SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Following this conversation intently, and reading the 2 posts above, I really agree with them and understand more clearly why I'm still in Limbo. No matter how many books advise on steps to R, if you are dealing with deeply-rooted psychological issues (which I suspect many or most cheaters have) it is just going to be a rocky road to R, if even possible.

Nobody ever signs up for being the 'sane one' in a marriage with a psychologically wounded person but sadly, betrayal is how we often learn about their issues. (Disclaimer: I'm referring to what I've found about my SAWH and his FOO, and specifically what RealityBlows posted.)

Edited to add: Maybe some people DO choose to go into M knowing their spouse has almost intractable "issues," but I don't think many do. Most marriage prep counseling I've seen emphasizes mutual meeting of needs and understanding, which tends to give us the belief we'll be able to negotiate any problem we both claim to want resolved. Well, it just ain't that easy, I've discovered.

[This message edited by Superesse at 7:35 PM, Monday, May 1st]

I’ve found the end of my patience.

"It's like I've invented a new game of baseball but with at least five strikes. I don't know how many strikes there are."

Something I said to my therapist shortly before I actually ran out of patience.

Not trying to disbelieve or hit you with a 2x4, but I bet you still have a little more left. Maybe enough to really absorb the meaning of my signature.

@RealityBlows,

Your post above speaks to (unfortunately) exactly what I am going through especially:

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.

I’m not trying to thread jack here but just wanted to reinforce as a BH how much your words "hit home" for me. Hopefully, the OP finds them useful as well.

Since our D-Days I have dealt with all the hallmarks of WS. Lies, trickle truth, minimization, false equivalency and blame shifting. We have experienced "feast or famine" on doing the work. Also my WW has been diagnosed as bi-polar and is being assessed for Histrionic Personality Disorder. At the end of the day, I am desperately trying to assess "how could she do these things" and although not currently cheating, is she in effect a "dry drunk". Is this who I want to spend the rest of my life with? She has also always been Intimacy Avoidant and breaks down into a crying sobbing mess anytime she talks about her affairs. It just boggles the mind how she can do the things she did but can’t talk about them with the person she should be closest to in the world….

I don’t have enough time to give a full update right now, but wanted to let you all know that I’m listening and appreciate your comments.

"It's like I've invented a new game of baseball but with at least five strikes. I don't know how many strikes there are."

Something I said to my therapist shortly before I actually ran out of patience.

TIF, sometimes it seems like you know my thoughts better than I do.

Not trying to disbelieve or hit you with a 2x4, but I bet you still have a little more left. Maybe enough to really absorb the meaning of my signature.

Turns out you are right here as well. I hear the discussions on psychological issues in a WS and I will engage in that discussion when I have a little time. But the short update is that when she isn’t in the throes of disregulation and shame, she gets it. And then when I need her to be in the emotional trenches with me, she can’t hold it together, even though she wants to and regrets it afterward immensely. What the fuck do you do with that, SI?

What the fuck do you do with that, SI?

It will depend on a very difficult combination — near infinite patience and her will to prioritize your trauma over her shame.

Among my wife’s inner battles, a big one was trying to overcome the fear of "no matter what I do, I will never be an equal partner in this relationship ever again."

A legitimate fear. Some BS never aim for balance in a relationship where their partner hurt them.

So that slows effort, it slows everything down, because it feels like the battle to be better in the M is over before it starts.

In our case, I couldn’t guarantee a happy outcome, I couldn’t promise something I wasn’t sure I could fully heal from. However, I had to promise to try. I gave her ground, I gave her space, I gave her the empathy I wanted and needed back from her. It was a series of baby steps toward each other. She would try, despite not knowing the outcome.

Eventually, somewhere in year three, we jumped all in.

We still can’t guarantee a damn thing, but we both aim for a balanced, loving M where we are each accepted flaws and all.

For a WS who feels like acceptance will never happen, it is tough for them to reinvest in something they KNOW they destroyed (thus the endless list of mitigating defensive measures to not feel like the M’s evil villain). Some WS never jump all in to reinvest. You’re the only one who can decide if the time, patience and effort is worth it, all while trying to heal YOU.

