SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

We’ll see.

Your entitled to your opinion. Id never question your decision to walk away from your marriage, after all, it was your decision.

my decision to try to save my marriage is mine. Not everything in life works out. But we endeavor our best.

If you cant respect that, neither one of us can help the other.

I wish you the best.

Sorry that your mom did that. It seems that until people face infidelity themselves they have only stereotypes to believe in.

You are right to hold your boundaries and her whys should not be blameshifting things on you.

Whys should look more

Like this:

I felt entitled to have an affair because I believe I made bigger sacrifices in the relationship. In hindsight I can see that I was wrong to have an affair in any situation, and I can also see that I thought that because I stopped appreciating my spouse for the things he brings to the table.

Most ws who have cheated probably that is one of the statements that belong to most of us.
I agree with won’t be fooled in the point your wife is nowhere near ready to own her shit. I can understand your decision right now to keep going. But honestly, she does have a long drive ahead of her and likely feels she has the upper hand because to her you won’t leave no matter what.

There needs to be some rock bottom in which the pin of changing feels less that the pain of staying who she is. If your join date was last March and that was close to dday, she really should be further along by now. What progress have you seen over the past l most year?

Keep in mind that I am not telling you anything about what the outcome of your marriage should be, but at some point if there hasn’t been progress what is happening is not working and will need to be reevaluated. Is she in therapy? Why is she doing to try and drive at this destination you are hoping for?

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:39 AM, Thursday, February 6th]

Hikingout,

I dont want to make excuses for her. We have had an extended discovery period ranging from 2014-2024. Some wild trickle truth over that time frame. My understanding has morphed from coworkers flirting with her, to coworkers trying to get with her, to her letting them get away with ass smacking and kiss stealing, to finding out this year she was going to meet one coworker(primary Ap)to make out and get fingered, letting a customer(secondary Ap) finger her for money, and two one time incidents with other coworkers in the backseat of a car.

I dont know what to count as d day at this point. Early last year is the first time I saw things for what they were, though. But I obviously suspected longer.

We went through counseling with a MC who was her therapist through her teenage years. Hes an old pastoral counseler. We werent getting anywhere with him.

Got a new counseler in october. She seems to actually have us on a path. Its slow going, but Ww is doing better with communication.

Im not happy with where we landed on disclosure. Im thinking Im not there, but Ww is adamant. Im pretty sure Ive seen this show before, but im not exactly sure if I would ever know when the lies run out. Pretty sure grown people dont have multiple concurrent affairs for 9 months without fucking though. So thats somewhere we havent made progress.

Shes made a ton of progress on an issue thats plagued us since we started dating, that is, jealous and controlling behaviors.

Ww is having a hard time facing/owning the cheating. Would love to flip it on me. She was supportive about my family not being supportive, paradoxically.

Seems to be taking a sort of apologize and hope for the best approach, but

She bought and read 11 books on infidelity since last november. Id say she wants to do better. Maybe its more accurate to say she wants to want to do better.

Shes catching herself making excuses and calling it out.

Ive got a hefty pile of things to work through with her, and for the most part, Im dissatisfied.

But she did really well by me the last several days. So Im taking it day by day, good with the bad, trying to not hate my life between counseling sessions.

[This message edited by 5bluedrops at 3:29 AM, Thursday, February 6th]

Thanks for catching me up. I will keep any eye out for future posts and support as best I can. Sounds a little like she has addictive issues? Is there anything else she shows that towards? Best wishes.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:43 AM, Thursday, February 6th]

I respect that it is your decision and I wish you the best too, 5blue. I also hope that in what I said in my previous post I turn out to be 100% wrong too.

Hikingout,

Im of the mind that there are more compulsive tendencies than addictive, but theres some addictive ones to be sure. She read "no stones" by marnie c ferree and at first she was like, "yes, this seems right". But half way through she was undecided.

She suffered from bulimia and cutting when we met. We found a lot of overlap in the hiding, lying, and excuse making she had to use to keep those things in the closet, and her behaviors around and after the infidelity. Her parents never found out about the self mutilation. They did know about the purging, but Ww convinced them she had an underlying medical condition that wasnt letting her keep food down. She had everyone so convinced, a surgeon took her gallbladder out. But it was bulimia, and Ww knew she knew it was bulimia and she was lying.

When we met she was totally honest about those things to me. I dont think anyone else ever knew though.

She beat those things largely by my reckoning over the 3 years we were together before the cheating. But then, that happened. And the old tricks were deployed against me.

Wont be fooled,

Its all good brother. I appreciate you trying to help. You are just trying to save me pain and heartache. I recognize that.

