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Until your last post, it seemed that we are in the same shit hole (I've been sleeping in the office for months). I'm guessing that he expects me to just cave in to avoid the conflict - as I always have. The thing is, he is NOT a safe partner and until I know WTF is/has/was been going on - I'm not gonna do that. The 'office' isn't so bad anyways. It is my sanctuary. I spent some money to make it comfortable, which is rather sad. But, I really don't know what I'm dealing with here. He doesn't want to talk about anything real and doesn't seem to mind that there is zero physical contact between us. Weird. For whatever it's worth, I don't see your game playing as a problem. It seems a healthy escape from life stresses. No different than reading novels, watching sports, or gardening.

It’s not so much that video games were the problem. It’s that I always wanted to play them competitively. This is really not possible when you have a wife and kids that are just trying to do normal wife and kids stuff.

I always compared it to an NFL coach standing on the sidelines of a game, locked in the chess match between every play. Then in the middle of this high pressure contest his wife walks in and asked, "do you know where the laundry basket is?" It’s jarring, and not conducive to high level play. It was rage inducing for me. As was just losing in general. It’s not easy playing games against a bunch of kids with no responsibilities.

Unlike gardening for example, this was a hobby that didn’t have a lot of room for other people, which was in some ways probably the point. More gaming equals more escape from the problems of the real world, which requires sacrifice and hard work to tackle.

I’m doing the right things now, but I should’ve handled this much better, starting many many years ago. It’s all on me.

[This message edited by 4characters at 1:48 PM, Tuesday, January 14th]

Ok so you played video games (maybe too much).

She had a right to complain. You chose maybe not to listen.

That doesn’t give anyone the right to cheat.

And maybe you cannot undo the past but you can do better in the present.

My H had a few flaws or things that irked me. One was constantly showing up late with no accountability. Example: client dinner after work and he’s tell me he’d be home by 11 pm. He’d walk in the door at 2 am thinking it was okay. For decades I asked him to please let me know he would be late. He just didn’t do it.

Finally when he’s begging me to R and I refused (at first) I told him I was done being disrespected by him and not willing to accept his lack of accountability. He finally heard me and understood what I had been saying. He stopped being selfish.

Your wife may be of the mindset it’s too late — she’s not interested in trying to repair the marriage. And that is something you may have to accept. BUT it’s not an excuse to cheat.

No doubt, I didn’t deserve to be cheated on, no one does.

Although I’m certainly responsible for my escapism and anger issues, I don’t think her communication of how she actually felt over the years was ideal.

She tends to shut down or "push through" when there are problems, and I incorrectly thought this meant there were not significant problems.

I’ll give you a classic example. When our twins were born, I wanted to be a great dad, so I tried to be as involved in everything I could, including changing diapers.

During the first few weeks after birth, my wife told me she thought I was the father of the year and was going to write into some magazine to celebrate my greatness. I was flattered and felt like I was doing a great job.

A few weeks later, she was upset that I wasn’t changing the diapers exactly the way she wanted, and was blaming me for one of the kids getting diaper rash. So I listened to her and tried to adjust. It didn’t work, she said I was doing it wrong and she would have to take over to ensure there was no more diaper rash.

But now I’m no longer helping with diapers, which makes more work for her. I didn’t want that, but I also didn’t want the kids to get diaper rash or my wife nitpicking how I changed the diapers. So I just kind of threw up my hands and said, whatever and moved on.

This kind of thing has happened with us many times over the last 22 years. And most recently, as I was attempting to reconcile with her over out marital issues (not counting the cheating) I offered AGAIN to clean the bathroom every week.

She told me I could, but when I didn’t clean it at exactly the time she expected me to start cleaning it, she did it! Then blamed me for not cleaning it.

She would later admit to "punishing" me for not meeting her expectations, as she told me I no longer had to worry about cleaning it ever again.

The old me would’ve said, "ok, you want to do it? Fine, that’s your choice." and the n periodically offered to help again whenever she complained about it. But the new me understands that allowing her to take these things on will only result in resentment towards me.

So after much discussion, I win back my right to clean the bathroom, something I never had a problem doing, and have been cleaning it every week without fail for the last 2-3 months.

I don’t know if it’s helping out marriage. But I’m now doing all "the stuff" that she ever had expressed interest in me doing; including making her coffee every morning, and brushing her hair when she asks me to at night. But obviously "the stuff" was never going to make or break this marriage. You have to love yourself before you can love other people (at least that’s what I believe), and I think my wife has a lot of unresolved issues that have nothing to do with me.

