What to do in the face of WS's desperation for R
I told him last week that I wanted to separate for a while (THANK YOU to everyone here who supported me in my last post!! It gave me courage.)
It makes a lot of sense from a practical standpoint for me and our daughter (15yo) to live closer to her school, and it would give me some much needed breathing room from WS, who has been on me like butter on toast lately to open up more. Now he is desperately promising the sun, moon, and stars (i.e. "I will figure out how to be a better person/the person you need/safer; I will quit alcohol/tobacco/video games; etc."), and he is miserable.
I feel really bad for him. Whatever shreds are left of my heart ache at seeing his pain, but I am really at the end of my rope. It's been 4.5 years since his affair started, a bit over 4 years since I noticed something was really wrong with our marriage. I'm tired of holding it all together. I'm tired of incremental changes that are never enough. Maybe I'm just one of those people who can't get over infidelity. I tried for 1.5 years to make R work, but for the past 6 months, I've given up and rug swept. Well, that isn't enough for him. He wants to be more than roommates and co-parents.
We have a two-hour couples therapy session (after nearly a year off from CC) later this week. In the meantime, what do I do? How do I cope with his misery? I'm a kind, patient person, and I really wish he would make this easier on me. He thinks fighting for our marriage is the right thing to do. He keeps begging me not to give up on him or us. I have no fight left in me, but I'm willing to take some time apart to see if that changes. He wants to keep working on R even if we're living apart. I don't. Is there a solution? Should I just go ahead and do what I need to do even if he's opposed?
16 comments posted: Tuesday, November 19th, 2024
Two years after DDay, the roles are reversed
Today marks 2 years since I asked the two fatal questions: "Is there someone else?" and "Is it still going on?"
4 DDays later, I'm still living in a house with my WS, our teenager, and my MIL (she's here temporarily). WS has been out of work for half a year now. Between him and his mom being here, I have no privacy or time to my own thoughts. It's stifling me, and I'm getting desperate to have my own space. A few weeks ago, WS begged me not to give up on him/us, but I can't find it in my heart to want R or him any longer. I feel like it's only a matter of time.
Teen is in a better place than she was a year ago. I turned in my last book. I have no obligations forcing me to stay, and I can see a lot of upsides in me and teen moving to a rental closer to her school (which is about 30 minutes each way from the house). I'm increasingly convinced that my chronic health problems will not improve as long as I'm in this house with WS and the chronic stress associated with that.
WS is very depressed. He knows things aren't going well with R. He is desperate to win me back, but I'm not sure he ever can. We live like roommates again, though it is now by my choice. We don't talk much about the past, but again, it is now my choice. He constantly tells me he loves me and wants me, and I feel empty or pained in response. He does a lot of work around the house and does most of the care and feeding for his mom, but there are a dozen little things each day that remind me of how he is still motivated primarily by pleasure-seeking or ego-feeding behaviors. And also, all those little things I could overlook when I loved him ... well, they're glaringly hard to look away from now that I don't. I don't love him anymore. I don't even like him all that much anymore. I'm really sad about it, and I feel pity for him, but I when I search for those feelings, there's a whole lot of nothing.
The question is one of timing. I know I'm trying to control the outcome, and that isn't ever possible, but MIL is still recovering from her broken hip. One of our cats was recently diagnosed with diabetes, and we're dealing with his treatment. I feel like we have been jumping from one crisis to another for the past 6 months. Maybe this is what being in your early 50s means.
I'm wondering what my next steps should be. I've started taking some action - writing teen, MIL, and WS letters of explanation. Looking at apartments online and figuring out when I can schedule visits. Making a spreadsheet of how we could split our property. I have a lawyer I talked to after DDay2, but I haven't reached out to her yet. Do I go for a trial separation first, or do I just take the plunge and go for divorce? Either way, I am really tired of this life. Of pretending for people like our kid or MIL that we are depressed and stressed for reasons that don't include WS's affairs and lies. Of waking up each day wishing I hadn't.
Thank you for reading this far. Advice, commiseration, or any other thoughts are welcome.
6 comments posted: Wednesday, November 13th, 2024
Too tired to argue/care - the death knell?
On another thread, BluerThanBlue wrote, "there’s going to come a time when your wife will stop asking you asking questions, won’t bother calling you out on your lies, manipulation, and obfuscation, and simply not care enough to fight with you anymore.
If or when that day comes, your marriage is over."