[This message edited by 5bluedrops at 11:17 AM, Thursday, February 6th]

I’m impressed your wife is trying.

So many betrayed spouses don’t even get that.

I’m hoping you can happily reconcile and accept the hand you’ve been dealt. It’s not easy bring the betrayed because whether you divorce or reconcile, you still have to accept the whole mess.

The problem is that nobody is going to understand your pain without having felt it themselves, and more specifically, they'd have to experience exactly what you felt in order to truly empathize.

Your wife may never know what damage she caused because you aren't the kind of person to revenge affair. And even if you did, would she have the stomach to deal with it on the same timeline? Multiple affair partners over multiple years? The lying and avoiding accountability?

Reconciliation is hard because of this difference, and it's even harder when you know there's no way they'll get to experience a fraction of the pain you felt. When my wife stepped out, I understood the pain she felt because I had emotionally cheated before and she had forgiven me. Did it make it all better? No, not even a little. But it was the common base experience of betrayal that registered and allowed us to reconcile. It was also an intense amount of work that required several years of difficult emotions. It's still ongoing. You never really get over it.

Every female in your life giving you this kind of advice is doing you a disservice. And your wife might not understand until you ask for a separation.

Icedover,

It would surprise me if she didnt understand, because Ww has always been terrified of me doing something like what she did. It scares her awfully. She has a real problem with attractive women existing around me. The jealousy, fear and accusations were really cruel when the cheating she was doing is considered. It is one of the things she has made the most progress on.

Its been a strange time since I last posted in this thread. Ww has been awesome to me for the most part, but Im still struggling.

We had the session with our therapist about the "whys". It was deeply unsatisfying. I was invited to chime in with my thoughts as we went at the beginning of the session, but was condemned throughout when I did. Ww was frozen in stage fright, and therapist led her to the conclusion of, absent father, critical mother, needed validation. Nothing we didnt know.

We spent about 15 minutes on discussing the why, and about 45 minutes on arguing with me about my reaction to the infidelity. Attempts to dissuade me from pursuing a therapist guided full disclosure, validating ww for shying away from all my attempts to reclaim behavior from the infidelity.

Therapist was perplexed that being told "this isnt about you, she needed to feel desired and thats understandable" made me feel worse, not better.

Quoted some statistic of "2/3 of marriages that suffer infidelity survive as long as the wayward chooses to stay, youve got a really good shot"

"This having happened can make what you have stronger than ever"

Yeah. Everything she did is valid and understandable and every kind of satisfaction Im seeking is inauthentic and wrong. Got it.

Somewhere in there, she let slip that my father was a pillhead before he was an alcoholic. Something my family has kept from me all my life. I worked for him, with him, every day for 15 years and never knew. She only knows because she is the MC for my brother. She Assumed I knew, was mortified to find out it was news, "shouldnt have told me".

Buncha fucking liars. Secret keeping, gas lighting, evil, reality warping jackasses who think me not knowing is the greatest good.

Session couldnt have gone worse.

So I fired the therapist, obviously. If I wanted to read Perel I could do that for less than $150 per hour.

Kind of just drifting in space now, angry, directionless and a little scared. But Ww is really supportive. I can tell Im not the only one in love, not the only one scared. So that helps a great deal.

I’m glad you fired the therapist. I hope you can find a new one. Do t give up on that process.

But you guys should also have your own individual therapists. Hers should be an infidelity specialist that you help her find and speak to yourself before she starts with them.

And yours should be a trauma specialist. This has all been traumatic for you and you really could use that support.

I'm also glad you fired the therapist, because her behavior is not only abhorrent, but it's enough to get her license revoked. Do yourself a favor and report her to the accrediting board, because sharing that information about your father with you was a serious violation.

Don't give up on therapists, however. My therapist doesn't even live remotely near me. I participate weekly in my car on a video call. Perfect for my lunch break. A "dashboard confessional" if you will.

If your wife is retreating every time the focus gets turned on her, then she isn't mature enough for this marriage. And the fact that she was projecting onto you the very things she herself was doing shows that she's not as innocent as she claims.

I'm not pushing you to leave her. But I am pushing you to hold her accountable and not to let up on it. Your marriage has already been destroyed, so if you want any chance of getting through this together, you'll have to blow up what's left of it and start over. But you also need to keep in mind that it doesn't always work out. Most marriages that suffer infidelity and attempt reconciliation fail within five years. You have to both really want it to survive, and that means something different to everyone.

I'm happy to talk privately if you need.

Glad you got rid of that therapist. Perfect example of how certain therapist can do more harm than good. Find a good one friend.

