SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

FWIW - I started a thread a couple weeks ago about lie detector tests, and it garnered a lot of good opinions and information. It's in "General" and here's the link:

https://survivinginfidelity.com/topics/659617/how-do-you-all-feel-about-lie-detector-tests/

(edited to correct link. I guess you'll have to cut & paste)

[This message edited by WhiteCarrera at 3:46 PM, Monday, November 21st]

Omg…..u all are going to love this. Lol
I was being kind of quiet, a lot on my mind. He kept asking what was wrong g and I told him nothing he would want to hear. (He gets mad bc I "can’t get over it") so I keep my feelings to myself, besides on here.
Anyway, he ended up saying, "it’s that stupid site u are on. U probably read some crap and it pissed u off at me. It’s not good to be on those sites bc there’s nothing but jilted women (he was mad at me) on there crying and hating." I told him it’s fucks like him are the reason there’s sites to begin with! The AUDACITY!!
He also asked how fucking long was I going to cry over it. He said it’s been 6 freaking months! 😳😳
He also reiterated that he would NOT EVER take a test. He said u either want to move forward or u don’t. He said he’s doing everything he can to better himself and be the man he wants to be. I said that he’s just supposed to get everything he wants? Screw the past and my hurt and questions…..I just need to say "ok honey, the past is forgotten and let’s move on, even though I’m positive u are still hiding stuff and lying." In what world is that right!?

OK, he’s given you your options: eat shit or leave.

What do are you going to do?

Sigh. Idk. I know he was angry when he said it, but if that’s the case then u shut ur dang mouth and not say anything until u are calmer bc all it does it dig u a deeper hole.
I start my therapy next week. God knows I need it. I’m going to go from there.

He also feels validated about refusing the test bc he says I will not believe him no matter what he says. That I’ll never be happy with the "truth" and always think there’s more.
Granted, that might very well be the urge…think that just comes with being cheated on, but that test would sure put my mind at ease about other women and so on. If he had not already lied to me more than four times (each time swearing that was it) then it might be different.

Wow, he just doesn't have any empathy AT ALL, does he? I don't think it would be a stretch to say that if the shoe were on the other foot and if it had been you out fucking strange and then lying about it, he would understand with exceptional clarity that you are ALREADY pissed at him and don't need a website to whip up hard feelings. Healing is typically two to five YEARS. Not six months.

Empathy isn't hard. It really isn't. It's just walking that proverbial mile in the other guy's shoes. But he apparently LACKS for intellectual curiosity as well as empathy because he's NOT even out there looking for answers and trying to figure out how the fuck he might fix this. He's backing you into a corner and maybe that's his intention, to make R impossible so that you have to be the one to pull the plug because he's too much of a coward to do it himself. It just doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that this is a situation where you need to put your best foot forward and cooperate as much as possible in an effort to prove your honesty.

Maybe he's just too embarrassed to sit with an interviewer and admit that he couldn't keep his dick in his pants, but you know what?.. that's the price one pays for not keeping his dick in his pants. Does he think that if you end up needing to divorce him in order to get your sanity back that people aren't going to find out? Does he think you'll be his little secret keeper and hide his dirt for him?

You've said you're going to go to IC and I think that's great. Personally, I put it off for way too long and suffered for it. But I hope that you're not going with a goal of finding ways to cope with a bad marriage and an unrepentant cheater. I know twenty-five years is a helluva an investment. I'd been married over thirty, so I get it. But it was everything I could do to survive in R with a fully remorseful WS who would have done ANYTHING to make it better. As it was, he changed jobs, did an interstate move, read the books, went to the therapist, answered any question I had, took me on vacations, bought me clothes, a new car, anything he even thought might make me happy. And I'm not saying he was perfect. He hasn't been. But I could SEE the effort, and I'll tell you.. KNOWING that your WS will pull out all the stops for your comfort goes miles toward healing the wounds.

