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I’m worried on my journey to fix myself that it just shows that I don’t care. That when I take a hike or do something by myself to take care of myself, it shows him that I don’t care about him.

I’m truly sorry and feel bad for what I have done. I hate what I have done to him, constantly worry how he is doing and what he is going through, and try my best to show that towards him.

This is especially hard when he’s triggered, mad, and/or hates my guts.

Have any of experienced this when trying to reconcile?

Yup. You're not alone in this.

Maybe a re-frame is in order.

How are you going to become the partner your BH deserved in the first place if you don't take care of yourself? If you run yourself ragged as a martyrdom to his cause, you're only going to stick him with a worn-down sad sack of a partner.

It's good you're doing the work. The guilt and shame pit you're in now is natural and part of the process. Don't fight the feelings- they're there for a reason. But don't flagellate yourself either. Before you can accept his forgiveness (or even really deserve it if it's ever offered), you need to become the person you would find worthy to forgive. It's a hard concept to wrap your head around... like, I couldn't forgive myself until I stared all my broken ugliness down in in the face. It was ugly. I nearly killed myself. But without that, I wouldn't have become so sick of myself that I actually began to change.

This is going to be the fight for your life. You can't take that on with an empty tank. If you're going to do right by your BH and ever hope to reconcile, you need to care for yourself. There's a lot of energy you're going to have to expend emotionally. You're going to get exhausted. The stress will drain you immensely. If you're not properly cared for (fed, exercised, given downtime to recharge), you're not going to have the strength to do the work.

Draining yourself and dying for the sake of showing your BH how sorry you are by burning yourself on your M's funeral pyre isn't going to fix anything. If you're going to fix the M, you need to fix yourself. Care for yourself (eat well, sleep well, exercise well), so you can heal yourself.

Your BH is going to hate your guts. I nearly divorced my H for the escalation of anger (getting abusive emotionally and verbally). I said, "IC or D, your pick." It was a dick move, but I knew that I couldn't heal and our M was certainly not going to heal by him not getting help in his own healing.

It's going to get ugly, but if you hang in there and just LISTEN without defensiveness, you'll find your BH will be able to calm down. He's in PTSD mode right now. His trauma over your betrayal is sharp and deep and raw. How are you going to be able to help him heal if you're drained and balled up on the floor?

Not helping yourself gather strength and heal right now is a form of selfishness. It's like trying to manipulate him into forgiveness or mercy by becoming a weak and helpless child. Children don't care for themselves- they don't know how. Your BH doesn't need a child right now. He needs a woman with strength and perseverance who can lead by example and own her shit and grow from it. You can't do that without caring for yourself.

Shame is debilitating and ME focused. Guilt is strengthening and OTHER focused. Shame says, "I don't deserve to live, I'm such a horrible person, I don't deserve anything good like healing and care." Guilt says, "I'm so sick of myself and what I've done. I am DETERMINED to NEVER do this again. I will grow and strengthen myself so that I can be the BEST version of myself. My family deserves a strong woman in their lives. I WILL GROW AND BECOME HER."

Hope this helps!

BS's have their own work to do. It's not right and it's not fair, but nothing about adultery is right or fair. Learning to cope with insecurity is part of the process and IME, the key to it is learning to trust oneself, so that if the WS flakes again, we're not emotionally dependent upon them. It's not as easy as it sounds though.

That said, there's nothing in the healing process which requires abuse. While it's not unusual for there to be an incident of harsh words/name calling and maybe even a handful of such incidents, if it's become a part of the landscape, that's not something which will resolve on its own. Cheating is bad. Cheating is wrong. No cheater is owed a second chance. All that's true. But as BS's, if we find ourselves behaving monstrously in response to it, that's not a legitimate way of coping. It's too damaging for the relationship to ultimately survive or even for our self-worth to survive.

WS's have to learn boundaries, and those boundaries apply to EVERYONE. BS's will often fail to see the merit in the evenhanded application of those boundaries because they long to feel special again, an exception to the rule, an extension of their mate... and that too is part of the work we have to do. Your mission has to be figuring out what your REAL core values are and developing the integrity it takes to create proper boundaries around those values. If you had really believed, with all your heart and with no doubt in your mind, that Fidelity was something to be cherished, you couldn't have done what you did. That core value wasn't strong enough to organically create behavior which would have protected that belief. Our boundaries encircle and protect our values. They grow from our inner devotion to our beliefs. Our word becomes our bond because it actually reflects what's inside us.

