SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Part of your WW's response could be because she likes to introduce the drama llama.

My read is that it has much more to do with something going on inside her. MC pretty much every session does a check in with my wife because her body language and facial expressions become un-interpretable. She is in fight/flight/fawn mode. I’ve met drama queens, this is not that.

The AP wasn't as predatory as you thought and your WW was more involved in creating the atmosphere for the A than you originally thought...much like a lot of us BS.

I agree. I’m glad I found this place. And it’s also true that not every message I’ve gotten here has been spot on AND I’ve only been able to come along the journey so fast. SI, for the next poor shlub trying to climb this hill in real time, have some mercy and understanding for my sake, ok?

InkHulk, I'm curious, how many questions are on your list, if you don't mind saying? And how many did the MC take off?

My list was around 90 questions. MC may have scrubbed 4 or 5, and I took another 10 or so off with my "olive branch". When she says unexpected things, the list is going to grow with follow up, but I’m trying to be judicious about that so this doesn’t get the sense of being endless. Some of the questions are yes/no, and some are more probing.

Do you believe going through the questions and getting answers is helping you get past it and to heal? Not sure how many I'll eventually give her. Don't want to overwhelm her, but there's a lot I feel I deserve to know. We all deserve to know and should be able to expect that our spouses don't continue to harbor secrets they had with other partners..

I asked a lot of questions early on, at first in a very disorganized, disregulated way and I lashed out in my pain with that information. I did damage with that, it (understandably) fuels her hesitancy in answering now. I started asking more practiced questions for a while. And now this is kind of my latest round that has been building up for months. I’m very skeptical of personal anecdotal answers of what heals a person or not. If my own case was the first in the world case of infidelity then I would have to say I have no idea what has brought healing. I go by the books and the community, and the consensus there is that the betrayed benefit from getting their questions answered. We almost universally turn into Sherlock Holmes, that in itself is a pretty good indication (to me) that our minds need information and are pushing us to get it. Now how much, when, and of what nature is needed to heal the person and the marriage, that I am not wise enough to say. I can say again that my mental health is vastly improved 10 months out with the strategy I’ve taken, and we’ll see how my marriage goes. Hope that helps.

[This message edited by InkHulk at 4:44 PM, Thursday, May 25th]

First, I want to give you kudos for a well-worded question. If you gave her a yes or no, you know she would’ve taken the no. But this forced her to actually think about it and give you a detailed response. No wonder she’s desperate to get out of answering these.

Careful, BTB, some empathy for my wife is showing.

Second, I’m glad that the veil over your eyes has been ripped and you can now see that your wife was an active participant in this affair, not a passive victim. As we were all trying to tell you in The Cheater’s Handbook thread, this false perception has prevented you from advocating for your needs and holding her accountable for the choices she made and the actions she took. Casting your wife in the victim role denies her agency.

In the language of that past thread, I would say that this information ups the seriousness of the charges, not sure yet how much it fundamentally changes anything. I am still processing it. It will spark follow up for sure, and I think it’s a good spot to work into her why’s.

I think, in future conversations, you might be able to convince your wife that it’s in her best interests to answer your questions, dig into her whys, and take responsibility for her actions. Once you feel like she understands and owns the choices she made, and demonstrates a willingness to take a proactive role in your healing, you can start looking forward instead of back.

Well said.

In the language of that past thread, I would say that this information ups the seriousness of the charges, not sure yet how much it fundamentally changes anything.

It changes things in the sense that you know your wife is capable of making calculated choices and pursuing goals in the context of a romantic relationship, as opposed to being a helpless doe succumbing to an apex predator or a naive woman who recklessly succumbed to her passions. She wanted emotional intimacy from OM and put in the time and effort to get it from him.

If she doesn't put the same effort into your reconciliation, then you know that she's choosing to do nothing, not that she's incapable of it.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 2:40 PM, Thursday, April 27th]

If she doesn't put the same effort into your reconciliation, then you know that she's choosing to do nothing, not that she's incapable of it.

That is a solid take.

If she doesn't put the same effort into your reconciliation, then you know that she's choosing to do nothing, not that she's incapable of it.

I think this is the cause for two different approaches being recommended in this thread. One party believes her FOO issues and her being a survivor of sexual assault etc has rendered her incapable (for now) to get past her shame and take an active role in healing OP. Others believe that she is capable but is tactically choosing to do nothing to get past her shame. And, that's why the second party wants OP to 'toughen up'.

