SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

No wayward figures out everything right away. Not even the most self reflective former waywards we have here on the forum; all needed time and effort. And even if your WW figures it out 100% you would still feel hurt, betrayed etc because it takes time to heal.

We're nearly six months in and the divide between us is still largely consuming my life. I'm unhappy right now and don't see a path to controlling my happiness in the near future.

On top of this dynamic, you are in some ways, probably, an extra tough BS due to your highly analytical nature. I am not saying that to offend nor change you but it seems that it is an extra layer of difficulty for her figuring her role out. Plus her personality has trouble dealing with that element of yours.

That die has long been cast. For better or worse, the terms and set and we'll succeed or fail with them in place.

My message to your wife is to understand NO is a complete sentence. Instead of building up resentment she needs an emphatic NO. It is the hardest thing in the world to say it the first few times and then at some point a glimmer of power shows up for her. You will not like it if she uses it because it messes with the dynamic in your marriage. These hidden resentment are so corrosive to relationships because there are nasty ways to undermine the marriage. I.e. the affair.

You write that she hears, agrees to change, but doesn't. That looks closer to 'betrayed financially' or 'not obeyed' than 'feeling unheard'.

Let me try to state this more clearly.

She definitely hears you, because after some sort of discussion, she agrees to change. I don't understand how you get 'unheard' from this.

She doesn't follow through on her commitment. Is the problem not meeting her commitment (infidelity)? Or is it that she's not doing what you want her to do (disobedience)? Or is the problem something else?

For me it would be infidelity about a survival issue (will we have enough money to put food on a table inside a good enough shelter?).

That 1st sentence also may say that a lot of what you think you know about yourself is mistaken. That's true for all of us. The question I'd ask is this: Do your mistakes in your understanding yourself hurt you as you wrestle with emotional, physical, and financial infidelity?

I'm saying that you made a mistake in thinking the problem WRT your W's spending is 'feeling unheard'. If that's true, what other mistakes, if any, are you making in your understanding of yourself?

And if you're mistaken about yourself, are they significant?

For the first few years of the career I settled in, I thought I was successful at work because I was lucky. In fact, I was successful because I was smart and fell into a job that used my strengths, strengths that most people simply are not born with (ADD). That misunderstanding of myself did not lower my performance significantly; I still got great reviews and raises.

That same misunderstand definitely slowed me down in my courtship of W2b. Because I thought I was lucky (and because I feared luck doesn't last), I didn't value myself as much as I should have. If I had understood myself better, we'd have gotten closer a lot sooner than we did.

So where are you? Do you misunderstand yourself? If so, do the misunderstandings hurt you? Help you? Do nothing?

My message to your wife is to understand NO is a complete sentence. Instead of building up resentment she needs an emphatic NO. It is the hardest thing in the world to say it the first few times and then at some point a glimmer of power shows up for her. You will not like it if she uses it because it messes with the dynamic in your marriage. These hidden resentment are so corrosive to relationships because there are nasty ways to undermine the marriage. I.e. the affair.

She’s no closer to that now than she ever has been.

Even worse, it’s changing my behavior—I’m being less committal subconsciously to avoid making her feel pressured into a direction. Now it feels like every conversation is a game.

Last night I asked if she preferred finishing salt or a red wine reduction with her steak. We danced around an answer for several seconds before I went and made what I wanted. Magnify the stupidity of that exchange by 20x a day and I feel my sanity lifting out of my body.

And the truth is she’s be entirely happy with either preparation—again, she just drifts through life without a care. But on my end, it makes me feel like I’m not part of a partnership.

Let me try to state this more clearly.

She definitely hears you, because after some sort of discussion, she agrees to change. I don't understand how you get 'unheard' from this.

She doesn't follow through on her commitment. Is the problem not meeting her commitment (infidelity)? Or is it that she's not doing what you want her to do (disobedience)? Or is the problem something else?

Me: Would you like to have fish for dinner tonight?
WW: Yes, that sounds great!
*WW goes to store and buys chicken*
WW: I changed my mind at the store and bought chicken!