[This message edited by 4characters at 3:01 PM, Tuesday, January 14th]

But the new me understands that allowing her to take these things on will only result in resentment towards me.

This should be about issue 4,729 to resolve on the docket, but still it stuck out to me. It is her choice to build resentments, you can’t do anything about that. She has to own it and end that habit. And if she is going to do the classic nitpick and complain if it’s not done exactly to her unspoken expectations, or just flat out blame shift, then she has a long long way to go on that.

But, job number 1, you need to emotionally recover from being betrayed by your most trusted human. Eyes on the prize.

...I did tell her exactly what I wanted....

Telling is not asking. I know it doesn't seem intuitive, but asking brings a healthy dynamic to a relationship.

If you want to be touched, ask. She responds yes/no/later/a specific time/etc. Saying 'yes' builds bonds. Saying 'I can do it a 3 PM - does that work for you?' builds bonds. Saying 'No' too often tells you that you may not be a good fit for each other.

If she wants to touch you, it's best for her to ask. You may or may not want to be touched just then. By asking, you get to choose.

You can't read each other's minds. At one point. and probably for a long time, you could read each other's body language, but the hidden A means you've lost that ability. Explicitly asking for what you want (and responding honestly) is the only way to recalibrate.

Your anger. I never heard a raised voice in my home so when I married a man who raises his voice I had no idea what to do. Neither did your wife. You owe her a thousand apologies.

Her choices are her choices. Your loud voice did not make her cheat. That’s on her. Yelling is on you. I hope you make sure to do it differently in the future, regardless of the outcome.

Good luck.

UPDATE:

It's been a while. There's a lot of stuff that's happened in the last few months.

1. This is probably the final death blow to my marriage. I don't know how I'll ever get over hearing this.

My wife recently told me that she was "stupid for not leaving me two weeks after she met me, and stupid for not leaving me throughout our marriage (because of various events where she felt alone, unwanted, unseen, etc.)".

This is the single most painful thing anyone has ever said to me. It haunts me. It invalidates my marriage. We have 4 kids, it invalidates them. She meant it. She told me last night, again, it was the truth. I've given her multiple opportunities to walk it back, including in front of our marriage counselor and she generally just gets quiet and lets the comment stand as is.

I honestly don't know what else there is to say about the state of our marriage right now that would make a difference when she feels like this is the truth. But I asked her last night, "This would suggest that right now in this very moment you're also stupid for staying with me and trying to reconcile, wouldn't it?" To which I got silence, and eventually she just walked out of the room to be by herself.

2. Our marriage counseling is nearly worthless. We've been to like 7 sessions, and I can't tell you any of it as helped with anything. My wife doesn't actually perform most of the "homework" and seems incapable of keeping up with the already glacier like pace of the marriage counseling.

To be fair, my WW has made some real progress and shown real signs of change. The biggest thing she's done is work on her stonewalling. In the past, whenever she got overwhelmed, she would shut down and just stop talking (yes, just like above) and leave the room. I would then be forced to sit with my thoughts and wonder if the marriage was over and if she would ever talk to me again. For me this is like pure torture. I absolutely hate when this happens.

She would also NOT say she loved me. Like I would say "I still love you" just to let her know that I cared for her even though we were fighting, and she would either not say anything or sometimes she would say "well I don't love you right now". And she meant it. She meant that right in those moments she didn't love me, or she hated me, and she was "just telling me the truth". Although I always want her to tell me the truth, this hurt me every time (and it happened multiple times during our 22 years of marriage).

But she has largely changed this over the last few months and really gone out of her way to tell me she still loves me but she's just angry, and she's tried to begin each new day with a fresh start, usually by sending me a text in the morning that says thank you for small things I did and saying she hopes I have a good day, and that she loves me. It's been a welcomed change.

3. About two months ago, she started to pass huge blood clots. This was an escalation of her extended periods that we both thought was a sign of perimenopause. But the large clots were alarming enough that she said she needed to go to the ER. This was a big deal beyond just the clots because she never goes to the doctor for anything. She hasn't been to an OBGYN for over 10 years, and the fact that she wanted to go to the ER was telling how serious this was.

Of course I wanted to go with her. But she told me she didn't want me to go. That she just wanted to go by herself. Because we've been under so much stress, and because I didn't want to argue with her, I tried to be as supportive as I could and I just said, "Ok, I'd really like to go with you, but I understand it's not about what I want. Please let me know if you change your mind and want me to come up there with you." She went alone and texted me throughout the long night. She said they diagnosed her with AUB (Abnormal Uterine Bleeding), and that basically sometimes during perimenopause, a women's body can't figure out if it's pregnant or not and it just keeps preparing for a pregnancy that isn't happening. Or something like that.

