BWMarried 27 yearsDD#1 Nov1999DD#2April2023

Navigating Shifts

Happy 1 am can’t sleep.
Haven’t posted for a while. A couple weeks ago a major shift started when my IC encouraged me to investigate and question my fear. Fear I didn’t know I had. I learned that I am afraid I don’t exist without my bond to my WH, an overwhelming feeling I will be erased if I leave the marriage and lose my primary attachment. Basically this betrayal represents an existential threat.
After realizing this I had a vision of myself dancing in the park, a whole happy person, unwounded, free. I remembered who I am, who I was before the marriage. And I came to see that I exist, I saw my core self and who I am with out any attachment to anyone.
Now I can’t stop thinking about buying a van, and driving to California to live on the beach and learn how to surf. I just want to be free. I don’t want to have goals anymore, I don’t want to have to regulate any other people anymore.
I’m wondering if I can be this person and still reconcile with my WH. Can I be free and still be in this relationship, or do I have to let it go and let go of the attachment bond in order to ne free?
Another thing that happened once In realized this desire to be free is I stopped needing answers. Like I all of a sudden knew that I knew enough, but only enough to leave. I have known that I can’t stay without full disclosure (and we aren’t there yet) and I’ve been relentless in pushing for it. I knew I needed to stop that behavior because it was just asking for repeated rounds of trauma. I asked him explicitly to stop giving me information, to sort his shit out with his therapist and not give me anymore information until he was sure he understood his own truth. But he came home from work that day and dumped some trauma on me, and now we are sleeping in separate bedrooms.
I don’t know if this is the beginning of the end, or just an uncomfortable period of figuring out what I really need to heal myself. But day by day I feel myself drifting further away from wanting to fix this. Yesterday I realized I have lost my respect for him. I see what he did as pathetic, and I see him as pathetic, weak and broken.
I don’t know if those feeling can change. And it’s painful, I grieve for the man I thought I was married to, and for the marriage I thought I had. There’s no comfort is recognizing those things as an illusion, it’s still painful to let them go.
What do you think? Beginning of the end? Or just an uncomfortable but necessary phase in healing the marriage?

5 comments posted: Thursday, February 15th, 2024

Are apologies important?

I’m really struggling with the reality that my husband betrayed me. I’ve done all the trying to figure out the reasons and understand how this happened, and come to some sort of acceptance. I’ve blamed his brokenness, the affair partner and his father abandoning him.
But it ultimately all comes back to the fact that he knew what he was doing, he knew it was wrong, and he did it anyway. This feeling I get when I stop looking for a way to excuse him; is that it’s inexcusable, unforgivable, (and I start thinking I need to walk).
We tried to talk about it this morning and he has nothing to offer me. The conversation went nowhere and I’m left feeling angry and hurt.
I think the one thing you can do when you are wrong and you can’t fix it, is apologize. It’s the one thing he hardly ever does even though I’ve told him it’s something I want and need.
What do you think about apologizing? Is it helpful? Is it necessary? What if I think it’s necessary and he just does not, or can’t bring himself to do it?
When I’m at the worst place I think all I want (and maybe all he can do) is for him to acknowledge that he hurt me, that he was wrong, and regrets it. Is that so hard?
Any insight from former wayward’s on the difficulty of apologizing would also be much appreciated.

15 comments posted: Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024

Needing empathy

Hi everyone,
I’m a BS whose Dday was April 25th 2023. My H and I have been married 27 years (one child who is our light, she is 23).
I’m really struggling 9 months in, have not left. Have been trying to find myself and what I really want, and giving my H time to figure out what’s wrong with him and if he can do what he needs to to save our marriage. But he has lied, minimized, denied and manipulated me in order to not have to be fully accountable.
This past month has been a barrage of discovering how much he’s still hiding and how he’s trying to control the outcome by controlling the flow of information. Even though he says he’s all in and wants to save our marriage.
We have been through R before, his first affair was a PA about 3 years into our marriage. He did everything right, we had a good marriage and a good story and I TRULEY believed he never would do it again.
I was blindsided in April by one of our employees quitting, and claiming he sexually harassed them. This accusation is so far outside his character that I immediately knew it was a lie, and he confessed that they had been having an EA. Since then he has been giving me half truths and trying to minimize. But today I (finally) received a copy of a letter that he had written to his AP and it’s stunningly obvious that he was infatuated with them. There is a fair bit of limerence in his affair, but I can’t accept that as an explanation / excuse.
I know I’m numb right now and feelings change, and people can step up when they hit rock bottom. But I’m really thinking seriously that I should cut my losses and get out. If for no other reason than I want to feel the same feelings he had for his AP, and know I never will with him again.
Happy Thanksgiving (sarcasm)

5 comments posted: Thursday, November 23rd, 2023