SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

waitedtoolong:

WBFA, I totally get your point. I had a friend who divorced his wife because she kept having stupid accidents in her car and he was sick of going to a body shop and paying $3000 every four months. The reason to divorce doesn’t need to be a good reason for everyone, it just has to be good enough for you.

My point to the OP, who swears it was one kiss one time, was either he doesn’t believe it which as we have seen time and again, he probably has good reason. Or he was unhappy in the marriage and wanted out. This was his ticket to do that.

I’m not dismissing the pain of having your spouse kiss someone once, but if it was truly a good marriage it could have been worked through.

I’m a believer in the Sean Connery philosophy in the untouchables where if they come at you with a knife you shoot them with a gun. This however seems like overkill. There feels like other things at play

Well, but I have issues with this post as well too. We cannot put 'kissing someone else' in the same category as 'getting into accidents too frequently'. In general I don't agree that we should be able to divorce someone else simply for reasons 'good enough to us'. When we get married, we take a vow to forsake all others, and for better or for worse. Kissing someone else breaks the vow against forsaking all others. Being a bad driver, not so much, and if one's spouse is accident-prone, then that appears to fall under the umbrage of 'for better or for worse' and, IMO, calls for finding other remedies besides divorce.

There are many many of us betrayed who, should we ever get seriously involved with someone else again, will NOT try to work past with our partners even kissing someone else just once, PERIOD. **Even if the marriage before that, seemed great.** I'd say that is smart. I mean, it is on us to work through our own pain and not hold the next person accountable for stuff they didn't even do. We have to do our own healing before we jump in. But deciding that in the future, any sort of cheating, even the so-called less egregious stuff, is a deal-breaker, seems to me to be absolutely fair. That is after-all what our partner took a vow for!

Now, I recognize that this probably is not what you meant--you quite understand very well already that kissing someone else and being an expensive liability as a driver are not in the same category. I get that I may just be really sensitive about this. And to get back to the OP's situation, I do agree with you on what I am going to guess is the larger point of your posts. Just because someone is the BS, it does not mean that they are not a toxic partner either. And a WS is not required to stay with an abusive BS just because of their infidelity.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 12:13 AM, Wednesday, February 15th]

Thanks for the responses! I'm sorry I don't respond but I like to read and reread on here.

I'm not sure what to say.
I know that maybe I need to improve my appearance and look better when I am around him vs just wearing leggings, T-shirt, no makeup, and hair in just a ponytail. When I was cheating, I would curl my hair, dye it, and wear make up. It was also around the time I was the fittest. I've taken a backseat on this because I don't want him to think I am trying to look hot for anyone but us. He associates when I dye my hair and try to looking good for the "guys at work".

I type things out on here a lot and then never submit them.

I try to talk to him. I try not to be defensive. I apologize. I try to be accountable. I try to be there. I feel like I'm pushed away and I end up putting up the wall too. If I try to talk about what I have done wrong, he will tell me to end the conversation. When I do something wrong or make a mistake to this day, it's a reminder to him of everything wrong that I have done before. It adds to the evidence that I am careless and have a "peanut brain". I read in the books what were supposed to do but what really happens is different. There's no talk about how I made him feel. Its only you you you you... you just wanted this, you just did this, you lie you cheat you are a whore. you did this you did that. Maybe he did expressed some feelings in the beginning but I think I made it hard for him to feel safe. I was defensive in the beginning and in denial about the extent of what I did.

Something needs to change. He tells me something needs to change and I need to make the change because he's unhappy with our relationship. He tells me he doesn't like me anymore. He doesn't give me input what I should change other than a hint that "you know what needs to be done".

I think what I want to keep working on is detaching (codependent) and stop trying to control the situation at all. I also want to figure out how I let him feel somewhat safe again with me. I feel like I keep screwing things up and whatever I do isn't right.

Tonight he said that he doesn’t foresee this getting better and we should start thinking about the next step. He expressed that nothing I can do will make this better, he’s never going to be okay with what I did (never expected him to). He won’t tell me the next step. So I have to ask him, so we need to talk about splitting up? He said yes and then he told me he didn’t want to talk about it. He said that I created this situation that He’s miserable with me or we split up. He told me he’s dealt with my shit for far too long. I apologized and told him he deserves better. I told him I don’t want split up but I want him to be happy.

Not sure how I feel except sad and rejected. I know that I’ve tried really hard to fix this. Maybe I haven’t been the best at it but I’ve tried. I wish he would go to some form of counseling. I wish he would read the books.

Your battle is his EMASCULATION & that he perceives that you don't lust after him / desire him.
Make-up & lingerie in the house; and bland unattractive office worker when you leave for work.

Wake him up with a BJ . . . go the EXTRA mile (light year?)

He needs to understand that you place a very high value on his manhood and sex appeal

Hang in there

I wish he would go to some form of counseling. I wish he would read the books.