This hit me like a truck because this is where I am today. I am so burned out and exhausted from years of trying to reconnect and repair, and even months after dday, my WS still couldn't do it. Even now, when he claims to want R so badly, when he tells me constantly that he loves me and he's sad about the walls I've put up, he still doesn't want to go back to MC (he thinks we can figure it out on our own but he says he will go if I request it). He just doesn't get it, and I can no longer muster up the energy to try. It's death by a thousand paper cuts.
I know I'm waiting for 3 more years (until our kid is 18) no matter what, but I decided to keep the door open for R as a real possibility in the interval. As time goes on, though, it's becoming increasingly clear to me that *I* have nothing left to give to this marriage. I'm tired of letting his behavior bother me. I'm tired of arguing with him or talking about his affairs or asking him to do things differently. I don't *want* to care anymore because I don't want to keep living in pain, so I'm teaching myself to stop caring. I keep telling myself that it doesn't matter what he does. He has his life to live, and I have mine. I don't need to let his actions affect me anymore. That is a choice I have.
In my other recent thread (about the wedding), a few people encouraged me to speak openly to my WS about my feelings. The quote from BluerThanBlue captures why I didn't want to. I have no faith that such a discussion will lead to anything positive or constructive, and I'm too tired/dead inside to bother trying.
Does this really mean it's over? I guess so, in a romantic sense. We still have our lives entangled in many ways - kid, finances, household, family and friends. We are still legally married. I'm okay with us being friendly (we rarely have physical intimacy anymore anyway). But in terms of what our marriage used to mean to me, yeah, I have to say it's dead as a rock.
14 comments posted: Tuesday, July 9th, 2024
Help, how am I going to get through this wedding??
So WS's younger sister is getting married (date not yet announced). She knows he cheated on me but not all the details. Now she has asked him to officiate their wedding?! I get that she still loves him and wants to support him. That's partly why we told her, but the fact that she wants him to officiate her wedding just utterly baffles me.
I was already dreading having to go, but our kid is excited about it (and doesn't know about WS's affairs), so there's no way for me to get out of this other than faking some terrible last minute illness. I cannot imagine sitting there and listening to my WS - who has cheated on me TWICE, for 3.5 YEARS with AP2 - stand up there spouting some bullshit about love and marriage. How am I going to get through this without bursting into tears in the middle of this ceremony?? Every time I think about it, I'm filled with panic. I haven't cried much in months, but this has sent me over the edge.
20 comments posted: Friday, July 5th, 2024
Is this really peace or just the Plain of Lethal Flatness?
I think I'm finding a sort of calm at last, 18 months past dday1, 8 months after dday5. My reluctance to divorce (or separate) has been predicated on two things: the best interests of our kid, and a reluctance to throw away the life we've built together. Sometime after dday3, I stopped giving a crap about the second one, but later, when I discovered that our kid was having suicidal ideation (she's autistic and highly anxious, too), my focus has been making sure we get her healthy and give her stability to get through this difficult stage in her life.
We've kept things calm in the household, but I struggled internally with the decision to stay. There were many times I wished I could just walk away and live my own life. The thought of waiting another 4 years to do that was hard. But time passed, and now it's only 3 years until our kid finishes high school and turns 18. It's like I've rounded the top of the hill. His affair started 4 years ago. My chronic illness started over 3 years ago. There's less time left to stay than what I've already lived through.
I no longer feel like making an effort to work on the marriage. Am I giving up? Yes. I surrender. I wave the white flag. He thinks he's changed enough because he understands why he was susceptible to cheating and he believes he will never do it again. He doesn't want to change other pleasure-seeking aspects of his personality, so I guess this is as good as it gets, and if that's not enough for me, then it will be up to me to walk away in 3 years. I think I can keep the peace going for that long? I don't hate him. I'm not happy, but I am striving to be content. Life objectively isn't terrible (good housing, financial stability). Even if he had another affair, it wouldn't change my desire to maintain a stable environment for our kid for the next 3 years.
So am I really at peace with all this, or am I just fooling myself while coasting along the POLF? I guess it doesn't really matter in terms of what I've resolved to do, but I'd like to be honest with myself, which is why I'm soliciting opinions. What do you all think?
7 comments posted: Wednesday, May 15th, 2024
Can R succeed without physical intimacy?
It's a complicated backstory, but I will try to make it short. About 6 months into his affair, WS developed ED. About a year into his LTA, he stopped having sex with me entirely. It was around the same time as I got sick, but when I asked him about it, he said his libido was just gone and he couldn't explain it, maybe it was "man-o-pause," etc. Yes, a big stinky load of horseshit. From that time, every few months, I would approach him, and he would push me away. In the meantime, I went through actual menopause and developed a chronic illness.
