SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

D-day was a month ago, a type of ONS with BH's brother.

BH is now "not sure what he wants" but keeps saying he also "wants me and that he wished he'd be able to just forget this, but he cant". I know that he is grieving and also doesn't know what he wants but what do I do about this? I know that he is stuck in the world of discovery and still very much in his own head right now. Before D-day, I was the only income and we were struggling. BH now has no motivation to get a job and I think he enjoys seeing me struggle right now. I've expressed to him that we not only are broke but I am not making the money i was ~3 months ago and that we really need to be saving. He doesn't seem to care and is ready to take whatever he can from me when he can. There are times where he says sorry for not working and he feels bad that we have no money, but I don't believe that.

Not only are we financially struggling but he doesn't want/act like a father anymore. We have a 2.5 year old and our son is struggling with the fact that his dad is not "here". BH hasn't left our house for more than one night since d-day. *check out other posts to understand the story*
He continually says that he feels like he needs to leave but that he doesn't want to. It's very hard with my work schedule (3p-12a) to find a sitter so I know that's a reason why he doesn't want to leave. I don't know what to expect or if this is something that I should tolerate? I don't know. I really have no support system and his family was mine but now they don't engage with me, within reason. Any advice is appreciated.

Hi-

First, lose any thoughts you have about what you are willing to tolerate if it is your wish ti save the marriage. I think it was very hard as a new ws for me to realize how traumatizing infidelity is. I didn’t realize that I had a lot of work to do on myself.

My best advice is to get very clear on what it is you want and why. Do you want to keep your marriage? If so what do you want the marriage to look like?

You need to figure out why you would have an affair, what is inside you that made you cross that boundary. The reasons you need to figure out can not be about the relationship. Nothing external. People get in bad marriages and do not cheat. They end the marriage or work on it.

For me, I needed to learn what I needed and wanted and to learn to communicate it so I could have those needs met. I had built up a lot of resentment without realizing it. I was blaming him for things I should have been accountable for. This is not to make you feel worse, but it’s to say these whys are clues to what you need to work on to be safe and healthy to have a relationship with.

Get very real and curious about yourself. Even if this marriage isn’t what you want self improvement is good for anyone.

If you want the marriage you need to learn how to be a successful rebuilder. There is a good
Article about it in the healing library and there are many good books on the subject. If you can afford individual therapy even better.

But what you are asking your husband to tolerate is so much bigger than you are making it. Infidelity is abuse and traumatizing. It does sound like you needed your husband to make some changes prior to the affair but that’s out the window now. The affair trumps all of it.

I also meant to mention that one month out your husband is still in shock. He will be for months. You will find for the next year at least her will cycle through the different stages of healing. It takes years to get back on track, and that first one is a doozy. I didn’t know any of this either and was completely unprepared for the consequences of my actions. I see that in you.

Most people bank on very few things in life. One thing that comes to mind that most people bank on is,

One, is that their sibling would never have sex with their spouse.

And two, their spouse would never have sex with their sibling. 

You (and most people) cannot comprehend the enormity of pain and trauma that comes with that kind of double betrayal.

It really sounds to me that you are complaining about his reaction to YOU cheating on him with his BROTHER. One sentence of "I know he's hurting" and the rest of your post is highly critical of him and what he's doing/not doing.

BH now has no motivation to get a job.

You said don't know what to expect and thats ok, no one starting out does. But, do you really think he's going to be flooded with motivation right now? Your actions have drained him of life.

he doesn't want/act like a father anymore. 

I seriously doubt its a want thing, its probably more of a can't thing because functioning isn't exactly a BS's strong suit especially this early. I implore you to consider something. If your BH had just suffered a car accident, was raped, held at gun point and robbed, lost his mom/child, <insert any other catastrophe>, would you be so critical of him and his ability to non parent at the moment? This is the scale your double betrayal evokes.

So yes I think you should tolerate it, in fact I think you should do more than just that. Your language and response to this crisis shows that you have little knowledge as to what you brought into your world and his. And again, that's ok. But what isn't ok is remaining uneducated. Being here is a great source for endless knowledge, but what steps are you taking to branch out and research trauma and the trauma response. What are you actually doing to understand the pain you brought onto him.

In what ways are you owning your actions? Because as far as I can tell, just from reading your first post, it comes off very strong that "it just happened" and you had very little say VS what I'm seeing between the lines.

Four weeks post dday you haven't even left the starting line. Its a drop in time compared to the amount it will take to work through your betrayal.