SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

After D-Day1 and D-Day2 I reached out to many others for help but got the deer-in-the-headlights look. It was as if I had a communicable disease. The pastors and counselors were just as bad. So I came to the conclusion that only those who had walked in my footsteps could offer empathy and help.

I’ve come largely to the same conclusion. People that I love and have known for a long time and deeply trust, they just don’t know what to say. It’s like asking them for help on a French exam when they don’t speak a lick of it. You all get it. No one else I know IRL does. I’m glad for that on one hand, and it’s lonely on the other hand.

As we all know, we are products of our environment.

My kids were fairly young while we were working through our reconciliation. As I was learning to be healthy and working on better coping strategies, I made a conscience effort to demonstrate and pass on some of those with my children. I remember a specific conversation with my son where he wondered how I could be so inside of his head.

We have emphasized with them how important communication is even when it’s uncomfortable. My children are smart and have since figured out why we were having issues during that time, but I believe that both of them have better communication with their SO’s than I did at their age. My son has mentioned that he appreciates us giving him a positive model of a relationship and shown them how to communicate better with their partner.

My point is, that we can not change the past, but we can break the cycle and show our kids something better. We have always kept it age appropriate as they grew. I certainly haven’t been a perfect parent and my kids have issues of their own, but they are both in serious relationships and they both seem to have open and honest communication between them which allows them to work through all of the other stuff together.

You and your wife can focus on showing your kids healthy coping strategies so that you too can break the cycle.

Why did no one help us?

I just don't think anyone could have known. In retrospect, it's easy to look back at the red flags and deficiencies as flashing warning signs of an impending disaster but hindsight is 20/20 and real life doesn't work that way. While I agree that, at least anecdotally, people with an avoidant attachment style appear to be overrepresented amongst Waywards, I hardly think it's predictive of Waywardness. A lot of us - even the healthiest amongst us - have avoidant features (in varying degrees) and until you live with someone (sometimes for an extended period of time), those aren't things that are necessarily obvious to anyone.

Another thing to remember is that people who avoid conflict tend to be able to evade detection and fly under the radar in a way that other personality "flaws" might not. In theory, they don't cause problems - that's kind of their whole thing. Conflict tends to be the thing that draws attention and alerts people to a problem (that they may be motivated to take steps to solve), so if it doesn't occur, it can be harder to detect. Conflict avoidance and people pleasing also tend to be closely correlated, and that can mask a lot of the more overt issues that might bubble up.

I'm not directing this directly at you InkHulk - more mentioning it in a general way, but another thing that can be difficult to acknowledge or unravel in the absolute devastation of the aftermath of D-day, is the various ways the BS may have (consciously or unconsciously) benefited from, or even (inadvertently) taken advantage of their partner's conflict avoidance/people pleasing nature during the relationship. A "drama free" partner who puts others first, is hardly seen as a negative. It's not obvious that your partner is compromising or you are "getting your way" a fair bit of the time if your avoidant/people pleasing spouse never voiced their preference. When that turns into a relationship pattern/expectation, it can slowly build resentment over time for the compromising partner. The odd time that these resentments bubble up, the benefiting partner may not properly appreciate WHY it bothers their partner as much as it appears to, and may believe their partner's reaction is outsized or unwarranted. To them it's about the one thing, to their partner it's about also about the 50 other things that were never mentioned. In the absence of a massive triggering event like an A that brings everything to a head, it's pretty hard to recognize a partner's selflessness at all, much less be able to see it as a potential negative.

I'm not directing this directly at you InkHulk - more mentioning it in a general way, but another thing that can be difficult to acknowledge or unravel in the absolute devastation of the aftermath of D-day, is the various ways the BS may have (consciously or unconsciously) benefited from, or even (inadvertently) taken advantage of their partner's conflict avoidance/people pleasing nature during the relationship.

A very fair and astute point.

I feel unsafe thinking about getting back into a relationship with her if she DOESN’T start voicing her needs. What you describe has happened. And part of that is on me, and part of that is how could it not happen when she has so steadfastly refused to speak up for herself, and the two are absurdly blurred and mixed. And I don’t want to live that way anymore. I don’t want to have the burden to ensure I’m keeping her safe and healthy in this intimate relationship when she is refusing to communicate when she is getting hurt. It’s like relationship leprosy.

My son has mentioned that he appreciates us giving him a positive model of a relationship and shown them how to communicate better with their partner.

Thanks for sharing this. I hear it said around here fairly regularly that we risk demonstrating to our kids that we condone infidelity if we stay and R. I do believe and you are reporting here that we can also demonstrate something worthwhile and beautiful to our kids with a successful R. I commend you for that.

You and your wife can focus on showing your kids healthy coping strategies so that you too can break the cycle.

God, I hope so.

And part of that is on me, and part of that is how could it not happen when she has so steadfastly refused to speak up for herself, and the two are absurdly blurred and mixed. And I don’t want to live that way anymore. I don’t want to have the burden to ensure I’m keeping her safe and healthy in this intimate relationship when she is refusing to communicate when she is getting hurt.

