I think what affected me the most were two things. One was his anger. I experienced his anger and the yelling so that wasn’t a surprise. It was the way he talked about me. I always thought of his anger like that he didn’t really mean it. And he’d say he hated me but deep down I knew he didn’t really hate me. Maybe he was trying to hurt me back and of course he was angry and I deserved that and more but I didn’t know how real it was.
Now you do.
But... I don't think he hated you. There are times when he may have wished he did, wholeheartedly. But he didn't, not that way. He was just in tremendous confusion and pain.
But if he did hate you, at that time in that moment, remember... he also defended you. He was very wise to listen to the cautions people gave him -- some of which as you know were well merited -- but not to absorb or revel in the invective.
What invective he himself said to you was between the two of you. To others, he never invited it nor condoned it.
I protected myself. His anger was my punishment. My penance. And that’s why I never responded in a bad way to his anger. I was sorry. I truly was and am, and I thought that his anger was something he would work through and then I could help him heal from what I did.
Yes, you did protect yourself. That is very human. You could not really believe in his anger because you empathy was deeply impaired.
The sad truth of things is affairs are a consequence of the destruction of empathy, not the cause of it. It is the empathy that dies first -- that feeling of cut him, I bleed -- long before the first covert act.
No one comes back to empathy in an instant on D Day. You took enough right actions to give your marriage a fighting chance. Dyanu. It was enough.
But the way he talked about me. So callous and indifferent at times. So many FU’s. He wasn’t like that ever before. I kept reading it, well fuck her, I don’t care, she’ll deal or if not fuck her, she could fuck him for 3 months so fuck her if she doesn’t like it. So cold. The way he talked about me. Like I was a criminal (I know I know). And how he called me out on everything I said or did. I guess his brain helped him. But while you all read those words, I heard them. They were on the iPad but I read them with his voice in my head. And they stayed there.
He needed to protect himself. He was in immense confusion and pain. But above all, confusion. Those words were, I think, an effort, back at that time, to project himself into the mindframe he felt you must have been in, to do what you did to him. It was a very unnatural place for him to be in and he had to, to a degree, psyche himself up to get there. But he needed to be there for a time to protect himself. He did not know who you were or what you would do next. He did not know you. But it was never where he wanted to be and he was never comfortable there.
The other thing was how scared he was. He was so frightened and lost and in so much pain. We were always there for each other. Yes, we are codependent but in different ways. Almost our whole lives we had each other to help us get through things and now he had no one to turn to. And he wrote that he was a broken man and scared and alone and that’s because I did that to him. He didn’t know what was going to happen to his life. He never really told me how scared he was. He couldn’t. I never knew.
Now you know.
And now he does not have to be alone with it in his head when he is home alone with you. He is probably less alone now, this day, than he has been in two and one half years.
I never knew how alone he felt. How lost.
He doesn't have to be alone now. You can be with him, now.
Thank God for my BIL. And he still had to go to work and function and I’d see him cry but I didn’t know it was from fear. I never really knew or understood what I did to him. What I really did to him. I always thought I did but I didn’t.
No, you didn't. But now you do.
I know neither he or your therapist nor anyone else intended your acquiring that knowledge to be this traumatic. But... you know now. And maybe that is part of what he hoped might come of your coming to SI -- if not in this fashion.
Not really. Not until your husband says it in his own words without trying to soften things or change it around for whatever reason. I didn’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe I was protecting myself.
Surely you were. You are, in fact, a card carry member of what one wise man here calls the crooked timber of humanity. It's something humans do when they are stretched beyond what they can cope with.
And he was so alone and in situations like that I’d always be there for him but I wasn’t this time and he couldn’t turn to me because he didn’t know who I was anymore. My husband didn’t know me. We spent almost our whole lives together and he didn’t know me or trust me and worse, I was I the one who did this to him.
Gently, very gently -- true, he did not know you. But the not knowing started long before the affair. It started whenever it was that you began hiding your real self behind a mask, one you wore to avoid your mother's voice inside you.
People here said that his love for me came through in his posts, but I didn’t see that. I don’t mean it wasn’t there. I mean I didn’t pay attention to it. I got so wrapped up in the pain and anger and fear and all the talk about me.
You will, very clearly, someday when you read them again. But for now it will be enough if your just always remember: he gave you the fudge. He gave you the fudge. He gave you the fudge. He came home and gave you the fudge.
Don't let your mother's voice keep you from hearing his love, then, and now.
And I heard my mother’s voice in my head with all her sarcastic comments (she never yelled, just knew how to bite in the worst way) and then it was my voice saying those horrible things to myself and I knew I was right because it was all right there in those posts.
Her voice was always a lie. Your work now is to learn to believe that to your bottom most soul. She was wrong. You are loved.
And thank you all again for everything and for listening.
Anytime.
And... this is a joyful day.
Today, you are free. You can be your entire past and all your bad choices and still be loved.
For myself, the happiest day I have had in four years here was seeing your username for the first time. Because I was so happy to meet you, and see you had come here to do some work.
You titled this thread "a little bit of my story." You couldn't know that many of us knew a lot of your story. But... we were and are so happy to see you! We knew your story, or a lot of it. Certainly the facts of your affair. We came ready and eager to like you anyway.
You are free here to be liked for you. All of you.
And, the most joyful thing of all, your husband does not ever have to be as alone as he was for the last two and a half years. Now, you know. Now, you can be there with him and he will not be as alone.
You are free today. It is a joyful thing.
[This message edited by Owl6118 at 4:34 PM, March 15th (Thursday)]
