SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Here’s my birdseye view of your situation.

Your H is good. He gets it! His cheating was wrong. He swears he won’t do it again. And now let’s just move on.

Oh and BTW I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Because I (the cheater) "understand" what I did was wrong. Soooorrrry!

Please note the above is meant to be sarcastic.

In reality he doesn’t get it. At all. He wants what HE wants. So he’s stepping up to the parenting plate and doing better. That’s good!

But it’s not enough. And your gut is screaming at you right now that you want to heal and HE needs to help you in that area.

Because if he doesn’t do it NOW, he’s not going to do it later. And you will continue to be less than healed, less than happy and you will suffer. You will become (possibly) resentful of him. You will become more angry over time that he’s not done the work.

Too many people here at SI wish they would have D at Dday or shortly thereafter when it was apparent the cheater was rug sweeping and willing to let the whole thing be "forgotten".

Forgotten by them. Not the betrayed.

I wish the cheaters could spend one day with the pain the betrayed feels. Just one 24 hour period to see what it is like to have THE ONE PERSON you trust more than anything betray you.

Some of the cheaters will never get it. And it shows too.

1st wife, I think you are right I feel so much resentment and then it comes out in my lack of physical affection or as someone said me making snidy comments or blowing up which my husband then gets annoyed about and blames the affair on this. I get told all the time ‘I don’t love him’ etc which only makes me resent him more as I feel he is lucky I am just here but if I say that I get the whole poor me routine, I have no friends, no one likes me.

I wish I had just left him I probably lol y would have been able to move home at that point where as now I know he wouldn’t let me. I don’t know why I came back when I had I initially left, I think I was in shock . So I feel stuck here. I think I am making the best of this situation but just living the life the best I can, seeing friends, focusing on the kids and I don’t care massively about him but this then leads to him getting annoyed

Also just to add i swing with my family from saying he has made changes he is better to then venting about him which probably doesn’t help in their estimation of him. I guess it is just a reflection how I feel and also how he is. I then get from him ‘why are you still talking bad about me’ you need to rehabilitate me but then at the same time from him’ I am never seeing your family again’. So then I am like what is the point in rehabilitating someone who never plans to see them again.

Writing this, I think are relationship is less abusive and more a toxic style of communicating from both of us. He plays the victim and what is funny blames me all the time for having a victim mentality’
. It is what he told our MC, about me and she felt so sorry for him it is what his mother now believes as well. Anyway rant over, thank you for listening.

I'm going to tell you something no one else here will tell you.

Get over it. Stop talking about the affair. Stop telling him about your pain. Trigger? Deal with it on your own. Tears? Not in front of him. Pretend. Rugsweep. Let it go.

He's apparently nice,as long as you pretend he's not a monster. He's nice as long as no one mentions their trauma over the physical abuse. He's fine as long as your the only one dying inside. He's fine as long as you feed his ego. He's fine as long as the kids are too scared to bring up the abuse. He's good. And,isn't that all that matters here?

Because that's basically what you've been telling us. You accept responsibility for everything he does wrong. It's only when you express negative emotions that he acts up. So stop. You aren't leaving him. You are determined to keep yourself,and the kids, in an environment in which you all know you have to be careful with what you say and do around dad, because you all know what can happen when he's mad. So stop making him mad.

If you are determined to stay..you can either rugseeep and keep the peace until he does it again(and he will, because he blames you,and has done no real work on himself). Or you can keep bringing it up,and the kids get to live in a home where dad calls mom the "c" word because she's hurt that he cheated.

Those are the choices you've given yourself.

There are different behavior models out there. And I'm not claiming either you or your husband *do* have a victim mentality, but it's entirely possible, you could both have "victim mentality" in comparison to "accountability mentality". You can google accountability vs. victim loop. Or something like that and get a lot of good information.

The other "model type" brought up generally, is the "victim, savior/rescuer, persecutor" drama triangle, where you take turns in each of the positions during ineffective conflict resolution attempts.

Both are worth thinking about in your situation. The accountability loop does have a "forgive what is possible" step that is easier in non-infidelity related scenarios...

Actually that victim, perpetrator cycle rings true for us. I will look more into it. Thank you that is helpful. I can see myself playing the victim at times .

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Hellfire-I get what you are saying and I think I do have those options. I have made a choice to stay so maybe I do need to let go of some of that anger and stop making those snidy comments for the sake of the environment of the house. I guess I come on here to vent when things are bad but overall things are ok, as I said I do enjoy my life on whole.

Let me clarify..the advice I gave is TERRIBLE advice.

I'm just thinking about the kids. If he pretends to be a decent dad as long as no one says anything negative, and you are determined to keep them in a toxic environment, then I think the less mad he gets, the better.