36,
I think that you made the right decision to cancel the dinner meeting. I know that many thoughts, hopes, and needs must have been compelling you to go, but as someone recently wrote in a thread, the ‘right’ actions to take that will help us get out if infidelity are often counter-intuitive and not what our emotions tell us to do.
It can be hugely difficult to do something because your head knows it is ‘right’, when your emotions are pushing you in the opposite direction. My heart goes out to you, because I know what a struggle you went through to reach the point of cancelling the dinner. And I know that we can make a long list of why it was the right thing to do, and you might agree with every point, but I am willing to bet that it still hurt like hell to cancel. You demonstrated huge strength in doing that, 36, and I hope you feel a little less vulnerable for doing it, even if it may not feel like a personal victory right now.
If I were in your shoes, I know that I would have been tempted to go to that dinner to see if my WW was going to give me the much-needed validation that would come from her recognising my pain, and taking ownership of the huge wrong that she had done to me, after weeks of minimising it and telling me to just shut up and let it go. As if my pain, and the damage to my life, are of so little consequence, and such little importance, that they do not merit recognition, remorse, or anything remotely like an apology or actions to support me and help me heal. In short, to be shown the respect and compassion that any human being deserves, from the person who had done so much to make me feel worthless and unimportant. To have the person who smashed me down apologise, show true remorse, and make the effort to build me back up again.
We all need that validation, and perhaps it leaves us feeling weak and vulnerable if we look to the very person who broke us down for just an ounce of recognition that our pain matters, that we matter, and that we did not deserve the horrible things that were done to us. To be shown love, mercy, and compassion when we so desperately need it, and which should, if there was any justice in the world, come from the same person who inflicted the grievous wounds on us. To soothe the urge we feel, even in our broken state, to get in their face and shout, “You really f*cking hurt me, don’t you dare treat me like that doesn’t matter! Make the effort, do me that justice, show me that respect! You broke me, you f*cking fix me! Acknowledge that I matter, goddammit!”
Yes, we do need that validation, don’t we? It can be so significant to us that its absence can make us feel worthless and lost, but sometimes we despise ourselves for how much we need it. And I might be wrong, but maybe you were hoping that your wife would give you just a little of that validation if that other couple was there. That she would not be as dismissive and heartless as she has been when it is just the two of you talking. It is hard not to hope, sometimes, isn’t it? I think many people here will sympathise with you on that score.
However…The likely reality was spelt out in one post after another. As much as you need your pain to be recognised, validated, and treated with the love and respect it merits, I think you would have been sorely disappointed if you had gone to that dinner with the hope of that redemption in your heart. You completely deserve it, that goes without saying, but I was very afraid that if you went, it would have degenerated into a vehicle for your wife to put on a performance about how badly hurt and traumatised she is, and how you should take her needs into account and stop being so cruel to her.
If that happened, it would have been the total opposite of what you need, and the total opposite of what the real situation is. That is why, although you struggled with the decision, I felt a huge wave or relief when you finally cancelled the dinner. Your feelings are raw, your emotions are bruised, and the last thing you need right now is to switch your emotional firewall off and put yourself through gruelling endurance tests like that dinner. Anything that is instigated by your wife will be designed to benefit her, not you, and I think you might have come away from that dinner absolutely reeling from the skewed, warped version of reality that your wife would have presented.
You have a plan for getting yourself out of infidelity, 36, and that should be your goal as you move forwards. Your wife may try to sabotage that, or distract you from it, but that will just land you right back where you were, mired in infidelity and dishonesty. You deserve so much better than that, and your plan, and the steps you have begun taking, are the way to break out of the bad place where you have been trapped.
It may be a hard journey, but it is the most important journey of your life, and one that is vital to make for the sake of your long-term well-being and happiness. It is such a release when we finally reach that point of liberation, and we no longer need validation from the person who beat us to a pulp. When we become self-validating, and we recognise our own worth, our own value, our own goodness.
That is the real journey that you are on, 36, and you are doing better than you think you are, because this early stage is always the hardest. And you are not walking alone; many of us are walking with you, in spirit, and we are here for you any time you need us, hour by hour, day by day.
Be good to yourself, 36, and our thoughts are with you.
