no excuse. There are very good therapists(but use common sense when interviewing them) who can help.
If none of this applies to your husband he might just be an extremely selfish person who needs to move along.

After thinking about it a lot and reading the responses, I am not ready for him to be back home yet. Maybe I'm the one that needs space right now. Or maybe I just want him punished a little bit. Is that awful? I'm just so sick of the back and forth. However, we did have a really good conversation last night where for one of the first times, he seemed truly sick about what he had done and how it affected me and our family instead of just feeling sorry for himself. So maybe I'll take that as a tiny win.

Cooley2here-- you just described exactly why I think my WS had his A. He had an awful childhood and I'm sure he's just trying to fill the void from that. Doesn't make it right but it does make me understand him a little bit better.

You know who else has awful childhoods? A lot of betrayed spouses. Many of us find out that the reason we put other people first and desperately seek love from people who hurt and reject us is because that's what we were conditioned to do as children.

My ex came from an extremely toxic family and I spent years making excuses for him, trying to understand him, and giving him the unconditional love that his purely transactional mother never did. The result of my efforts was multiple OWs and multiple Ddays. If I had even a fraction of the time, effort, and energy I spent trying to cast out his demons into confronting my own, I would have come to a place of healing a lot sooner and not wasted nearly a decade of my life.

I'm sure you had a great conversation with your husband last night. He is very good at talking. If he follows through with his IC as you asked, he might even get better at talking as he picks up new lingo in therapy.

But what is he doing? Do you think he's on infidelity recovery sites, posting multiple posts a day about how to fix his marriage? Is he looking into spending thousand of dollars on affair recovery programs, apps, coaches? Has he taken out so many books on how to save your marriage that he could get a PhD on the subject? Because these are all the things that you're doing while he talks.

And you can't even guarantee that he's not still seeing or communicating with OW.

My only advice to you going forward is this: Give yourself 30 days minimum without seeing or speaking to him. Limit your communication to essential things about the kids only... and stick with it. And when I say essential, anything that can be answered with a "Yes or No" only.

The purpose of this is not to punish him or manipulate him into wanting you back. It's for you to get some much-needed time to focus on yourself, wean yourself off your need for his comfort and approval, and gain some clarity of thought without him chewing your ear.

T/j. I am going to respond to BTB. Every human comes into this world genetically preprogrammed. Then who, and what, starts influencing them? One person might have a better built in survival response than another. EVERYONE copes the best they can. I am a social worker in the trenches with children who come into foster so damaged it takes super human effort for their foster parents to try to help. Sometimes the damage is too deep. I have had too many teenagers tell me they wished when they went to bed they could just die in their sleep. Being left in a house alone with little food and not knowing when the adult(s) come back scars them. How about the teenage boys no one wants. I read an article years ago about a test to see why some children grow up with so many problems. One young mother agreed to sit in a room devoid of anything except a table, a chair, a high chair for her 8/9 mo baby and bottles of formula. Thru the one way mirror they videoed the interactions between them for two hours. The mother never spoke to the baby. She fed it formula and then it would vomit. This happened several times over the 2 hrs. The psychologist said the baby already knew that the only time it had any attention from the mother was when she fed it. So it vomited to keep her feeding it. The very small amount of time the mother gave any attention was to give it a bottle. The remarkable human brain begins making decisions at birth. Add that the fact that parents leave their kid with strangers to go off drinking, drugging etc, have strangers over who might have eyes on the child, think it’s funny to give the child alcohol or cigarettes, beat each other or the child. I am keeping this clean. What I just wrote is very surface.
So no two people have the same genetics except twins so their responses to their environments are different. Yes, some people manage better but some people can’t. Do I think he gets a pat on the back? Of course not but if he gets help he might get that burden off his back. I am not advocating R or D just giving some info I have accumulated over the years.

Cooley, my point is not that AdLaurel's WH's character flaws aren't due to deep-seeded trauma, only that this trauma is not an excuse to continue tolerating the pain that he inflicts upon her.

You're correct that every experiences and reacts to trauma differently... but that doesn't completely deprive human beings of their agency.

More importantly, my point is that she's single-handedly trying to fix him, when instead, she should be using her time and energy to work on herself... because herself is the only person over which she has any control.

In short, instead of asking the question "Why does he do this?" a better and more productive question to ask is: "Why am I putting up with it?"

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 3:19 PM, Thursday, March 27th]

"In short, instead of asking the question "Why does he do this?" a better and more productive question to ask is: "Why am I putting up with it?""

Brilliant.

This should get posted into about 80% of the threads on this site.