SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

"Staying with you makes me a loser". One of the statements my husband said to me the other night. I haven't posted in a long time, but read a lot. As a reminder, I am a WS post LTA for 5 years with one AP and husband had an affair with 2 AP's for 2 years. He started his when I was 4 years in. He says he knew I had an affair, but didn't say anything. D day was 1 year after I broke it off with my AP. D -Day was 2+ years ago.

Since that day I have hit the ground running and have done so much healing and discovery. I feel healthy mentally and continue to grow and learn about myself, how to improve myself and true feel like my true self. Calm, peaceful, caring, empathetic, assertive, create boundaries, reflective, and the list goes on, but I now truly love myself. The road has been rocky to say the least and reconciliation is not for the faint of heart. I am still in individual counseling and continue to read and explore and grow. As I have done this, I have been able to listen more and not be defensive and own all my wrong doing. I'm at the point that I understand that shame is not helpful, I can own what i'v done, continue the work and do whatever I need to to help support my husband as he heals. His healing is non linear of course and sometimes he talks to me about it and sometimes he doesn't. The times that he talks to me about his feelings are when he is angry. "you were so stupid", " I wish I didn't marry you", "I lose in this situation no matter what I do" and the most recent " I am a loser for staying with you". I know it's his ego that is so hurt. I betrayed him and emasculated him and fed into all his insecurities that he's never dealt with. I feel so sad and horrible that I did this to him, I wish every day that I could take it back, but the person I am now is completely different and healing. I am thankful for that, but I continue to wonder if he will ever heal or have the desire to heal. I know 2 years is not a long time and I should give him all the time that he needs. He doesn't do individual counseling, that's his choice of course, I can't force him into that. I just wonder at what point he will seek help. I also noticed that the issues we had before the affair, still continue and a lot is one sided. He is not in a place where I can bring up anything related to his affairs, I have no right as he says. I can't really bring up things that he's said that hurt me as he tells me "they are your feelings and not my problem". I have asked him about certain things he's said or how he's said them, and it ends up being a 2 day fight where divorce is brought up because I have betrayed him and don't respect him and I have issues with not believing he is a good person and giving him the benefit of the doubt when he says something hurtful. I didn't respect him during the affair, but I didn't respect or love myself either, so it's really hard to think of how it effects others when I was grasping for love and affection from someone other than myself. Anyway, this is where we are. I don't know that I have a question, more than just observations.

Observations:
1. I have tried to help heal him, but ultimately I am the one that hurt him and I can't heal him. Only he can work to heal himself. I can just support him.
2. I will live with this for the rest of my life and I accept that and will continue to work to be a safe partner, friend, mom, everything.
3. We all heal at different rates and have different levels of willingness or desire to heal.
4. Shame is not helpful, it just makes me the victim and takes away from supporting my BS. I have these feelings and have learned to work through them, feel them and work through them and not bother him with them.
5. Our relationship may not be rebuilt as it takes two to tango, pre affair issues need to be dealt with and new growth needs to occur. He is not there yet.
6. This marriage may not survive, this may be something he cannot heal from. My job is to continue to grow and support him through this and let him decide when he's done trying.
7. I don't know how much I should tolerate as far as insults, hurtful comments, criticism, unwillingness to work on pre affair relationship/communication problems. I don't know the boundaries there and how long that lasts. Do I deal with it forever since I have done such a devastating thing that is unforgivable? I don't know the answer to this one.

Let me know of things you have realized through this process. Thank you all for reading and listening. Love to all.

Hi all, can I have the stop sign removed, not sure how to do it, thanks!

Mods alerted.

Stop sign removed

Hi Copec. I was going to address exactly this in a post over in general entitled, "I felt like such a schmuck," but when I saw your post, I figured it would be a good opportunity to post here as it is germain (thanks for pulling the stop sign btw).