Dday1 happened 1.5 years into our "dead bedroom" situation (2.5 years of LTA). After the mandatory STD testing period, I was eager and ready to resume our sex life, but WS was still struggling with ED and he was still "sexually oriented to the AP" (yeah, his words). So I waited for him to get over her. We tried sensual touch, massage, date nights. Every couple months we would try to be intimate, and sometimes it would work, sometimes not. Before the affair, we were once-a-week, and way back when we first got together in our early 20s, almost every day, so emotionally, I felt like he was continuing to reject me.
I also had a lot of pain and discomfort when we tried, and eventually went in for medical advice. The appointment waits have been very long. I found out just a couple months ago that due to the chronic illness, my pelvic muscles are locked up, and due to the menopause, the tissues have atrophied. I have some medicine that can help with the latter, but I will need to use it lifelong, and unless the area is "regularly stimulated" (ideally twice a week!), I will continue to have pain and discomfort during sex. In addition to pharmaceutical help, I will also need months of invasive physical therapy.
At this point, after 4 ddays (including false R) and 3 years of little to no intimacy, I gave up. I cried in my therapist's office that I have lost my sex life thanks to WS's neglect. The hospital where the PT was to happen is too far away for me to visit regularly. Had we maintained our pre-affair habits, I would not have this problem.
Now I barely want to hug or kiss WS, much less have any kind of sensual contact with him. Any thoughts in that direction make me angry and depressed. He is very sad and sorry, etc., but that doesn't change the facts of the situation, and he is physically incapable of being intimate on a weekly basis. He has tried ED meds, but they often don't work, and higher dosage gives him miserable side effects, so that also doesn't work.
We are in our late 40s/early 50s. R has been hard enough with a period of false R and major trickle truth. Now I feel all tangled up about physical intimacy in addition to the trust and emotional intimacy issues. How can R possibly work with this much negativity? I'm trying to give us 3 years (until our kid is 18 and hopefully goes off to college), but I don't know if I can last that long.
13 comments posted: Wednesday, April 10th, 2024
"Death knell" for reconciliation
Reading the other thread on why people R, I am reminded of posts here and on other forums where people say certain things are "death knells" for R in the long run.
Some examples I've seen:
1. False R or inability to stay NC by WS
2. WS doesn't do IC, reading, or other self-improvement work
3. lack of remorse, defensiveness, or blame shifting from WS
4. EA + PA (as opposed to one or the other)
5. WS was confronted with evidence as opposed to confessing
6. trickle truths over many months or years
7. multiple APs, i.e. WS is a serial cheater
8. WS leaves the BS to live with AP for weeks or months
There's probably more, but that's all I can think of, and it's probably enough to give you the idea.
I'm curious if any of you would agree that one or more of these factors doesn't bode well for R, and what your personal experiences have been.
16 comments posted: Saturday, March 16th, 2024
Do some people "just not have it in them" to be who you want/need?
Oddly enough, the words came from my MIL about a different relationship dynamic (she doesn't know about WS's affair), but she said, ""Some people don't have it in them to do what you hope, and that's disappointing." And I couldn't help but think of WS in the same context relative to me. I am really starting to think he isn't capable of being the person I hope to spend my days with.
Tonight he is out with a buddy doing a new hobby (cigar smoking) that he knows I can't participate in due to my health. I had mentioned after dday1 that it would be a good way to reconnect if he could pick up some interests that we could share. He claims he can't control what he gets interested in, but as our MC says, "the grass is green where you water it," and he is choosing to water this particular hobby. There's a part of me that wonders if it was deliberate. He acted surprised/clueless when I pointed out that the hobby would be bad for me, but maybe at a subconscious level he knew and wanted to shut me out? Or maybe it hurts that after all this time, he still has a poor understanding of my symptoms and issues.
To be fair, he supports me in other ways, like helping more around the house, so it's not like he's being cruel about my disabilities. I think I'm just miffed that he's away on a Saturday night having fun with someone else. And yes, we have talked about this, and it makes him sad that I feel this way, but not sad enough to deprive himself of the pleasure/excitement he has about the new hobby.
He seems capable (at least for now) of internalizing the stuff he needs to change in terms of relationships and his need for external validation and reassurance, but fundamentally, maybe he doesn't have it in him to control his impulses, his interests, and his desires. He never has before the affair, so why should I expect that he can change such a fundamental aspect of his personality?