What your WS sees is you spending time prioritizing your own needs instead of his. He doesn't see that it ultimately benefits him for you to be strong in your boundaries. Boundaries aren't just about Fidelity and Honesty. They're also about the treatment we will except from others. If we believe in Kindness, Compassion, Civility, we learn to extend those things to ourselves as well as others. This new expectation, that the Grace we extend to others should also be extended to us, forms new boundaries organically. We're no longer tolerant of abusive people, no matter if they perceive their abuse to be justified. We protect what we value.

Many, if not most, of us start out with a kind of immersive style of Love. We lose ourselves in partnership and then emotional intimacy becomes emotional dependency. It's like one half of a whole rather than two wholes working in sync. Sometimes, the BS is so bent on recovering that deep feeling of enmeshment that they can't accept any independence from the WS, even when that WS is being as open and transparent as possible. It's an impossible dynamic because the cure for insecurity, IME, isn't having an enmeshed relationship with your WS. It's having that primary relationship with yourself. When you are whole and complete in yourself, you're free to simply enjoy being with another person. You aren't reliant on anyone else for your happiness. Insecurity evaporates because you are safe with the only person you can wholly trust... yourself.

Thank you for your replies. This is good advice. I need to be a little less dependent on him and what he thinks of me. I also need to keep working on my flawed values and insecurity. I feel so selfish worrying about myself.

I’m getting better with boundaries, especially identifying and respecting the ones that lead me to cheating.

But what about the boundary when he tells me to "fuck off" or "shut up"? Where is the line between doing exactly that and also showing him that I care about what is going on? I struggle enormously with this boundary and find myself keep trying to make myself present or talk to him.

We are in a state of crazy making with the up, down, back, forth, hate, love, cold, hot, future, no future. It feels like it may never end. He’s not coping. I don’t know anymore if he’s doing anything to help cope except grow resent and hatred towards me. He resistant to almost everything, including counseling.

But what about the boundary when he tells me to "fuck off" or "shut up"? Where is the line between doing exactly that and also showing him that I care about what is going on? I struggle enormously with this boundary and find myself keep trying to make myself present or talk to him.

You seem to be under the impression that this kind of verbal abuse is a normal part of reconciliation, but it's not. It's just verbal abuse. My fWH did horrible things when he was cheating on me. I was enraged by it. But I'm an adult and I don't get to throw temper tantrums whether my anger is justified or not. I NEVER verbally or in any other way abused my fWH. Accidents happen. It's a very stressful time and we are ill prepared for how strong the emotions are, so yeah, we do see BS's lose their shit and say abusive things every now and then. Just because it happens doesn't make it right though. It's an aberration, and if it isn't, that's not a tenable situation.

Your BH has had plenty of time to process his emotions and while no one expects him to be fully healed or fully perfect, he's not a child who can't be expected to keep a civil tongue in his head. If he gets mad at his boss does he tell him to "fuck off"? No. Because he knows his boss has fucking BOUNDARIES and that he'll be fired for acting like an abusive asshole in that scenario.

Restraint isn't always easy, but it's what we do as adults. If your BH can't manage basic civility in three years, it's become a lifestyle for him. He's unlikely to stop on his own. What are your boundaries on this? Do you think it's okay for people to say the kind of things to their spouse that he says to you? If my spouse told me to "fuck off" or to "shut up" or any of the horrible, bullying things yours says to you, should I be okay with that? The fact that you are a WS and I am a BS doesn't make either of us more of less deserving of abuse. Abuse is abuse. That's why we call it that.

Your BH might not like your boundaries, but if you don't have a boundary which demands Civility from everyone than you don't really have a boundary. If this boundary can have exceptions, certainly other boundaries may have exceptions too. You see how that works? It's all a slippery slope. "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." Stand up for your boundaries and sure, some people might bug out. But if your values are worthy, if they're really reflective of the good and decent person you want to be, then devil take the hindmost. If this guy's priority is to call you names and use you as his whipping post, in the long run, you're not going to miss him if he toddles off.