Well, in all fairness, he has let me look through everything on his phone (of course he could have cleaned it first 🤷‍♀️). He let me read through his text messages, but I knew he would have gotten rid of any inappropriate ones, but I looked bc he might have missed some to others that he might have made comments to. I’ve looked all through his computer (granted that where he forgot he put the pics and video and I found it hahahaha). I’ve gone back through it since then. I’ve been In everything that he has that I know about, anyway.
But if it were me, I’d clean house and then say…sure…go though anything u want. 🙄
I have found nude pics (porn) when digging majorly deep (he doesn’t know I found) but I didn’t mention them bc he’s been addicted to porn for all the years I’ve known him. Mentioning the pics would be senseless bc I know about his addiction. It’s the affair(s) I want to know about.
His counselor and mine and both looking for a marriage counselor for us. I’m going to wait and see if they can make him understand that it doesn’t take just 6 months to heal. I think his problem is….he only has seen and gotten advice from people in his corner. His two therapist told him not to get the lie detector done (at least that’s whAt he said they said) and his friend told him not to. He keeps saying that "two professionals have said they don’t work and not to take it". He’s holding onto that like a staving dog with a bone.
I think he gets so mad and no patients bc he’s scared. Scared for me to know anything and scared I’ll D him regardless. He still swears up and down that he’s told me the truth and there’s nothing more. Of course, there’s no way in hell I’ll believe that when he’s said it at least five times since I found out.

There's only ONE good reason to refuse a lie detector test and that's because you don't believe you'll pass it. Sure, there are a few stone cold sociopaths who can beat it, and we've heard about liars who take tranquilizers before the test to some effect, but this test is by and large trusted by government agencies all around the world to troubleshoot their work forces, so I'd say you can assume at this point that the guy is lying through his teeth and then see how you feel about that.

Right now, just six months out, you're probably still absorbing the shock. I'd say the kneejerk reaction of the vast majority of us when we discover this kind of betrayal is to find some way to fix it. But here's the downside of long term continued betrayal, and that's exactly what this is when honesty is denied, "continued betrayal"... in time, you stop loving your WS. You can't stay in a state of emotional connection with someone who is actively hurting you in perpetuity. It's like hanging onto a ledge with your fingertips. Eventually, your strength wanes and you fall. In this case, out of love. So, the clock IS ticking. He can continue to deny it, but that's just the bottom line. Love and trust are draining away every day that goes by while he continues to be recalcitrant.

Oh.. and I don't put up with porn anymore, just saying. Your mileage may vary on that, but after everything my WH put me through, I have NEW boundaries and one of them is that I won't tolerate a partner who feels the need to look at porn. If that's who he wants to be, more power to him. But he can take it with him when he goes because he's not having it here.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:47 PM, Tuesday, November 22nd]

Wow. I have to reply that my WH decided that when I was upset or needed to talk about his LTA that I must have been on this site and getting riled up again by all the bad advice and bitter people here. He also feels the same way about the books, articles and therapist advice I have used to help me get through this nightmare.

I let him know he was clueless, and only a fool would think they knew better than a crowdsourced support group or multiple trained therapists online or in print. The real issue isn't that this site or anything we do to help ourselves riles us up or causes more problems, it is that they DO NOT want to discuss their A and they are using misguided anger toward our resources to make us stop.

I consider ANY attempt on his part to hinder my efforts to heal myself another act of betrayal and evidence of his lack of commitment to repair this broken marriage. I have made sure he understand that it is his refusal to join this site or any that might help him unpack his damage and find accountability the problem, not me being on here.

I tell him about the successes and failures I observe here and I use the resources in the healing library to try to help him understand the process and time required to try to find a path forward for us both.

Six months???? He is telling you to let it go at 6 months? The audacity. He needs a reality check. We are five years out from initial Discovery, four from the end of the affair and one from the last disclosure, so he doesn't get to use a timeline on me because he drug it out, he caused me further damage and he is the reason I still need this site so much.

Please, don't take this crap from him. We had a moment a month ago, when I was discussing another situation here and how it applied to my healing and he said every time you go on that site you dig all this up again. I laughed loudly at that and said I am on this site daily, so you are wrong. Are you saying I can't have my own thoughts or feelings without looking online to find out what they are? Don't you realize I would be this upset and outraged still if the internet never existed? How dumb do you think I am? Please, turn that crap right back at him. Let him know that if your broken marriage is still limping along at six years like mine is, it will be his lack of effort, his refusal to use any resource to help fix his damage and his attempts to rush your healing process or worse to hinder it that will have broken your marriage, not this site.

FWIW, I feel the lie detector test issue is a waste of time and resources, because they can be so unreliable, and some personalities, especially expert compartmentalizers, are able to control their bodies and responses to pass, just as others who are nervous by nature could appear to fail. I also think that as BS's we can never fully know the truth of the past, but we can watch like hawks and know the reality of our present. Your WH is trying to derail your efforts to heal. Unless he accepts any and all resources you use to help yourself and takes steps to show you how he is helping both you and your marriage, I don't see any point in worrying about the truth or your future together.

