SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Maybe it's because I'm feeling the clean grief of losing our beloved puppy, but the 'drowning in someone else's cesspool' that is infidelity just makes me want to drop kick H right out the door.

First I’m sorry for the loss of your dog. He was loved and led a good life.

Your post (copied above) reminded me of something I say often here at SI. It’s not the affair that often kills the marriage but the behavior after the affair that kills the marriage.

The Cheater claims to be "doing everything" to save the marriage. Your cheater is hoping you will bond over a new puppy and he will get "out of the doghouse". ROFLMAO 😂

His actions prove he’s just trying to cover his tracks and manipulate you yet again. Good for you for seeing through his charade. You see the game he plays.

And good move not going to a client dinner. Did he honestly expect you were going to sit through a dinner and pretend everything is great? He really is clueless IMO.

He’s not a sec addict. He’s a serial cheater who chooses not to stop. Period.

I have just read your whole thread and my hat is off to you for keeping a cool head. I'm so sorry about the loss of your dog. I do understand how that grief must feel "clean" compared to the confusing mess that is your marriage.

Your husband does seem to be a skilled manipulator. When he accuses you of trying to control him I'd just respond with, "No, you are free to choose not to comply, but these are the things I need to be in a relationship with you." Or, "These are my boundaries if we are to have a relationship. No one is forcing you to be married to me, but monogamy is a requirement for me to be married and I can't move forward with you without an accounting of your non-monogamy." Of course, it's not that I think a well-put, logical statement from you is going to get him to give up his attempts to control and manipulate the situation so be prepared to walk away/hang up as you've been doing.

In my experience empathy is something we cultivate and improve upon. It's not something we just have in abundance. And we have to have the resources to soothe ourselves before we can worry about the struggles of others. So my guess is that your husband has little capacity for empathy, as you are discovering to your horror. The fact that he would harm, betray, and fail you so spectacularly and then express zero concern for your distress is a slap in the face, to put it mildly. I'm sure if feels like discovering you are married to Dr. Jekyl.

I lost my mom last year. It was sudden and traumatic, and it changed me in ways I would never have anticipated (both good and bad). It made me look at life differently. Every aspect, from my past to my present and into the future. It made me look at things like choices, mortality, character and legacy through new eyes. So forgive a somewhat long and annoyingly philosophical (but hopefully not pretentious) post, but your comments about death being a pure grief struck a chord.

When we leave this earth, all that’s left of us are impressions. Memories people have of us, connections we’ve made and the impact we’ve had on people’s lives. And it’s all so fleeting in the grand scheme of things, like breath on a windowpane.

There are some things in life that you can't change, no matter how hard you try or how much you want to. All you can do is live your best life and try to be proud of the impact you leave behind. You can’t do that if you’re broken. You can’t do that if you’re withering from the inside out because you’re spending all of your emotional energy searching for answers to unanswerable questions and propping up people who are like black holes – people who will do nothing but suck that energy from you endlessly in a futile attempt to fill the empty spaces inside themselves while blaming everyone else for putting them there in the first place.

I’m not saying your H is irredeemable, or even that he’s an inherently bad person. I’m saying that right now, he’s a bad person for YOU – and it doesn’t look like he’s going to make any effort to change that anytime soon. He is – apparently always has been, and maybe always will be – focused only on HIMSELF. His whys, his reasons, his regrets and his resentment over how his actions are going to define his legacy (at least with the people who know who he really is) – all that is his burden to bear. Don’t let it become yours as well and snuff your own spirit to the point where you have nothing left to give to anything else, including yourself.

You get one life. Make it a good one for YOU – and for the people who are going to share your positive energy and DO something with it before hopefully paying it forward (aka, your son). I sincerely, truly wish you the best of luck, no matter what the future holds for you.

This may be the best most accurate and appropriate thing I have ever seen written about how to go about dealing with the aftermath of infidelity on this site or anywhere:

If he wants to hoard his secret life like it's a box of treasure instead of a shit filled cesspool, I can't change that, but I can change what I do while he continues to lie.

