SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Sisoon and the end are very wise. Hang in there. All of this is so hard. You will heal in time, but it’s such a long, slow process. I feel deeply discouraged too sometimes.

Your husband opened up to you and told you his vulnerabilities, doing what he is supposed to do to build intimacy and transparency and because of that he is unattractive and weak in your eyes. It does seem like he did make a mistake opening up to you. looking at him in disbelief like "who is this dude?" When he opens himself to you is mean and you seem like a mean and coldhearted person in your reaction to him.

Mean and cold hearted is having an affair. Maybe the OP lost the attraction since the affair. I know there is nothing my xWS could have done to regain my attraction back post affair. Something had severed in me. The book Cheating in a Nutshell explains it perfectly. Maybe it was a dealbreaker as it had been for me. I believe even if my xWS had been remorseful (he wasn’t) I don’t think I would have had it in me to R. This includes previous years of emotional abuse before the affair. I believe I stopped loving my xWS before the affair and the affair was just the icing on the cake.

Or ... if he had opened up a lot earlier, the fact that they aren't a good fit for each other might have come out a lot earlier ... maybe even before M. That would have been a Good Thing, IMO.

None of us is ever guaranteed or entitled to a specific, compassionate response to anything and everything that we confide to another person in vulnerability. That is a sad fact. In order to be more authentic, honest and vulnerable, we bravely share our truth with others in order to grow our own strength, coping skills, and abilities, but that just doesn’t entitle us to the response of our choice—particularly not if we are sharing with the person that we have devastated and betrayed.

I always knew that my WH was insecure. And I also knew that we all feel insecure sometimes. I tried to support him. I tried to encourage him to face fears and grow into security like most people do as they age and learn that their insecurities are often irrational and that they have the strength and resources and support to face them. I encouraged him to seek therapy. I knew that insecurity is something that each of us has to figure out how to overcome and deal with. No one can MAKE us feel less insecure internally just by loving us. That’s not where insecurity comes from when a person feels inadequate and afraid of their own perceived deficiencies.

BUT, and this is a BIG but: when his insecurities led him to hide shit from me, lie relentlessly about what was going on with him, and look for someone that he could feel superior to because she was such a mess herself and would buy the fake bullshit person he pretended to be rather than either of them dealing with the real him, my ability to be sympathetic and see around the insecurities was just gone. Now, it was deal with it and grow up at last or I have no interest. He decided that it was just too scary to face all that.

I had always sympathized and made excuses for him. I had propped him up and yes, I had protected him from having to deal with the things that he felt insecure about. I also protected him from his own feelings of inadequacy about his insecurities and inabilities to deal with people in grown up ways. He very much expected to keep being able to turn the attention to himself and his sad reality after the A came to light. He expected me to continue to put him and his needs first even after he had completely destroyed my world and my family. That was just a very hard nope.

It isn’t cold or unsympathetic for you to expect him to realize what his cowardice in dealing with his own insecurities has cost you (rather than dwelling on what it has cost him). It is important for both of you to realize that his talking to you about all of this is triggering to you because it’s clear how much hiding his reality (and yours) and his real self from you left you completely vulnerable to the consequences of his action. This isn’t unsympathetic or uncaring of you. Him revealing all of this is a stark smack in the forehead that him pretending to be someone that he wasn’t, maybe someone who wasn’t insecure, hid from you the danger that you walked into. It also means that he married you under false pretenses, regardless of what those pretenses were.

You get to be upset that this insecure person isn’t who you thought you were marrying because he hid that from you. He had probably been in the habit of doing that for years already when he met you. It’s the lying and hiding that is the real issue—it’s always the lying. We all have a right to know who our partner in life is. We are trusting them with our hearts, our safety—emotional, financial, physical—, our children’s lives and health and safety. It’s not mean of you at all to be upset that he hid this, whatever it is. It doesn’t make it different—or you meaner—that what he hid was his scared and damaged reality, not when that insecurity compelled him to betray you.

He had the guts to have an A. He now has to find the guts to face his own actions, who he really is, and the consequences to himself and others. It’s not even very productive for you to continue to comfort him and shelter him from any of that. He needs to deal with that stuff with his IC. Give yourself permission to not take his issues on right now. Not because you are mean and heartless but because you have your hands very full dealing with your own trauma because of him.

This all sucks, but I can tell you that focusing on his pain and challenges is not productive for you right now. It’s not even productive for him. Maybe just say, thanks for sharing what you’re working on to become a safe and honest person for yourself. That will be better for him no matter what happens with your marriage.

I think it may help to realize that being betrayed is a trauma in itself - and IMO, it brings up all the trauma and all the self-doubt that one has ever felt in the past.
—Sisoon

These are very wise words. It is the hardest challenge, I find, in choosing recovery. I have to separate out the wounds my spouse gave me for those I brought with me, unhealed, into our marriage. Some things in the road ahead are for me alone. The reward is a healthier me, whether or not the marriage endures.

My spouse’s betrayal was profound, but also rooted in his own pain.

My reaction was profound, and rooted in things that happened to me long before I met him.

We both had to evolve and heal or walk away.

You can love someone and hurt them. You can love someone who hurt you. What matters most is that you learn to love yourself. That is where healing begins. That was were I found courage and strength to decide what love was, what it meant to me, and whether or not the man I married almost 3 decades ago was still worth loving.

Affairs are wild fires. They burn away all the vegetation. In the devastation that follows, you are both stripped bare and will either recognize each other again or realize there is nothing left to grow again.

Either way, everything is changed. You are changed. Your love, if you find it again, is changed.

[This message edited by RecklessForgiver at 3:30 AM, Wednesday, January 3rd]

RecklessForgiver, your post moved me to tears. Thank you for that 🙂

Thank you for your post Reckless, it certainly hit home.