I'd tell you if she really wanted to hold it together, she would. Her actions,words and reactions are all a choice.

She is not incapable. She's choosing not to be capable.

[This message edited by HellFire at 6:49 PM, Tuesday, May 2nd]

I agree with HellFire. There is no Try, there is only Do. If she regrets it that immensely, then why can't she go through your questions/give you what you need right then and there, or THE NEXT TIME?

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 6:56 PM, Tuesday, May 2nd]

There's a YouTube show that I love called The Behavior Panel in which a group of 4 body language experts from law enforcement, military, and corporate backgrounds analyze videos of people in interviews and interrogation videos and provide their opinions on whether or not the subjects are being truthful.

The latest episode was about Sherri Papini, a woman who was convicted for faking her own kidnapping in order to spend a few weeks away from home with her ex-boyfriend. The whole video is a must-see, but there's a moment around the 3-hour mark that I suggest you watch.

The police confront her with the evidence that the kidnapping was a hoax and inform her (and her poor shell-shocked husband) that her ex admitted she was with him voluntarily during the entire period that she claimed she was being held captive by 2 violent women. Each time the detectives try to complete a sentence or ask her a direct question, she starts weeping, wailing, and ducking her head down.

The panelists all agreed that her behavior was intended to garner pity, put a stop to the questions, and avoid taking responsibility for her actions. One of the panelists compared her to a public bus screeching on the breaks really loudly.

As I watched the episode, I said to myself, "I wonder if this is what marriage counseling sessions are like with InkHulk's wife."

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 6:56 PM, Tuesday, May 2nd]

@BTB,

Not to threadjack the topic, but this was the coda to the Papini case:

The pair separated on March 3, 2022, the day Sherri was arrested, and he filed for divorce in April, according to PEOPLE, citing irreconcilable differences. He also asked for custody of the pair's two children.

"Now that I have learned the truth, as reflected in the plea arrangement agreement that she has made with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento, I must act decisively to protect my children from the trauma caused by their mother and bring stability and calm to their live(s)," the statement read, according to Redding Searchlight, adding that he wanted to protect his kids from "the negative impact of their mother's notoriety."

As OP said... so much destruction... for nothing!

[This message edited by toota at 9:22 PM, Tuesday, May 2nd]

And then when I need her to be in the emotional trenches with me, she can’t hold it together, even though she wants to and regrets it afterward immensely.

Oh, man - so sorry that you're going through this, InkHulk. My XWH is a diagnosed covert narc, and I didn't realize all the hoops I would jump through to make him happy or to avoid his tantrums if he couldn't get his way. Silent treatment, or he'd talk right over the top of me. Sometimes, I didn't have anything to say but would open my mouth, and he would immediately start talking. I would mention it (when I could get a word in edgewise), it would get better for a little bit but he'd do it again. He'd also do it to our adult children.

Good temper, bad temper, stomping around the house with a pout - anything but talk about the topic with me.

From Oldwounds:

Among my wife’s inner battles, a big one was trying to overcome the fear of "no matter what I do, I will never be an equal partner in this relationship ever again."

A legitimate fear.

…In our case, I couldn’t guarantee a happy outcome, I couldn’t promise something I wasn’t sure I could fully heal from. However, I had to promise to try.

This, is really important. My WW went into self destruction mode when she concluded that things would never be the same, she would always be a WW or ExWW, that there would always be a balance of power and moral mismatch, etc, etc.

She even said one day, that if tables were turned and I had cheated on her, she could never forgive me and would summarily divorce me.

She didn’t want to invest precious years of time towards R with little-if any, guarantee of success. She’d rather cut her losses and start fresh.

She considered the damage so profound, that it was a waste of time to continue R.

This made me feel like a disposable commodity, an inanimate factor in a risk vs gain equation, a liability.