That when I take a hike or do something by myself to take care of myself, it shows him that I don’t care about him.

I just want to also point out that lot of times, as BS's our impulse is to expect that our WS puts us first. The WS has certainly put themselves first while they were cheating and most of us counted ourselves as lucky if we were so much as an afterthought. Here's the thing though, as a lifestyle, that's unsustainable. No one can (or should) live their lives for someone else. What we need isn't to be "put first". It's to be made equal so that we are an equal stakeholder in the decision-making process.

In the early years after dday, I was still feeling very insecure and suspicious. That's normal. If my WH wanted to go somewhere, he needed to be thinking not only of his needs, but mine as well. He needed to make decisions with BOTH our comfort in mind. He wanted to do his hobby so he not only invited me, he made every accommodation to make sure I had fun so that the time spent on the hobby became "we" time. He did such a great job of bringing me fully into his world on that, making it special for BOTH of us, that these days if he wants to go and I'm doing something else, I don't worry about what he's doing. He brought me into his world as an EQUAL. I have a complete mental picture of what's going on.

People tend to think in binary terms of "either/or". "Either he'll be happy or I'll be happy." The better solution though is to keep working the problem until we can arrive at a solution where "WE are happy".

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:37 PM, Wednesday, November 16th]

You seem to be under the impression that this kind of verbal abuse is a normal part of reconciliation, but it's not. It's just verbal abuse. My fWH did horrible things when he was cheating on me. I was enraged by it. But I'm an adult and I don't get to throw temper tantrums whether my anger is justified or not. I NEVER verbally or in any other way abused my fWH. Accidents happen. It's a very stressful time and we are ill prepared for how strong the emotions are, so yeah, we do see BS's lose their shit and say abusive things every now and then. Just because it happens doesn't make it right though. It's an aberration, and if it isn't, that's not a tenable situation.

This. There were certainly times in the early days (certainly not 3 years later) where I lost my sh*t and said unkind or unproductive things in the heat of the moment. Because I am a grownup who (despite everything) respects my husband as a human, I would always apologize afterwards. At no point did I cross a line into abusive language however (I never told him I hated his guts and certainly would never wish that he was dead). Did he hurt me? Yes. Does that give me an excuse to forever use him as a punching bag whenever I'm feeling upset? No. If we want to reconcile, we BOTH had to be working towards creating a healthy marriage.

If this boundary can have exceptions, certainly other boundaries may have exceptions too.

Part of your work in being a safe, healthy person (and a safe, healthy spouse) is to develop boundaries on what is acceptable. You cannot develop your boundaries with others if you have no boundaries with your spouse. You're afraid of putting up boundaries with him because he'll be upset - that's the EXACT reason why you felt like it was appropriate to give your phone number to male co-workers. I say this all as a BS.

We are in a state of crazy making with the up, down, back, forth, hate, love, cold, hot, future, no future. It feels like it may never end. He’s not coping. I don’t know anymore if he’s doing anything to help cope except grow resent and hatred towards me. He resistant to almost everything, including counseling.

For me, the hardest and worst part of being a bs was accepting that I was going to have to handle my own healing from the infidelity. It's so not fair - I did nothing to deserve what he did, I am not perfect by any stretch, but I was as good a spouse as I could have been. And then he decided to have an affair and blow up my life and now I have to heal myself for a wound I didn't do anything to inflict. The injustice of that rankled for a long LONG time.

But here's the thing. Let's say that I got hit by a drunk driver and lost my leg as a result of the injury. That's so not fair - I was just minding my own business and then some a-hole hits me and blows up my life and now I have to have surgeries and learn how to walk again and all the things. Now let me ask you - as unfair as that is and as much as it sucks, how far do you think I'd progress if I just sat in a wheelchair forever and called the drunk driver names? Nope, in order to heal I have to do my PT and do therapy, and figure out how to exist in my new normal - no one can do those things FOR me, only I can.

The point I am making with all of this is that you can SUPPORT your BH's healing, you can support him working through things, struggling, etc. But YOU can't heal him. As unjust as it is, he must heal himself. I understand that struggle all too well. But nothing that you say or do will make him want to heal himself - he has to get there on his own.