I know you can't feel it now but you should be so proud of yourself for the strides you have taken in such a short period of time.

I would really encourage you to start enforcing some 180 in your life. It will help deal w/ the pain, and decrease the chaos you are feeling.
Make it clear to him, that if gets a dog it's his, and 10000% his responsibility.

If he wants to hoard his secret life like it's a box of treasure instead of a shit filled cesspool, I can't change that, but I can change what I do while he continues to lie. The other night he cried on the phone to me and said he didn't want to lose me, he wants our marriage 'more than anything' and that he's just 'trying and trying to come to a place where I can confide in you'.

I know it probably doesn't feel like it right now but you're doing so well. Like, I'm legitimately impressed with your instincts and your insight into the situation so quickly.

If he wanted your marriage "more than anything", he'd be willing to do anything to save it. He's not willing to meet your most basic of requests. What is he waiting for.

There are some things in life that you can't change, no matter how hard you try or how much you want to. All you can do is live your best life and try to be proud of the impact you leave behind. You can’t do that if you’re broken. You can’t do that if you’re withering from the inside out because you’re spending all of your emotional energy searching for answers to unanswerable questions and propping up people who are like black holes – people who will do nothing but suck that energy from you endlessly in a futile attempt to fill the empty spaces inside themselves while blaming everyone else for putting them there in the first place.

I'm so sorry about your mom, what a terrible loss. I hate that it often takes something so catastrophic to bring perspective, but it's also one of the small gifts that come in its wake. I'm really taking your words to heart and I've been thinking about this a lot lately. About the 'theft' of energy from the people who genuinely love me, my son who loves and needs me, and myself. I honestly don't know how much energy it would take from me if I chose to stay married and reinvent our marriage with this new knowledge of the underlying foundation. And where that energy would not go, while it's going into that reinvention. Would I take it from myself? My son? My family and friends? My career?

I don't know what people are seeing when they say I'm doing great because I'm so mired in molasses. Leaving my marriage without even trying to fix it feels impossible. Staying in my marriage with the knowledge of everything that's been underlying it also feels impossible. Neither option feels healthy or endurable. I just feel wedged between a rock and a hard place and making any move at all is just beyond me. I'm in so much pain, it's hard to know what inside me comes from a healthy place and what comes from the pain.

So he did give me a timeline last night and I immediately saw how short it was and as I skimmed down the very short page I also saw that it had all this filler in it, really minor things like flirtations and fantasies but that were described in a lot of detail. Like the unspoken message was that most of the things he did were minor, plus a few big things that got one line mentions. Like he wanted me to not focus on the escorts and the girlfriends as I read about impure thoughts instead.

I immediately told him I already have a lot more info than anything included on this joke of a timeline, please give me a real one. He argued with me but now that we've had some time apart and I've spent so much time reading things and talking to people who have experience with this I notice that his arguments never address the real subject, they're all tangential or deflections. I have to cut him off and tell him "We're talking about your lack of honesty on this timeline" or he'll bend the argument to something completely different.

This is why having bullet notes in front of me has been so helpful, it's the only thing that makes me feel like I'm anchored to the ground when he starts bending and twisting things. I just need a single point, a single sentence to keep me focused on the reality he keeps twisting. I notice now that he twists my reality all the time! He twisted the reality of our marriage, and kept me content with the facade of our happiness. Every argument starts out with one point and gets twisted to something different. And I'm alternately furious and then just tired of trying to forcefully defend the bullet point reality we're supposed to be addressing. Today I'm just exhausted.

This is gruesome but something to think about.. Do you remember that young man somewhere out west who fell and his arm got jammed and he could not get it out. He had to amputate his own arm to survive. That’s kind of where you are. It’s very hard to see you surviving in a healthy way if you stay with him. He does not appear to have the capacity, the ability, to see what you need from him because he has no depth. He lives on the surface and what he does on the surface is have sex with his many women as he can. That’s his life because that is who he is.

I always think the people who come here and ask for advice need to make their own decisions but I’m kind of nagging you a little bit because you’re so miserable and will be if you stay married to him.

