36YG,
Your wife has been spouting absolute nonsense to justify her unsupportable actions.
You walked out of an MC session and she told you that you were "rude"? Really? Forgive me for asking, but when it comes to acceptable manners, what part of lying and cheating counts as politeness?
Her friends support her in the affair because you are an a-hole? Wow, how well do they know you? Who do they get their information from? Oh yeah, the woman who wants to find reasons to justify her indefensible actions. Suddenly, her slander makes sense, doesn't it? Those dimwits support your wife because they have bought into her BS about you. "I don't blame you cheating, he sounds terrible". Suits her purpose, doesn't it?
She sees your asking for full transparency on her devices as intrusive and controlling? You ask her what she's hiding, and what she's scared you'll find.
She says you not trusting her is a slur on her integrity????????????????? What part of betraying her husband, children, and marriage vows to become just another pathetic notch on a player's heavily whittled bedpost does she see as a testament to her integrity?
She says the OM has been banging his way through as many women in the place as he can? Ask her if that makes her feel extra-special?
While you're at it, ask her if he has married any of these easy idiots that he has used (and use those terms for them, your wife seems to be deluding herself that she has joined a select group who are hot enough for this home-wrecker, but in actuality guys like him are far from picky). Frankly, I can think of several choice names for his harem, but they are not big or clever. But then, neither are these women who think it is a privilege to make themselves easy for him.
More than that, as your wife seems to have an arrogant streak a mile wide, you can ask her where she thinks her wonderful affair with this guy is going? Tell her she is welcome to ride off into the sunset with him, with your blessing. Tell her she can go today. Only, for all her deluded bluster, she knows this simple truth: the OM does not want that.
He does not want her, he is not serious about her, he is just using her because she is convenient for the time being. The only time he spends with her is to use her for his own pleasure. He doesn't want to run to the drugstore for her medication when she is ill. He doesn't want to rub her feet, or put lotion on the dry skin on her back. Faced with the prospect of being with her 24/7, 365 days a year, do you think for one moment he would want that? Hell no!
In her deluded arrogance, your wife seems to have blinded herself to the glaringly obvious truth that her affair with him is going to end the second he finds someone else to focus on, and she will be dumped back into the marriage she has done so much to destroy, with a man she has done so much to hurt and insult. Kind of short-sighted, isn't it? And then what? She hasn't thought that far, has she? She's acting like that day will never come.
Well, you need to starting planning for that day, even if she isn't. Or maybe she is; it sounds to me like she thinks she can use MC to soften her landing, by painting you as the bad guy who has a lot of work to do, and trying to use the counsellors to reinforce that self-serving agenda. To that, I say one thing: bullshit!
Do not go to another MC session, because she is out to manipulate them into becoming her support singers, and through that manipulation, to use force of numbers to gaslight you into believing that you are a terrible man who left a poor, honest woman like her with no choice but to become another scalp for the office player. That is what she tried to do in the first session, and she will continue to do it if you keep going, so stop wasting your time and money on this.
Oh, she will make a huge drama out of saying you are clearly not committed to the marriage, this is what pushed her into another man's arms, she wants to do the work but you aren't co-operating, how can you expect her to stay when you treat her with such despicable cruelty, but you have to learn to let that self-serving garbage wash over you. Do not respond to it.
She has been acting like a selfish, spiteful little girl who wants everything her own way, not a mature woman with a conscience or any commitment to you or the marriage. You remember the old 'Peanuts' comic strip, where time after time Lucy would hold the football for Charlie Brown to kick, only to pull it away every time and send him flying? That, right there, is your wife's attitude to you.
Instead of being like poor old Charlie, the next time Lucy holds a football and asks you to kick it, say nothing, turn round, and let her hold the football until she realises you aren't falling for it. Wouldn't Charlie Brown have had an easier, less concussed life if he had done that? Wouldn't it have been better if Charlie had gone and found his own way to amuse himself, instead of allowing himself to be drawn into her games? Probably!
So maybe what you need to be doing is using the 180 to reduce her emotional hold and control over you, so that you have the time and space in your thoughts to think about what you want, and how you feel, and what the best way to get it might be, without her constant attempts to distract you from that.
And make no mistake, that is what she is doing. She has probably done that throughout her life, because she has found it gets her the results she wants. By interrupting your thought processes, pushing you one way, pulling you the other, hitting you with one ridiculous bullshit statement after another, she is preventing you from formulating your own survival plan, because that means she can step in and out of the marriage as and when she likes, because if you agree to play her games, you won't know which way is up, if it is day or night, or if you really may be the bad guy, and she is actually the poor victim here. Her friends already think that, because they have bought her bullshit.
She gets a reward for bullshitting. It makes her life easier. And it's what she's doing to you. If she can keep you tied up, confused, and wasting your time and energy taking issue with her ludicrous statements, allegations, and theories, you will never have time to ask her the many hard questions that she should be answering, or figure out what you need her to do if you are going to permit her to stay in the marriage.
What the 180 is about - and there is very good material about it in the healing library, as well as a long thread in the forum - is enabling a betrayed spouse to mentally separate themselves from the emotional storm and the hold a cheating spouse has over them, and to start listening to their inner voice, so that they can figure out what they want without other stuff distracting them from it.
On the surface, it can look like it means withdrawing from a wayward spouse, and shutting them out, to try and make them feel worried and motivated to chase you. That is not what it is for. It is for, even if it may have that side-effect. The aim is for the betrayed spouse to achieve the head-space and heart-space to focus on themselves.
Your wife will not like it, because she is wants to control you via the medium of bullshit, a prime example being her projecting her own personality onto you and accusing you of being controlling. It's a tactic as old as the hills. Accuse the victim of doing what you are doing to them. Project.
Do not fall for it, her methods, once you see them for what they are, are feeble and transparent. And there's another element to her campaign of disinformation. She medicates herself with it, and uses it to justify her actions and avoid feeling bad about herself. She invents an alternate reality, and peddles it to anyone gullible and unquestioning enough to believe it. And if she can make others believe it, then it must be true, and she has no reason to feel guilt, because she has done nothing wrong. And because she believes that, there will be no sign of remorse. Have you seen any of that so far? It doesn't sound like it.
Here's the thing; what you need is your own support team. Trusted friends, family, a separate individual counsellor from any that she consults, and the people in this forum. Some of what gets said may be hard to digest, but it is all said with the aim of trying to prevent you from being hurt more than you already have been. Your wife has turned her friends into her 'gang', and she was trying to do the same with the MC counsellors. So form your own gang that is independent of her and the influence of her guilt-absolving alternate version of the truth.
Drop the MC, because she is trying to warp it into a process that says she did nothing wrong and you are the bad guy, and you have to change so she feels comfortable steeping back into the marriage she has all but destroyed.
Get yourself into independent IC. Connect with a few good friends and fill them in on what is happening. Same thing with your family.
Once you stop engaging with her nonsense and her unsophisticated games, you will realise that you have the real strength here, and in your life, because you have truth, integrity, and decency on your side.
She does not.
So please continue to post, 36YG. We are your gang. We are fully committed to helping you reach whatever goal you decide upon, but we will do our utmost to ensure that you are not lied to, abused, co-erced, or bullshitted along the way, and that you do not let anyone convince you that you have been the bad guy here, or that you did anything to deserve what has been done to you. And we will also do our damnedest to make sure you get what you need to heal properly, whichever way you decide to go with this.
The journey is ongoing, but you must be in the driving seat, not your wife. So far, she has driven the marriage towards a cliff, so she really cannot be trusted with the steering wheel, can she?