I believe truth might be somewhere in between. I think she is capable of getting past her shame but she is choosing not to do it not because she doesn't want to help you heal but because then she will have to accept and own the truth that she has abused you. She is an abuser.
Since the day she was assaulted, she has been a victim of abuse. She might have developed a victim mindset from being a victim. Did she ever truly get out of this mindset? There is a difference between being a victim and having a mindset of the victim. This mindset always hinders personal growth and prevents victims from escaping pain, trauma, and other related issues. These issues often become problems in the future. Now that she has abused you, she can not have that victim mindset anymore. She needs to come out of that mindset and see for herself what she has become, an abuser, a person she dreaded and never wanted to become one. May be this is the issue here - accepting the truth that she is am ABUSER.

You should ask her (if you haven't) these following questions:
1. Do you agree that you have abused me?
2. Do you see yourself as an abuser?
3. As a victim of abuse, what should I do? How should I reconcile with my abuser?

I have to remind you that admitting is different from owning it.

'Getting out of infidelity'

I have a problem with this idea unless the BS pays a lot of attention to what they are getting into. What a BS gets into after being betrayed is more important than getting out of infidelity.

Yes, one needs to get out of infidelity, but one has to protect oneself against jumping, say, from a frying pan into a fire. Most of us have decades of life to live after being betrayed. If it takes a few years to find out what's best, that's unfortunate, and one can't get the time back - but one can still look forward to many years of good living - if one has made a good choice for oneself.

******

Do you believe going through the questions and getting answers is helping you get past it and to heal?

IME, the connection between Qs, As, and healing is indirect.

There's benefit from asking, even if one doesn't get answers, especially if onr faces the true gut-wrenching questions.

Answers are often sought - especially by engineer-scientists - as a way of gaining understanding. That never worked for me. I can tell you what my W has said about her choices, and I have some understanding of them, but I still don't see how she could choose what she did.

The benefit of the answers lies in areas like these:

True answers help the WS take responsibility. That helps the WS recognize the problems, and that recognitions helps resolve the problems, because one simply can't solve a problem one doesn't recognize.

True answers start to rebuild trust.

True answers start to rebuild M bonds.

True answers start to reteach a couple to read non-verbal comms.

The level of truth in the answers help a BS decided what to do next.

One good thing about Q & A is that the BS can heal even if the WS stonewalls. Healing is harder without Q & A, but it's still eminently doable.

@InkHulk, if I may ask, what drew you to the woman who is now your wife in the first place? Her walls and issues were apparent from the beginning, no?

I am sorry to hear of your latest update--but yeah, not at all surprised to read that your WW pursued OM. (Not that it makes much difference in the culpability of your WW--she had ONE job and that was to protect you and the M--*precisely* from predatory men.) A big detail in that regard was that she was sneaking out of the house to drive an hour to go on dates *before* she and OM had sex. She was clearly an active participant even before the bonding hormones released after sex got involved.

Your WW needs to get to the bottom of why she did what she did and this needs to be done with FAR more urgency than she has demonstrated in the past 9 months. And this is just the start. Otherwise, you just cannot stay married to her, it is just no way to love! (I had meant to type 'live', but my typo, 'love', seems to be an interesting slip so I won't edit it out.)

Sisoon, my mental picture of you is a character from the movie "Mystery Men", the Sphinx. His power is being "terribly mysterious". I greatly appreciate your perspective, your measured approach has helped me have patience in this disaster.

Lurking, I think that is an insightful post. I have dealt with more than my share of DARVO over the years and I do think she has a pretty strong victim mentality, and I see hints of it here. I won’t tolerate much, if any, and I think she knows that.

take an active role in healing OP.

Quick detour here: given the discussion about "betrayed, heal thyself" going on, what exactly do we mean around here about WS taking an active role in healing BS? End of detour.

You should ask her (if you haven't) these following questions:
1. Do you agree that you have abused me?
2. Do you see yourself as an abuser?
3. As a victim of abuse, what should I do? How should I reconcile with my abuser?

We have talked about 1 and we agreed on yes. We agreed that it was not malicious, she never intended to hurt me, but it was too obvious and foreseeable to call it anything but abuse. I directly compared it to the asshole who date raped her in college. He almost certainly didn’t do it to hurt her, he just wanted what he selfishly wanted and he took it. I know that was a deep connection to her and to see herself in that position seemed pretty meaningful.
Didn’t get into an identity/character issue with question 2. I kind of like question 3, I’ll think about it.

@InkHulk, if I may ask, what drew you to the woman who is now your wife in the first place? Her walls and issues were apparent from the beginning, no?

There are many things that attracted me to my wife, and they still do. Everyone has their flaws, but I will say the extent of her trauma and FOO issues were not evident to me at the time. Would it have mattered to a 25 year old in love? Almost certainly not. You expect to be able to grow and work thru anything. And like stated before, no one ever would have pegged her for a cheater.

A big detail in that regard was that she was sneaking out of the house to drive an hour to go on dates *before* she and OM had sex.

Not quite sure where you are getting this from. The physical spark did happen when they decided to meet up at a park and walk a hidden path. First make out session, shit like that happened. Next meeting was for all the money. Not sure what that means to you here.