12 comments posted: Saturday, March 2nd, 2024
Surviving the first year
One year since the bottom fell out of my world.
I have lived through false R, trickle truths, therapy (so much therapy), marriage counseling, lies told to my face both big and small, secrets from a decade ago revealed, a couples weekend, family holidays and road trips, a continuing dead bedroom, apologies (so many apologies), tears, intense 4AM talks, hugging, screaming into the void (when no one else is home), holding hands, confessions, soul-searching, a lawyer consultation, heartfelt talks with best friends, health crashes, hope, and despair.
I have no idea how I have held it together, but somehow we are still trying to reconcile. I love my spouse in a familial way, but struggle to like him. In the past couple months, he has become kind and affectionate and is desperately doing whatever he can to salvage things. I wonder daily if it's better to walk away, but I have fears about what that would do to our teenager who, as far as I know, doesn't know about the affair. It's like choosing between walking over hot coals or a bed of nails.
Outwardly, everything is fine. We live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood with a nice kid. We have a healthy nest egg for retirement. We have health insurance. We get together with friends and family. I tell myself daily to be grateful for all of this.
So why is this so hard?
I'm also deeply thankful for this community and all the wisdom, humor, and compassion that you all provide on a daily basis.
5 comments posted: Saturday, November 11th, 2023
If I feel happier when he's away, does that mean I won't be able to reconcile?
Lately, whenever my WH travels, I feel this sense of freedom and relief. I'm starting to wonder if that's a sign that part of me is done trying to reconcile, and if we're destined to split up.
For further context, we are nearly a year past dday1. WS has only properly started to work on himself for the past 2 months. Prior to that, he was still pretty defensive and shutdown/shame spiraled a lot. We were in false R for the first 2.5 months. That ended with dday2, but after that came two big trickle truths, the most recent of which was via voluntary confession about a month ago, when he started doing more intensive therapy work.
We have been trying to reconcile, but it has been rough. He keeps begging me to give him more time to improve himself. I know a year is still relatively fresh, but I am really tired of the upheaval and the changing narratives around what's "really" going on, why it happened, etc. He had a nearly 3 year long EA+PA with another married woman. On dday4, he admitted to a brief EA/crush about 9 years ago that was one-sided until the OW turned him down for sex.
He seems to love me again, but it took him so long that I've gone numb. (He did "not in love with you but love you" thing during his affair.) The main reason I haven't walked away is because our kid (teenager) is already struggling emotionally. I don't want to add more trauma by way of divorce, but I'm getting to the point where I'm really wondering if I can ever move past WS's lies and secrecy and crappy behavior. I have dropped friends after they got involved with married men. I'm not sure I can truly move forward with my WS, and that fact that I feel a lot more positive about life when he isn't here really makes me wonder if I should give up.
Then I read these stories of successful R where it took several years, and I question myself. WS and I have been together for 30 years. I used to think of him as my best friend, but I can barely think of him as a friend now. I haven't wanted to wear my wedding ring since dday, and I don't feel like we are married anymore (even tho we legally are), but we have so much history. I wish someone could tell me if it's worth sticking around or if I'd be better off divorcing.
16 comments posted: Sunday, October 29th, 2023
A question for those who have divorced after a failed reconciliation
I keep going back and forth on what to do. I'm currently attempting to reconcile (see my sig for the tl;dr version), but I frequently have a strong urge to divorce. It's been 8 months since I first learned about the affair, and while he hasn't been a horrible person since (no abuse, no financial misbehavior), he also hasn't given 100% the way I was hoping would happen.
Here are the factors that are stopping me from heading straight to a lawyer: our kid is about to start high school, and she changed schools twice during the pandemic. I worry about destabilizing her life right now (if we D'ed, I would move out and have primary custody). I'm also disabled, so I'm dependent on my spouse's income and health insurance, and moving will be really difficult (physically). We live in an area with a high cost of real estate, so both of us will take a big financial hit from splitting our daily expenses.
Yeah, I didn't mention love or any emotional stuff there. I do still care about him, maybe I love him at some level - it's hard to detach after nearly 30 years of knowing each other. At the same time, I don't *feel* married right now, and I have no desire to be married to him. I don't like using the word "husband" or "spouse" about him, even though it's still legally true, because I don't feel it in my heart like I used to.
Anyway, to get to the question: for those of you who divorced (especially if you tried to reconcile first), I would love to hear your stories. What made you pull the plug? Do you feel like it was the right decision for you? How are your kids (esp older ones) handling the changes?
13 comments posted: Monday, July 17th, 2023