I wish you luck and healing and peace, but I know from experience that you have a master level denier and deflector who is doing further damage. I took anger from my WH out of play by making it clear that his anger frightened and threatened me and triggered panic attacks and meltdowns and depression that lasted for days and set us back to ground zero just like another lie did. I made it clear that the minimum requirement for me to stay and try to R was for him to find out why he was angry in the first place and keep it in check to make me feel safe. I will walk out the door for good if he ever yells at me again and he knows it. I have helped him understand this by using the same logic on myself, and working to understand the emotions behind my sorrow and my screaming at him and keeping myself under control as well. It was hard work but I can now calmly say the most upsetting things and if I can keep myself from raging, he can too. I had to remind him a lot at first that I am the aggrieved party here, not him, and that I am the one that needs to see effort to repair, not him seeing me rugsweep and forgive without compensation for all the damage he brought to our lives. Yours hasn't begun to own what he did. Call him on it, calmly, like a rock and watch how things go.

And almost everyone here will tell you that it is way too soon for MC. You both need individual help before you can start the MC stuff. We tried too soon, and my WH was as hostile and deflective with the therapist as he was with me because he hadn't begun to own his shit. I stopped that as soon as I realized what was really happening. He told the MC his goal was to help me get over his A and never thought a good goal might be to help me heal, or to help us reconnect or learn to communicate better or to strengthen our marriage. The problem wasn't his choices and the fallout, just my reaction to it all. Right. He was just taking up a cushion on the couch and putting a bandaid on a massive wound, and wasting all our time. Don't put yourself through that until you see some effort, progress and understanding on his part. The attitude he is showing you now is the attitude that enables lies and cheating and is the reason you can't feel safe moving forward. Good luck with therapy and finding your center again and good luck getting him to get it.

Let’s cut to the core issues.

He’s does not understand the trauma and Pain he inflicted on you and your marriage.

He doesn’t get it AND doesn’t try to want to get it.

He does not make any effort to put your feelings first. Ever.

Lastly, he will be stuck on the "no lie detector test" because it’s in his best interest. He will not put you or your healing first.

Soooo……you are at this point in your life where you have to decide whether you want to live with a guy who is your H and has the attributes listed above.

Stop having conversations with him b/c he doesn’t care. That may appear to be giving HIM what he wants, but I’m going to point out it’s for your peace of mind as well. You need to heal yourself. You need to readjust your idea of "marriage" b/c honestly he’s not a H. He’s a guy you live with that you know. He has limited emotional investment or maturity.

You probably should accept him for the broken jerk he is. And if he ever had a crisis, feel free to ask him "when he’s getting over it". No joke.

IMO you’d be better off living alone with a dog. At least a dog is loyal and loves you unconditionally.

His counselor and mine and both looking for a marriage counselor for us. I’m going to wait and see if they can make him understand that it doesn’t take just 6 months to heal.

Forget about going to marriage counselor; it's a waste of time and money with a husband who is still lying to you. The problem is not the marriage. The problem is that you're married to an asshole.

Also, your counselor shouldn't be focused on getting you a marriage counselor. Your IC should be focused on what's best for you, with or without your husband.

I follow a couple of women who were cheated on. One was an affair he had with a coworker and the other was a diagnosed sex addict. The woman who is married to the cow cheater has written about this for 12 years! She tries to write in a positive way but the pain is obvious when you read what she says. In the last year or two he has finally admitted that he thinks about the other woman and he still feels love for her. The problem is he loves his wife and children and does not want to tear up the family but imagine living with that knowledge every day. The woman married to the sex addict has written extensively for the last several years about him trying to overcome his addiction. He no longer yearns for cheating around but instead has become a workaholic. In both cases these women are still in marriages that are not anywhere near healed.