Firstly, no revenge affair for me. Oh, I thought about it. I dreamt of it. Even picked out one of the APs (my former best friend) significant others but the faces of my kids kept popping up. My thought was that if her A had already disrupted the family and caused so much toxicity between us, what would yet another affair do but exponentially increase the deleterious effects on my kids? My next thought was a bitter,"At least one of us needs to think of our children since their own Mother hadnt during her A."

All that to say, no affair for me and I am now thankful. I think it would have double warped my soul.

Im not sure how long your BH has stayed with you (and you with him as you are mad hatters), but I stuck it out for a very very tough decade and that brings me to the subject at hand. You said:

I wish I didn't marry you", "I lose in this situation no matter what I do" and the most recent " I am a loser for staying with you". I know it's his ego that is so hurt.

Obviously, theres a lot of bitterness spilling out here. Sure wish your BH were open to IC in order to help him process those thoughts and feelings but I do relate to them.

Gently, when you said, "I know it's his ego that is so hurt", I know you probably didnt mean to minimize, but let me try to bring some clarity to this "hurt ego" concept by simply subbing in "obliterated", as in ,"I know its his ego that is so obliterated."

I can understate this. I had a horribly traumatic upbringing. Chaotic. Abusive. Ive lost close loved ones. Ive been hurt by friends. I have had failures in various ventures. Nothing even comes close to the ego hit I took from my wife's A. The fact that it was with a "friend" was, of course, a huge force multiplier. This was no "bruise" or laceration. This was an impact crater to my very soul.

This is what your BH is walking around with.

Why SO impactful? Well, as Ive peeled the onion over the years, Ive looked at the layers. The first, of course, is betrayal. Very hard to be betrayed by your betrothed over the core of your committment, marital fidelity. The next layer for me was rejection. The betrayal involved active rejection of me and my place in the life of my spouse. This is a horrible realization for any betrayed and has special implications as a BH. We deeply desire to take pride in our choice of a spouse. Conversely, and maybe more importantly, we want our spouse to be proud of their choice of us. "Proud" may be way too thin of a word here but its my best stab at it in the moment. To be betrayed and rejected by your "chosen" does something to you that is almost unutterable. It has changed me and I have never been the same.

The final layer is the severed pair bond. This is primal. It pre-dates the vows, even the decision to be exclusive. Its that thing that drew you together in the first place. "Attraction" is too thin a word again but Ill use it. The A severely damages the pair bond, sometimes severs it. BSs have expressed this over and over again in many ways. Most common is "I loved them and was wildly atrracted to them up to Dday, and the day after they disgusted me and I was repulsed!" Why? Read above.

And yet, I stayed. I stayed not yet understanding the above. I felt like a schmuck from day 1. I know now I stayed for the wrong reasons but was a young H and Father and didnt know what I didnt know. I mucked around in a wasteland of a "frakenmarriage" with a severed pair bond. It was terrible. I still feel the vestiges of "schmuckiness" in my soul decades later but have a lot more clarity now and am in a wonderful marriage with a mature and self aware woman who is also an infidelity survivor.

I have also come to the realization that in part, I felt that way because I felt inauthentic. That staying with her set me against myself. Not only did she betray me, now I was betryaing myself and that made me a loser/schmuck. If the AP "got away" with it with few repercussions, multiply that feeling by a factor of 10.

My poor attempt to communicate this facet of betrayal-by-infidelity is the result of years of grappling, introspection and therapy. I wish your BH would post here as well so we could reach out to him.

I affirm your observations:

Observations:

1. I have tried to help heal him, but ultimately I am the one that hurt him and I can't heal him. Only he can work to heal himself. I can just support him.

2. I will live with this for the rest of my life and I accept that and will continue to work to be a safe partner, friend, mom, everything.

3. We all heal at different rates and have different levels of willingness or desire to heal.

4. Shame is not helpful, it just makes me the victim and takes away from supporting my BS. I have these feelings and have learned to work through them, feel them and work through them and not bother him with them.

5. Our relationship may not be rebuilt as it takes two to tango, pre affair issues need to be dealt with and new growth needs to occur. He is not there yet.

