First of all, it is huge that you are making this statement. It’s a brave and bold move to be willing to see both the light and dark within you. We all have it. I’m a Jordan Peterson fan-he talks about this often...how most of us view ourselves as the person who would have hidden a Jew in WWII Germany, when in fact, most of us might have been the Nazi’s to turn them in.
I am 49 too. I am BS, who is 2 years past Dday after having learned about a LTA my H had with an ex GF. It literally lasted most of our 26 years together, and we are attempting R. I can share with you what is working for us.
The perceptions of the WS and the BS are usually pretty different. The WS’s tend to see the betrayal as something that they “did”, but the BS’s are having to untangle the perception of who the WS “was”. Your post alludes to a good grasp of this, and I think it is huge and good that you get the nature of the problem. To heal, the WS has to make a very visible and open journey in front of the BS that conveys adequately that they are not just someone who would choose differently, but that they are fundamentally operating from an entirely different place emotionally and that that is sticking.
If your husband is still asking questions, of course the first piece of major advice is to answer them fully and don’t leave anything out. Your consistency is going to go miles with calming the need to constantly pepper you with questions.
He’s going to be very sad about his shattered reality, as you already know, and that takes time and new bricks to rebuild with.
If you are past that stage, then I would suggest an approach that leaves your husband out of the equation of your fundamental transformation of perspective. Here’s what I mean by this:
When this went down with us, I of course filed for divorce and threatened to leave. He didn’t do a lot of begging and pleading. A little, but not a lot. But he did immerse himself in self-help books, videos, lectures, IC, etc. When I came home from work, he’d be sitting in a chair off in some corner reading. When I went on his computer he had videos about healing from affairs that had been 3/4 watched on his desktop. He started keeping journals. I got the sense that he truly wanted to understand himself, and that he was doing this with the full knowledge that I was planning to divorce him anyway.
This is what got my attention to possibly delay divorce.
He was of course 180 in terms of being nice and attentive, etc. but holding doors open for me does not begin to make up for a parallel relationship with another person. He understood that he needed to fully turn himself inside out while I watched and independent of whatever choices I made for the marriage.
So that’s my first piece of solid advice from a BS perspective: Be the change, regardless of how he responds to it. If you have self-esteem issues, past traumas, etc. etc. dive headfirst into tackling them and let him see that without end. His anger, as you well know, is simply trapped hurt surfacing. Let him express it. My H always just moves in and says “I hurt you badly. You have the right to be angry. I’m so sorry”. Doing this every time and without defensiveness has been one of the major reasons I chose to stay longer.
Second, there is a great book that really helped us to understand each other: “How to improve your marriage without talking about it”. This was huge. Men and women, generally, deal emotionally differently. Women tend to be fear-driven, and are inclined to talk through their issues. Men tend to be shame-driven, and have these cortisol spikes that lend to incline them towards activity prior to talking. I.e., they may need to do pushups or play a card game to come down before wanting to actually talk things through. Women tend to reach for connection, men reliability...etc. etc. Knowing these particulars and how to navigate them helped us tremendously. Check out the book.
Another game-changer was “Irritating the Ones We Love”. Everyone has emotional sore-spots that we look to soothe. We can tell when we’ve flipped the lid off of someone’s jar when they overreact, and knowing this about them and ourselves can be huge for learning how to build better relationships.
Of course, there are the two classic WS favs “How to help your Spouse heal from your Affair”, and “Out of the Doghouse” that are hugely helpful for WS’s to understand the BS’s perspective, but I suspect you may be past that. You sound like you really get how your H is feeling.
We have to navigate personalities, but also gender tendencies/societal structures too. Learning more about these things really helped us.
Another thought is this:
How much time did the two of you put into learning how to be married? Us? Zero. We liked each other a lot, were attracted physically, and thought “hey it’s time”. Well, here’s your do-over. You don’t have to reinvent this wheel. There are myriad courses out there, workshops, etc. that support the building of great marriages. It’s as skill-set, not just chance.
Consider investing in a Gottman workshop, or finding things say, once a year, that actually strengthen your marriage and build vital skills for moving through life together.
This is something we plan to do, and if you take the initiative for it, it will go a really long way towards showing him you mean business. It can give him confidence that healing is also a skill-set that you can practice and grow. A Gottman weekend, for example, is about $900ish bucks for a couple (a divorce is around $6-10,000, so worth it don’t you think?)
Get on the web. There are family/marriage building courses and lectures literally everywhere.
So in summary, if there is any good advice I can give, it’s that showing tangible, proactive initiative is going to be huge.
Your husband is tired and hurting. And so are you, but people who have been through much worse still pick up their pants and carry on. Secondly get really good support for yourself if you haven’t already. You mentioned IC-hopefully you are working with someone who is good, but also you may want to consider investing in a relationship coach. They tend to be more proactive/have more action-oriented steps vs. just talk therapy in my experience. A blend of both is good if you can afford it, but having to choose between the two I’d go with an experienced relationship coach.
You can’t ever undo what has been done. None of us can. Whether you’ve cheated or not, we all carry regrets in life, but we must have faith in the lighter parts within us, yes? There was darkness...but there is also always light. Walk in the light, now. For yourself first and with no agenda particularly to sway your husband. See what happens.
Hugs.