The fact that he won't should be telling you something. People protect what they value. If healing this relationship was a priority for him, he'd be doing something to save it. When you look around just on this site, you find BS's who have read mountains of books, listened to choruses of podcasts, and worked through hours upon hours of therapy in order to heal. In the same way that we see WS's rolling up their sleeves and committing to recovery, that's what we see in motivated BS's. This guy adds nothing to R. At a certain point, I think it becomes obvious that it's because R just isn't important to him and it isn't what he wants.

Now, I'm going to be frank with you. NO ONE should have to put up with verbal abuse and name-calling in a relationship which is supposed to be loving and supportive. It's THREE YEARS later and this guy is calling you "peanut brain" and "whore". That's not acceptable, and it's certainly not going to be fixed by giving blow jobs and playing dress up as some would have you believe. Debasing yourself is THE LAST thing you should be doing. This guy doesn't respect you. If he did, his words and actions would reflect it.

I think what I want to keep working on is detaching (codependent) and stop trying to control the situation at all. I also want to figure out how I let him feel somewhat safe again with me.

These two statements above are a bit at odds if you examine them closely. I think working on codependence is a GREAT idea. What it can accomplish is making YOU feel safe within yourself. You can't control his feelings any more than you can control his words, thoughts, or actions. We all have to manage our own feelings. When you become whole and healthy within yourself, you're not only a safer prospect as a partner, you're safer in your own skin so you don't feel like a broken thing that doesn't deserve goodness in your life. It's okay to work on you FOR YOU.

You can't fix him. You can only fix YOU. That's the same for everyone. If he wants this relationship, he will choose it. Meantime, all you can do is be the best YOU possible, and that means HEALTHY and emotionally self-reliant. Not sick and codependent.

As a BS, I had 2 sets of problems. First, to R, I needed to know my W loved me and desired me sexually to the exclusion of everyone else. And I had to figure out how to know if the A was a permanent or temporary rejection of me.

Second, and more important, I needed to come to grips with the ways my W's A impacted my place in the world. I had to answer questions like:

What, if anything, made me responsible for my W's cheating?
How could I have prevented her A?
What did her A say about me?
What did my sense of emasculation say about me?

As I read about recovering from being betrayed, and thought about it, and considered feedback from my therapist and MC and fellow SI members, I realized I was not responsible for my W's cheating; she did it because of her issues, not because of issues with me or our M.

I ...um... reached down, found my body intact, and realized my ...um... systems worked pretty damned well for a 66 year old man. I realized I feared emasculation, but in reality, no emasculation had taken place.

I realized my W could do nothing much to make me feel good about myself. Being awakened by a blowjob might be nice, and it might mean that she desired me sexually, but all that did was help make me lean to R - it wouldn't do much about making me feel good about myself.

I realized that even though my W's A was a rejection of me, I was still OK.

Most of all I realized I was OK, with or without external validation. My W's actions after her A impacted my R or D decision, but they did not impact me or my humanity. I came to know I would be OK even if my W turned out to be a great candidate for dumping.

kccal,

I don't know you or your H, but one explanation of what your H is doing is that he's stuck in fear that your A proves he's not a worthy person. He doesn't seem to understand he has to heal himself. He's still demanding you to heal him. and he doesn't realize that external validation simply will not cure what ails him.

But that's only one way of describing the problem. I don't know what words will get your H to understand that he's responsible for healing himself, that he has all the resources he needs to do so (which means, in part, he has the resources necessary to get the help he needs), that he can D even if he heals, etc., etc., etc.

Right now, you're on the way to learning that external validation doesn't fill up any internal holes. That means there's a big mismatch between you and your H.

Yes, your A may be the reason you're at this impasse. Yes, the impasse may mean you'll both lose something of great value. But ending the impasse is likely to be good both for you and for your H, even if ending it means D.

I hate that what I did can destroy his self worth and emasculate him.
I think even when I put on that $100 piece of lingerie, try to put the moves on him, initiate sex, or try to be sexy, it doesn't make a huge difference overall in our relationship. I will never be as hot in the same way as the naked girls he follows on instagram. His view of me is completely tainted by my decision to have a relationship behind his back. It doesn't matter that the relationship was shallow, short lived, or that not much happened during its course, it was still a betrayal to our marriage and lie to his face over and over.

He doesn't respect me. I was disrespectful to our marriage and relationship. It doesn't make it right that he calls me names or when I do something wrong he will demean and ridicule me. I never know what to do in these situations when he's upset. I look at it as a defense and he's hurt inside. I look at it as his cry for help. I think it makes him feel better, cope somehow, when he tries to point out in some way that he is much better than me. I try not to take it too personally anymore and don't believe what he says other than its a sign for hurt.

He might not be putting the same effort into reconciliation but he's here. He's suffering in silence and I can only make myself available if he wants to talk it through. It's his choice at this point. I can only keep putting in effort on my part and show love through those actions. I don't have any other choice as I'm not ready to give up on us. I need him to make that choice and talk to me about it.

I still don't feel like I'm good for him though. I will always be a source of pain to him no matter how this turns out. I can be the best wife in the world from here on out but I will always have hurt him in many ways.