SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

OhItsYou

I think you have a bigger problem than you realize. Not because of her being able to read your posts, but because of her reaction to it.

Hearing this, 18 months later would throughly convince me that I have an unremorseful spouse on my hands. And that her anger over this allowed that mask to slip just enough.

I am very concerned about this. I'm concerned that even though she has made significant progress, and she is being very open, honest, and kind to me, that this is as far as she is willing to go. I don't know of course, but 18 months is a pretty long time for these attitudes to persist. Without taking full responsibility for her affair, and doing the work necessary to address why she made those choices, I don't see how I can feel safe again.

Unhinged

You have to stand your ground, brother. Your absolutely have to stand up for yourself.

I will try. :) I'm finding out it's a battle with myself as well.

BluerThanBlue

Without ever reading SI, I think anyone with half a brain knows that cheating will break their spouse’s heart and devastate them.

This has been one of the hardest parts of this whole thing for me. She knowingly and deliberately chose to betray me. She knew how serious her actions were. She told me she was not planning on ever telling me about the affair, but things got in the way and she eventually did confess. Doesn't make the fact that she still did it willingly and knowingly any less painful though.

But your wife simply isn’t interested in understanding your point of view or digging deep to understand herself. She just wants you to get over it… and if you can’t get over it, then to shut up about it.

I get what you are saying, and you could be right. I really hope not though. Several people have told me that waywards don't just switch from bad partner to good partner overnight. It's a process, and the longer the affair, the longer this process takes. It's always possible that this is as far as she is willing to go, but it's also possible that this is just part of a long process of self discovery. I just don't know.

And she’s learned that making implied threats and shifting the blame from her actions to your reactions does the trick.

I think this part is true. She might not be doing it intentionally, it might just be a reaction to her fear and guilt. But this pattern is there for sure.

Without ever reading SI, I think anyone with half a brain knows that cheating will break their spouse’s heart and devastate them.

I disagree.

I think many of us spend a lot of time looking at proof our spouse doesn’t love us. We are often completely unfocused in all the evidence they do. I knew that it might be the breaking point but if he didn’t care then neither did I. (I realize that is ridiculous but that’s the mind of a very common type of ws) Many also think we are so clever they will never find out.

I think to cheat, you either never had any empathy at all or you have been going through a period of such disassociation that numb it you has you in a temporary void and you can’t connect with it. Regardless, I don’t think people who cheat are armed with any empathy.

In the aftermath, the mess you created isn’t exactly a welcome mat to relieve your emotional constipation. So most of us start in the minimize the impact as much as possible stage, followed by the overwhelming emotions when we can no longer dissociate away from it. So there is this whole other stage of being only focused on the consequences, fall out, not knowing where to even start with the work. Some people push past this and actually start the work, some just pretend, others just continue to avoid.

This is why remorse is almost always delayed by 6-12 months. I am highly suspicious of a new ws who has all this remorse. Nope- you are still just sorry you got caught.

Ws are often avoidant, lack coping skills with we’ve the smaller problems before they cheat so they certainly aren’t armed or equipped to deal with the overwhelming blow out.

This is not to say we need to have empathy for any of that or that we are owed anything. It’s just not accurate to think with your healthy mindset what they must be thinking.

I believe reading what bh here write not only helped me decode my husband, but it helped me gain empathy from a detached space first. It’s much easier to listen to a stranger that you didn’t hurt, you aren’t having all these difficult conversations with, and to get it in the doses you control. If I had not found this site and read the betrayeds point of view I am fairly certain I would be divorced today.

I feel if the event can be honest here, it may give her a little more time to process what he is saying before she responds. When you are doing it live, and you have ws traits it’s a web in your brain because you are emotionally reacting with guilt, shame, frustration, which means you aren’t actively listening as closely, and then you may or may not have your empathy all back from the damage you did with the way you were coping with life up to that period. I also think it may bring her to the site and let her see that this is not just her husbands reaction but a common reaction. For me, this just was a safe way to be able to start taking it in despite my overwhelm.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:09 PM, Wednesday, January 7th]

Hikingout
Thank you for that very insightful comment!

Hikingout wrote:

I also think it may bring her to the site and let her see that this is not just her husbands reaction but a common reaction.

That was exactly my point when I wrote this.

I think it's helped. Especially seeing others' pain and how it affects everyone, not just me

Your insight into the lack of empathy and how it helped "decode your husband" is where I think my wife was also. She was also focused on seeing evidence that I didn't love her, and ignored evidence that I did. She's been almost a model of "I get it now" and empathy for several months, but those first couple of weeks or that first month she wasn't. It really started sinking in for her when I found this site and started directing her toward the articles and posts of others that she realized I wasn't just being overly sensitive or dramatic. I was having a "normal" reaction to her infidelity, and she began to understand the full weight of the depth of the pain I was in. I mean, she knew it was wrong. She knew it would be painful, but I don't think she really fully understood just how badly it would damage me.

I didn't know how badly it would damage me.

I myself underestimated it until it was thrust into my lap. I'd often thought with my FOO issues and party personality before we met, if one of us were to cheat it'd be me, and that she'd likely be "pissed" but she'd get over it. Forgive and forget, and before long life would move on. Boy, what an ignorant mindset. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but that was what I thought. However, when the rubber hit the road and opportunities presented themselves I held steady, and in 27 years I never strayed.

Maybe my FOO issues had the opposite effect on me. My parents are mad hatters. Dad was a serial cheater and mom revenge cheated on him, tho it wasn't just revenge. She did end up marrying her AP. At that point my parents had separated, then got back together, but they were pretty much done. I think her and my step-dad really were in love. A couple of years later he died in a motorcycle accident, tho, so I never saw if they'd become another statistic or the anomaly, but I'm pretty sure they'd have been a rare example of one of the couples who started as an affair and actually made it. He treated my mother way better than my dad did.