All of that aside - yes you did a horrendously damaging thing to him. Yes his being hurt and angry is understandable. NO it does not give him the right to be verbally/emotionally/mentally abusive to you; nor does that give you the obligation to accept him being so. That is not good for him and it is very not good for you. And is definitely not a recipe for marital healing and reconciliation.

The other thing I'll say (as much as I am sure you don't want to hear it) is that maybe for him the cheating was ultimately a dealbreaker and he's just having trouble accepting that in himself. Took me quite a few months after dday to be able to admit that to myself and then to be okay with taking the steps I needed to take to move on. It sucks and it's not fair, but I chose to not stay in a relationship lamenting that fact when I knew that the relationship was no longer serving me.

I don't know if it's ever 'right' to call the game, but I DO know that sometimes the only way to heal from infidelity is by going it alone.

Great post Ellie.

Thank you

I want our relationship to progress and I want to be a better person for the relationship.

I feel stuck between this is abusive why am I taking this and he is hurt and not handling it well. It’s usually me feeling really bad for him and myself. I only feel it’s abuse when I get a little burnt out on the comments.

I will keep working on self love and self esteem so that I can be a better for person for him and for the relationship.
I am codependent and my emotions are regulated by his emotions so I need to find better ways to self soothe.

The last thing I want to do is keep pushing his boundaries with my big mouth.

Others have said things far better than I could have, so I won't repeat their wise words.

But I do want you to keep a few things in mind. While self care is not selfish - understand that any time you are doing something that doesn't involve your BS that is a huge trigger for them. After all - we bought "excuses" before. We don't know that going for a hike [which is an amazing mind clearer and good for the body, mind and soul] is really code for something else. Face it - us BS have believed our respective WS was "hiking" before. You could wear a body cam but that would really only show what is in the frame and we know this. You could send us photos every 10 min but face it, we've been sent photos of "where you were" before. I don't mean to beat you up, but this is our reality. For a very long time we will feel this way. I know I do and it been years for me. I'm not sure that anxiety will ever let up. Over time I've learned to better deal with it. I'm still in IC.

I've also learned to curb my outbursts. Trust me, after each DDay in the Land of Chaos I cursed a blue streak that would make a drunken sailor blush and take cover. Now - I never threatened WH nor called him abusive names [now LTAP is another story]. But I screamed those curses until my throat was raw, and still tried to scream some more. Looking back, I don't know why WH even called me or was in the same room with me for a while. He'd have had it easier naked in a den of angry vipers.

What will ultimately make a difference - proven behavior over time. That's pretty much it. Proven behavior over time.

Pro tip [and this is a hard one]. Don't take the bait. When WS is melting and flooding, remain calm, cool and collected. A defensive outburst (and I know you will be tempted) only fans those flames. You don't have a right to be abused. No one does. But keeping a calm demeanor will ultimately be in your favor.

Proven behavior over time. Keep coming here kccalifornia. Keep posting, reading, asking and listening. Keep an open mind and heart. Read everything. Even and sometimes especially the responses you may not like so much in the beginning.

Proven behavior over time. Baby steps.

Wishing you the best on your healing journey.

I will keep working on self love and self esteem so that I can be a better for person for him and for the relationship.
I am codependent and my emotions are regulated by his emotions so I need to find better ways to self soothe.

You shouldn't want to be better for him or the relationship, you should want to be better for YOU. You need to learn to love and respect yourself so hard that good boundaries just become a natural extension of who you are (because imho, ws's never have good self esteem and don't respect themselves or they wouldn't be ws's to begin with). That is NOT easy to do - I too struggled with codependency and I know how hard those habits are to break. Any work you put towards doing that will do nothing but good stuff for you and by extension for every relationship in your life.

Again just my 0.02, but the healing from infidelity is multi-pronged. The ws needs to find their why's and heal their own broken spots and support their BS. The BS has to heal themselves too - no matter how remorseful or picture perfect a ws is after dday they cannot heal their BS; they can only support that process by being transparent and non-defensive and empathetic. After some period of healing for both the ws and the BS, then BOTH work together to rebuild a new marriage. All three of these things need to happen for R to happen - think of it like a three-legged stool. If you take one of those legs away, you don't have any stability on which to build.