Well, like I said, he’s always been addicted to porn. I have never put up with it, but he’s always still done it, regardless. Just hid it better. He got help right before we married, but that didn’t last long. My rules were….no nudity in movies and def no porn. The no nudity in movies might sound too much, but if u lived with someone that LOVED nudity and porn then u would feel the same, I think.
Anyway, he never stopped and after so many years, I stopped caring. And I warned him years before (when he told me to stop caring about it or something like that) that the day I stopped caring is the day he needs to worry.
He has been verbally abusive to me and the kids for like 23 years. And not like calling us names, just screaming and cussing at the littlest things. It was pure hell. I almost left him a few times, but stayed for the kids. He was good beside the no patience and addiction to porn. My way of thinking….everyone has faults. Then about 2014 I heard a rumor. He came home telling me about it. 🙄 That is the best way to cover it up, tell the wife first, right? Granted, it could have been a rumor 🤷‍♀️. Then after that is when I just stopped caring…had to for my own sanity. I was raising kids and they come with a whole bundle of problems themselves. Lol. Keeping the house, cooking, homework, being referee (three of them are close in age) and all that raising a family entails. This is not including health problems I had. And u know the people that don’t get it until it happens to them and then they get it? Well this is my H.
He started to act better (rages and screaming) about almost two years ago. I thought it was great. I had decided before that that I’d stay with him until my youngest got up old enough to be ok with her parents divorcing. That would be about this year or next. So I was happy when he started acting better. Well, long story short, his testosterone was dropping. Him not having much of a libido (although he still looked at porn and got off) was making him less angry and not wanting sex as much. Making him realize what a fuck up he’s been and done and wanting a family and me now.
I’ve had problems since I started having kids yearssss ago with my libido. I didn’t have one and I had thyroid problems, hormone problems and other things that added to it. And I couldn’t take extra estrogen bc of other health problems. I’ve lived the last 20 ish years being cussed out like a dog for not wanting sex all the time ( and I would have sex like once a week. Sometimes more and there were times that my problems were flaring that I might not for almost 3 weeks.). In all honesty, knowing he was constantly watching porn at the office and taking care of business and the rage he had all the time didn’t make me eager to show affection either. He’s a very needy man and insecure. I wanted him to get counseling over the years and he wouldn’t do it.
As far as the lie detector, he says he’s be nervous and fail even when he was telling the truth 🙄. I don’t think the test is a 1 u are lying and 2 u aren’t. Isn’t there like a scale from 1-20? 1 u are def lying, 5 it’s a 50/50 and like 8-10 u are def lying??? But his defense is…I wouldn’t believe him even if he got the test. I told him that the test would help prove he’s telling the truth and if he failed certain questions miserably then I’d know he was def lying. Idk 🤦‍♀️. I want to kick his ASS for putting me through this. I’m scared I’m just going to flip and not give a flying F$ck!
Like I told him the other day when I freaked out in him; I’m tired of putting EVERYONE before me. I didn’t divorce him for the kids, and I didn’t divorce him (before I found out about the cheating) bc I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, I stayed with him bc I put my kids first (I had them and they are first in all), I get mocked for having compassion and sympathy and not judging people (totally diff story but that’s what set me off and I went off on him, lol). When do I get to come first? When are my wants and feelings the main priority? When do I get to be happy? When will someone put my feelings and wants first??!
He didn’t say anything when I went off on him. Sigh.
He also said in the beginning that the cheating was his fault, BUT me not showing him affection and wanting sex numerous times a week pushed him to cheat. WTH!? I told him he can tell himself those lies, but not to open his freaking mouth again and try to feed me that BS! He’s the reason I don’t want it all the time anyway!! Who the hell would feel loved and wanted when he does nothing but look at porn, rant and scream and cuss?
And u know one of the things that ripped my ass the most?? Lol. He gave his "other" free stuff and I stopped asking for stuff (for personal things like shoes or clothes) about 4 years ago bc I’d have to hear how I don’t work and help out. I told him staying at home, raising 4 kids is a 24/7 job. He said the roof over my head and food is my payment. Lol. Granted, he was being pissy, but I stopped asking for stuff. I saved my bday money and did odds and ends when I could. (So he’s giving his ho stuff and I can’t ask for money bc he gets pissy). I know he sounds awful, but it wasn’t all the time. My point in all this is that he was ALWAYS mad at me bc of sex and attention. What it boils down to, I believe, is that he has so major issues of his own. Instead of getting help for them, he let them fester and took them out on me and the kids. Which all eventually led to him cheating at least once, but prob more. He validates himself by thinking I wasn’t the "porn house wife" he wanted. Watching porn all those years corrupts ur sense of real life sex, emotions and feelings.
If he would only understand that telling me everything would work for him instead of against him. Sigh. He’s stupid🙄.
Sorry for the long lost, but I just don’t really have anyone to talk to. I start my therapy next week. And I debated putting anything on here bc I was paranoid that he’d get on here and read my stuff. Wouldn’t be hard to find which one is me 🤦‍♀️

Let's cut through to the bottom line. He doesn't love you. He has no respect for you. You set "rules," and he breaks them. And you allow it. He has been abusive throughout the entire marriage,to you AND the kids..yet you "stayed for the kids." He doesn't care about your boundaries, because he doesn't believe you are going anywhere.