6. This marriage may not survive, this may be something he cannot heal from. My job is to continue to grow and support him through this and let him decide when he's done trying.

7. I don't know how much I should tolerate as far as insults, hurtful comments, criticism, unwillingness to work on pre affair relationship/communication problems. I don't know the boundaries there and how long that lasts. Do I deal with it forever since I have done such a devastating thing that is unforgivable? I don't know the answer to this one.

May I ask, how long ago was your LTA?

...sorry if I missed that.

As to your 7th point, I am pretty intolerant of verbal abuse and consider it both intellectually vacant and non constructive. There is a time frame where a betrayed "venting their spleen" as it were, is understandable but to continue in that state for a long period of time is toxic, and not sustainable if any hope of reconciliation is to be had. If we are talking years of this on a ragular basis, then, as I have stated before, divorce may be a mercy for you both.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 2:12 PM, Monday, November 20th]

I guess I'm technically a mad hatter, but probably the tamest example on this site. These incidents happened many years ago with my fiancee. I've now been happily married to a different woman for quite awhile who is the love of my life, but it still sticks with me.

A few questions. I see from your prior posts that your husband deployed, so I assume he's military? Also, you previously mentioned that you'd slept with your AP twice, but with occasional physical meetups. Did the PA continue after those first two incidents or was it primarily an EA?

The title of this thread resonated with me. Allow me to project a bit, please. I'm career military. This tends to be a hyper masculine field, and many of us are defined by our jobs. Some are more combat-related than others, but your worth and contributions tend to be judged based on the risk you take in whatever your job may have. I would go so far as to assess that threats to someone's masculinity are more egregious in this particular cultural stew than in many other professions. Given this, I think the most soul-destroying label a man could have is that of a cuckold.

I also sympathize with how he must feel knowing you were cheating while he was deployed. You knowing he was in danger (I presume) while you were deep in the throes of an affair must destroy him. I can think of times in my career when I honestly didn't know if I'd survive, and the idea that my wife could be so indifferent as to be in an affair...well, I can't really even finish that sentence.

Lastly, as much as we try to tell ourselves otherwise, therapy is still a third rail in the military. A lot of hard work has been done to destigmatize IC, but we still have a long way to go. I now know I suffered from PTSD stemming from an incident in 2009, and I just started going to therapy this year. Seriously. Again, projecting, but I would feel like a loser if I were going to see a therapist because my wife had an affair knowing I was sitting next to a service member suffering from combat-related PTSD in the waiting room of the installation therapist.

That said, I applaud you coming here. You are among a very small number of WSs who come here with the goal of trying to right the wrong you did. That's good.

However, remember it takes 2-5 years on average, and you're still relatively early in your process. While he has no right to behave abusively toward you, and he also has to make up for the affairs he had (maybe come here as well?), everyone heals on their own timetable. If he still feels that level of anger years after the fact, with the benefit of therapy, then this may be a deal breaker for you both.

Stay strong.

[This message edited by 1994 at 2:59 PM, Monday, November 20th]

@DobleTraicion

"Why SO impactful? Well, as Ive peeled the onion over the years, Ive looked at the layers. The first, of course, is betrayal. Very hard to be betrayed by your betrothed over the core of your committment, marital fidelity. The next layer for me was rejection. The betrayal involved active rejection of me and my place in the life of my spouse. This is a horrible realization for any betrayed and has special implications as a BH. We deeply desire to take pride in our choice of a spouse. Conversely, and maybe more importantly, we want our spouse to be proud of their choice of us. "Proud" may be way too thin of a word here but its my best stab at it in the moment. To be betrayed and rejected by your "chosen" does something to you that is almost unutterable. It has changed me and I have never been the same.

The final layer is the severed pair bond. This is primal. It pre-dates the vows, even the decision to be exclusive. Its that thing that drew you together in the first place. "Attraction" is too thin a word again but Ill use it. The A severely damages the pair bond, sometimes severs it. BSs have expressed this over and over again in many ways. Most common is "I loved them and was wildly atrracted to them up to Dday, and the day after they disgusted me and I was repulsed!" Why? Read above."

