SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Me again.....

I still do not have the full disclosure.

It was promised at the end of May. Then June. Then this weekend. Now it is apparently three weeks from now.

All of that is frustrating enough on its own, but I have tried to tell myself that if the delay means it is deeper, more honest, more complete, and not just another polished version of partial truth, then maybe I have to be patient. I do understand that a real disclosure is not supposed to be rushed if the goal is actual truth and not just damage control. Being the fourth "full" disclosure, three previous full of lies and omissions, this is truly her last chance at it and she knows.

But last night we were talking after I had pulled completely away for a few days, and the conversation turned to her IC and why this is taking so long. She told me, "My therapist has told me over the last few sessions that I am not to try and make you happy, or try to help you in any way. I have to heal myself and that is my only priority. You have to heal you and that is not my concern."

I understand what I think her therapist probably means. At least logically I do. I assume the point is that my wife has to fix whatever is broken in her, because chasing my reactions, managing my mood, or trying to soothe me without doing the deeper work is not the same as becoming safe.

But what I heard was something very different.

What I heard was, "You are on your own."

And that hit something in me hard.

Because why would I heal with her if I am healing alone anyway? Why would I choose reconciliation, with the person who caused the wound still standing beside me, if the message she is receiving is that helping me is not part of her job? It would be vastly easier to heal without her in front of me every day. Without her words. Without her delays. Without her blank spots. Without the constant reminder that the person I am supposed to somehow feel safe with is the same person who made me unsafe in the first place.

That is the part I am struggling with.

I have heard over and over that her healing is hers and my healing is mine. I get that. I am not asking her to do my healing for me. She cannot climb inside my chest and undo what she did. She cannot make the images disappear. She cannot return the years. She cannot give me back the man I was before I found out.

But if reconciliation means I carry my pain alone while she works on herself separately, then what exactly are we rebuilding together?

Because the damage was not separate.

She did not betray herself in isolation. She betrayed me. She betrayed our marriage. She betrayed our children’s home. She brought another man into the foundation of my life and then let me live inside that lie for years.

And sometimes I do not think she understands the difference between working on herself and repairing what she destroyed.

This triggered me so badly because she already has a history of speaking from her own perspective with almost no awareness of what her words do to me. A perfect example is when I asked her why she brought her affair partner to OUR wedding. Her answer was very matter of fact: "Because I wanted to share MY special day with him. I cared about him, you know."

My special day. With him.

There was no pause. No visible recognition of what that sentence would do to me. No immediate understanding that she was talking about our wedding, our vows, my life, my consent, my reality. She said it like she was explaining a seating arrangement.

So when she tells me now that her therapist said she should not try to help me in any way, I do not trust that she is hearing the nuance. I do not trust that she understands the difference between not making me responsible for her healing and abandoning responsibility for the harm she caused.

Maybe her IC is saying, "In this room, we are here to work on you. You need to understand your choices, your patterns, your lies, your avoidance, your selfishness, and your broken thinking." That would make sense to me.

But what seems to have landed in my wife’s head is, "Do not worry about helping him. Do not worry about making him feel safe. Do not worry about his timeline. Just heal yourself."

And I honestly do not know what to do with that.

I do have empathy for waywards, at least to a degree. I imagine it must be an awfully hard line to walk. Fix yourself, but do not become self-absorbed. Help your betrayed spouse, but do not perform healing just to get approval. Be patient with their pain, but do not make their reactions the center of your recovery. Become safe because it is right, not because you are trying to win something back.

I can understand that intellectually. But emotionally, I am sitting here thinking, if I am on my own anyway, why stay in the blast radius?

Am I reading this through a triggered mind? Does it make sense that an IC would tell a wayward not to worry about helping the betrayed spouse in any way? Or is the real message probably being misunderstood by someone who still struggles to understand the difference between healing herself and repairing the devastation she caused?

I am sometimes still very unsure of what I even want or need from her, but this seems like the point was lost. Maybe I am just confused by you heal you and I heal me, can someone explain to me what is meant by this while still trying to make it work? I know for a fact that if I disconnect too far emotionally my analytical mind will take over and that will be the end of US.

Just quickly,

If it were me, I think my response would be, "If you’re trying to avoid getting divorced from your counselor then you should follow that advice. If you’re trying to avoid a divorce from me, following that advice to leave me to myself is a path straight to divorce."

