SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Aside from the infidelity I've been reflecting on our relationship overall. A short recap of background and FOO stuff that is important.
My dad was volatile, intimidating, and sometimes downright verbally abusive. My mom was emotionally unavailable to me because she was having to manage my dad. She taught me how to walk on eggshells and be a caregiver of an adult child.
I have been with my WH for 34 years and when we got together I was only 16 yo. He has ADHD/Low executive function. He was very passive and calm, opposite of my dad, and that attracted me. I didn't want to be with anyone remotely close to my dad so he seemed like the opposite. Well for the first 10-12 years of our relationship, I acted and behaved in some ways like my dad, controlling and overpowering. I was over-functioning and he was under-functioning. Once we had kids I put that caregiving more into them and slowly over the last 20 years I have let go of the control and become more passive within our relationship myself.
I understand people get in relationships often to fulfill childhood deficits. His parents had no patience with him and didn't show love at all (never hugged him or told him they loved him). He was treated like an annoyance. So I understand our relationship served him in a way to be properly cared for, nurtured, and mothered. Once we had kids and the attention wasn't focused on him he became a pouty pants, felt neglected, etc.

My question is this...What was this relationship fulfilling in me?
What childhood wound, or deficit, am I attempting to resolve?
What is the developmental task for me to have achieved?

Any insights, opinions, thoughts welcome!

Is your H being treated for ADHD? When did treatment start? How is your H with impulse control? I assume you know low impulse control is associated with ADHD.

In consulting I was taught to begin envisioning where a client wanted to be and where they were, and then to figure out how to get to the new position from the current one. How the company got to their current position wasn't all that relevant, except with respect to how the current culture would throw up obstacles to changing.

Conclusion: my reco is to start with different questions, like:

What do I want to change about me?
What do I want to change about my life?
What would keep me from changing?
Who can best give me the help I want?

And I'll ask: what caused you to call yourself 'lessthinking'?

My dad was volatile, to put it mildly.

My husband is not. He is calm and mild.

I tend to be the one who does the organizing, planning, etc. At the beginning of our relationship, I did the caregiver role, but as things evolved we split it more evenly.

What are you getting from it? My first thought is that you get control of your life.

Because with that kind of childhood, you get unpredictability every day.

But as an adult, if you’re the one who is in charge, then you know what’s coming next. You know it’s not chaos coming down the pike. You get a smoother ride.

5Decades - Thank you for that insight. Control for sure, fear of the unknown is a thing for me. So with that insight specifically what would I need to learn from this experience to grow, or complete that developmental task specifically?

Sisoon - Always love your insight, thank you! WH is in IC and awaiting ADHD medications for the 1st time in his life.
I think I've done a lot of reflecting on how I got here. What I'm looking for is the bridge to get me to where I'm going. I have been reading Coming Apart by Kingma and I'm trying to identify what developmental tasks I've learned from this relationship and experience.
The "lessthinking" is a handle I've used for a long time because of my overthinking habit, getting stuck in "what ifs and shoulda coulda woulda thinking" It's been a lifelong challenge I've worked very hard to make big strides in. My parents jokingly said my first word was "What if?" Of course, deciding to stay or go would be hard for anyone, let alone a lifelong overthinker.
One task I know I have learned was to not quit, I went back to school and received my degree and then went on to grad school and finished that as well. So what "task" would that be? This may be a dumb question but I was journaling and want to write this out as a reminder to myself and what I've learned. I find it powerful to hear others' tasks learned.
Your questions are really good and these are where I struggle the most! questions that challenge me to think in a new way and I'm a bit stuck...
What do I want to change about me? I want to feel confident in my abilities
What do I want to change about my life? I want to take care of myself first
What would keep me from changing? What Ifs! Crippling fear of regret
Who can best give me the help I want? Me and SI group :)
Just some initial thoughts...

The "what if" cycle is a "looking back" task.