She gets out of the ER late that night, comes home, bleeds to the point she probably needs a blood transfusion, and tries to make it to an OBGYN for a follow-up, all while going to work every day for weeks. The OBGYN (that took weeks to get into because she had to see them as a new patient) says she has to get a D&C where they basically flush her out and try to reset her body. It sounds kind of like a reboot of your computer.

It's all very concerning, and I try to stay as supportive as I can. Yes, I'm not stupid, the thought that this could be a failed pregnancy crossed my mind immediately even before she wanted to go to the ER. Yes, sitting there alone with my thoughts while she was in the ER was a nightmare. The entire time I kept thinking, what if her AP is at the ER with her right now? What if he is comforting her and acting as "the concerned husband"? What if the EA was actually a very physical PA and my wife was carrying around this dude's baby? It's hard for me to even type this out right now.

I brought these thoughts up to my WW and she assured me this was not the case. That she was just a middle-aged woman going through perimenopause, there was nothing physical going on, there was no longer an affair, she was avoiding him at work, there was no one but me and our troubled marriage that she was committed to reconciling. As proof, she could only offer me the ER discharge papers, which showed a diagnosis of AUB, and a recommendation to see the OBGYN.

But it also showed the tests they'd run. And one of them was a pregnancy test. Perhaps not that big of a deal considering her symptoms, I can honestly see them running a pregnancy test on any woman bleeding like that. But still concerning with the context of the affair and her telling me she didn't want me at the ER. I didn't say anything about this to her for days, but it gnawed at me. And when she noticed I was being quiet she asked, "what's wrong?" and I told her.

This turned into a huge argument where of course she got defensive and said that it was "her body" and I was sounding "controlling" but she "wasn't hiding anything" and proceeded to show me the medical test results on her phone that showed a negative pregnancy test. She also flashed me the results of many STI tests that the ER did, which all looked negative as far as I could tell (since she was rapidly flashing multiple tests at me while telling me she had nothing to hide).

This only made me more nervous though. The defensiveness, the test result high speed picture show, what seemed to me like a disproportionate response to an understandable concern. And I was again left to my thoughts, uncomforted and alone.

Later, my IC would hear this story and tell me, "I used to work in an ER, and we would never have run STI tests in that situation." Thanks, IC for the help! (sarcasm)

Our MC would also question her about this story, by saying, "It does seem odd that you wouldn't want your husband to be at the ER with you during this incredibly stressful time. I think most women would want their husband's there."

And so, this story sits rent free in my head, perhaps for the rest of my life. Was it a miscarriage? Only my wife will ever know for sure.

4. I've been having chest pains for the last month. They started to occur most frequently when she would leave for work (yes, her AP is still at her work, and she still sees him frequently as a normal responsibility of her job).

Overall, I'm "better" than I was in the early days and months after DDay, but the chest pains were concerning and obviously tied to anxiety. I thought I had them fairly well under control and I was getting better, until last weekend I got triggered by my wife's phone usage. I saw her using some kind of messaging when I walked into the room and then she quickly removed the page she was on and went back to scrolling through Instagram videos (which is generally how she spends 80% of her time at home).

I didn't think it was her texting someone, but it still triggered me to the point that my chest pains showed up and over time they just got worse and worse. She asked me if I was ok, and I explained what had happened. She showed me her phone and told me it was just her commenting on someone's Instagram post, and visually it seemed consistent with what I saw when I walked in the door. So, it really shouldn't have been a big deal. But it was. Because a few hours later my Apple watch told me I was having some kind of AFIB issue (and I don't have any known heart problems). I could feel my heart fluttering, and the pain was getting worse, so I went to the ER.

Hours later, the ER couldn't find anything and associated it with anxiety, and I went home. My wife went with me to the ER and comforted me the whole time. I remember thinking "where has this woman been the last few years? I really missed her."

5. I have only been getting about 4 hours of real sleep a night because I keep waking up after a few hours and then I just can't get back to sleep. That's why I'm typing this now, I can't sleep, and I just need to get it all out of my head. I need to share this with someone. I need interaction with people that are divorced (no pun intended) from the day-to-day intimacy and nuance of my situation. I need perspective and objectivity.

