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[This message edited by user4578 at 8:38 PM, Sunday, November 10th]

In the Healing Library, there are a couple of versions of the 180. Read them and pick what is going to work for you. The 180 is to help you get emotional distance because it is so exhausting.

Basically, treat him like a bad roommate. Don't talk to him unless it's about the kids. He can do his own cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc. If he pitches a fit, tell him to go to his room or something because you're not going to listen to him bitch.

Also, search grey rock. You are a grey rock. You sit there and don't say anything, don't react...be that grey rock. There are tips on the internet that can help you.

User.

I really wish I had amazing tips and advice but I am here to say that I don't because I still struggle.

I just want to say that I am following your journey and I think of you often.

I don't want to say my H is more remorseful or empathetic than your H because I don't know, so don't take it that way but the only advice I have is let him care for the kids when he can and you do what you need to do to be happy.
Whether that is working out, going to dinners, reading books, going to bed early, etc.

Sometimes I feel this overwhelming need to be alone, to find myself and not be around him. He could have a movie ready to go and I will walk in the living room and announce I am going to lay down and be by myself and I do it.
We could have a dinner date lined up and then I could feel suffocated and need to switch it to be with friends, and I do it.

I have relied on him heavily for happiness, almost a codependency and I never really truly got to know myself. I have thrown myself back into poetry and reading and it has helped, some, minus dday approaching, now everything is derailed again.

I hope you start to find yourself soon and I hope he helps regardless of the outcome

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[This message edited by user4578 at 8:38 PM, Sunday, November 10th]

Like your IC, I think your decision to stop arguing and watch what he's doing is excellent. It's what we mean by 'give up trying to control the outcome.' Celebrate your insight - really. Do something nice for yourself as a reward.

My reco is to skip the 180 document and focus on https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/topics/598080/the-simplified-180/. The 180 doc contains a number of internal contradictions. The Simplified 180 is, IMO, clearer and easier to follow.

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[This message edited by user4578 at 8:38 PM, Sunday, November 10th]

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[This message edited by user4578 at 8:38 PM, Sunday, November 10th]

I am a people pleaser. For almost 50 yrs I have bent over backwards to keep everyone happy. I put up with a lot of shit. I can count on my one hand how many times I had had it and lost my shit. It was the indifference that scared my H.

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[This message edited by user4578 at 8:38 PM, Sunday, November 10th]

It’s good to hear your update, user4578. I’ve been off the boards for a few days, and I was hoping that it was going well.

You’ve already gotten a lot of great thoughts and advice. That weeks-long bargaining argument was actually a really good preview of what life can be like if you don’t learn to set new boundaries and continue to let him make you the villain. You’re really doing the only and best possible thing by saying that you’re not his mom or his warden. He has to decide if he wants to be a real grown-up boy or not and do it because it meets his goals. He can also choose to stay a child, but you’ve already got a couple of those, and it is the least attractive thing there is to have to be the only grownup and caretaker to a giant-ass man baby.

When I read your other post, he had you half-convinced that him going on the road really wasn’t the problem at all because if he was going to do something, he would do it anywhere. It is definitely true that if he is determined or interested in cheating, he can do it anywhere, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

But he has cheated now, and it is wound up in all of the bad behaviors of the road—a fact that he may slowly be starting to see now. Cheating is never about just one act. It’s always about all of the small slips and excuses and lies and hiding that condition a wayward to horrible behavior. You’ve had multiple band-wives here telling you that the road is where their WS cheated.

My WH was not in a band, but he did travel a lot for work, and it was much the same. The road was the place where anything was fair game. He didn’t have mom along to take all the fun of out things. He said in one conversation after dday that he didn’t feel married on the road. He traveled with men and women from work without spouses along. Lots of them cheated. Lots of them drank heavily and partied on the company. They engaged in single, immature behavior, and so did my WH. What happens on the road stays on the road.