I always think the people who come here and ask for advice need to make their own decisions but I’m kind of nagging you a little bit because you’re so miserable and will be if you stay married to him.

What if I initiate a divorce and a year from now realize that I hadn't even tried to fix things, could I live with that myself? Could I look at my son with confidence that I did everything I could? I read about people going to therapy and recovery retreats after infidelity and I'm so jealous of those people. I want to try to fix my marriage but I have nothing to work with. He doesn't want a divorce, he says, but his actions are only leading us there! It's like he's passively forcing me to divorce him while saying out loud that he wants to stay married. And I've seen him cry more in the last few weeks than in the 20 years before that we've known each other and part of me is aching for him, but then the new cynical side of me thinks this is more manipulation. Because if he was actually in that much pain, he'd want to resolve this. But the reality is even if he were somehow fixable, I don't think I'd ever be sure that he was "fixed". I don't know if I could ever, EVER trust him again. And that would even be in the best case scenario that he genuinely wanted to fix things, which he doesn't seem to.

On paper he could probably defend himself by saying he begged me to help him, admitted his wrongdoings, gave me a timeline, and said he wanted to stay married - and all of that would be technically true. But you'd have to feel the energy that he's putting into all of those things to feel how wrong all of those claims would be. He begged me to help HIM without ever once doing anything I've asked him to help ME. He admitted a small fraction of his affairs and denied others that I know for a fact he's done. He says he wants to stay married but complies with nothing that I've told him are deal breakers. His timeline was a joke, it doesn't have a single escort on it and claims he knew the Whistlesucker was 6 months when the text exchanges about the trip with her were from October, 2020. None of the things he's doing have any weight behind them. They're not even the bare minimum, they're like a worker rearranging paperclips at their desk and letting their work phone ring unanswered - yes, they're at work and doing something, but they're still not doing their job.

I feel so alone without the person I still think of as 'my husband'. I want to go back in time, climb in bed with that version of him and tell him all of the awful things this other husband is doing and cry while he comforts me. I know that's crazy but I miss him so much, my best friend. I've come to accept that he was largely an illusion, in my mind, but I still love that husband so much. I can envision a future in which I divorce THIS husband, the one in the garage apartment with the shitty timeline, but what about that other husband? How do other people deal with this????

Also how does he get away with this without even having to fix anything that he broke?? How does he get the marriage, the faithful wife who truly loved him, the fantastic child, the house we built, the trips we took and memories we have - and then he also gets a buffet of other women for decades -- and then he gets to skip the part where he does the hard work to confess, apologize, make amends, work on himself? How is that at all fair? How does he get to dip out of the hard parts while indulging in an orgy of things that made him feel good? When do the scales balance? Do they ever???

Dearest Sigyn,

It is terrible you are here. So sorry. I, too, am amazed at your comportment through all of this. You are so strong. You can do this. There is a wealth of insight in these many postings. Great discussions, everyone.

Your story of your WH's perfidious behavior could have been my husband's. It's the same story of extra-marital shenanigans, same shiny facade, same unwillingness to soul search, same incapacity for empathy. While our husbands are both reading, line for line, from the long-term-marriage-serial-cheaters' handbook, upon D-day 8 months ago I reacted with relief and foolish hope ( am I still hopeful? ) that our marriage could be saved. You are already way ahead of me. I only have a recent calm to help me see more clearly. I also am 21 years older than you and a mother whose grown children have suffered greatly.

Do not get sucked into hope. Whether or not your WH is able to confess all, feel remorse, etc. It doesn't matter. Just walk away. Your WH, like mine, is incapable of true love and true connection, of putting others before self. As strong as you are, you may still be tempted to risk it. But if you stay, you are risking your son. He is nine, on the threshold of becoming his own person. Men like our waywards are terrible with teens, maybe because they play mind games with them. I can't say with certainty that my WH's deceptiveness influenced our troubled teens, but I do think it had a great deal to do with it. For one, he wasn't present for them, literally or figuratively. He was always "working", i.e. too busy conniving to get his next fix. His needs always superseded the kids. Secondly, this type has a need for his kids to shine for his (WH's) sake, not theirs. For this type, everything is to be manipulated to reflect well on WH. That kind of twisting pressure messes with a teen's mind. In summary, your WH, like mine, is FUBAR. It doesn't matter exactly what the cause, what his trouble is, how much he glows to the outside world, this man is NOT what you and your son deserve. He is not fixable. He is not worthy and can never be worthy of you both. He has proven this. The guy just doesn't have what it takes to be a decent man.