I recently figured out that our bedroom had become "a trigger factory". It was a constant reminder of all the things my wife did in the lead up to the affair. Taking her phone to the bathroom with her (no she's no longer doing this, but the scene is the same). Hearing the phone go off in the middle of the night. Watching her get ready for work in the mornings. Hearing her shave her legs on Sunday nights before her work week would start. Just tons of little things like that where I'm alone thinking, "Is it happening again?"

I got such anxiety from just being in the room at night that I just wanted out. I would think about just sleeping on the couch, but I have a C-PAP machine that I need to survive, and it's just not an easy thing to manage. I needed a more permanent solution. Plus, I didn't want to be away from my wife. The symbolism is just horrible, and it definitely felt like it would be a big step away from reconciliation if I stopped sleeping in the same room as her.

I brought this up several times and each time she said she didn't want me to leave the room, but she would understand if I did. Eventually, I just couldn't stay anymore. I bought a cot online and put it in my office. She was not happy about this but didn't put up much of a fight either.

I've been sleeping in my office for almost two weeks, and it's definitely providing me with some shielding from the trigger factory, but unfortunately, it's not resulting in more sleep. In fact, I used to get 4 hours of sleep and now I'm getting about 3. Yet I still don't want to go back into the bedroom. It just feels like bad memories and missed opportunities are all that await me there.

I say missed opportunities because one of the things I want most in this world right now is for my wife to just hold me. For her to want to be close to me. No sex, just hold me. But even when I tell her that I can tell it's a chore. She doesn't want to do it. She has no desire to be that close with me. So, at night when I'm in that room with her, all I see is someone that doesn't love me or want to be with me. I see someone that has so much shit that is overwhelming her, the guilt for the affair, the failing marriage, problems at work, problems connecting with our kids, midlife, there's just nothing left for her to give me.

I'm trying so hard, but nothing is working.

After my 3-4 hours of sleep, here are the milestones of my days:

I wake up and feed our cats. I make coffee for my wife as an act of love that she says is important to her (but that she's definitely not expecting me to do every day, her words). I then write her a little note and hide it in the kitchen or in her purse to tell her I'm thinking about her. She finds the notes because I know her routine in the morning. She then goes to work, and about an hour later I get a text from her that says something like "Thanks for the coffee! It was great as usual. I hope you got sleep. I love you and hope you have a great day."

I work from home, and we text each other throughout the day. I try to make dinner for her at least twice a week and have it ready when she comes in the door. She has a busy schedule and sometimes it's a hard window for me to hit, but I do it. I also make crushed ice for her and stock the freezer so she can munch on that at night as she's watching Instagram videos and sitting on the heater vent (because she's always cold).

I make it a point to ask her about her day and actively listen to whatever she wants to talk about. What she wants to talk about is always her work. He said she said politics stuff. The stories are predictable, and seemingly endless. But I do actually get enjoyment out of listening because it's the only thing I can truly say makes my WW happy anymore. That and the heater vent.

After dinner I will usually work out for a few hours, then take a shower, and get ready for bed. I will offer to rub her feet or brush her hair as these things relax her. She'll then take a shower, read a book to fall asleep, and then we wake up and do it all over again.

Yes, I know, this is certainly part of the pick me dance. But as I've told people here before, if I'm going to get a divorce, it's not going to be because I didn't try everything I could to save this marriage.

6. I went to see my primary care physician yesterday as a follow-up to the ER visit. I knew it was going to be a short conversation, and he would not be able to really help me with anxiety, but I wanted to touch base with him for another reason.

I trust this guy, I've been seeing him for like 20 years. He's a very good doctor, and I just never feel like he doesn't provide me with good advice.

So, I tell him about my ER visit and that it was probably anxiety. Then I tell him why I have anxiety. I explain the affair. I tell him about my wife now taking a stance that our whole marriage just sucked from the beginning. That everything I've tried to do for her to show I care and love and cherish her is not moving the needle. That our marriage counseling is shit. That I was sleeping in my office to avoid the trigger factory but although it was helping overall, I still wasn't sleeping anymore.

Then I tell him about my wife not wanting me at the ER. This is why I'm really here. Because I want to get his opinion on my wife's story. Does it seem likely to him? I explain that they ran a pregnancy test, and they also ran tests for STI's. He says he can see the pregnancy test, but not the STI's. He says, "It's possible they just ran it, but she probably had to tell them something that made them feel it was necessary to check it out."

Fun fact, I have a vasectomy. I also have severe ED. I also haven't had much (although I've had some) sex with my wife where pregnancy would be likely. I also got checked out for STI's myself (after I learned of the affair) and told my wife I was clean a few months before her ER visit.