Your WW needs to get to the bottom of why she did what she did and this needs to be done with FAR more urgency than she has demonstrated in the past 9 months. And this is just the start. Otherwise, you just cannot stay married to her, it is just no way to love! (I had meant to type 'live', but my typo, 'love', seems to be an interesting slip so I won't edit it out.)

To Sisoon’s point, I’m not hitting the ejection button without knowing where I’m landing. Urgency is one thing that I don’t feel a need for. She is doing enough to satisfy me. IC, MC, reading about past trauma, FOO issue acknowledgement. A person can only do so much with the time of a day. She works, we have kids, life goes on. We aren’t stagnant and neither of us is happy with current state, so I’m not worried about getting stuck here. For being in a totally fucked up situation, I think I’m doing ok. For today at least.

@InkHulk,

What I mean is, the start of most affairs before the sex have an element of **plausible deniability**. e.g., 'yes we spent 2 hours at that restaurant together but we're just two coworkers on our lunch break', and 'yes we've had these long lingering lunches every day this week but that's because he is just so easy to talk to', or 'yes he held my hand but I was sharing something really emotional and it feels good to know that somebody cares'...i.e.,before the sex occurs, the left hand can pretend to have a case to the right hand that it is innocent. (not that these affairs aren't still horrible--isn't the ring finger on the *left* hand anyway?) With your WW, there appears to be even no plausible deniability. That your WW was willing to drive an hour fora picnic date before she was sure there was even a physical spark, that was a pretty big sign that she was doing her fair share of pursuing. The detail I brought up made me suspect she made her decision to embark on an affair *before* she was overwhelmed with feelings. And that she pursued OM seems to corroborate this.

It's like meeting someone off Ashley Madison to see if there is chemistry first, vs slipping into an affair w a coworker. What your WW did is actually closer to the former.

If you are needing to know where you land before you hit the eject button. You characterized your WW's affair as abuse. It is abuse. Well there are a lot of wonderful single women out there looking for a great guy, who will NOT abuse you. Please remember that man!

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 2:39 AM, Friday, April 28th]

I’m not hitting the ejection button without knowing where I’m landing.

Why don't you know where you will be landing?

What I mean by this, is that you should be working on what YOU want to end up at for yourself, and not depend on an answer from your WW to make that decision. By waiting for a response from your WW to make your decision, you are holding yourself back from progressing with your life. If your WW wants to stay in your life, then she would have to be taking the actions that will help her stay in your life, and not the other way around.

She is doing enough to satisfy me.

I would be wary of this. This can end up as 'settling', and can lead to complacency. If your WW were truly vested in healing the M (not you, as that is your own task), she would be doing everything she can to help heal the M (even though your original M is already dead, but a new one could be built if she were so inclined to work at it).

So far, it looks like your WW has surrendered to you, and is just taking the easy way out and do what you tell her to do. She is not taking proactive actions to show you she really wants R. She does not seem to understand what a gift you have given her, which is time to prove herself worthy of R. She is squandering this precious privilege she has been offered, as she is still too self-absorbed.

I will say a bit more: InkHulk, you mention that your WW had a lot of anger hidden from you. Have you considered the possibility that your WW, in her abuse of having her affair, actually DID (on some level at least) set out to hurt you? I mean, she didn't actually go on Ashley Madison and go trolling for dates. But, she did do something CLOSE to that i.e., her share of pursuing of OM.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 6:35 PM, Friday, April 28th]

Have you considered the possibility that your WW, in her abuse of having her affair, actually DID (on some level at least) set out to hurt you?

There has already been a protracted conversation on this thread about whether or not the affair was malicious or not. InkHulk has very clearly considered it. I believe his ultimate view was:

I don’t think they have intent to harm and as such I don’t think it’s malicious. And at least for first time offenders, I don’t think they know the extreme nature of the harm.

Again, WontBeFooledAgain, I think you are confusing intentionality of action with intentionality of effect. Yes, the Ashley Madison users certainly set out with an intent to cheat (intention of action). At a certain level, I think most cheaters INTEND to cheat - don't you? It's not like it happens by accident - no one is slipping on a banana peel and falling on a d*ck. The Ashley Madison cheater perhaps differs from someone who gets caught up in a affair by falling down the slippery slope in the sense that ALL OF IT it was pre-meditated from the outset but in a 3 year affair, where sex occurred multiple times, it is fair to say that there was intention of action.

It does not follow that just because someone intended to cheat, means that they set out with the INBTENT to harm their spouse.

--

She has always buried/rug swept issues, thinking herself a good forgiver in doing so. But that actually been the stuff that has resulted in resentments and was why I had to be the one to dig deep and really put pieces together about the way I hurt her.