This is just my take on this as a stranger on the internet, but it sounds like your BH has not leaned into accepting that responsibility for his own healing. I am not throwing shade on him for that, mind you. It took me a long time to accept it too. But until he does so, I fear you guys will just be stuck in this spin cycle.

I feel stuck between this is abusive why am I taking this and he is hurt and not handling it well. It’s usually me feeling really bad for him and myself. I only feel it’s abuse when I get a little burnt out on the comments.

Huh? It's only abuse when it hurts? Is that what you're saying?

Look, I'm going to get really real with you here. My fWH went on a nine months Craigslist binge where he was fucking three different OW and future faking with one of them with all the "I love yous" and other bullshit. This was AFTER an earlier flake-out ten years before which featured porn, cybersex, and emotional affairs. Somehow though, I managed to remember that I'm an ADULT and I don't get to verbally abuse people. It is absolutely do-able for a person to keep a civil tongue in their head while dealing with very complicated and painful issues.

Your EA was three years ago. I think maybe it would be more understandable if your BH was in the just-found-out stage, but that's not what's going on here. He's had ample time to deal with the shock of the situation, so clearly this is not about being ill-prepared to deal with strong emotions, and just as there's no excuse good enough for cheating, there's no excuse good enough for abuse, particularly when that abuse is ongoing.

I get the feeling that you're looking for ways to cope with your husband's contempt and that maybe you feel like if you can just hang in there long enough, he'll start treating you better. The problem is that when you change nothing, nothing changes. He's perfectly comfortable with a lifestyle where you take the brunt of his anger whenever he's mad about something, and I promise you, at three years out, it's not always about your EA. Sometimes it's about the dog pooping on the rug or the tire on his car being flat.

Strong emotions like anger will connect up to the previous trauma and create a convenient outlet, and there's nothing in his world more convenient than you and your three-year old EA when he's been irritated. If you think you can outlast his invective, you need to know that we've got BS's coming in here twenty, thirty, even fifty years after the affair who are STILL unhealed and unhappy. What EllieKMAS has told you about the BS needing to get serious about healing is absolutely essential.

I'm not encouraging you to divorce, or separate, or anything drastic like that. I will encourage you to stop accepting your a status of "codependent" though. Work through that. Get it behind you. Work on your feelings of shame. Get those behind you. Work on your boundaries and think about how your values shape them. Part of being the person you want to be is learning to love yourself. Try doing some creative visualization and look for your inner child. In The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson, the author asks us to picture the child we were at age four. Four year-olds are all about questions and helping, and they're super honest because they have no real guile. It's a very innocent age. When you can really imagine that child though, when you can see her in your mind's eye, it's easier to love and protect her. Be that grown-up carer for yourself. It'll make a world of difference in how you practice self-compassion.

I think others have told you this in different ways but your husband is stuck in a self defeating mindset that is manifesting itself in abusive behavior toward you. Your remorse for your actions 3 years ago is causing you to rationalize his behavior. 3 months of yelling and cursing? Ok. 6 months is a bit much but ok. 3 years? Not acceptable. That is not R.

You've done your penance. Continuing to take his abusive behavior isn't good for you and it isn't really good for him either. Have you considered confronting him? He is stuck in a bad place and doing nothing to move out of it. This is hurting him and hurting you. If he can't take action to move forward out of his pain, then you can take action by separating and letting him see if that helps him heal. After the separation, you both can decide whether to R but with him actively working to help himself heal or to D.

It sounds like you've done a lot to help him with only minor results. You could look at it like this... at this point you're essentially enabling him to remain stuck. He needs a decision point and perhaps a separation would do it. It may seem counterintuitive but sometimes what someone needs is uncomfortable to give them.

Thank you for your responses. I keep rereading them over and over again and they certainly help some.

I get the feeling that you're looking for ways to cope with your husband's contempt and that maybe you feel like if you can just hang in there long enough, he'll start treating you better. The problem is that when you change nothing, nothing changes. He's perfectly comfortable with a lifestyle where you take the brunt of his anger whenever he's mad about something, and I promise you, at three years out, it's not always about your EA. Sometimes it's about the dog pooping on the rug or the tire on his car being flat.
Strong emotions like anger will connect up to the previous trauma and create a convenient outlet, and there's nothing in his world more convenient than you and your three-year old EA when he's been irritated.