You are young and bright. Imagine you are waking up tomorrow newly single, free from this drama, with a job, a precious son, and half your assets. Maybe you're not totally financially stable, but you can make your own way now. Would you choose to remarry this guy? I'm guessing: Hell no!

Peace.

Oh friend it's all so hard.

Regarding fairness, I don't think his failure to be accountable right now means that he is escaping the hard parts because ultimately, if he were to show genuine concern and contrition right now, *he* would benefit most of all even if the marriage ultimately still ended. Because he would be the one who was gaining self-insight, learning how to heal and how to love, etc. Instead he's just throwing a bunch of tantrums and trying to misdirect your attention away from his hideous faults, all but ensuring that he will pay the highest cost for them.

He wanted it all . . . he wanted the fun and the thrill of his "non monogamous" life and also the stability and regard of being a stable family man. Well he's shot the latter to hell and the former is going to be a lot less thrilling and fun when he's just a sad single dad whose wife sailed off to greener pastures. It may look like he's "getting away with it" but please trust that he's paying the price.

You see that he's just giving you tiny drips and drabs of information, so I wouldn't expect him to do any heavy lifting with a financial accounting or revised timeline. I'd assume he's not going to come through and start taking whatever steps you have lined up. You can always halt or reverse course if he makes some kind of dramatic change (though you must understand the odds of this are not good). The fact is that a relationship is a two-way street and while you have always help up your end of the bargain, you can't do his part for him. As you're discovering, his part was always an act . . . he can't even pull out a responsible, concerned, empathetic person when his marriage is on the line.

I totally understand why it's frustrating that he will play the victim (he's going to merrily DARVO you until the end, I'm afraid) and he'll probably even believe a good number of his own lies. All of that is easier for him than facing the truth. He'll lose you before he'll lose the false image of himself as a good guy, but hey, if he can keep both by getting you to believe his lies too, then that's a win/win for him. Your solace will have to be in being the kind of person you'd want to be married to (honest, kind, loyal).

My husband displayed a lot of these same attitudes in the months following DDay too, and in full disclosure I did not leave and we are together, happily, today. He was really haughty and indignant at first, and his "timeline" was laughably short, as were his attempts to write a no contact letter (he wrote a "long version" that was 5 sentences, and a short version that was 2). But I'd say that what I was counting on was that his 6 month affair and his subsequent entitlement and acting out were the exception, not the rule. He seemed to be having a classic mid-life crisis/conflict avoidant affair. He admitted to an emotional affair after five minutes of me asking questions, though it did take 2 weeks more for me to discover it was a physical affair (which I would have assumed but the OW lives really really far away). I don't know you rebuild with someone who has lived a double life for so long, and who has relished it so much that they give advice to others on how to do it. Honestly, it was hard enough to work through my husband's "one thing led to another" affair. That's not to say it can't be done . . . I'm sure someone somewhere has done it. But again, you can't do your husband's work for him. All you can do is have boundaries and enforce them.

If you're not ready to work towards ending the marriage, it might just help to have some language that describes your situation. You could say you are "in house separated" so that you have a shorthand to shut down his attempts to get you to do normal married things like attending his work dinner or buying a puppy. This may also subtly shift the power dynamic because he will be put on notice that the onus is on him to "un-separate" you two by being pro-active rather than the onus being on you to "un-marry" you two.

He doesn't want to divorce. He also doesn't want to reconcile. He wants to rugsweep.

It's normal for a freshly caught WS to cry a lot. Those tears aren't for you,or the marriage. He's crying because of how this affects him. That's all.