See an attorney.

Do not show him this site.

He has no empathy. Zero remorse. But everything is ok,as long as you play pretend. The marriage will never be a real marriage,because he expects you to eat shit,with a smile,and pretend it's ok to be abused.

You need to find your anger. Rage. Get angry over the way he's treated the kids. Get angry that he thinks you're an idiot. Get angry that you have wasted decades with a man who doesn't care.
He needs real consequences. Your feelings don't matter to him at all. They're not consequences. Expose him to everyone. Move him to another bedroom. Stop doing his laundry, cooking for him,and having sex with him. Read the 180,and follow it religiously.

He's an abusive,cheating,asshole. Treat him like it.

[This message edited by HellFire at 9:37 PM, Tuesday, November 22nd]

Ouch. I see it.
But I think he’s actually scared to death I will leave him and that’s one of the reasons he’s keeping stuff from me (but he says he isn’t🙄).
He has been nothing but selfish for our entire marriage, yes.
Now, he is seeing what a jerk off he was. He’s admitted it and said that he wouldn’t have blamed me for divorcing Jim in the past. Of course, he said he thought of divorcing me, too.
If I’m honest, I can see the faults of both of us in the marriage, BUT (not to sound egotistical) it was all HIS fault to begin with. He made the marriage something that a normal person couldn’t and wouldn’t have put up with or been happy in. (Porn, screaming, cussing, rage, cheating, etc).
I stayed bc I’m not going to make a knee jerk decision bc I’m hurt. I’m still going to give it a year and see how it’s going. I’ve invested 28 years into….hate to toss it in less than a year. 🤷‍♀️
I just wish I could sit down and tell him how I feel and ask tons of questions, but he won’t do it. If I tell how I’ve felt all these years, he calls it insulting him and and he says he knows he did wrong, but he shouldn’t have to hear it every time we talk. (The times I’ve talked about my feelings) He said he’s tired of been bad mouthed and hearing what a shit he was and that he knows he was and doesn’t have to hear it over and over. But what he doesn’t get…..I’m not trying to call him a shit, I’m trying to express my feelings and how I felt and so on. But he doesn’t want to hear it bc he realizes how awful he was. I couldn’t ever express myself then and I can’t now. I’ve held in my feelings and anger and it’s come out as health problems, I believe. Stress can be a killer. Sigh.
He doesn’t understand that I just want HIM to understand how "I" have felt all these years. I get so depressed, angry, u name it, bc I just want him to hear me and see me and realize what he has put me through. I doubt that’s ever going to happen bc he feels know I wasn’t happy is enough, but it’s not for me. I just want to tie him to a chair and torture him with in depth details of my life from 28 years ago til now! Lol. Sigh

Oh…and the thing that freaks me out and makes me feel so hopeless…. When I cry or try asking anything about the past he says…."u aren’t trying or wanting to move forward. U are just wanting to stay in the past. U aren’t even trying to move forward. U just want to keep dwelling and bringing up this stuff."
I just sit and cry sometimes bc I feel so lost and no voice. Then he wants to know what’s wrong and I just have to say nothing and then he gets upset bc I don’t tell him. Then I tell him that he doesn’t want to know and then he knows what it’s about and just gets irritated.

When I cry or try asking anything about the past he says…."u aren’t trying or wanting to move forward. U are just wanting to stay in the past. U aren’t even trying to move forward. U just want to keep dwelling and bringing up this stuff."

Here's what cheaters don't get about that... you don't have any choice about their perfidy being on your mind 24/7. You're not in control of that. It's the result of TRAUMA. There's a book called The Body Keeps Score by Bessel van der Kolk who is unarguably the world's leading expert on trauma, and in it, he explains the brain function which causes this. It's not an infidelity book, but the results are the same. For your situation, I would recommend The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson in addition to or instead of. This book will go to enough lengths with the brain science for you to grasp the concepts, but it's also going to explain WHY the loss of a primary partner is so devastating. And he IS lost. He's not there the way you need him to be. He might as well be on the fucking moon for all the good he is to you in emotional terms, disengaged from the process of recovery and stonewalling.

Long and short though, HE fucking caused this. It's not you. It's HIM. And now he's whining about how difficult it is for HIM.