Now that your WS has cheated, he doesn’t get to say that the environment is a safe one for him or for you. He seems like he might be getting that. He seems to understand that he has led himself into a situation where he feels that you’re not the boss of him on the road. That you won’t know about it, so he can do it. It’s a really important thing for him to realize that HE is the problem and being in the band that goes out and drinks and parties and encourages juvenile, single behavior is the problem. He has looked at the road as the place where he could stay out all night and not get caught, drink and not get caught, and then, shocker, he could even cheat because no one was watching.

Guess what isn’t and was never the problem? YOU. You and saying that he can’t be in the band and also be your partner. Because he just noticed himself that when he has no oversight, he lets himself do exactly all of that bad stuff. He doesn’t police his own behavior. He doesn’t have standards for it. THAT’S been the problem.

It sounds like he might just be getting a clue that you aren’t responsible for the way he’s choosing to behave on the road.

Now, whether or not he will choose to give it up is another question.

BUT, it doesn’t really matter one way or the other because you are moving forward and doing YOUR work. You’re really doing such a great job pretty darned quickly, user. You have come through being afraid of losing him if you take away his dream to being so pissed that you gave him your boundary with the band but also let him bargain and manipulate for a couple of weeks and halfway convince you that you were being unfair to letting go of the outcome and plotting your course forward to peace and a better you, regardless of his choices.

That’s amazing, and I really want you to acknowledge yourself and your strength. Because you’ve been afraid that he would just leave the whole time. And you still stuck with yourself and stuck up for yourself and your kids. Brava. Really. Give yourself a huge hug for respecting and honoring your needs and boundaries when, as you’ve said over and over, it’s not your norm.

Giving up people-pleasing is so freeing. It feels so much less demeaning and self-denegrating. It’s also really hard, and you’ll probably feel creeping guilt now and then still. You’ll probably still ask yourself if you’re being mean and denying him his one precious dream of. . .being in a hobby cover-band.

But the impressive thing is how you keep recovering from those moments and moving forward again. You’re doing the work to get out of infidelity and become a stronger and more self-realized you for yourself and your kids. It’s up to him if he is strong enough and has enough integrity to be worthy of you going forward.

You deserve someone who is and someone who will really be a partner and support for you and your kids, user. I think you are realizing that.

The 180 is a great next step. Just keep swimming. You’re getting stronger with every stroke. Hugs to you. As everyone keeps saying: just watch what he does and don’t throw him any life jackets. That’s when you’ll see if he’s got what it takes or not.

[This message edited by NowWhat106 at 6:33 AM, Sunday, September 8th]

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[This message edited by user4578 at 8:39 PM, Sunday, November 10th]

That’s an amazing update on you, user! For so many reasons, it just reflects you focusing on the things that you can effect and working on moving forward as the person you want to be. All of us here can see and appreciate how hard this road is and many of us spend so much time trying to control the outcomes for our WS. I can’t say enough that what you are doing will make sure you and the kids are okay, whatever he does.

I get the frustration with no immediate consequences for him. It’s really hard to let go of the need to see our WS struggle in some way with what has happened. It’s especially hard because everyone else is suffering such huge consequences from all of his actions, especially you. It just seems so cosmically unfair, and also, it feels like he won’t change if there aren’t any consequences. Which puts us in such a parental role in the middle of our devastation because we are still trying to "teach" them.

You are really so much better off just letting him hang out there on his own for the first time. With no one to direct hostility and defensiveness toward, he’s really going to have to decide for the first time how HE feels about everything. Whatever happens, you still get to decide if you want to be in it with him or if you ultimately can’t live with it.

Either way, you will be fine because of the work you’re doing now to take care of you. You’re right that you might have lapses (or more likely blowups) in the coming days. But each time, you’ll get better at course correcting and resuming the 180 approach.

I hope you reread your last post and recognize the strength you have. Keep focusing on you and the kids and having those great days with them. Down the road, you’ll look back on those and appreciate them so much more than you’ll dwell on his childish nights out drinking with his band.