^^
That's very true. We BSes can spin our wheels wondering why our spouse isn't taking action when they claim to want the marriage. But they want a one-sided marriage that suits them. They don't want to do a lot of heavy lifting to become the person they were pretending to be.

Just imagine the level of self-denial needed to sit in front of a religious community and pretend to be a model husband while coaching internet strangers on how to cheat without getting caught. That isn't going to be easily overcome and substituted with humility, empathy, and accountability.

It’s ok to take a while with your decision of what to do. I can’t imagine ending a long term marriage quickly, even in circumstances as bad as yours. I’m a slow processor and an over thinker.

But don’t base one shred of your decision on whether he can tell himself or others that he wanted to work on it, and you didn’t give him the chance. He is DEFINITELY going to play that card if/when you walk, no matter what you do. Or some other card that paints him in a sympathetic light. It’s spectacularly clear that he needs to look good to himself and others, so he will spin a sob narrative that portrays him as a remorseful person who sincerely wanted the second chance that you didn’t give him. (Insert violin playing).

But you know what? People will see through it. No one with a shred of intelligence, life experience, or empathy would blame a person in your shoes for walking the second you found out.

I believe infidelity is a deal breaker. But I also think some people deserve second chances more than others. My husband was a solid, devoted, high quality partner and father for 20 years before his midlife crisis affair. That and his genuine remorse and about face when I found out, plus the good life we had built together made me feel like it was worth it to give him and our marriage a second chance. And you know what? It’s still been two grueling, awful, life-sucking years trying to recover and rebuild trust.

I don’t know how one would go forward with someone like your husband. He’s deceived and endangered you from the get-go. I can’t imagine trying to trust someone so self absorbed and deceitful and manipulative. He’s still lying. He lied in the timeline.

Again, in your shoes I’d probably feel stuck, too. The molasses analogy is something I can relate to. Take the time that you need to come to terms within yourself with the best path forward. But don’t listen to his narrative about how he wants the marriage so much; if only you were willing to do the rugsweeping and babying of his precious wounded self that he sees as reconciliation. He’s an inveterate liar who is committed to his lies. He’s crying because he got found out and might lose his comfortable cake-eating life, not because he’s remorseful.

All of that is easier for him than facing the truth. He'll lose you before he'll lose the false image of himself as a good guy, but hey, if he can keep both by getting you to believe his lies too, then that's a win/win for him. Your solace will have to be in being the kind of person you'd want to be married to (honest, kind, loyal).

I believe the above to be true.

You are in a tough situation and you do NOT have to decide right now about reconciling or divorcing. Get clarity on what you need from him, write it down. Ask him to provide it by a deadline. This should give you an answer about his willingness.

The sad reality is he is not ready/willing to face his truth. Many people here experience false reconciliation because of this. I was one of those people. Keep standing your ground and TRUST your gut if you have what you need (you are not close as you know). It seems like he will only give you bare minimum based on what he thinks you already know. This is 100% selfish behavior and is not helping or serving YOU. He is rugsweeping and hoping you will go back to your former ways of seeing him as he pretended to be. He also may not be able to accept what you reflect back to him knowing him without the mask on. He needs validation/acceptance/admiration- I doubt he could handle seeing what is reflected back through your eyes. He probably loves to live in fantasy land.

I completely understand the difficulty to reconcile the "good husband" and the "bad husband." It may be impossible. Each is a part of him and not the entirety of him. It is natural to long for and mourn the husband you knew, but you are correct it was an illusion of his making. It was your percieved reality because he hid huge parts of himself from you through lying, cheating, and deception. You have been through a big trauma so please be patient and kind with yourself.

You will know what to do when the time comes. This is so fresh and it is a process to work through and you may go back and forth. Do not put pressure on yourself to make big decisions right now. I really hope you are in IC as this could help you so much.

You have everything inside of you that you will need to get through this. Keep posting as you are getting support here!

The cognitive dissonance you would be experiencing trying to reconcile the two faces of your husband would have many curled up on the floor. It's too soon for you to decide - that is completely OK.