This is so good. It all makes sense and this is what I know he feels like, he has said it in different words and I feel the devastation. I feel it deep in my soul and I wish I could take it back x a million and go back to my broken self and change all that I have done.

It has been 2 + years since D day so it sounds like he has just hit the surface of healing from this. I'm just not sure what progress he will make without therapy, but that is not up to me.

I am glad to hear that you are healing, I'm so glad you are in a loving relationship. I hope so much that my marriage can make it through it, but I know that chance is low. Either way, I plan to do whatever I can and heal to become a safe partner. Although I have proven that I am not, so not sure if that is possible.

@1994, The LTA was looong. 5.5 years. It started with a coworker and he left the job and then continued as a type of long distance thing even though he lived 20 minutes away from eachother. It was mostly an EA and then we would see each-other a handful (5-6 depending on the year) of times a year with sexting etc, so either way, it was ridiculous and the worst mistake off my life. I didn't love myself at all and was searching for all the admiration, attention, feeling of worth I could find. I felt empty and questioned who I was every day. I woke up guilty everyday and would rationalize it away like cheaters do. "We are just friends and talking" "We can end at any time", "we only see each other a few times a year" etc etc. Honestly I was miserable. I didn't know how to cut it off(I tried 20+ times) cause he would guilt trip me into coming back and love bomb. I also felt that if he left me, that would prove that I am not worth it. Nothing about this relationship was real, I barely talked to him one the phone, I didn't really know who he was in real life on a day to day basis. I ruined my marriage for this and I will carry this forever. I know people don't believe it, but I did love my husband, yes, its messed up and twisted, but was so selfish in my own brokenness that I could not get my head out of my ass and understand the consequences.

During the last year of my affair(no D day yet), my husband then found out he was getting deployed and instead of thinking I would have more time for my AP, I didn't want to see my AP. We saw each other the least amount that year and my AP was married and going through a divorce so I wanted nothing to do with it because I didn't know how to cope with anything. MY AP had cheated with me and his wife had also cheated so it was a mess. My husband still didn't know about the affair when he was deployed, but that's when he started cheating. He doesn't view it that way, he says he was lonely on and island and that's why he did it. He also says he felt the distance and knew I was doing doing something with someone else, although also says he thought our marriage was getting better over those years, so I don't know, can be both I guess. He checked out at that point, barely spoke to the kids, only reached out maybe once a week. He was not in a war zone, it was a calm deployment on an island, he worked in the administative realm with the military. Anyway, he had affairs with two "friends". This continued for a total of two years, both girls were friends of each other and still don't know that he was with both of them the whole time. D-day was 1 year after he returned from deployment.

I had cut it off with my AP as soon a my husband returned from the deployment, because my AP got divorced and wanted me to make a decision and my decision was that I wanted my husband (comical right, after what I had done, bat shit crazy to think I was entilted to have a chance with my husband). Anyway, I went complete no contact with AP on D-day and my husband asked that he continue to talk to and be friends with his AP's as they were "friends" and I owed him that. So I said yes, because obviously what I did was devastating and I did owe him everything. He is still in contact with both woman and carpools and works with one of them on a monthly basis for the weekend with the military. He says he does not love her and does not want her, so I should accept that.

@1994, you are so right. There is a masculine vibe that transcends all. Not only is my husband military, he is also a firefighter, so double that masculinity. He has access to resources for therapy, but feels that he can deal with this on his own and why would he talk to a stranger about it. I know war PTSD is life altering, but I feel that what I have done is traumatic and he needs trauma counseling just like service men and women need for war time trauma. I have obliterated him as @DobleTraicion has said and it is so true.

Both of your comments have been so helpful. It seems like you both are not in the relationships you had infidelity in (correct me if I'm wrong), but I am wondering what, if anything, your WS/partner did that helped you or would have helped you get though and heal from it. I know counseling is a big part, but what can a WS do to help.