That's how I feel about our financial discussions. She is not valuing my input nor her agreement, so I feel unheard and disrespected; while also feeling as though her word has no value. I don't think she "disobeyed" me by buying chicken because it wasn't my edict. Was it infidelity? Perhaps, but I don't understand the distinction your making. In both cases, my takeaway is that she doesn't value me as a partner in life or in the specific agreements.

For me it would be infidelity about a survival issue (will we have enough money to put food on a table inside a good enough shelter?).

Are you suggesting it's only financial infidelity if our survival is at stake?

That 1st sentence also may say that a lot of what you think you know about yourself is mistaken. That's true for all of us. The question I'd ask is this: Do your mistakes in your understanding yourself hurt you as you wrestle with emotional, physical, and financial infidelity?

I'm saying that you made a mistake in thinking the problem WRT your W's spending is 'feeling unheard'. If that's true, what other mistakes, if any, are you making in your understanding of yourself?

You're jumping to the next step before we've agreed on the first. I still *feel* unheard despite your reframing. And more to the point, I don't understand why you're reframing it. So I have no idea if I don't understand myself as you're suggesting.

The more you post the more you sound like a regular couple except for the affair of course. My husband wants me to have things in concrete about a meal. If I tell him I’m going to fix spaghetti and at some point during the day I change my mind and tell him about it he goes off the deep edge. Listen Dr people have the right to change their minds. If my husband wants spaghetti badly enough he can fix it himself he’s a grown man. You cannot hold against her the fact that her brain works differently than yours. if you are so stuck that you can’t budge an inch that’s how she gets you to budge she just does her thing. I think both of you are just standing your ground and not compromising one whit!

And then the longer she talked, it sounded more and more like justification to me--her love tank was low, no wonder she had an affair! She didn't say that--and possibly wasn't even implying it--so again, probably on me. The result was her visibly becoming frustrated by the conversation.

So I too have to be careful in describing what was wrong with our preA marriage for the same reason you state here.

There was a huge disconnection with us prior to my affair. Had it not been there I would not have chosen to cheat at the time I did. It was a factor in the TIMING of the affair. Same being true of my husbands affair.

What I have had to own is there NEVER, under any circumstances, a good reason to cheat. I had to get under that to be able to see my coping skills, integrity, commitment level, etc allowed me to do it. And that’s when you can start looking at those internal factors of what would I need to change to make sure this would never happen again?

And I have a long list of things that were contributing factors within myself that allowed me to make a destructive decision over a constructive one. Those also often reverse unhealthy tendencies for the entire duration of the relationship.

I don’t think acknowledging there are issues there that equaled a breakdown of the friendship/emotional connection of the marriage is a problem per se. It sounds like through this book she is realizing how some of that connection was lost. Not a terrible thing to analyze, as long as she follows up with her reaction to that is not an acceptable one.

Knowing your reaction to a failing connection can bring the marriage closer in the future because there is a new awareness to when it begins. My IC assigned me this book as well. Her frustration or anger is that she was trying to relate to you and you were critical. It was a bid for connection, though at this time you don’t have to give her that connection.

In many ways I personally would look at anything she is digging into as genuine signs that she absolutely wants to save this marriage. On that level, I think she has actually been very consistent for some time. It’s one puzzle piece at a time and this is likely the piece that IC has her examining.

Many of the concepts that she has to learn are as foreign as boundaries are to you. I am not minimizing the horror this could cause you, and am not ever advising you not to protect yourself until you are working with a safe partner.

In the good news you have clearly moved out of denial, shock and bargaining. Welcome to the anger stage. I know you hate that but if you read about grief it’s pretty easy to identify. Having awareness of that is helpful as well if it is still your hope to reconcile.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:07 PM, Saturday, September 3rd]

She's grasping at straws, recognizing that she thinks she's trying as hard as she can and still feels like she's failing

Well, she pretty much is. She is still spinning her wheels trying to make HERSELF feel better.