My doctor spent the next 30 minutes talking to me face to face, man to man, hinting that it might be time for me to close down the marriage.

So where does that leave me? Where does that leave us? Limbo.

I told my wife and our MC that I could not be in limbo forever. That I would need to start seeing our marriage turn itself around at some point, and that right now it was only going backwards. That since starting MC we've actually gotten further away from reconciliation. So, I said that I will give it until the end of this year and then re-evaluate. What that means to me is that if our marriage sucks as bad as it does right now and I don't see significant changes, I'm done. I know I'm done because I feel done right now. I feel like there is hardly any hope left. Maybe just a few drops. But how those few drops could sustain me until the end of this year is beyond my ability to understand.

To anyone that reads this wall of text all the way through, thank you.

Also, thank you in advance to anyone that responds with insights that might help me. I have found the people in this forum to be remarkably helpful, and although I haven't posted in a while I've been lurking a lot and reading other people's struggles.

Oh yes, of course I forgot to add this to the above post:

7. She says she's working with her IC to process the guilt she feels for the affair.

I'm hoping this means that the IC may also be working on her telling me the full truth about the affair (as I worry, I may not have it all yet), and that perhaps this is something that can get us out of our stuck state.

I'm not holding my breath(much), but that is what I hope.

You can’t have kids and yet she had a pregnancy test at a doctor visit where she didn’t want you to come. Read that again. She also says she regrets the last 22 years of your relationship. It sure looks like she was sexual in her affair, and that she is doing a major history rewrite to justify it.

I’m truly sorry this is who she is. It sure looks like she isn’t being honest and you have some hard choices to make. My thoughts are with you.

[This message edited by Washashore at 5:52 AM, Sunday, March 9th]

Thoughts in no particular order:

I think the chances of the affair not being physically sexual are very, very low. My outsider’s thought about the most reasonable explanation for the hospital visit and behavior is that she had a perimenopausal gynecological event, but due to her sexual activity, she feared it could be a miscarriage and/or STD related, and so she didn’t want you at the hospital. In my experience, medical personnel will run pregnancy tests as a matter of professional caution in many medical situations involving women of childbearing years and beyond, so the test doesn’t strike me as odd at all. But the std testing is different, and her not wanting you there is odd at best.

I see the video game issue as a bigger deal than some other posters, and unrestrained anger and rage can do profound, lasting damage to a relationship. I can see being extremely unhappy or ending a marriage over your behaviors as you’ve described them.

But. Your wife’s affair speaks to some profound psychological issues and character flaws on her part that need to be addressed for you to have any chance at a successful reconciliation and relationship. Her lack of transparency also kills any chance of meaningful progress.

There’s a good chance that this isn’t accurate or helpful, but here’s my thought. Her seeing marrying you or staying with you at previous points as a mistake is profoundly painful and awful to take in. It’s a terrible, terrible gut punch, and I don’t pretend to understand the weight of it. But it’s not necessarily relevant in terms of what the two of you decide now. What’s important is what you both want now, and what you're both doing now. Evaluating the present is much more salient than hypotheticals about the past. It sounds like there are some good things going on between you in the present, but there’s a fatal catch: she’s not being transparent. I would dig in on that.

Gonna echo that the pregnancy test sounds like SOP for any gynecological issue. STD testing does not. And I agree that since she didn't know why she was bleeding so heavily, she had concern that it could be related to pregnancy or STD. And she didn’t share any of that with you.

And I think your MC is working - it is showing you that your WW is unwilling/unable to commit to it. It may not be "saving" your marriage, but it is showing you things that you cannot ignore.

I am glad you saw your primary care doctor. Did he offer anything to help you sleep? The lack of sleep plus the apnea issues all is hurting your health.

And you are seeing that nicing her back doesn’t really work. Is she reciprocating equally? Has she helped redecorated the bedroom (new mattress, sheets, comforter, etc.) and re-arranged and burned some sage or whatever to help you feel comfortable there? Is she actively seeking a new job? I mean, if my job was sending my partner to the ER, I would be changing jobs.

Look - you had issues. She had issues. You are recognizing yours and working to fix them. (Good). But she has to work twice as hard to fix her issues while rebuilding trust. The ER instance was the opposite of leaning in and trusting one another.

[This message edited by BearlyBreathing at 8:43 PM, Saturday, March 8th]

Everything BB said.

I also meant to say that your body is telling you that you are under extreme stress. Take that seriously.