Nothing you did (or didn't do) could have caused him to throw his integrity out the window if he had any. You are NOT a god who can bend people to your whims, right? IF he had truly BELIEVED in Fidelity, if that was a core value for him, he couldn't have simply ignored his own belief system. We protect what we value. He believes murder is wrong, so he's not out their wholesale slaughtering tailgaters and people who cut him off in traffic, right? Not committing murder is an important value to him, so no matter how aggravated he gets, he puts that core value first.

What you're getting here is the standard, "sorry, not sorry". He knows that the right thing to say is that it's all his fault and he's really sorry for it, but then if you push just a little, he's just a guy whose wife has been denying him a fabulous sex life and couldn't help himself. The trouble is that if his sex life was unsatisfactory, that was ultimately HIS fault. With half the effort these cheating yahoos put in to finding another partner, they could have really impressed their legitimate partner. Let's say the sex problem is insurmountable though... there's an app for that. IT's call divorce. NO ONE is required to throw their values away. The lie is exposed by all the other people whose spouses cheated with no complaint whatsoever about their sex lives because in the vast majority of cases, the cheating is about EXTERNAL VALIDATION.

You could have met that guy in a see-through apron with a beer in one hand and a pizza in the other every day of his life and he would have still cheated. Because the cheating isn't about YOU. It's about HIM, and for most, that means it's about the conquest and excitement of getting some stranger to say 'yes'.

Your brain isn't ready to think about other things yet. That's not your fault and it's not your choice. Right now, just six months past dday and dealing with a selfish man-child who can't be bothered to unplug his ears, that's NORMAL. You're craving emotional intimacy right now. That's something you haven't had from him in a long, long time. He's prioritized his feelings over yours for decades, but now, because of his perfidy and betrayal, that need for connection is so great that the void it causes inside threatens to swallow everything else up. It's going to take time and it's going to take some effort for you to learn to fill that void for yourself.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 9:07 PM, Wednesday, November 23rd]

I give up 🤦‍♀️
We just had an argument/talking. I’m sure u all understand that any talking turns into an argument. I get sooooooo frustrated!!!! He is pretty much saying that me not showing him affection and sex all the time is what made him screw someone else. Although he keeps saying (in the past) that the affair was all his fault, but when we get down to it, it’s my fault as far as he’s concerned. He ask if I can blame him for not looking elsewhere for attention and sex. In all honesty……I can understand BUT and it’s a BIG BUT…..I didn’t go screw around bc he treated me like shit for 24 years! I DIDN’T CHEAT ON HIM! And this might sound soooo "not taking the blame", but all this is his fault to begin with! And it pisses me off bc he doesn’t see it!!! I can’t help my hormones getting screwed up…I tried many things to fix them, but him cussing and yelling at me bc I’m not in the mood sure the hell didn’t help. Plus, he treated me and kids like shit for 24 years! So he cheated on me bc of something he caused to begin with except I didn’t cheat on him bc of how he treated me!
I’m sorry. Sigh. Just had to vent. I get sooooooooo freaking upset and frustrated!
Am I wrong?
And he still says there’s NO WAY he’s taking the test. He says if that’s my stipulation then we will just have to divorce and there’s no need to talk further.
I’ve never wanted to hit someone so bad in my life.
I told him that he didn’t want the marriage as badly as he says bc if he did, he’d do ANYTHING to help me. Ahhhhhhhhh!

Why do you keep getting into circular arguments with him? What is it you hope to achieve?

For all your obsession with getting the truth and getting him to stop lying, you won’t believe the few things he’s saying that are true:
He doesn’t care that you’re hurt.
He doesn’t feel the need to change anything about how he treats you and how he behaves.
He doesn’t think he’ll done anything wrong.

He has given you 2 options: keep your mouth shut or file for divorce.

Which path will choose? Or do you want to keep up this endless charade until he decides he wants to divorce… at a time that is most convenient and beneficial to him?

Sigh. Idk. I feel trapped bc I don’t want to break up the family. I didn’t divorce him in the past bc of the kids. And he was an ass back then and now that he’s been decent the past two years….my kids have formed a relationship with him. I don’t want to destroy that. 🤦‍♀️ And me divorcing him will.
And yes, he hurt me and cheated on me, but I know he loves his kids dearly.
My youngest is 15….maybe another year? Sigh. I’ve sacrificed my happiness this long….what’s another year? I just know how hurt they’d be if we divorced. They don’t know anything and just think that we just have disagreements like normal married couples.
I’m just so mentally and emotionally exhausted.
Too bad there’s not a truth serum. 😂