Even with my hope seeding reassurances, my empathy and commonly verbalized understanding for the difficult job that lay before her, every trigger I suffered, every A related question I asked, every time I was caught checking the phone bill, reading her texts, was continuing verification to her that things would never be the same, and she’d regress into a debilitating well of despair.

I do believe that R requires a team effort. I’ve related R to two shot-to-shit soldiers dragging each other off the battlefield to safe refuge. Where the least injured party has to do most of the dragging and most of the reassuring.

With infidelity, we assume the WS is the least injured-damaged party, but is this true? When someone falls from grace to the degree of committing adultery, are they in any shape to do the heavy lifting, to be the guidon in R-let alone the SOLE guidon torch bearer or…are they just too debilitated by the very issues that contributed to the A?

A paradox.

Not everyone has the capacity or the opportunity to be a successful WS and pull off a successful R. It takes a selfless leap of faith-from both parties, sacrifice-with no guarantees of success; requires the WS to overcome-transcend their own personal failings-damage, while simultaneously nurturing their injured BS. A successful WS requires the capacity for empathy, deep introspection, emotional intimacy, loving patience and undying determination and, they need to pull all this out of their broken ass on the horns of the dilemma before the patient dies.

Sounds like a superhuman to me. I don’t think I could pull this off, myself. This is why I don’t cheat on a spouse or marriage I truly care about, but if I did, I would cling to the bedside of my dying marriage and BS on full life support, like that parent, camped out in the Peds ICU, who can’t be dragged away.

So, how in the hell does successful R ever happen? I can’t imagine the WS doing it all on their own. When I observe the former WSs here on SI, who seem to have been successful in R, they all seem to have certain commonalities:

-Loving patience

-Unrelenting determination and true desire

-The capacity for deep honest introspection

-Excellent communicators, with self and others.

-Able multi-taskers who can fix themselves while simultaneously nurturing their spouses and marriage and…

-Progressing cooperation from their BS.

The WSs haven’t necessarily "fixed" their issues. They have, at least, identified them, understand them, and have contained and adapted to them so that their issues no longer control their actions, effect behaviors and their emotions-so much.

The WS also seem to measure their chances of success, their effectiveness, through careful observance and appreciation of the smallest signs of improvement. They don’t focus on temporary set-backs, they seem to focus on trending improvement. A WS should not look at the 1-month trend, nor the 1-year trend, they should be looking at the 5-year and the 10-year. The successful WSs seem to be initially self inspired, and not lean so much on the BS for encouragement, promises and reassurances.

These WSs also don’t seem to be doing all this to save their marriages or their spouses, they seem to do it to save themselves, to truly reconcile with themselves, regardless of the outcome.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 11:29 PM, Tuesday, May 2nd]

But the short update is that when she isn’t in the throes of disregulation and shame, she gets it. And then when I need her to be in the emotional trenches with me, she can’t hold it together, even though she wants to and regrets it afterward immensely. What the fuck do you do with that, SI?

We learn behavior and build dynamics without being consciously aware of them and how they seem to benefit us. After DDay, it became clear that my husband and I had unhealthy dynamics that got in the way of us having honest and real communication between us. Anytime my husband had attempted to discuss anything of importance with me my immediate defense was to break down into tears. His natural response to that was to protect me, be my KISA. This dynamic was obviously not going to work if we were going to work on reconciling.

I am still an emotional person. I cry during commercials or when others are crying. What is different is that my husband has learned to push through any tears and I have learned to let him. We both understand the dynamic and are willing to ignore it to get better results. Understanding what the dynamic is has helped us change it.

I think the question is whether or not your wife is willing to work through those unhealthy dynamics. It has been working for her in order to avoid what is truly at the heart of the issue. Top that with shame and she has a perfectly wrapped blanket to protect her from seeing what is underneath it all.

I will be perfectly honest in letting you know that it took my husband’s willingness to let go of the marriage and begin to actively seek D before I woke up and started doing some real work. The saying "you have to be willing to give up the marriage to save it" could not be more true for us.

I hope that she believes that you are losing patience.