Kind of telling yourself that if you could only go back and do it again, you could make things perfect maybe.

Perfection. A life lived so that you could have controlled each and every outcome. Those "what if" thoughts are still about control. If only you could have controlled that moment, that unpredicted turn of events, that other person's decision, seen around that corner….

Thing is, we just can’t do any of that. But you already know that. There is no perfect life.

Maybe your lesson is "let go of perfection".

You have the ability to control one person in this world, and that is you.

I can only speak to my experience. In my FOO, I was afraid of making an error. Mistakes weren’t seen as a learning experience, they were deadly sins and met with violent repercussions. As an adult, I would punish myself for even the smallest error, berating my stupidity, telling myself how worthless I was. I was afraid to try new things, knowing I would fail at first - failing wasn’t a thing we were allowed to do as kids, and I feared that. It took time and personal growth to learn about failure as part of learning anything new.

I’m wondering if you are seeing his affair through the lens of "what ifs", and thinking things like "what if I had done x, then I could have prevented this"?

Because this is self-blaming. I did similar things. I think most BS do this. Thing is, your spouse made those decisions, each and every step of the way. The affair wasn’t one decision at one point. It was a series of decisions.

Just as reconciliation is a series of decisions. Take your time. It’s good work you’re doing right now.

Who can best give me the help I want? Me and SI group :)

Uh-oh.

I think I know what you mean ... and I think you need to realize real life support is immensely useful and probably available now. I think the only way to get out of one's own head is to be with and share with other people.

*****

Less thinking is probably VERY useful. The stay/go decision requires taking loads of information and making it all fit into a binary choice. T here's too much info and too many gaps in one's memory to take account logically of every piece of data. IMO, the sooner one lets intuition make the choice, the sooner we can get to a good decision.

I like to think in terms of head (logic), heart (desire), and gut (intuition). I believe they'll align on one choice if we let them - but heart and gut have real advantages over head. For the record, my head and heart wanted R from the moment my W confessed. It took a few months for my gut to decide R was worth the risk.

What do I want to change about me? I want to feel confident in my abilities
What do I want to change about my life? I want to take care of myself first

Have you considered IC? An IC can help you process the pain of being betrayed and losing what you thought you had.

A good IC can help you make the changes you want to make - and IC gives you face-to-face real life support.

*****

It takes some time to find the right dose for an ADHD med, and it sometimes takes time for finding the right med. They worked for me, and within a couple of months, I got a lot more out of life. I hope the meds work for your H.

5Decades...my what ifs are...What if I decide to D and then the pain from missing him is more than I can take? What if I D and then get an illness and have nobody by my side? What if I D and deeply regret it and spend the rest of my days regretting my choice, or I die alone? OR even worse...what if I D and realize the problem was mostly me?! Crapy like that :( I know I know...all very common I'm sure but intense nonetheless.

Sisoon..yes lots of IC which is helping work through this...but I may need to find a new IC, sometimes the work only goes so far with one and then you need a new one that can challenge in new ways. My current IC was with me almost a year before DD and I spend much of my time trying to work on radical acceptance with my relationship. Although she won't say it I think she is wondering What the HECK?! I spent a year telling her how difficult our relationship was (his untreated ADHD, emotional immaturity, and lack of initiative)....so she's probably frustrated that he cheating and I'm confused. I didn't spend any time talking about the good stuff we had in our first 15 years together because I was trying to work on the drudgery. Might be good to get a fresh set of "eyes" on it, a new perspective.

We saw each other this weekend...I let him give me a short kiss, I didn't cry like I did the first time. I kind of felt nothing...I was mostly afraid of how I was going to react. He said it was the best day he can remember in so long and he will wait for me however long it takes. I wish I had a crystal ball so I could see if the spark would every come back.

Sisson I need to get in touch with head/heart/gut and get them to align for clarity and peace!

Thanks for the ongoing conversation...

[This message edited by lessthinking at 6:27 PM, Monday, February 5th]