Back for my biweekly push at this issue.

For me, this would be all the more reason to push for answers. Yes, because it re-establishes emotional intimacy. Yes, because it builds trust. Yes, because it's not fair that there is anything that there is any intimate, special secret between the AP and your wife. Yes, because it avoids a situation where you learn new information years in the future that sets you way back in your healing. But most importantly because it HELPS you both understand the A. This is vital for digging into and figuring out your wife's WHYS. Understanding the WHYS is an absolutely vital first step for a Wayward to figure out how to become a safe partner, so that they can avoid going down exactly this type of road in the future.

I absolutely agree with CT that at a certain point, asking certain questions (especially for the 40th time) may not serve your purposes. HOWEVER, I also strongly believe that the best way to test the veracity, reliability, biases, and inaccuracies of a person's story is through fulsome cross-examination. If your wife is anything like my husband, her insight into his WHYS was pretty limited on his first go-around. Just like you didn't accept the answer as to her motivation to put your kid into the relevant activity, there are going to be questions that do not make sense to you on the first go around. There is a need for follow-up. This is the a reason why witnesses at trial are not simply given a list of questions, to consider in advance, that they are entitled to veto.

Again, I get that this is an ongoing and evolving issue for you. I'm happy that you are seeing progress. Welcome back.

I’ve found the end of my patience.

We had a questions session. Long and short of it is it was a disaster. She is acting like she is a victim of this discovery process. She has no humility, at least none that I recognize. She feels ashamed and terrible (I think) and she externalizes it into it being my fault. That dynamic has been there for as long as I can remember, I won’t remotely entertain it here.

I’ve asked for space this weekend. I travel for work for the week, and then I plan to have us living in separate rooms until the future becomes a little clearer.

I’ve so wanted to avoid this. I feel with my mental health recovering that I’m not afraid of it anymore. The future of living out my days with a woman who has cheated on me and thinks herself the victim in the aftermath is untenable to my soul. She just can’t seem to look past herself. I’m a little heart broken, but more than anything I’m mad today. Such destruction for nothing.

I think that's a solid idea. Wayward wives are notorious for trying to use sex,to sway things in their direction, when they know they're losing control over their BH. So cutting off sex,and all physical affection is needed. Otherwise, it clouds your perspective.

IH-

The future of living out my days with a woman who has cheated on me and thinks herself the victim in the aftermath is untenable to my soul.

While I imagine you have communicated this in some or many forms, I would write this exacting, succinct phrase down and hand it to your wife.

There is no path to moral superiority when one chooses to cheat — no amount of damage during an M allows for infidelity. Sounds logical, but a WS still dodging responsibility needs to told that there are dozens of ways to help a M, and infidelity is only damage and pain.

Ink, As we’ve been discussing,

To successfully save your marriage a Betrayed Spouse requires a lot of transcendence. A WS has to be bold, make the sacrifices, do the work, and transcend their fears, their shame, their pride, and their past contributing psychological issues that debilitate emotional intimacy and facilitate maladaptive behaviors.

They need to have the courage and the initiative to face and ask the hard questions, from you and of themselves.

If a WS chooses to hide from the process, through unrelenting defensiveness, self pity and victimization or, under a veil of shame and guilt-genuine or manufactured, will totally debilitate R and condemn you to limbo and costly concessions made at your expense.

Some WSs simply don’t have the capacity to reach down deeeeep, to very intimately and objectively explore and question themselves, and then have the courage to honestly share it with others, regardless of the finest therapeutic efforts.

I don’t know if it’s a deficit of intellect, curiosity, courage, willpower or, just years of layered maligned defensive mechanisms that would take the better part of lifetime to descale. Time you don’t have.

Is this your WW? It was mine and it was so frustrating. It took me over a year of R to conclude that she was simply not able to give me what we needed to truly transcend the damage she caused.

The prerequisites for a successful WS are:

-True remorse.

-True desire

-Sobriety

-Achievable emotional intimacy

-Repairable psychological issues.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 4:50 PM, Monday, May 1st]

The future of living out my days with a woman who has cheated on me and thinks herself the victim in the aftermath is untenable to my soul. She just can’t seem to look past herself.

What part of this process did she expect to be comfortable? That's the telling part, isn't it? If she really had a firm grip on the seriousness of what she'd done, if she understood the betrayal of it and the emotional trauma caused by her actions, or what needs to happen for R to be successful, doesn't it stand to reason that she wouldn't expect it to be all better by now?

This sounds like a basic empathy problem to me. Maybe she's so distracted by her own feelings that she just can't manage to dial in, but empathy really isn't all that hard. It's just walking a mile in the other guy's shoes, right? If she can't put her own inner turmoil on the backburner for a few measly minutes in order to imagine what it might be like to be you, what does that say about her potential for R this far down the line?