SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

You all are truly amazing. I appreciate the support but also that you aren’t coming in and trying to tell me what an awful person my wife is. The respect for the immense decision to be made means the world to me.

Couples counseling (can I claim credit for coining that phrase here ) was raw. My wife didn’t hold back, I give her credit for that. But that resulted in the counselor asking her multiple times about her defensiveness in tone and body language. I didn’t hold back either. Counselor asked my wife if she could endure the reality of being not trusted and needing to be on point in her responses to me. My wife said a yes, but was obviously not happy and was asked about that. She said that she wanted "credit" for doing that for six months. I told her that she has gone even more net negative in this six months given her overall behavior, and that my boundaries around anger and defensiveness meant that her credit is cut off, no more withdrawals allowed. I think she heard it, not exactly sure. The session ended with her saying to the counselor that she shouldn’t be expected to put up with swearing and raised voices from me. It came out of nowhere, it essentially came out like an abuse accusation and the counselor was surprised to hear it. I was mad and asked her when that has happened (it hasn’t since the first couple weeks), and she gave me a "come on" look. I left pissed. She came to me at home and asked to talk. Hopefully that won’t blow up. But she still has a victim mentality when pushed, and her defensiveness is at best just under the surface.
I honestly don’t understand the situation, something still just doesn’t make sense. The kind loving woman in her is real, and so is the angry defensive adulteress, and I struggle mightly to understand that.

The kind loving woman in her is real, and so is the angry defensive adulteress, and I struggle mightly to understand that.

She is both. If it was one or the other, your decision-making would be easy.

The real question is--will she work hard on changing the one? Will she continue to work hard on that today....tomorrow....forever?

Borderline personality disorders are so difficult to live with as are all personality disorders are. You need to get online and look up Dr. ramani who is a psychologist who deals with personality disorders. She has tons of YouTubes on all sorts of them and they are so informative.

How are things going?

Have you had any more counseling sessions?

Thanks for the follow up request, feels like being cared about.

We had a session last week, and another one today coming up. Last week was again raw. We came in to the session in the middle of a conflict. I had sent her a flirty text and gotten a pretty stereotypical for her to me lukewarm response to it, and I responded that I was not going to accept that after she spent a year perfecting her sexting game with fuck head. So that session got really consumed with that.

Ever since I communicated the boundaries of no angry defensiveness, she has been different. She has definitely controlled those. She has picked How to Help your Spouse Heal again. She is apologizing a lot and owning what she’s done. Probably the most encouraging though is that she described to me the other night that she was doing some serious introspection in her journal and wrestling with the fact that she both needs to value herself AND discover flaws and change them. Holding those two things at the same time was/is a challenge for her, really for any of us, but the fact that she is going there is music to my ears. So things seem to be going pretty ok. I still cry randomly now and then, I still am struggling to really focus on work. But there are some positives here.
That was a good exercise for me to write it out and be grateful for it. Thanks again for asking.