I’ve fallen behind on this thread. I like to reply to almost all responses to honor the effort and time you all put into investing in my life, but I’m probably not going to be able to do that for the last few days. But know I’ve read them and thought about them and appreciate them.

I’m going to do something different here: I’m going to copy a key exchange between us from Monday that I’d like you all to know to understand where we are at. I just don’t believe this is as simple as "she chooses not to", but for the first time you all can see her words directly and see what you think. This is long but the content is really meaningful to me right now.

InkHulk

I’m going to describe what I experienced on Thursday night and try to communicate how I felt about it.
These questions matter to me in a number of ways. They help me feel re-empowered after my agency was stolen. They promise to shed light into a dark place in my life, a darkness that did in fact produce danger and pain. And they remove a cancer from Us, because if I know one thing for sure in all this, I can’t just forgive and forget. We need the surgery, it has to come out, otherwise it’s fatal. There are likely more reasons why questions are important to me, but these suffice for now.

So for as important as this is to me, the process has been highly delayed. That has created a building tension in me. To run into more walls, more delays is agonizing. You saying in therapy that you were far more active in initiating the affair than I ever thought also very much heightened the stakes for me on Thursday.

But the single biggest thing that happened on Thursday was you using the word "deceptive". I don’t understand what is happening with you in that situation. From my perspective, your situation is like that of a murderer who confessed and is offered a full pardon, all they have to do is show remorse and tell where the body is. But when given the chance they seem to just keep talking about how they don’t like the stern lawyers and guards and the holding cell is cold. I’m asking for where the bodies are buried and you keep provoking me in those moments by making the moment about yourself and your discomfort.

What happens to you in those times? In MC’s office you finished it saying "I feel betrayed" (I heard, I don’t think MC did). You finish the next day with "I feel deceived". You put all kinds of rules and conditions on it. What I want to see from you is a model of humility, answering fully, answering the deeper questions I don’t even know to ask, and with a soft demeanor that honors the difficulty of the experience for me. Because the difficulty of the offender in a given situation is trumped by their victim. I believe that in general, not just for myself. I will act like that in your hurts. I expect that of myself and everyone else.

So I’m asking: what happens to you in those situations, or just what happened to you on Thursday, and Wed in therapy? When I look at you, I perceive the look of a trapped animal. It seems like we have all these rules and delays that are set up for your protection and benefit. Why do you need them? MC used the word "re-traumatize" in session, but I’ve never heard of someone being "re-traumatized" by truthfully recounting their own actions and motives.

In all this I’m looking for signs that you are going to take up the role of caring for my stated needs and desires. You know you are working on speaking up for yourself and not people pleasing, and I support that. But a healthy person still meets the needs of their spouse, and a betrayed spouse has extra needs. And even with the people pleasing, my needs weren’t getting met, how much more once you were siphoning off love out of the relationship. I’m starved and broke. You starved and broke me. And I know you aren’t healthy. I know I’ve hurt you, that you’ve injured yourself with this self destructive behavior, and that you came in hurt. But I need some minimums from you as we both try to mutually heal. And you being humble and transparent in this disclosure process is a non-negotiable to me. I’ve given you time, I’ve accepted rules and protections. And then Wed and Thurs happened, with you using language (betrayed, deceived) that I perceive as you taking a victim role. And that is a deal breaker for me. Full pardon offer revoked.

So to move forward, somehow we need to address what is happening in those moments. I truly need humility and transparency and something is happening in you that blocks it. Please don’t tell me to not judge your emotions, that will not help this situation.

This is long. I’ve tried here to describe my thoughts. My feelings are roiling like the flood water under the dam right now, brown and foamy, beyond counting, hard to believe a person could survive a trip thru that. This needs to be addressed, I won’t make it another month with this going on. I love you and my heart is so broken.

Mrs Ink Hulk’s reply

Thank you for expressing what you are experiencing and needing. I see you being patient and kind and understanding in making concessions for me to give you the details to your satisfaction. I hear how important it is for you to look the at the ugliness of my sins against you and understand that as fully as possible. I also hear you sharing how hard it is to discover new things or understand things differently than the narrative you have come to believe.