Yeah, I had a effed up childhood. Infidelity was an early part of my life and my wife made it a part of my later life. She's different tho. Always has been. Within the first month after d day she really began to get it. After a couple of months she was the poster girl of contrition and remorse, and I think reading from this site played a part in that. I can't tell you how many times she's read an article or someone else's account, broke down in tears, and said "I'm so sorry. I hope one day you can forgive me." She regularly thanks me for giving her another opportunity and tells me she's grateful for it.

[This message edited by Pogre at 2:23 PM, Thursday, January 8th]

This is why remorse is almost always delayed by 6-12 months. I am highly suspicious of a new ws who has all this remorse. Nope- you are still just sorry you got caught.

I haven't written about my W in a long time.

My W immediately stopped lying as she revealed her A. She wen NC. She never blame-shifted, minimized or TTed. That looked like remorse both to me and to W's therapist, who became our IC.

In fact, the no blame-shifting/no minimizing/no TT were just aspects of being honest, and my W says she decided that the least - the easiest thing - she could do was to be honest.

She said it took her at least 5 months to accept that her A, which she framed as 'saving a life' (because ow kept threatening to kill herself without my W's attentions), was just another A.

So that's one way remorse was delayed almost 6 months.

But she looked remorseful within hours.

*****

Given my experience, Theevent, I have some concerns about yours.

When my W joined SI, she did follow through with our mutual agreement not to read each other's posts. I know I started to read some of her posts without realizing it, but I stopped as soon as I realized who the post's author was. I never read a thread she started. Her experience was like mine, because she told when she read one of my posts.

So I strongly object to your W's breaking your agreement - and if she didn't agree, she could have told you so and just stayed out of SI.

Also, you report blame-shifting and manipulation.

IMO, your W doesn't get it yet. She may get it, but she may not. IOW, protect yourself. Be very sure to monitor your W's behavior, and don't let hopium blind you.

Go for healing. You heal you. If your W heals herself, you've got a good chance at R. If she doesn't, you don't.

Sisoon

Go for healing. You heal you. If your W heals herself, you've got a good chance at R. If she doesn't, you don't.

I know I've probably asked this before, but can you describe what the steps are to do this or how I know when im on the path?

Thanks.

All I've got is:

Feel the feelings.
Figure out what you want and what you're willing to do to get it.
Ask for what you want.
Ask and get answers to the questions you don't want to ask.

My W immediately stopped lying as she revealed her A. She wen NC. She never blame-shifted, minimized or TTed. That looked like remorse both to me and to W's therapist, who became our IC.

I am not here to judge really if your wife was remorseful or not. However, I will point this out:

When my affair ended, I put myself in IC immediately. When I was stable enough two months later, I confessed everything. I never lied about any of the fact related to my affair.

I came here and started posting far before my husband knew this site even existed.

So when I think of remorse it’s about having deep empathy for the damage created. It isn’t the same as feeling a responsibility to clean up your mess. Though both are helpful.

I mean I did a lot of things right, but it doesn’t mean that I was in a place where empathy was the driver or that I understood this all as trauma.

I will also point out your wife is in the mental health profession, so she may be a rare bird who did understand the trauma she inflicted. To me that would be indicative of her empathy being shut off, but I don’t know her and you do.

But most ws re so overwhelmed about their feelings about what they have done, fear and guilt and shame and all of it, they are not equipped to understand the damage enough to let that fully guide their behaviors. Instead it’s almost like when you are a little kid and got punished for something. Even a little kid can be compliant and act accordingly, but they may not be sorry that their sibling needed stitches until they are of an age thier empathy is more developed.

I feel my baseline is empathetic. But in the midst of a crisis after a long period of not handling smaller issues well I was completely out of my depths and my tendency to self punish was frustrated by him layering in what I was perceiving as rubbing that in. I know it’s not right, but that’s where I was. And I did not act with empathy- I acted in a way to try and find my way out of something I was very lost in and it just so happens some of those behaviors could look like remorse or ended up being helpful.

And we will have to agree to disagree about whether or not you can really expect someone who is acting so irrationally to respect a rule that you can not read something that is written in a public space. I get her doing it against his wishes is problematic. But here is what it reminds me of-

You have advocated for a bs to be able to get permission to have the therapy notes be reviewed by the bs. And I get that is an agreement your wife made and what the two of you want to do is up to the two of you. However,in many cases I think a ws trying to save their marriage would be highly susceptible to that being agreed upon under duress (not asserting it was the case for your wife)

To me it is so more egregious to expect that openness from the ws to disclose private sessions meant to shape better mental health to a bs. Most bs would think what is done in IC is not what they want to happen. The think the ws is there to save their marriage and that’s what should be discussed. But to save their marriage they may need development that would seem very negative to someone unfamiliar with the process. Not to mention now the ws will most definitely want to sanitize what is being said in these seasons which negates the ability to tap

Into the authenticity and vulnerability of putting it all out there so they can hear themselves and nough to see the error in their thinking.

Yes, to build trust a ws should have honored his wishes. But this never works in the whole history of me being here. That agreement gets broken by both sides every single time. I am writing this part more for the audience than you - the best rule you could have with SI is either don’t bring it to your ws at all or bring them here and know that you are going to want to know what they are saying and vice versa and be okay with not sanitizing it. Anything else is setting up the situation for failure.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:23 PM, Friday, January 9th]