I am not sure how to get the missing info. There is likely some CSA that has gone on where she's also affected by spotty memory of events. Could this experience with this scumbag professor have been due to some kind of psychological coercion? She said she went there (his apartment) and he made her tea. Could he have drugged her?
The bottom line is WTF was she doing in a another man's apartment while we were engaged to be married. That in itself was a very fucked up thing to do. If she had cold feet she was totally within her rights to call off the wedding. She did not have the right to put me at any kind of risk for catching any diseases, even a cold, strep throat, or the flu, never mind the other nastier shit survrus noted in his reply.
So sorry you are going through this. I have great empathy for you. "I don’t remember" is the bane of my existence. I also said many times "if this is how you wanted to live, why didn’t you just leave or tell me so I could have".
I also read your WW’s post in the Wayward section and was literally stunned by the similarities to my WW. The "whys" and "justifications" are almost identical. The selfish behaviors and need to be the "center of attention"…ditto. I also suspect my WW of having tendencies of Histrionic Personality Disorder (obviously need a professional assessment but the number of boxes she checks is scary).You may want to Google that. Here is a brief description:
"For people with histrionic personality disorder, their self-esteem depends on the approval of others and doesn’t come from a true feeling of self-worth. They have an overwhelming desire to be noticed and often behave dramatically or inappropriately to get attention."
My WW also has many unbelievable memory gaps. She claims not to remember having sex with the first AP. This would have been the first time she ever had sex with someone other than me. And she doesn’t remember? She’s sure she did because she remembers flirting with him, wanting to and then telling a friend afterward. But doesn’t remember the actual "act". She had 4 LTAs but "can’t remember" basic timelines, how,when, why they started, when they turned physical, how, when and why they ended…..for ANY of them. Conversely, she can remember all of her boyfriends before we met, and all these details for those. How "physical" things got. All their names, etc. and these are 42+ years ago….. I explained to her her affairs are really "men she dated" as well. We just happened to be married at the time. Why the memory gaps? Guilt, shame? Willful withholding?
As far as "what helps"? We have had very limited success in this space. We have tried her writing out a timeline (it is perfunctory and lacks details). We have tried question and answer. She clams up and breaks down sobbing. We have tried approaching the past like a game of Clue and her referring to herself in the third party. Nothing. The most promising thing we have done is try to walk through the chronology of our lives together year by year. I have a great memory and could lead her through "what was going on in our lives" through the years. We started 1 year before we got married (2 years before she started cheating) and it worked great for "mundane" things. She remembered trips, details within trips, day to day things and every slight, real or perceived by me…….I was really encouraged this would work. When we got to the cheating, I could speak to what was going on with "me" and "us". When it came time for her to fill in the gaps of her cheating…..nothing.
So either her own shame, true "trauma" of facing what she has done or something else, it appears to be locked away. On one hand, I feel she has decided "this is my story and I’m sticking to it" and on the other hand, I think there are genuine psychological blocks. Either way, we are not getting this out of her on her own. We have discussed hypnosis but she is adamantly opposed. She is afraid a "deal breaker" will come out (I shudder to think what could be "worse" than what I already know).
Early on, when my WW was still purposely lying, watching videos around the pain of the betrayed helped her finally realize she had to come clean. I also wrote her an "Impact Document" detailing how her cheating, lying and trickle truth have impacted me and still does. It was 25 pages long and very raw. My WW has no "natural empathy" so absent her being able to empathize with how I feel, I just had to tell her. She "gets" how this impacts me, she just can’t get over her hurdles to help us heal. One entry in her journal sums it up:
"The lack of my work to heal him is the ultimate betrayal. Wow. Shutdown, avoidance at all cost kick in. I’m killing us."
So absent professional help, I’m afraid we may be stuck and I will never get the full picture. My dilemma is I have plenty enough info to leave. Do I have enough to stay and "eat the shit sandwich" the rest of my life. TBD….only you can answer for YOU what you need. Good luck and prayers.