I believe this is harder for me than even I understand. I want to give you answers to these questions. This has gone on a long time and I feel we are both struggling with that. I believe that you need these answers and I am humbling myself to give them to you.

I have used the word purgatory. I have confessed and answered many questions. The weight of the number of questions still left and believing that more will be added is heavy. It feels to me like I confessed, I showed you the body and now I am needing to detail every thought I had before during and after the murder as well as the details of what I did. And I want to do that. I believe you when you say you need that. I also don’t know that I will receive a full pardon even if I follow through. You have made that clear and I give you that, I don’t expect you to know how you will feel about me.

I have been trying to understand what is going on with me, I want to answer your questions, I believe you need them and have the right to have the answers, yet I clearly get easily dis regulated. I think it’s helpful to think about the times I hurt myself. How absolutely crazy it made me.

The phrase for that kind of crazy in me is toxic shame. I believe it comes from childhood trauma. The same place my people pleasing comes from. It’s the other side of the coin. I’ve done something shameful. I did not please you. What I have done is devastatingly shameful. It is something I never wanted to do, have judged other people for, and it’s ugly, gross, selfish, sinful. It feels unforgivable to me, I have to work to remind myself of Christ’s complete atonement. I’m sorry, I feel I am rambling.

I have identified the toxic shame I feel as coming from an emotional flashback. An emotional flashback as far as I understand it is feeling something that triggers a hijacking of my amygdala and floods me with the overwhelming feelings of my childhood trauma (largely emotional). I sometimes feel fear, shame weak, helpless, scared, hopeless and despairing of life. Being seen feels excruciatingly vulnerable. Everything feels overwhelming and confusing. My emotions override my rational brain.

These are new learnings. I am committed to growing and managing/thriving/putting to bed my emotional flashbacks. I believe it will take time and I have already experienced some really great wins.

The challenge is that I need to address the most shameful things in my life and I need to do it now, without time to perfect tools that would help manage my emotional flashbacks.

I am so sorry for the way I have hurt you in these interactions. I do not want to hurt you.
I have asked for very generous/strict boundaries to try to help me move through this.

I care about you and have deep empathy for you. You’ve said you felt I lacked empathy for you. Sometimes, my empathy is so much and my hate for myself for hurting you so much is so great that it comes out in a shame shit storm. I understand how hurtful that is to you. It feels like my other option is to disassociate and just give you answers. It’s the two ditches. I want to be able to sit infront of you and see the hurt on your face and hear your anger and hurt and stay present and empathetic. I really struggle, I really fail at that right now

I think it’s really hard for you to hear the hurtful answers to the questions and not feel anger and lash out. I feel like what we are doing is a crazy cycle.

I would welcome the chance to send you answers this week. To try to change the cycle. To try to push through some questions. I also want to honor that you are working and this might not be the time for that.

Perhaps a good strategy is for you to present the remaining unanswered questions in writing snd for her to answer in writing. Perhaps she answers ten questions per week in writing, so as not to overwhelm but also so she can answer with sufficient depth.

At MC, do not address the minutiae of each and every question. Address the larger topics, the most salient issues, and perhaps a couple of the questions that stand out to you as being part of these larger, salient issues.

IH -

I know you said you were still looking at some of the other responses, but the line from your wife’s response:

I also don’t know that I will receive a full pardon even if I follow through.

That’s what I mentioned about my wife’s greatest internal hurdle in my recent post on your thread.

It’s why your wife — at times — is still trying to show ‘reasons’ for her choices to defend them instead of truly owning those choices.

Truth is self evident. Ultimately, I don’t think she believes whatever defenses she has thrown out there. My wife didn’t buy into her mitigating circumstances either, but again, no one wants to be the evil super villain in their own M.

She hasn’t been able to forgive herself and she can’t imagine you will be able to fully accept her EVER again as an equal in the M.