I actually didn't bring this up with the idea of fault or blame in mind, more to point out that some of the traits that have proven themselves to be maladaptive and look awful and dangerous in retrospect, may have been seen as positives or even assets during previous times (ie. part of the reason that no one, including yourself, saw the risk). Getting rid of the bad may necessarily involve getting rid of the part of the trait that you liked, and I can imagine losing those benefits to be particularly hard to stomach post-d-day.

To be honest, assuming you're not steamrolling anyone or being inconsiderate (and I don't think you are ), I don't actually think you're responsible for issues that were truly not raised. You are not a mind reader. I say this as someone who also had this dynamic in my own relationship (pre-A). While I don't consider myself conflict avoidant, I certainly have some people pleasing tendencies and I perhaps more importantly, I tend to be more easy-going/flexible than my husband is generally (in fairness, he is far more easy-going than I am in other ways, but he tends to be a bit inflexible once he gets ideas in his head). There would be times we'd disagree about low stakes stuff (think sushi versus indian food for dinner) and my husband would often just seem to care more than I seemed to, so if it was something that didn't matter much to me and certainly wasn't worth debating, I'd be like "mkay, whatever," and we'd get what he wanted. In each of those instances I didn't really mind, but every once in a while something would come up that I did care about and if I didn't get "my way" in those instances, I would feel incredibly resentful because I felt like I had compromised all those other times and I was therefore OWED this. My husband would be caught off guard by my reaction because normally I truly don't actually care. Obviously me being easy going shouldn't mean that I should never get my way though, but if he didn't actually appreciate which things mattered to me it was hard for him to After a few blowups where we hashed out why i was really mad, we worked out a code where when we disagreed we'd rank how strongly we actually felt about it on a scale of 1-10. (For example, he wants steak for dinner and I want salmon, but I'm an 8/10 on salmon and he's a 4/10 on chicken, we're having salmon for dinner). I appreciate this sounds silly and cumbersome, but it worked for us because it was a quick way for me to communicate to him which things actually mattered to me. The reality now is that if I actually feel the need to tell him how strongly I feel on something, it's cue for him to step back and realize that this is likely one of those things I might me mad about later. If I ever say "Hey Mr. Emergent, I'm a 10 on this," that's basically a shorthand for me to say "Yo! We WILL be doing it my way, ya hear?"

It works for us. Avoiding a fight/resentment is a heck of a lot easier than coming back from it once it has festered. We were only able to get to that point though because we were able to discuss it and solve it together though. If she is unable to come to the table, there is only so much you can do.

necro bump

i tend to ruminate on things slowly and this has been on my mind since you posted it. i asked a question, you responded and then i have been letting it marinate since.

Just so i am clear, are you asking about help before you were married or help after you got in that car and got up to speed at 155 mph?

Premarital would be cool, but most of my history with my wife is obviously after we got married and that is really where most of the opportunities to observe this stuff come from. So I guess the second one, Jeff Gordon.

It is my opinion that by the time you get in the car it is too late. That is not saying you for sure would have been impacted by infidelity. You may have made it all the way through without much effort, maybe you would have seen someone close to you impacted by it and decided to dig in or perhaps one of you would have come close and that experience would have been enough to change.

My opinion is that at the point you are getting in the car there is too much momentum going in that direction. You have the feels, you are 'in love' and there is a strong belief that loves conquers all. New life, new plans, new directions, ..... i believe Sisoon asked what kind of intervention would have helped. Would an aunt pulling you aside and having a talk with you have helped? Are you sure that didn't happen but you did not hear it?

All of that is too much of a 'what if' game like you mentioned later in the thread. At this point i think all a person can do is learn and live life accordingly. Teaching those close to you as you are able. Learning from them as well. Practicing how you would say -- "Hey watch out that person may not be the best for you" and have them listen.

Wow, that is some intense marination, this is a few threads back.

I hear you, but of course I was in love with her well before I married her, so even the question of pre or post marriage doesn’t even do this justice. Nobody could have talked me out of marrying her, I’m convinced of that. I haven’t re-read the thread to remember all the points that were made, so I’ll ask to be forgiven if this is repetitive or even contradictory of things I said before. But I’ve only in the wake of d-day learned about anxious/avoidant dynamics, attachment disorders, people pleasing and conflict avoidance as risk factors for infidelity, the 4 horsemen. I’m convinced at this point that these things are universally applicable and things people should know if they are going to be in an intimate relationship. So maybe my original question was more like: "why did no one tell us?"

Thanks for thinking about this and bringing it back up, feels honoring.

Anyone else had this experience?

Each WS acts toward their partner in a deceitful manner. However, their behavior toward their partner is not occurring in isolation. Everyone around them, including their AP, is often receiving a stream of deceit as well.

My FWS lied to her counselors, her doctor who prescribed her antidepressants, her AP, and her family. Some were "little lies", some were "whoppers", some were dangerous (lying about alcohol and MJ use to her doctor).

If the person who is supposed to know them best, the BS, can't make sense of it all, I don't think the remainder of the social group, counselors, doctors, etc, can either.