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[This message edited by user4578 at 8:39 PM, Sunday, November 10th]

My entire family has been to AlAnon because of one member. We visited separate ones because of distance. Each of us got the very same message. We did not cause the behavior and we have no control over it or the addicted person. That is a hard message to swallow because human beings need each other for support, guidance and love. When they choose a self destructive life we really do need to let go of the outcome. This has been the hardest thing we have had to do. A couple of us are still trying.
I think your open hand to give him the freedom to do whatever he wants is scaring him but…there is always a BUT…you still need to protect yourself.
I spend a lot of time on this site writing about stress. It can actually kill you. That is because your body recognizes danger over and over and over again. Each time you get flooded with which are designed to help you run away from danger but all toxic if it happens over and over again. You need to protect yourself by giving up any control and just go on with your life.

Yes, to everything Cooley2here said. Letting go of trying to reach, guide, and motivate an addict is in many ways like the process of letting go of trying to control an unremorseful wayward. It’s not that you don’t love them. It’s accepting that your love can’t change them, only they can do that. And to do that, they have to see the issue and want to change it. And even then, it’s very, very difficult to break lifelong ingrained patterns of thinking and behaving.

You do have to protect yourself. Really take in what Cooley said about he effect of stress on your physical and mental health. You are a mom. You have to take care of yourself for you and for your kids. Stress and overactive panic response can become ingrained in your body and do ongoing damage. Many of us on these boards have developed long-term PTSD from exactly this.

Brene Brown is someone who is recommended and discussed over and over on these boards for her work with shame and overcoming shame cycles. Though it isn’t always said overtly, in my opinion, one of the real indicators of whether or not your WS is going to get it is whether or not they’re able to break through their own shame to care about what others are suffering. Shame is such a self-focused and ultimately selfish process. It seems like shame might be a motivator, but the truth for many waywards is that shame drives them to deeply selfish behaviors of self-pity and litanies of how terrible they are and how they’re incapable of being decent people. Everyone keeps telling you to keep still and watch.

It took me a long time to stop knee-jerk rescuing mode every time my WH took a deep dive in the shame pool. I had spent our whole relationship at the ready to dive into building him up, taking care of him, trying to keep everything smooth so that he wouldn’t crash. My automatic response when he looked like he was going to sink into depressive self-hate was to put everything else aside, especially myself, because this was, after all, a crisis.

So I won’t say that your WS’s hating himself and saying he’s a bad person is pure manipulation. Shame is a real, self-focused, unhelpful, unhealthy state. BUT, it has also been a process that allows him to sink into himself, stop working to help anyone else, and leave all of his responsibilities behind in favor of just crashing and taking others down with him. For my WH, it was a go-to that allowed him to give up. He was awful, after all, and couldn’t do anything about it. He had ruined everything, and everyone hated him for it, and he should just give up now because the damage was done. This was the spiral of shame for my WH.

If someone isn’t listening to you, you should watch for that. If they’re not listening, you should stop talking and you should start watching like a hawk. Because what’s been revealed to you is the fact that your understanding of the situation is radically insufficient. You are not where you think you and you are not talking to who you think you’re talking to. Now if you cease talking and start watching and listening, they will tell you who they are and what they’re up to."

This is gold. I’ve saved it for myself. It’s just great advice, and really fits your situation right now. So putting that together with your WS’s realization that he "doesn’t feel good about himself right now," is he listening to you? Or is he just listening to his sad, ashamed inner voice?

How does he think he’s supposed to feel about himself after he cheated on you and lied to you and refused to do what you needed him to do? Does he think that he’s supposed to feel good about himself?

I told my WH over and over when he said this: If you want to feel good about yourself, DO THINGS that make you feel like a decent person and DON’T DO THINGS that make you feel like a shitty person.

For some reason, a lot of WSs feel like somehow they can do shitty things that hurt people, betray themselves and throw away their integrity, behave like sneaky spoiled children, and somehow feel good about themselves. How does anyone manage to develop such an f-ed up way of thinking?

Where your WS is at is a crossroads. He may decide to stop coddling his ashamed inner child or he may hunker down and dig in. Just keep watching and leave him to it. As the quote says, "watch like a hawk."

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[This message edited by user4578 at 8:39 PM, Sunday, November 10th]