That’s where, even when you have offered patience, grace and kindness, she isn’t sure it is real or lasting, especially if she reveals more of the truth. I imagine she considers one more straw of truth will break the back of the relationship.

So, I think in those moments where YOU lose patience, she is assured nothing she can do will be enough, so she doesn’t reinvest into the process. And the cycle goes for another spin.

For me, it was a series of trust fall exercises. If my wife answered a question, regardless of how hard it was to hear her answer, I thanked her for that truth. In turn, she was able to share more and we took these basic baby steps toward each other. I had to show I still saw her potential, I still saw the good in her — despite her previous bad choices — and she had hope we could actually have a balanced, loving M.

I never had to give the full pardon. I just had to give her enough space to move back to me, and that allowed me to move back to her.

One big issue for my W was that she never thought her cheating was forgivable. She never understood that forgiveness is neither here nor there. She never understood that I get to choose what I want, and I wanted her, even though she didn't think she was desirable. I knew she hated herself, but I didn't.

So some of what you write about your W's internal processing resonates with me. OTOH, my W said she decided that telling the truth was the least she could do ... that is, of all the things she needed to do to heal, the easiest was just telling the truth.

How do you react to your W's crying and shame spiral?

A few months after our wedding, my W cried during conflicts. (It turned out to be a side-effect of The Pill.) I refused to be manipulated, but it looked like she was expressing strong emotions, not trying to manipulate me, so I just waited until she cried herself out and then went back to conflict resolution. I used the same tactic after d-day, but we already had a lifelong pattern of staying with the emotions and not letting them change our decisions/behavior. If I had tried to cut her crying short, I think our results would have been different.

*****

Was that a written exchange? One of the things I got from therapy was, 'Say it so a 6 year old would understand.'

I suggest experimenting with that approach. It requires getting to your core desires, and it requires you to treat your core desires as legitimate. It requires the speaker/writer to be pretty strong, and the more you exercise a strength, the stronger it becomes.

IMO, you were pretty clear about what you want, but I think that fewer words make it more likely that you'll get what you want. Mind you, I'm not a diplomat.

You’ve said you felt I lacked empathy for you. Sometimes, my empathy is so much and my hate for myself for hurting you so much is so great that it comes out in a shame shit storm. I understand how hurtful that is to you. It feels like my other option is to disassociate and just give you answers. It’s the two ditches. I want to be able to sit infront of you and see the hurt on your face and hear your anger and hurt and stay present and empathetic. I really struggle, I really fail at that right now

That's not empathy. That's sympathy. The two are not the same. Boiled down, empathy is just walking that proverbial mile in the other guy's shoes, using your imagination to feel what it must be like to be him. Sympathy is about your own feelings of compassion or pity at whatever you've encountered.

Your hurt is already happening. It's happening because you can't move forward with someone who won't be HONEST with you. So yeah, hearing new details might hurt. But so does losing your chance for R because she isn't willing to establish a baseline of REAL emotional intimacy. You are still being deprived of your agency. You can't reconcile under those circumstances. She's literally stopping it from happening by refusing to be present and honest so that you can make your choice freely.

When I read your WW's words, I felt like she gives herself permission to indulge in paralysis. If she had left the door open and her toddler was out on the lawn lurching toward a busy street, would she stand in the doorway whining about what a loser she is for leaving the door open or would she get off her ass and catch her kid before something bad happened? This should be an "all hands on deck" moment for her, and if saving her marriage means she has to lay down her barriers and be vulnerable enough to return your agency to you, that's what it means.

You're a patient man. I think that's great. Truly patience is a rare commodity and one which is sorely undervalued. There will come a point though when you've had enough and the love will be gone. We don't always have a choice about that.

To follow-up on what ChamomileTea said, your wife has no idea what empathy is. Empathy is the ability to envision an experience from another person's perspective and understand their feelings and reactions. I wouldn't even call what your wife described as sympathy because sympathy, at least, is an expression of compassion for another person.