My message to your wife is to understand NO is a complete sentence. Instead of building up resentment she needs an emphatic NO. It is the hardest thing in the world to say it the first few times and then at some point a glimmer of power shows up for her. You will not like it if she uses it because it messes with the dynamic in your marriage. These hidden resentment are so corrosive to relationships because there are nasty ways to undermine the marriage. I.e. the affair.

YES.

I had to take great risks that were counter intuitive to me at the time. I had spent our entire marriage deferring to him, being compliant, etc.

Compliancy doesn’t equal respect. It equals self abandonment. Doing what he said didn’t earn me more love.

When my IC told me I had to stop doing so much and just do the most basic tasks felt like he was for sure going to divorce me. I had to let go of that outcome to fix myself.

Your wife is struggling because she very much wants the outcome to be married to you. She is conflicted on how to expand in this relationship under its current constructs.

And I don’t discount it’s impossible for you to stop analyzing her and focus on you. Let the relationship tread water. Focus on your healing. The more you analyze her the less she has room to expand.

(And before anyone says it, separation is always in the table but I think we all have to accept that point in time can only be determined by him. I simply don’t push for any outcome other than to state What my own observations are)

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:08 PM, Saturday, September 3rd]

I have a suggestion. Take one full day, perhaps tomorrow. And record yourselves every single time you interact. Do it from the moment you get up until you go to bed, or later if you’re still communicating. The next day sit down and listen to those recordings and you will be blown away by what you sound like. Both of you. At the beginning you’re going to try to control what you say but if you give yourselves over to being truthful and show who you are throughout the day. I think it will give you a lot of insight into why you two keep circling around each other.
And y’all will not like the people you are. We are all so adept at lying to ourselves.

The more you post the more you sound like a regular couple except for the affair of course. My husband wants me to have things in concrete about a meal. If I tell him I’m going to fix spaghetti and at some point during the day I change my mind and tell him about it he goes off the deep edge. Listen Dr people have the right to change their minds. If my husband wants spaghetti badly enough he can fix it himself he’s a grown man. You cannot hold against her the fact that her brain works differently than yours. if you are so stuck that you can’t budge an inch that’s how she gets you to budge she just does her thing. I think both of you are just standing your ground and not compromising one whit!

I don't understand your post. For starters, I'm the one who cooks, so if anything her bringing home a different protein would be rude. But that wasn't my point anyway--it was an example of how she agrees to things she doesn't agree with. In retrospect, it was a silly example--and I don't even need an example. The financial example I gave can stand on its own.

I have a suggestion. Take one full day, perhaps tomorrow. And record yourselves every single time you interact. Do it from the moment you get up until you go to bed, or later if you’re still communicating. The next day sit down and listen to those recordings and you will be blown away by what you sound like. Both of you. At the beginning you’re going to try to control what you say but if you give yourselves over to being truthful and show who you are throughout the day. I think it will give you a lot of insight into why you two keep circling around each other.
And y’all will not like the people you are. We are all so adept at lying to ourselves.

I suspect that would be a revelatory experience--and I understand your point. Tomorrow is not a good day for it, but perhaps something I'll consider soon.

[This message edited by Drstrangelove at 7:48 PM, Saturday, September 3rd]

So I too have to be careful in describing what was wrong with our preA marriage for the same reason you state here.

There was a huge disconnection with us prior to my affair. Had it not been there I would not have chosen to cheat at the time I did. It was a factor in the TIMING of the affair. Same being true of my husbands affair.

What I have had to own is there NEVER, under any circumstances, a good reason to cheat. I had to get under that to be able to see my coping skills, integrity, commitment level, etc allowed me to do it. And that’s when you can start looking at those internal factors of what would I need to change to make sure this would never happen again?

And I have a long list of things that were contributing factors within myself that allowed me to make a destructive decision over a constructive one. Those also often reverse unhealthy tendencies for the entire duration of the relationship.