Thank you again for your time and help, I really appreciate it!

Both of your comments have been so helpful. It seems like you both are not in the relationships you had infidelity in (correct me if I'm wrong), but I am wondering what, if anything, your WS/partner did that helped you or would have helped you get though and heal from it.

I had to move on to salvage my sanity. In my case, she cheated, then I cheated back. It didn't sit right with me even though I felt that was the cosmic way of balancing the scales, so I tried to rug sweep and move on. Ironically, given the topic, I'd later entered Army basic training. She then wasted no time by proceeding to sleep her way through members of my social circle and trash my reputation to anyone who would listen. I was beyond devastated. When I came home, I met my now-wife and we hit it off spectacularly.

Not sure what the protocol here is, but I'd be happy to communicate with your husband on how therapy has helped me.

As far as regaining my masculinity, the XWF drunk-called me one night at around 2AM after I came home to lament about how dumping me was the biggest mistake of her life and that she would never again find someone like me. I calmly informed her I had company over. I was unavailable for this conversation and likely would never be available for it as she wept drunkenly on the other end of the line. I then returned to bed with my curvy, blonde girlfriend who made me feel like the only man in the world and slept soundly.

That story makes my case different than yours in substantial ways. There was nothing left in my prior relationship but misery. Even had I not met my wife, I could not have returned to my XWF because there was no practical way I could look past what we had done to one another. Even if she had been 100% remorseful and did everything right, I knew it was all a deal breaker. You sound like your affair, while horrible, was not out of spite and was clearly not an exit affair. His seem like he was lashing out in immature ways and also had no intention to leave you. This is something you can both build on. But he has to be all in as well, which should include NC with his APs immediately.

[This message edited by 1994 at 2:54 PM, Tuesday, November 21st]

It has been 2 + years since D day so it sounds like he has just hit the surface of healing from this. I'm just not sure what progress he will make without therapy, but that is not up to me.

So, 2+ years is still pretty early. I too wish that he would invest in himself via good therapy. I have gotten guys to see their way clear to do so by referring to it as "coaching" rather than "counseling" or "therapy" btw. Does he know you are posting here? If so, feel free to pass along what I posted if you think itd help.

My purpose in relating all that I did was to possibly help deepen the level of empathy for your BH. I dont want to paint with too broad a brush but empathy from WSs to BSs seems to be a common challenge (it was with my first wife in the extreme but, again, we were also young(ish) spouses and parents. If this can derpen the channel through which empathy can flow, it may help both of you in your healing journey, whether or not it is traveled together or separately.

The other reason is to help cultivate radical ownership, again, not wanting to generalize or speak too broadly. Radical ownership cuts both ways. If after two years he is still here:

He is not in a place where I can bring up anything related to his affairs, I have no right as he says. I can't really bring up things that he's said that hurt me as he tells me "they are your feelings and not my problem". I have asked him about certain things he's said or how he's said them, and it ends up being a 2 day fight where divorce is brought up because I have betrayed him and don't respect him and I have issues with not believing he is a good person and giving him the benefit of the doubt when he says something hurtful.

This is not a good sign. Id say he is stuck and is still in "take my pound of flesh" mode which will do nothing but cause regression. It makes me wonder why he is still there. I can say from experience that the no-mans land of indecision is no way to live. I was not as outwardly aggressive and berating as he seems to be but was definitely acting out in passive-aggressive ways. All of it is a severe impediment to any forward progress.

Question, when he says, "I am a loser for staying with you," do you ever ask him why he is staying/has stayed?

ETA: I just found and read your original post from 2022 which gave me a clearer understanding of both your story and where you are today.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 2:02 PM, Tuesday, November 21st]

Copec

There was this old, really bad comedy by Cheek and Chong called "The Corsica-twins" where they were so connected that if Cheek punched his own face it caused Chong physical pain. In many ways marriage needs to be the same: Pain caused to one partner has to equate to pain caused to the other. In the ideal reconciled world when you reflect on your affairs it has to cause you as much pain as it caused him, just like when he thinks of his revenge affairs.