Your wife, in contrast, is entirely focused on herself. She doesn't like hearing what you have to say and answering questions because they make her feel bad about herself. She's incapable of seeing that these uncomfortable moments in MC and when you're arguing are actually opportunities for her to reconnect with you and help you overcome your pain. I would compare her to someone who says they want to work out and get fit, but drops the dumb bell every time they feel or slight burn and jumps off the treadmill at the first bead of sweat.

Ironically, even though she's attempting to stonewall you at every turn, she's still giving you valuable insights into why she embarked on the affair and how she was able to betray you. You've learned that she avoids difficult conversations and circumspection as much as possible, even when they would benefit your marriage and her personally. She doesn't think about how her behavior and her choices affect you or anyone else; hence, how she was able to sleep around with OM then come home to you and hang out with OBS as if nothing was going on behind her back. She is the first-person protagonist of her own romantic novel; everyone else around her are simply supporting characters with no inner life or agency of their own.

You've heard a lot about what she can't or won't do. She either smacks down or puts unreasonable limitations on anything you ask of her. You've been the sole driver of this reconciliation and you are slowly coming to the realization that you can't do all the work yourself.

So perhaps when you last speak to her or have an MC session, you should simply ask: "What are you willing to do to save this marriage?"

Whoa, You married my ExWW…

Oldwounds comments about "the cycle" she’s stuck in that perpetuates with each new revelation is spot on. Also, his "Trust Fall" exercises. Rewarding her somehow for each disclosure, when she opens up to you, for the truth. Make it cathartic for her to explore this with you.

My therapist suggested scheduled periodic sessions, rather than blindsiding her while she’s making dinner, and creating a safe and inviting environment for her to attend and intimately and actively participate in these sessions.

These sessions should be mutually beneficial and her trusting disclosure of these very personal intimate and, at times, humiliating details, details about herself she’s probably never shared with anyone before, should bring you closer together.

I also don’t know that I will receive a full pardon even if I follow through.

She may also want to look at that above statement another way. Her primary goal should not be a "full pardon" from you, should not be to save you or the marriage either, her priority objective should be to reconcile with herself. Even if you two divorce, she still needs to follow through, to sort this all out, to identify and intervene with those causative fundamental issues, and to, at the very least, reconcile with herself.

If she’s doing all this R work only to avoid divorce, than her remorse is not true, it’s not sincere, it’s conditional, she’s doing it because she has to, not because she’s truly interested in self improvement.

I ended up divorcing, and as soon as my WW was served the D papers, she immediately stopped all of her IC, through out all those "stupid books" and continued right on with her toxic friends and unresolved brokenness into her next relationship. The remorse mask was tossed straight away. I would have thought if she was truly remorseful, she would have continued on with her therapy to at least reconcile with herself and never hurt someone else like this again.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 10:19 PM, Wednesday, May 3rd]

My therapist suggested scheduled periodic sessions, rather than blindsiding her while she’s making dinner, and creating a safe and inviting environment for her to attend and intimately and actively participate in these sessions.

The last two sessions were exactly this, MC and then a planned time in a private place. Still went sideways.

These sessions should be mutually beneficial and her trusting disclosure of these very personal intimate and, at times, humiliating details, details about herself she’s probably never shared with anyone before, should bring you closer together.

I desperately want that bringing closer together. In this, and in general in conflict resolution. But that has never been the case between us. She is so triggered by conflict that we never leave any disagreement with that "kiss and make up" kind of falling back together. I deeply hate that. I was very gentle with her disclosures in MC, even with her admitting she was the spark of the A. MC shook my hand afterward, but my wife looked stunned and said she was "betrayed", I think because I asked follow up questions, that she gave permission for and the MC specially said should be allowed. She was in no place to come together. If she would have cried and apologized, I would have held her and it would have been beautiful, instead she left mad. Same thing happened the next night, I asked "too many" questions, even though they logically went together, and immediately she said she "felt deceived". It’s not the answers to the questions that set me off, it’s that victim attitude. That sends me off the deep end.