Months ago I recall my WW and I reading a post here by DaddyDom (I think) about a WS finding his/her "whys." It made a lot of sense to me then and still does now. As far as I can tell, my WW has no interest or ability to do that.

I don’t think acknowledging there are issues there that equaled a breakdown of the friendship/emotional connection of the marriage is a problem per se. It sounds like through this book she is realizing how some of that connection was lost. Not a terrible thing to analyze, as long as she follows up with her reaction to that is not an acceptable one.

Knowing your reaction to a failing connection can bring the marriage closer in the future because there is a new awareness to when it begins. My IC assigned me this book as well. Her frustration or anger is that she was trying to relate to you and you were critical. It was a bid for connection, though at this time you don’t have to give her that connection.

In many ways I personally would look at anything she is digging into as genuine signs that she absolutely wants to save this marriage. On that level, I think she has actually been very consistent for some time. It’s one puzzle piece at a time and this is likely the piece that IC has her examining.

Many of the concepts that she has to learn are as foreign as boundaries are to you. I am not minimizing the horror this could cause you, and am not ever advising you not to protect yourself until you are working with a safe partner.

She's reading books all day every day--and it is a great sign in theory--but I go back to the Fish Called Wanda example I gave you earlier ("Apes read philosophy too...they just don't understand it"). As best I can tell, she's not critically thinking about the information she's learning--she's not examining it. My observation is that she's looking for surface level answers to solve a problem that's too big for her to comprehend. It's like reading a book on carpentry and the trying to construct a house.

Baby steps; I get it--but until she changes the way she processes information and begins to learn how to think critically, I feel like she'll be stuck in this spin-cycle.

In the good news you have clearly moved out of denial, shock and bargaining. Welcome to the anger stage. I know you hate that but if you read about grief it’s pretty easy to identify. Having awareness of that is helpful as well if it is still your hope to reconcile.

As you know, nothing interests me less than defining the "stage" I'm in lol, so I'll just note that I'm not angry. Perhaps apathetic--even nihilistic--but not angry. Most of all, I suppose I feel disconnected from my wife right now; I feel like my M isn't all that valuable. But I don't attribute that to some larger phase--it could change tomorrow or next week.

I had to take great risks that were counter intuitive to me at the time. I had spent our entire marriage deferring to him, being compliant, etc.

Compliancy doesn’t equal respect. It equals self abandonment. Doing what he said didn’t earn me more love.

When my IC told me I had to stop doing so much and just do the most basic tasks felt like he was for sure going to divorce me. I had to let go of that outcome to fix myself.

I think my WW has been going through this process for months, but I sense her application of it was more selfish than it should have been. The first thing that came to mind reading that part of your post was that initial 9 p.m. boundary on us talking about the affair each night a few months back. I recall how defiant she was about that--she was putting her foot down. The boundary was fine with me, but for her, it was largely a reprieve from a topic she hated discussing. It was like she could use this new tool to get what she wanted.

Your wife is struggling because she very much wants the outcome to be married to you. She is conflicted on how to expand in this relationship under its current constructs.

I agree with you.

And I don’t discount it’s impossible for you to stop analyzing her and focus on you. Let the relationship tread water. Focus on your healing. The more you analyze her the less she has room to expand.

I'm doing my best to keep the focus on me when we talk rather than guidance or suggestions for her. I've been doing that for awhile, though I still slip up. There's no indication it's been helpful.

[This message edited by Drstrangelove at 8:09 PM, Saturday, September 3rd]

Hmmm ... you say you think you're unheard. OK. That's where you are, so that's where you start from. What feeling(s) go with that - mad, sad, scared, glad, ashamed?

I think I wrote pretty clearly. You don't. That says to me that I should stop trying to make these points, not because there's something wrong with you or me, but because we're just not getting through to each other in this area. Sometimes that happens.

Months ago I recall my WW and I reading a post here by DaddyDom (I think) about a WS finding his/her "whys." It made a lot of sense to me then and still does now. As far as I can tell, my WW has no interest or ability to do that.