IMHO a part of reconciling is when both partners can sort-of look at each other and say:
"This is what happened, we need to work from that base and move forwards. What is it I want from a relationship, and does that line up with what YOU want"
And then you work towards that goal.
That goal might be that you want separate things and therefore you work towards divorce. Or that goal might be something you both want and therefore you work towards that.

This is progress from the initial stages where more-or-less all the focus tends to be on minimizing hurt, often by lashing out.

Based on what you share it sounds like one or both of you are more focused on being even or equal, and not in a positive way. Its like "I caused him 100 points of pain but his affairs were only 80 points (he gets a deduction because I made him have to have an affair) so I owe him 20 points of pain" while he’s thinking "She caused me 100 points of pain but my justified revenge affair only caused her 40, and therefore I somehow have to make her suffer for 60…"

If he truly thinks being with you makes him a loser… Well… set him free. If being with you is going to damage his self-image to an extend where he defines himself a loser… then there is no realistic way the marriage can be good. Make him that offer – tell him that if he truly thinks working towards a healthy reconciliation isn’t possible and it would make him eternally feel like a loser then you two should focus on a fair and amicable divorce.
If however he were to say "I want to be married to you but I have to overcome this feeling that by doing so I am in some way condoning what you did and that hurts my masculinity" then you two have something to work from. He has made a valid point on an issue that needs to be dealt with so you can reach your common goal.

I strongly suggest you have that difficult conversation with him where you state that constantly hurting each other and trying to get even won’t work. There is no accounting for your affairs and his affairs and the consequent actions that can make debit and credit equal out. You BOTH can elect to get out, and no – there is no "we can’t afford divorce" excuse allowed. The end result of that conversation should be either that you want to remain married or that there is no future as a couple.

If you decide you want to be married you two can then set the path to that goal. Preferably with an MC.

All this is so good and similar to what I've discussed with my therapist. I think I lean towards the keeping track of hurst/measuring as @Bigger mentioned because my husband is not sharing the load. I feel like it's all on me. And I get that, it should be because I left first and committed this devastating crime, trauma, choose what words you wish, and want to own them and be accountable for every action. I can only do my part, I can't do his part for him, so I view it in the lens of "I can only change me, I can only control my actions, my growth, he has the responsibility for his own stuff". It allows me to keep moving forward, continuing to grow and learn and be brave. When he has said hurtful things, I ask him why he is still here and he says that he loses either way, If he stays, he is losing because he is weak and emasculated, and if he goes, he loses me and our family and the boys. He loses the dream we had. I think the raw emotions he has and words he says to me are raw, unfiltered pain and I feel that. All his words and feelings are true and valid. But I also think he would be able to process them better if he wasn't doing it alone (not including my support of him). I think I just needed to know what the line is between expressing feelings and being hurtful/abusive with the expression of said feelings. I've always been timid, always thought everyone is smarter than me, more knowleadageable than me, I never spoke top, very much a people pleaser. had not the faintest clue of how to speak up and definitely no clue on how to manage conflict as my FOO were conflict avoiders and ignorers.

So what I've realized form all your great advice is I need to continue being empathetic and loving and and also have conversations about where we are going and consider MC.

My fear is that he feels forced into healing and I don't want it to come across that way as he's taken it that way before when Ive suggested trauma counseling or IC. I know I have traumatized him and the pain is unbearable. I am an empathetic person so I do feel that intensely. My coping mechanism pre affair was to shut everything down, suck it up, deal with it. I am my true self now, so empathy is free flowing and I don't want him to feel forced or rushed, but also desire some mutual work to be done. He says he loves me and wants this to work, but is deciding if the is still "in love" with me. He is processing and dealing with things.

Thanks all for your honesty and helpful advice, I really appreciate it!

From what you've described, this was a situation in which your WH's cheating just happened to coincide with yours. He seems to want to believe that cheating first or cheating longer makes you the greater villain, but if I understand your situation correctly, he had no idea at the time of his cheating that there was anything amiss. He appears to be claiming that a disconnect in your relationship was at fault for his many choices to abandon his values and commit repeated acts of adultery. That's Blameshifting 101, don't you think?