My husband has always been healthy. No cardiac issues, good blood pressure, physically fit, eats healthily, etc. His affair exploding in his face coincided with his sister dying, and he started having chest pains and breathing issues that caused us both to fear a heart attack or worse. It was stress, anxiety, and panic. Focus on your own health and well being. Nurture yourself, even though it’s hard.

Sorry to say your unwillingness to require a polygraph means you’re intentionally keeping yourself in the dark. From a previous post, it implied you wouldn’t really mind sharing your wife, which seems odd with your concerns about a pregnancy test. Is adultery ok with you or not? Or is it just that you want her to ask your permission?

You seem to know the pick-me dance never works, yet do it anyway. Sad to see you’re your own worst enemy.

There is so much here, none of it is good.

The severe defensiveness and stonewalling are enough to ruin a relationship without betrayal. Post betrayal? Your heart won’t stand up to it, no matter how much you want to preserve some love for her.

I also gave myself a year timeframe, and then I extended it. Took me just under two years to come to the conclusion that my marriage was unsalvageable. I can certainly hold my head up high and say I did everything I could. But I paid a high price for that.

It is very standard behavior for the cheater to rewrite the entire marriage. Her telling you she should have left you after 2 weeks of meeting you is very typical behavior.

It’s NOT your fault she dated and married you. lol 😂. She made that choice I assume of her own free will.

My H told me some pretty terrible things during his affair. The one I will never forget was his statement that "I never loved him and only married him for other reasons". It was so ludicrous and ridiculous that I burst out laughing. I had to leave the room because I could tell he was upset by my response.

He said the first year after our marriage he was waiting for me to tell him I wanted a D. What a bunch of nonsense! My "honeymoon" was spent in a hospital having surgery and I know for a fact he NEVER questioned my love.

Just know that the cheater says all kinds of crap to justify the affair, blame the betrayed, assuage their guilt for cheating and generally do and say whatever they can think of to avoid taking responsibility for their actions.

BTW when my H was begging me to R after dday2 and false reconciliation I threw every mean, ugly thing he told me during the affair right back at him. I remember saying to him "why would you want to reconcile with me? You believe I never loved you so I’m not sure why you suddenly want to be married to me".

Karma!

It's the resentments. Until she digs into this, and really starts to understand them, things will not improve.

You stated that your wife was a fantastic spouse/mother for 16 or so years. I would be willing to bet you that you could pick out some things that she did then, that were not ideal. But the difference is that you did not hold on to them, and add it to your personal 'grudge' list. Like most people, you took them as part of her character, and balanced them with all the other good traits. But in her mind, she is keeping score of your bad habits, and in many cases, magnifying them due to her own issues. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't have tried to remove these bad traits, but to have them stored and weaponized against you is a far unhealthier option.

I'd be willing to guess that she didn't tell you, at say the 15 year marriage mark, that she has been unhappy the entire time. Why would that be? Why would she need one of the unhealthiest, most destructive choices that one can make in their life....an affair....to *finally* see how unhappy she was since Day One of their marriage? That is what you are receiving, and it's very hard to just dismiss, because she IS able to list specific checklist items about ALL of your shortcomings. Because she harbors those resentments. There is a former wayward who posts here often by the name hikingout. If you get a chance, look of some of her postings. She mentions how it took a lot of self reflection for her to learn that many of the resentments that she built up against her partner were of her own making. It didn't make her partner perfect, but it sure made him, by her own accord, far less flawed than she made him out to be.

Your wife has a lot of baggage to still sort through. She is running you through the grinder while she still does this. Her *truth* is that you were a mistake to marry years ago. I'll almost guarantee it was not her truth a decade ago. It doesn't change where her mind is today, but it does show how much, in the wrong direction, she has changed.....and may not return. That's hard to accept, and I do sympathize with you. I could feel the resentment my wife had for me at the time, and shortly after, her affair. And I made sure that I let her know how much I felt it. I had to force her to make the choice of looking at, or running away from this key issue.

@jb3199

Yeah, hikingout has provided me with incredible insight, both directly to some of my posts and indirectly to others. I find her take on things to be highly valuable.

Regarding my WW's communication over the years:

She did tell me that she was upset or that she wasn't getting what she needed. However, she's also a world class stonewaller, so the communication was often a one-way conversation. Looking back on it, I regret not handling it differently. It's hard to explain without writing a 10k word novel, but I'll make an attempt at giving a single example. (EDIT: Who was I kidding, I just wrote a novel)

In fact, I'll give you the very worst example, the one where I performed the poorest as a husband, and in retrospect I have little to no defense.