IC never gave me this concept. This is a concept that I got from others here. But IC did address it in a different way. It was like a jigsaw puzzle and far more abstract than that. They work with you more with what your reporting to them and then ask you questions to help you come to the conclusion. I don’t think I would have ever described it this way without the site as a resource but I am not sure it’s needed to be described

I personally did a lot of reading too. You can’t see how healthy people think and how they manage their marriages without getting that perspective from an objective place. I agree it all has to get practiced, but for a little while I was afraid to do some of it because my husband was already watching for "signs of life" and would interpret things negatively. I see this in your posts now.

I think your definition of focusing on yourself is widely different than what we are trying to talk to you about. I don’t know how to connect that for you.

[This message edited by hikingout at 10:57 PM, Saturday, September 3rd]

There are certain things about your description of yourself that it reminds me very much of my husband. When he has something to do it gets done. Period. Nothing gets in the way or he’s just beside himself. It took a relative of mine to ask me if he possibly suffered from anxiety. The more I thought about it the more I realized that it’s exactly what that is. He finally went to the doctor and was put on medication for anxiety and depression. He did not act depressed most of the time but he finally admitted to me he was all the time. Anxiety causes depression because you are always waiting for that bad thing to happen, or that bad feeling to come, or feeling helpless, and out of control. You describe yourself as controlling. You and your wife both have some issues you brought from childhood and until those get resolved you are going to stay at odds with each other because your expectations of each other are so high you cannot meet them.

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 2:13 AM, Sunday, September 4th]

OMM-- Things like these two examples could be feeding into both the parent/child dynamic and her feeling of never "winning".

DSL-- I agree with you on the former obviously. I don't see it for the latter.

RE: I don't see it for the latter. So, you don't think a child ever feels like they can't win with a parent? Trying to flip this so you might be able to see how it can be both scenarios.

Other things that you write, that I would view (if I was your wife) as you trying to one-up me, or prove to me that you were "winning" and I was the "loser" are things like,

I realized quickly she didn't fully grasp the example, so I tried to clarify it for her.

(She's such a loser I have to explain everything to her)

But for her, she doesn't want to examine and apply information in any critical manner--she also didn't have comprehension on the topic to dig into and explore my pressing questions.

(She can't even answer my pressing questions... loser!)

Last night I asked if she preferred finishing salt or a red wine reduction with her steak. We danced around an answer for several seconds before I went and made what I wanted. Magnify the stupidity of that exchange by 20x a day and I feel my sanity lifting out of my body.

(Can you believe this idiot? The things I have to deal with day-in and day-out!)

Yikes! If my H said those things about me, I most definitely would feel like I wasn't able to "win" in his eyes.

I'm hoping by typing this out, you might be able to see why your wife may feel like she's always losing.

Love, Marie

[This message edited by ohmy_marie at 7:12 PM, Sunday, September 4th]

Quotes like what Marie just pointed out is why I pegged you for the anger stage. (I know, you hate labels, but stay with me for just a minute here.

I don’t doubt you don’t feel angry.

What I have noticed about a bs who leaves the denial/shock/bargaining stage is that the reality hits them so hard it’s difficult not to feel contempt about the smallest things. Marie’s illustrated a few good examples that make me believe this is where you are but it’s all over your posts the last couple of weeks. The contempt is the beginning of the anger bubbling up.

There are a few reasons I think understanding stages of grief is important, they all boil down to if you understand it you can manage it.

First, knowing it all comes in phases helps you remember the likelihood of you permanently feeling anything is highly unlikely. Having some idea that there is a natural flow that is predictable reminds us that we are having grief reactions that are related more to he affair than to the all

aspects of her current behavior.

You may experience some things in a different order than someone else, and grief isn’t linear so you go back to stages until your understanding of your reactions deepen. But knowing what they are is important. I am surprised this hasn’t been discussed in IC.

This knowledge allows us to be self aware and recognize feelings we aren’t comfortable with as part of the process.. It is a small part of what we mean when we say focus on yourself. Educate yourself on the path to healing for you. It will help you become self aware of it.