I also reject the notion that female cheating is somehow more egregious because it damages fragile male egos. If a man's ego is fragile, that's about him and his own personal definition of masculinity. While we might feel compassion for that kind of suffering, we can't fix it or shield from it.

I suspect that in your case, feelings of remorse regarding your own past transgressions might be keeping you from setting good boundaries on the kind of treatment you need to see from a mate. If you can both agree that your cheating is worse and you deserve poor treatment because of it, you can continue to make excuses for him. You see how that works? It might leave you in the one-down position, but it also allows you to feel like you've got some control of the outcome. Demanding fair and equal treatment might feel more risky to you.

That said, when we look at the causes of cheating, it's pretty much always about the cheater. It's about filling voids and about the lack of personal boundaries surrounding one's values. That's as true for him as it is for you. Yet, by refusing to take REAL responsibility for his own behavior, he makes it impossible to correct his own internal shortcomings.

My advice to you would be to explore what causes cheating, not just in yourself, but in general terms as well. Once you have the ability to step back and examine it more clinically, I think you'll be in a better position to think about establishing boundaries on what kind of treatment you're willing to accept. Marriage is a two-way street. I think you're unlikely to be happy with it if you put in all the work to become a reformed WS and end up stuck with an unrepentant one.

Thank you Chamomiletea, that was very helpful. I spoke with him and talked about where we are and what he sees with us moving forward. I let him know that when he says things in a harmful way, it's confusing for me. I see his actions of staying with me, showing affection, participating in the family despite his pain, and then he says these hateful things. It confuses me and I need to know that he is willing to work together to move forward and that incudes healthy communication. He says he's confused too, part of him hates me, but he also loves me. It makes sense. I told him that his cheating is also due to his brokenness and he acknowledges that but then continues to compare the fact that he didn't love these woman and I loved my AP. So still making excuses, but at least some acknowledgement I guess? So ultimately, he is asking for time and presence. He wants me to let him work through these feelings and ideas and just be present and continue what I am doing. I understand that, I am not trying to force healing, but I don't understand how healing can happen without getting therapy and working through things. We are still in early stages and it may be a situation where I will have to part ways if he is not able to heal from this, and that may be the case. It is horrible and I wish I could go back and change everything. I also know it is part of my story and something I have to live with for the rest of my life. He had so much invested in me and I obliterated every hope of him trusting again as I was supposed to be that safe person for him.

I'm going to put this bluntly but I think he needs to man up and take accountability that he cheated on you, period. He's blaming you for cheating when he did it himself, twice, and still talks to his AP! Sorry, not acceptable. My time in the Army reinforced accountability for your actions not blaming others.

Yes, as you wrote it, your A was 'worse' than his. Was your lack of affection for him during your A palpable? Even if it was, he still cheated twice and had no direct knowledge you were in an A. He failed to come to you and say we need to work on our marriage, instead he slept with other womoen. That makes him a WS, just like you. He really needs to reframe this thinking and see he is in the very same boat that you are. That would help him resolve a degree of his issues if he took ownership that you both cheated on each other.

Unfortunately, I still think your LTA is pretty devastating. But the fact that he hooked up with two women APs should help the emasculation.

So that's what I would tell him over a beer. I understand that it's hard for you to say any of that at this point. But I feel like you are coddling him to a degree due to your own guilt. That's your choice, but perhaps someone needs to confront his thinking with a little cold water.

You are getting some excellent input.

Maybe rather than what not to do, establish what to aim for. Ask him what being majoratively healed looks like to him. Can he describe it even in broad terms? Same for you. What does it look like to you? Put some concepts on paper and compare notes.

I agree with Trdd, and I'll ask a little bit gently:

What have you done about healing yourself from your H's As?

From what you've said, the only way you could have rug-swept more than you're doing is to have refused to believe that he's cheated on you.