There was a time during our marriage where I was commuting to work for over an hour, walking a mile from the parking garage to the office, then working 9-10 hours, before walking back to my car, driving home and doing it all over again the next day. This lasted for over 10 years. It was a grind in a job I didn't like, didn't want, working with people that are type A personalities where my bosses and their bosses were all 10 years younger than me. It was toxic to say the least.

I remember coming home each day to my wife and kids and just having a very difficult time switching gears and becoming Dad/Husband, when the vast majority of my life was being over-aged dip shit that wasn't doing well at work, had no real career, was underpaid, overworked, and miserable.

Through this time period, my wife was amazing! As the Paula Cole song goes, "I will wash the dishes, as you pay all the bills." Back then, I thought that's what teamwork looked like. I had no successful role-models in my childhood.

My wife, as amazing as she was though, was struggling. She had four kids she was homeschooling, in a tiny home, in a crappy neighborhood, with zero support. No real friends, and no family on either her side or mine. She did it all.

Much of this super mom show had been built over time though. It didn't start out that way. In fact, very early on, I can remember her telling me how happy she was with me as a father. Saying "I wanted to nominate you for father of the year to this magazine I read about parenting." But that didn't last but for a few weeks or months (I really can't remember) before she started to say I wasn't doing things correctly. The most famous example of this was changing the kid's (we started with twins) diapers. They were getting diaper rash, and their doctor suggested a specific way to avoid that. She said I wasn't doing it right (which would be a common theme throughout our marriage). But I was trying, and in this case (and many others) I felt like whatever I did was always the wrong way to do it, and my solution to that was to say "I'm trying the best I can, if you're not happy with it, then you do it!" She would do it, and over time, she would just about do everything.

There were times I would try to take things back off her plate, but we would find ourselves in the same patterns every time. I "wasn't doing it right" so she would just say that it was too much trouble to deal with me and she would just keep doing it (whatever it was).

Meanwhile, I would be rage machine, quick to anger, but also extremely quick to calm down once the vents had blown, and she would say "I'd rather do it myself than hear you get upset about it". It was a vicious cycle. She'd be overwhelmed, I'd try to help, she'd fight me for control of the task, criticize how I was doing it, be upset if I showed any anger, and ultimately it would result in her not getting the help she needed, and me escaping back into video games to avoid her displeasure, or WORSE her stonewalling. She would just shut down during conversations where I'd say "Look, you're doing too much, I want to help. I will take this thing off your plate."

After DDay, I was trying to take on as much responsibility for the house as possible, and one of the things she was always complaining about was cleaning the shower. So I said, I'll do that. But when I didn't clean it at the time of day she wanted it cleaned (seriously) she just did it herself and then got angry that I didn't do it. I had to use this example for like two weeks before she "gave me another opportunity to do it" and now for the last 4 months I've been cleaning the shower every week (among many other things).

So, I told you all that so I could tell you this... :)

Back in the before times when I was driving to work in the snow uphill both ways, and I was miserable with my career, I had a midlife crisis, and my wife was the super star she had always been. She willed me to get through it (while also taking care of the kids and doing everything else under the sun). I came out on the other side a stronger person, and I'm not sure I would still be here today if it wasn't for her.

A few years after that, she had her own break down. I came home from work about 8 pm after another horrible day of being a corporate drone with no future, and as I walked in the door, my wife immediately started to tell me that she needed help. That she was struggling.

I tried to find my sea legs because I knew this was an event, I knew this was serious and not something she had done before (except for many years earlier before we had kids when she had talked about being horribly lonely because she was home alone all the time, and mentioned that the only reason she was still on this earth was because she didn't want me to have to come home and clean up the mess).

I remember going up stairs to change out of my work clothes, coming back down and asking her what was wrong. She couldn't explain it. She was shutting down. I asked, how can I help? Nothing, no response. I was frustrated, and I went back up stairs to try to figure out how to handle things. I remembered the time before, many years ago, and I thought about how that was before the kids, and my bright idea was to try to get her to focus back on the kids and understand how important it was for them that she keep it together (I know, this wasn't a good plan).

And so, I went back downstairs to tell her this great wisdom, and she shut down even more. Essentially, I was incapable of doing what she had done for me, and in this moment, I failed her as a husband. She told me to forget it, to leave her alone, and that's what I did. She had to get out of her depression and her loneliness by herself. And she did it, probably for the kids, as no amount of "are you ok's?" was going to help her. I just didn't know what to do and fucked that up.

