SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My fWW said quite seriously as she looked into my eyes while laying in bed last night. "Don't you think."

"I think that reason is what sets us apart from other creatures."

"Sure that's important but it's really about the empathy"

Me, stunned silence.

"But what really makes us human?"

Me, deciding to derail instead of confront:

🎵What makes a man?
Is it the woman in his arms?
Just 'cause she has big titties?
Or is it the way, he fights every day?
...No, it's probably the titties🎵

"Ugh we will never see eye to eye on some things"

"No, I don't think we will."

Well...my dogs display empathy. Just saying, lol.

She was trying to have a deep conversation and connect with me. But she was barking up the wrong topic a bit. I feel a little bad about shutting that down, a little bad for rugsweeping, a little ok that I didn't engage in an argument when she was just trying to reach out.

I don't really know if I have a point to this post. It was just one of those things that wouldn't be a thing if there wasn't an A.

Do you think your reaction reflects your gut picking up on a continuing lack of true empathy from her, or not? I don't want to read too much into this, just asking.

It's a lack of empathy but not at the same time. She doesn't lack empathy towards me or in general. But she also doesn't associate her affair with a lack of empathy. So when she brought up the topic it was branching from other conversations about our son's empathy and about a TV show we were watching.

But there is some general lack of empathy or awareness from her that the topic of empathy itself could be quite charged. Her EA was also motivated in part by her perception that I was not empathetic enough and her unwillingness to share her pain further with me.

I could have made it a fight. But I chose for it not to be. I don't know if that was really the right decision or not.

Where do you think she wants to get from there?

Her EA was also motivated in part by her perception that I was not empathetic enough and her unwillingness to share her pain further with me.

Didn't you strengthen this perception by shutting down her willingness to share?

By the way, I don't think her premise is correct either. Empathy may not be something only in humans, and it may not be in every human being.
We cannot even say that the reason is what separates human from other living things. Evolution may have given us priority, but that doesn't mean that other living things haven't that potential.

Didn't you strengthen this perception by shutting down her willingness to share?

Well that's an interesting question. I did shut down the conversation, which could have been kinder and deeper. But then it would not have been honest either.

What was on the tip of my tongue was "tell me more about how empathy shapes your decision making?"

She most like would have "noodle-brained" that, which is her common way of making me not imply things and make them explicit. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean if you are so empathetic and it is what sets us apart where were my feelings considered when you cheated on me? In the aftermath? In the first year before I asked for a divorce?"

Maybe she answers maybe she doesn't. Maybe she just takes it as an attack. Maybe she gets defensive and I tell her "I thought you weren't going to get defensive about this anymore." And I just wasn't interested in that path of conversation either.

I didn't see it illuminating anything new. So I didn't engage.

I'm projecting.

"I think that reason is what sets us apart from other creatures."

"Sure that's important but it's really about the empathy"

Smacks of what my wife used to do. Positing a suggestion for me in the form of soliciting the answer she wanted to a leading question. Pretty effing disingenuous. But, you know, I'm just suspicious of cheaters.

Seriously, though, you're two years out from D-day, and based on the tone of this exchange that you shared, I sense no warmth. Do you foresee a time, a circumstance where that changes? How does it look? What must she do?

Just curious because I believe it was possible for me if she'd not been so defiantly resentful that I broke up her fun.

There is plenty of warmth. I'm generally quite happy with my fWW. I made a topic in R about how things had gotten easy again. As these forums tends to be, there is a selection bias in what we post here. I don't post the next day when we cap off a typical day of contentment after the kids go to bed with a TV show, a nice little conversation, then sex.

Not much to analyze or talk about when that's the case. 🤷‍♂️

Good for you. Outstanding.

Seems pretty obtuse not associating a lack of empathy with her affair and subsequent actions. How is that possible for even a not terribly bright person? Denial maybe?