Right now, your hindering your R by not holding your poor, Victim, loser of a WS to account. You're letting his refusal to take responsibility for himself keep you from healing.

He hasn't been emasculated. His equipment still works. He may pretend to himself that you made him feel like not a man, but IMO that's entirely on him - since he refuses to get help, the most likely thing that's going on with him is that he wants to believe he's less than a man because of his own issues.

He thinks he's a loser because he wants to think he's a loser. Nothing you or anyone else can do will or can make him think he's not a loser.

IMO, he can make himself find his qualities of being loving, lovable, and capable, but he can do that only if he chooses to do his work.

The only way you can complete your own healing without leaving your WS/BS id for him to own his shit, as used to be said, take responsibility for himself, and do the work on himself that he needs to do.

You don't seem to see that. That makes me think 1) I'm either way off or 2) you're deeply into co-dependence, thinking that you're responsible for his issues and absolving him of his responsibility for your issues.

JMO, but ....

*****

A note: I have little patience with 'feelings' of 'emasculation' (and 'defeminization'). I agree that it's totally normal - and even reasonable - to fear that one is not 'man enough' or 'woman enough' for one's WW or WH. But the fear is misplaced. You may question whether you'll ever want to have sex again with your WS, but your WS cheated for their own reasons, not for any failing of the BS.

To heal, the BS needs to realize - relearn - that they are loving, lovable, capable - and as capable sexually as they were before the A.

I'm finding that age can reduce one's sexual capability permanently, betrayal ... only temporarily.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:46 PM, Thursday, November 23rd]

I’m so sorry that you’re hurting like this. I have read through this entire thread and don’t really have much to say in addition to the excellent points already made by others. I do understand exactly how you feel. My BH, soon to be ex said something very similar to me when he told me he was moving ahead with the divorce insted of seeking reconciliation.

His point was that staying with me would make people look down on him. I think by this he means his family who have made it very clear they hate me now and were not interested in ever forgiving me. I can understand their anger, especially his sister who is my former best friend.

This was just one of many read he gave for not wanting reconciliation. I know he’s also already seeing someone but that’s a whole different thing to post about!

LostAndHoping

I still wonder if friends and family still look down on me even after over 20 years for staying with my WW.
It is a bitter pill to swallow for a proud person.

The affair doesn’t have to play out in public for the betrayed spouse to have these feelings. Other than her AP and a no good MC no one else knew about her affair. The staying with you makes me a loser was internalized by me. I was a successful businessman, a good father, and though like everyone else I wasn’t great at everything, I was good enough to where I never felt like a loser. Until her affair. It especially hurt that in my case, as well as others here, she affaires down. So not only did I lose, but I lost to a real loser. That was devastating.

I’m not sure how this has manifested in your BS’s behavior. In my case I wasn’t the mope around loser, I was the poor loser. The guy who flips over the chessboard right before they are about to be mated. My EX bore 100% this. The first year I was just brutal, but after just shut down. I’m not convinced by a long shot his affair was a result of yours, but rather just an affair on his own. But if it was, it wouldn’t surprise me. I came close a lot to a revenge affair. I never did, but among other factors it played into my reasoning to divorce to even the affair by having sex with someone other than her. A large part of that to even the field and try to shake the loser feeling.

I’m not sure what you can do here. You are correct that you can’t have a one sided reconciliation. I do believe in the beginning that the WS needs to crawl over glass to get the process started, but at some point the BS has to see the effort, and decides they must crawl over the glass too. Again in my case I saw the effort, but it didn’t matter. I was just never going to make that effort.

He might be the same kind of person. You need to have a frank conversation to where he is at. It might feel cruel, but you probably will have to let him know in a gentle way that things aren’t working. Tell him you will do anything you can to help him, but if you don’t see movement on his part you will end the marriage. I actually wish my EX woukd have done this a couple years in. Would have saved both of us a few years of a crappy marriage.

The bed,bath beyond approach to your broke it, you a responsible for it doesn’t always work