Well she remembers that, and it's one of her, I would say top 5 moments in I'm a bad husband lore that she brings up as evidence that "She told me", and "she gave me the blueprint for how to be a good spouse and I didn't follow that and instead told her to suck it up for the kids". Several years later, if all I (or anyone) knew about our marriage was that story, we'd all say she should leave the bum, she can do better.

But of course, we would not all say that I deserved to be cheated on. Nor would we say (I would hope) that she was perfect in the marriage and there were not moments in time where if we only highlighted her worst actions that people wouldn't say "why are you married to her in the first place?"

I've learned a lot over the years, and probably even more so over the last 6 months. But yes, she resents me for a lot of this stuff, and in some cases (like the example above) it's totally understandable, and valid. But since we're still married and she says she's committed to reconciliation, what good does that resentment do for us now? I would argue it does no good, and it prevents reconciliation. But I can only control myself. Marriage is a team sport, and if you want off the team, then we have this thing called divorce.

@gr8ful

From a previous post, it implied you wouldn’t really mind sharing your wife, which seems odd with your concerns about a pregnancy test. Is adultery ok with you or not? Or is it just that you want her to ask your permission?

The answer to this is complicated. I know for some people it's the simplest binary yes or no answer, but for me it's not.

Ideally, no, I don't want to share my wife with anyone. But at the same time, I want her to be happy, and I have developed significant kinks around this area. I'm literally in fight or flight mode when thinking about my wife being with someone else. And the reality is that sexual novelty is largely (or at least often driven by some form of fear). What I'm saying is this, when I think about my wife being with someone else, it scares the shit out of me. I'm devastated by her affair, and I don't want to hurt like that ever again.

But what hurt me the most is actually the lying and the part where I was on the outside looking in on her, whatever was going on there. She had excluded me from satisfying her needs, and that really hurts. Yes, intellectually I understand that she was selfish, it wasn't my fault, she did a bad thing. Emotionally it disconnected us. Physically, it set us back. Mentally, it created deep trauma that will likely take me years to get over.

However, that doesn't stop my mind and body from reacting to this fear, in what I assume is a copping mechanism to release the stress and the pain through sexual release. Meaning yes, I get off on the idea of my wife being with other men, even though it's also very damaging to me, it can be unhealthy, and it's not something I consciously chose for myself. I'm self-aware of all of this, and I've spoken to two counselors about it that they both said it's extremely common after someone's been cheated on (especially for men).

As I said in the OP, I asked her if she wanted an open marriage and was relieved to hear that she did not. It's been 5 months, and she's never brought it up to me or shown any signs this would be something desirable for her. It's really all in my head, not hers (as far as I can tell).

And for me, it's a defensive mechanism. I don't want a divorce. But I've often found myself mentioning divorce to her whenever we're fighting or she starts stonewalling me, and I know it's a way to try to get comfort that she doesn't want a divorce. Which is not helpful, but it doesn't change the fact that I often feel extremely vulnerable and confused about where our marriage is and where it's going. I feel like I'm always in limbo, and what I really want her to say is that she wants to stay with me forever, she doesn't want any other men, and she loves me.

I'm broken by all of this. And my mind and my body are trying to give me a way to manage the insane amounts of stress I'm feeling. And honestly, I welcome that because I don't have a lot of other outlets that seem viable to me at the moment.

I appreciate the 180 for what it is. A process that sets up clearly communicated boundaries that when broken the BS can immediately hold the WS accountable in an effort to reduce the risk and the impact of being hurt again. Sure, that's one way to do it. But I can't get over the fact that it just feels like hand holding the BS and I don't want to do that. If my WW can't "not cheat on me" and do the right thing, then I don't want to stay in the marriage with her. I don't have time for all that.

When I got married, I thought she was capable of not cheating, regardless of how bad a husband she thought I was. I was wrong. Reconciliation (to me) is about seeing if she's the type of person that can learn from that mistake without me forcing her to work under a structure that really turns the relationship into some kind of imbalanced power dynamic. If she's going to cheat on me, the 180 isn't going to stop that, it's just going to make it a bit harder. We're going to end up in the same place if my WW wants to cheat, she's just going to do it.

So my offering to talk about an Open Marriage was simply a way to try to figure out what she actually wants and then explore if I think I might be able to compromise on some level. I don't know if I could. I think there might be some room there. But thankfully, that's not what she says she wants, so it's really a moot point.

Saying "no" to an open marriage doesn’t mean she wants to fight for your marriage.

Two completely separate things IMO.

I hope you see that. I don’t think you should be living with false hope or anything like that.