Yes there are things she needs to do for herself to fix herself. There are things you need to do for yourself to heal yourself. More importantly right now, whatever list of things you want from her in this moment is more important for her to do than all the above.

I’d probably send a note to that counselor and get clarification. I’d probably also tell him/her verbatim what I said above as well.

While you have plenty of work to do, she has 10x more.

Hi Gemmy,

'My therapist has told me over the last few sessions that I am not to try and make you happy, or try to help you in any way. I have to heal myself and that is my only priority. You have to heal you and that is not my concern.'

Being completely honest, this sounds horrible.
And when you add her statement about bringing her AP to the wedding, it compounds the hurt.

She sounds like she's still compartmentalizing the affair, and thinking that her reality doesn't affect yours.

This is toxic af.

If she can't step up and provide the full disclosure after 3 months, I'm immediately thinking the affair is still happening or it's so bad that she's thinking once you know it, you're gone. I'm not one for ultimatums but perhaps it's time for one - she either tells you everything and submits to a polygraph or you separate.

She needs something to snap her out of whatever fog she's in.

I understand that your wifes therapist is HER therapist but it sounds like your should have a conversation with your wife stating that if she agrees with her therapist, then there is little need to continue this marriage. When I read it, I thought that it would be similar to your leg being broken and her physician saying it would be easier for your wife to have you euthanized than for her to deal with you in crutches.

Does your wife agree with this therapist?
Is your wife just trying to delay taking responsibility?
Does she think the problem will just go away if its ignored or that their is a statute of limitations to addressing this?

Why are you putting yourself through this, and why don't you just take all that energy you're wasting on your endlessly long posts and just get a divorce?
Do you think you'll be happy with her in a year, or in three?
What are you hoping for?

So, I think that either you're probably right that she misunderstood what her IC told her, or that the therapist is not a good one for the situation.

There's a massive difference between not trying to manage your BS's feelings (as I have learned here-- for example, not withholding things that you think will hurt them more, and not "performing" self-healing inauthentically, as you phased it, or exiting unhealthy codependency)...

and not caring about them at all.

A WS is meant to disclose everything to their BS in order to choose honesty and authenticity, let the BS have their hard-earned feelings about whatever is disclosed, and sit with the BS while they have them. We are not meant to try to change those feelings, but rather bear witness to them, empathize with them, validate them, and face them head-on, along with whatever consequences there are for our behavior. (Easier said than done, of course, but definitely necessary.)

What is meant by "the WS heals the WS, and the BS heals the BS [and both of you heal the marriage]" is that the WS processes their shame, digs deep into themself, identifies those internal issues that enabled them to cheat and betray their spouse, and fix all of that. The BS can't do that for them (though many try to make it happen.) The BS has to process the betrayal, the anger, the pain, the grief, the destabilization of reality... And then work through the consequences of all of that, whether they stay in the relationship with the WS or not. The BS must make sense of it all, integrate the new information they're receiving into their mental model of reality, find relief from triggers and mind movies, define and enforce boundaries going forward, figure out how to trust again, etc. The WS can't do that for them (even if they want to.)

This does not mean that the WS does not have to do additional things to help the BS feel safe while the internal work is in progress, like maintaining NC, getting rid of artifacts from the affair, providing the full truth and timeline, giving over all their passwords, sharing their location, letting their BS know when they'll be late, change jobs (where feasible)... Or whatever other reasonable behavioral changes the BS requests of them. This does not mean the WS does not have to sit with their BS in the worst of their feelings, and try to provide them comfort. That's all part of healing the marriage, where the BS's and WS's healing journeys intersect.

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 6:30 PM, Thursday, July 9th]

Thank you MORBS for this response, as stated I have a feeling I am being a little sensitive to what was trying to be stated. My wife has a tendency to take what she means and turn it into the worst sentence available to explain. This helps.

OHITSYOU I will ask her directly what exactly the IC said, and if it is verbatim, then further that conversation accordingly.

Shino I will keep my endlessly long posts short moving forward, but my energy is two fold. One to organize my thoughts and sort, two to try and make an informed clear decision about my future. I still love my wife in ways that confuse even myself, so I question more experienced members who have been through this hell. I may or may not leave her in the end but thank you for your constructive feedback.