This struck a cord with me. Everything I have ever done wrong to him or around him (in his opinion) is an easy target and trigger for anger towards me. Like last night we went to dinner, after dinner we had to move our vehicles for street sweeping, so he yelled at me to move faster, I asked him to turn his lights off for me so I could park, and I'm called a bozo, and then he went silent for the night and slept on the couch. I asked why, he says he doesn't like me. I'm still invisible today.

I do need to work on the codependency issue which is why I'm trying to work on self care and self love. When he's triggered, he used to cuss me out or make comments but these days he just sleeps on the couch and uses silence and distance for his coping. So the codependent me wants to go and talk to him, to fix things, to make him feel better, to get the validation. I have learned that talking to him in this state only earns me a bad name and further distance.

So for now, I will just leave him alone. This is when I feel guilty and I worry that he thinks I don't care.
The codependent part of me won't make any plans at all in case he decides to talk to me and wants to make myself as available as possible for him.

So today, I'm going to have therapy, take the dog out, and then go get a haircut and color. I haven't had a color change since last year.
I need to learn to be okay to just let go.

You're in an abusive relationship... full stop. No one deserves to be treated like that. I have been with my husband for almost 16 years and I promise you, not ONCE has he called me names and given me the silent treatment for the night. He has never told me he didn't like me.

The speed at which you move your car has nothing to do with his A. In fact, I'll bet if you look closely, this mis-treatment started far before the affair. You A only gave him an excuse for it to ramp up and continue.

I'm worried for you. I'm worried that this has gone on so long that you don't know what healthy looks like anymore. In your mind "good" just means, no active abuse. You deserve better.

Kccalifornia, I wish my wife was like you in regards to your work to reconcile. I can’t speak for all of the other BS’s out there, but I do long to just hear that I matter to her. It’s been 20 months since D day and I have never once yelled or raised my voice to her. I realized the night I found out just how much I love her and I instantly addressed all of the shortcomings she brought up that she felt were lacking in our relationship. She has thanked me for taking charge and showing her that she means so much to me. I have done so much research on the subject and I really wanted to have a solid understanding of why she would do this, how it got to that point, and how she must feel afterwards. I am in IC and take Zoloft for depression. My IC keeps telling me that if I continue to put in the work, she will see how hard I’m trying and it will likely convince her to become involved in the healing process. Currently she just seems to want to forget about it and act like it never happened. We do have a great time when we are together, but when I’m alone, I’m in great pain. I tell myself that she just can’t emotionally handle the work required to reconcile, but it constantly feels like I’m just not worth the effort. It is taking its toll on me and honestly I don’t see thing’s continuing down this path for a whole lot longer. I feel selfish when I tell myself that maybe I deserve someone who can be there for me emotionally like I I am for her. Is like I’ve been walking the fence for so long and I’m tired of trying to maintain balance. I’ve told her things I need, but she just never goes there. Maybe your BH just can’t "get over it" and he’s just passing the time until the decision finally hits him, but know from my perspective that are are doing a lot of the right things. It’s a crappy life and a lot of us lose but I’ve come to terms with that.

*Removed because I replied to the wrong thread *

[This message edited by DaddyDom at 10:35 PM, Monday, November 28th]

@Copingmybest
I'm really sorry for what you are going through. I commend you for taking action to try to heal on your side, even though it is unfair. My husband and I have yet to address any problems that I thought were in the relationship. I've only been working on fixing things that have bothered him and the things that have contributed to my decision to cheat. It hasn't been easy and I mess up a lot.

Sometimes I ride the fence as well because it has been exhausting. Working at it from one side has been exhausting. I've never been called a bitch, cunt, whore, slut, or trailer trash so many times. I never thought I would hear that over and over again and still want to be with that person.

I'm really sorry that she isn't contributing more to the healing process. It's not fair to you. It isn't easy to when you are the source of pain. I hope that you are asking her for what you want. I know it's not fair and it should not be up to you but maybe she just doesn't know what to do next to help you. That's how I feel at least.

Maybe your BH just can’t "get over it" and he’s just passing the time until the decision finally hits him

This is probably what is happening. I think he's just getting closer and closer to being done with me. The silent treatment gets longer and longer each time he's pissed at me for what I've done. Ultimately it's his decision and I have to accept it.