It really only proves that your spouse has blown your sense of self-trust, security, and having a normal day to day life to smithereens. (Not to mention your faith in her) You already know that to be the case, proving it by analyzing her day to day behaviors is futile.

I will also gently point out that while I have seen some growth - I see no real critical thinking when it comes to learning healthy boundaries, focusing on yourself, the difference between recovery and reconciliation, etc.

I do think recognizing the parent child dynamic was a break through for you but you are naturally not going to be an expert at modifying it for some time to come.

And while this is completely normal, I am pointing this out because you are having issues absorbing and implementing this information because it is foreign to you. This is what is happening to your wife.

She is learning a lot of new concepts. Until she can have enough time to absorb them, become aware of them for a period of time and practice integrating them, her understanding is going to be shallow. If I were to ask you about some of the concepts I listed, your answers would also be a very shallow understanding. It’s new for both of you.

This shit takes time from both sides. You are not ahead of her

Now I will balance all of what I am saying with she is the one that has to do the heavy lifting for trying to regain trust and respect from you rather than it being the other way around. She needs to become consistent and reliable, but that’s hard to do when you are also needing to practice change. That is too messy and involves trial and error, failure, etc. So it seems erratic which is the opposite of what you are looking for.

She can’t make you heal any more than you can make her heal. Your focus needs to be 100 percent on healing, not on her progress or the relationship. You keep saying you need to understand where she is so you can evaluate her progress. I don’t think that’s true.

I think you can’t measure her progress, make a good decision for yourself, fix relational issues until you dig into your healing a little deeper. Your clarity will come from that.

You can resent that you have to do this work because hell yes that is unfair. It’s part of that shit sandwich she served you. But whether you stay married or not, that’s now not optional.

I also think that you both will make more progress now that you see it’s a mountain rather than a hill. This period of time was the hardest for us to get through. He had a stranglehold on my faults because they were magnified. I had to stop being meek and not believe everything he was feeling critical of was truly a fault. I had to do things that was against what he believed should be happening. It started with the smallest steps, but at the time they felt like dangerous risks.

I started with stupid things like choosing restaurants. I never spoke up if I had a preference our entire marriage. This is what I mean about being the child. I hadn’t thought about that in a long time until you mentioned the steak story. I give it as an example because progress comes in tiny increments, not things you can measure week to week.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:54 PM, Sunday, September 4th]

Anger is the controlling emotion. When we can’t handle grief, despair, fear, hopelessness, helplessness we go to anger. We can, in most cases, handle that.

I think anger has also gotten an unfair and undeserved bad rap. When we act out from it, it can become a negative. But without knowing how to constructively deal with anger, the result often becomes to suppress it or deny it.

On the emotional scale, anger is actually a higher vibration than the other feelings Cooley describes. It’s one reason anger can feel so empowering. It can be productive in that it often leads us to make changes that fear and sadness stifle. But often times it’s been conditioned out of us - and I tend to find that to be especially true of highly analytical thinkers. Over thinking is a common strategy to suppress feelings. (Ask me how I know! )

Just for clarity I am not assigning it negatively. I am simply holding a mirror up of what I am seeing. I think anger in this case is probably positive. He definitely is missing a protective barrier here that I see him constructing.

And yes, as a fellow analytical thinker I too have suppression issues with anger. 100!! Knowing it was part of the process of grief kind of gave me permission to experience it. I am not sure I am explaining that well. I guess it kept me from being hard on myself. I think he may have issues differentiating between what is a normal step and trying to work on his parenting role.

It would be my guess he associates the two in some way. It’s hard to sort that out when you are recognizing that has been your role and hitting that anger point simultaneously.

Also anger IS a stage of grief. I think it’s always helpful to have undertanding if the full process, maybe because that was on of the first things I learned in IC during my bs stage and it helped me to know there was a process and gave me some clarity of trusting myself and that process.

[This message edited by hikingout at 7:04 PM, Sunday, September 4th]