I kicked my ex on D-Day because he a/had somewhere else to go and b/had been doing a lot of other BS that I'd already found out about (drugs and money related - just being an immature clown). In short, I'd already had enough of him, and when I found all his secret messages his fate was sealed. What I despised most about him when I found out was all the time he had invested trying to impress all these buffoons outside of the marriage, when he could have invested that energy into our kids.

Regarding what the teen years might look like with this person if you stay together - a bunch of covert emotional abuse, including gaslighting you and your son, convincing you both how great he is, or what a victim he is (of you, his boss, your sister, the church, the world, whatever), whilst blaming you for anything that goes wrong and making your contributions invisible - all the while he will be nowhere to be seen for the real emotional labour that it takes to turn a boy into a good man. He'll turn up for the visible parts though so everyone can admire him (mine took our son to climb Mt Kilimanjaro - I think he was getting desperate for validation)

If you're really unlucky, mental illness and/or drug use for your son - I'm just navigating my way through this with various aged children. It's really terrible when you know you have done your absolute best for a child, invested everything in them, to not understand what is going on, and why they are so anxious they can't leave their room, or go a day without drugs, etc - take your pick of things you never thought you'd have to deal with.

Get your son far away from the gaslighting. If you are separated, and his dad keeps doing it (he will), he has at least one safe, sane parent to turn to. What you have is a brilliant support network - your sister sounds like a legend, you have a career, you are a solid human. I don't foresee your husband has anything of value to add to that, and if he stays in this situation where you are the only adult, you are potentially holding him back from one day becoming a decent person, and father, if that is possible. As they say, if you love someone let them go...

[This message edited by VezfromTaz at 12:27 AM, Sunday, September 11th]

Leaving my marriage without even trying to fix it feels impossible. Staying in my marriage with the knowledge of everything that's been underlying it also feels impossible. Neither option feels healthy or endurable. I just feel wedged between a rock and a hard place and making any move at all is just beyond me. I'm in so much pain, it's hard to know what inside me comes from a healthy place and what comes from the pain.

This is the horrific "shyte sandwich" that is referenced here often. On top of causing the indescribable pain of his adulteries, your cheating husband has left you with only the awful options you describe. He then piles on MORE crap with continued lies exemplified by his half assed joke of a "timeline".

I wrote a post in the General forum about duplicity vs cognitive dissonance and how initial intentional duplicity metastasizes into habitual cognative dissonance. This is your cheating husband. The probability of getting truth from him and the resulting clarity you seek is slim to none in my opinion.

As I read your gut wrenching posts, I pray for you. My prayer is for strength, for a hardening of your resolve to get out of his infidelity, or more accurately, out of even the orbit of his infidelity around which you are circling in your quest for answers and clarity. Answers and clarity which will elude you as he is not capable of that level of integrity. All he knows is lying. It is his lifestyle.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 2:50 PM, Sunday, September 11th]

Could I look at my son with confidence that I did everything I could?

Do everything you could...to do what? To "save" your marriage with a man who has not changed? Who is still dishonest, abusive, and selfish? No, that should not and must not be a tolerable option. The only marriage you should consider being in is one with a kind, honest, non-manipulative and safe partner. Your husband is none of those things, and only he can make this change. You can not do it for him (despite his highly manipulative language of saying he "needs you more than ever") and you can not even make him want to do it. That is up to him (and frankly, his reluctance to change and work to rectify the wrongs he's caused should be a huge, ominous red flag).

So yes, you are doing everything you can to be only in relationships that do not require you to debase yourself. Sure, you could do more/endure more if the goal is to "save" other types of marriage. But why would that make looking at your son any easier?

What hHellfire said! ^^^^^

Those tears and that emotion is for him. The wayward that has remorse and empathy at DDay is the rarity. Many take years, with expert help to gain a realization and remorse for what they did. Some, never get there. Who wants to believe that about themselves.

Maintain your boundaries, tell him what you need and the hell with the rest. You are giving your best shot at not just figuring things out, but also at reconciling the marriage. You may not choose it, but to stay through this and put up with him, you are trying.