I want to make sure I have the info in the right order. Your ww somehow got the message out that she was easy. There were takers. But no actual piv. But this kept up for a long time from the beginning of your marriage. She has consistently lied to you. Still not telling you everything. Is this correct?
Ok. I don’t think there is just one diagnosis here. Her behavior from the beginning is about power. The jealousy, the sexual acting out, the lying, are symptoms of a very messed up childhood, which appears to make it impossible to allow you any power, even if she does it covertly. She needs intense therapy. I do not think mc will work. Her childish brain has stacked a thousand emotional barriers between the two of you. She can never relax. She is always on guard. She cannot let you in too far. All this time while you think things are getting ok she is still slippery as an eel. None of this is thought out. It’s how her childhood trained her.
In cases like this I recommend EMDR. There are many hidden memories that her conscious brain can’t retrieve. This form of intense therapy does not take long and she will bring up all those that are hidden from her. It can be painful but necessary because if she doesn’t change nothing in your marriage changes.

I think Cooley has the right take on your W.

The therapist broke confidentiality. My reco is to at least consider reporting her to her professional organization - for example, if she a social worker (LCSW), report her breaking confidentiality to NASW.

As for the whys, my heart goes out to your W for her very difficult childhood. Now, what is she going to do to change her behavior? She can't change her past, but she can change from cheater to good partner, whether it's with or without you.

I'm very sorry more people from whom you looked for support have let you down.

Cooley,

You have the gist of it, more or less. The cheating happened (in as much as I know) in 2014. Ive got reasons to suspect much longer but no smoking guns. Only have admissions of behavior in 2014. We werent married until 2019. But lived as a committed cohabitating relationship from the get go.

I think your assessment is completely on the nose.

Ww is a scared person. She is terrified of surgery, illness, social scrutiny, abandonment, being older, unattractiveness, powerlessness, so many other things.

When she suffered as a teenager of bulimia, she lied to the point that her parents and medical professionals were convinced it was her gallblader. She would have been terrified of abdominal surgery; the pain, the anesthesia, the uncertain outcome. But she was so much more afraid of being found out and castigated for being a shameful bulimic that she went ahead and let it be done, even though she must have known she would continue purging after.

Did her priority of protecting herself from shame over all other fears change when she exchanged bulimia for cheating?

No. It wouldnt have.

Did the need served by both behaviors disappear in 2014 when she says she stopped cheating?

No. It wouldnt have.

So how did she serve it, all these years from 2014 to now? Its an ominous question.

I am, at the current moment, struggling to figure out what to do for next steps. I agree that MC is not going to do it. But I dont know what kind of counseling to solicit, where to find it. She was raised to reflexively avoid talking about her true feelings, shift them to the side, make it about something else, and hide hide hide.

And Ive watched her do that without meaning or wanting to with two therapists at this point whom we have had to fire after the cards turned over and we saw they had no plan.

It is exhausting and very disappointing to open myself up to a professional, force myself to trust them at the least trusting point in my life for half a year while I tell my most painful, to find out a long ways in that they arent on board.

Honestly, I am losing faith in people. Its hitting me from all sides. Wife, family, society, therapeutic professionals. The onslaught of letdowns has demoralized the living shit out of me.

So even though Im worn out and disinclined to go through intake and getting a new therapist caught up,

Im going to seek someone whose specialty is SA and infidelity. We have been dabbling a bit in self administered emdr for some time. It does help me with intrusive thoughts alot. Probably need to go to a pro with it. Maybe someone has both skillsets, Id like to find that person.

Im giving her an avenue to reconciliation. I just want her to feel like putting the energy into us that I do. When I talk about how the infidelity hurt me, how I feel about specific facets and why they leave me feeling pain, she shuts down and goes quiet. She has little to say about me feeling rejected, ridiculed, used, left out, gaslit, and betrayed. Its like, "yeah, I see. Totally valid. I get that. Sorry".

Damn 5bluedrops, are you married to my wife? I’m closing in on 4 years and it’s about done. Had another therapy session today and it would seem I’m a Rescue Archetype. (Interesting reading on this). I’m tired of her rug sweeping and just not doing any work. I don’t think she’s capable and she needs some therapeutic help built won’t seek it out. She’s in denial that there is anything wrong with her. I told my therapist, she’s going to have to decide what is more painful very soon. Losing the relationship or working on herself. I think she’ll lose the relationship before she’ll put in the work but she’ll be worse off for it. I’d suspect she’ll have a mental breakdown but still won’t seek help. It’s sad to watch unfold. Stay strong my friend.

5BD....Jake Porter is your man. Very much a specialist....probably expensive...but will know what to do first time right.