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I'm done in, I cant do this anymore and its killing my BS and turning me into an absolute prick.

I have written a super extensive timeline, one that goes into past and present and some great detail and more than I feel was required but was what she had asked for.

We reached a point where eventually she said she believed she could move on and things were on the up however week or two goes by and suddenly her gut insists that I am still lying and hiding stuff about the Affair and the past....

So we go around in these vicious circles with hurtful statements being thrown at each other and the constant threat of divorce and how scummy I am etc

Anyway it's now reached a point where I feel I need to share my timeline so I have created a blog and I'll post the link here, to highlight exactly the level of detail I have gone into in the hope that others read it and can give some advice on what I am missing :-( I wouldnt even care if she then shared it with my AP just for clarification as I just want us to move on from this aspect of it all now

Regardless though how do you fight against ones gut? When they insist you are still hiding stuff and your marriage depends on it I have just come from two days of no sleep, on the sofa and then have been a massive prick to her because she threw packaging for a parcel away that needed to go back!!!

Hey Tim,

BS have to rely on their guy. We have hurt them, we've lied and we've utterly destroyed the self belief. This is something we need to remember at all times. No matter where we are in time line acceptance. There will be WS on here who are years into R and their BS will have a trigger or will have a gut feeling that something is wrong.

Look, we have exchanged messages and discussed lots in the past. You know I'm not attacking you in any of my posts. So I'm going to write this giving my true feeling on this. It's not an attack or criticism.

Each and EVERY time we act out, get defensive, act like a massive prick, get defensive of our timeline or even seem off. This is going to cause their gut to go off. BS are hyper sensitive and when their gut goes off, we have to be calm and measured. We can try to reassure them that there is no more to come, but they are going to mistrust us. We have to learn how to deal with this. The way we act when we get defensive is wayward. Getting defensive is unsafe, and unsafe behaviour is going to trigger a million alarms in their head.

Maybe a BS can post on here with their thoughts on what I've said. Is it true that this behavour is going to cause triggers and therefore get the gut feelings firing?

Also, you're only a few weeks from having a timeline accepted, it may be a long time before there are no more suspicions. Hey this may never come. Another thing is as a betrayer, we need to learn to live with.

Our attitude is key, any sign of waywardness is going to trigger a BS. Even things we post on here can be a trigger to any BS and not just our own. I suspect there are BS reading this and having concerns about what you wrote and understanding the gut feeling you BS is having.

Hey, we've hurt and damaged the women we love. Them feeling something is wrong or triggering in just one consequence of our actions. We can't compete with it, we need to help them, feel empathy for them and support their gut feelings

[This message edited by Bulcy at 2:32 PM, Thursday, June 6th]

Thanks for this, I get all this and accept her triggers and that is all fine however this isnt a trigger. She accepted then essentially hasnt accepted the timeline i have produced and at times her rationale for believing I am still lying is because "it's not rationale" an example was her disputing a position we had sex in, this was seated her opinion...
No you didn't because you would have had grass on your ass.

Triggers I can deal with, sometimes better than others but if it were just triggers it's fine it's the absolutes though the "we are done as your lying, I know you are still lying" and then it becomes toxic.

It's competing against a gut feeling, a feeling which I accept can 100% be right but that she cant accept maybe wrong.

I am out of options, I know I ended this marriage when I had the affair but I am fighting tooth and nail to try and keep it now however it may just be too late. Anyway thank you for your response, appreciated as always

I hear what you're saying, I really do. You'll find somewhere a post I made quite a while ago about giving up. I felt I could do no more to prove what I was saying was true and that she will NEVER believe me. You know what, she may never believe me. We are working on how to deal with that while still actually working on my timeline.

This need to be a joint effort. We cannot win. This is not a situation where we can ever be a winner. The only thing that can happen is you as a couple win. For years I saw our recovery as a competition. So many conversations were me v her. She did not believe me then I NEEDED TO PROVE SHE WAS WRONG. Dude, that does not work. Being defensive in this manner is like were trying to suggest our BS are irrational...They may well be being irrational, but we cant point that out. They are allowed to be irrational, we've broken them. Our behaviours during the years of our infidelity and subsequent post d-day bullshit was highly irrational, yet how did we react when this was pointed out? What we did does not make sense, even if everything we have sadi is true, it does not make sense. The BS mind need to make sense f things and they will fixate on small details. Why? Because when small things don't make sense, it MUST lead to a bigger lie. What else will someone think? Especially one who has been traumatised by us.

The whole mess we've made is one massive cluster fuck. We need to try and be empathetic to every emothion or BS has, we need to try and explain our actions. While doing this if our attitude is off by 1cm then we're going to struggle.

It is not easy, but it is not impossible.

I'm going to be straight with you, as someone on here was straight with me. If you are looking for excuses to end the marriage, then this is not fair what you're doing. You need to make the decision and leave. If you are true in your decision to stay and fight, then you need to lose the defensiveness and work with your BS to help her.

I paraphrased a long reply there, but I think it applies to you too. Your BS is still with you, she could have kicked you arse to the kerb a long time ago, yet she is still with you. Fight with her, not against her.

Look, I feel really hypocritical writing that. I am the worlds worst at defensive and argumentative behaviour. I have been and still am in your position. Try and be empathetic to her doubts and questions. No matter how irrational the seem or are, that irrational behaviour has come from the damage you've done.

I hope that someone can come on and write this more eloquently than I just did, in short stop being a "massive prick" and be an empathetic prick, work with BS and help her to help you. Remember, by still being with you she is showing signs of hope. Pick up on these positive affirmations and use them as your driver forwards not finding negative thoughts and using them to drive you apart. Been there, done that, read the book and got the t-shirt. All of which are shit.

I think it might be helpful to read some about resolving conflict. I think that you simply may be lacking the skills to keep this from escalating.

Is it frustrating? Yes. Is it understandable? Yes, but there is a a compassion element that might help you both feel on the same team.

Gottman has a lot out there on conflict.

I think the thing you have to practice is staying calm. You don’t have control over your wife, and if she is spiraling, you can only say "I am so sorry I have caused this. Caused you to question everything I say. I want to save our marriage but I do not want to give you false information. I have genuinely been as truthful here as I possibly can be because I want to give you back the security of knowing everything you want to know."

If she says that’s not what my gut tells me to that then say "I understand that I have made it impossible to rust what I say. I understand your vigilance is a result of my shitty actions. How can we resolve this?"

Keep trying to focus on why she feels the way she does and be loving and calm with her. Ask her questions out of authentic concern for her pain. “Tell me what you need most. I can’t lie and say you are right about this, but I also do not want that nagging feeling you have to come between us.””What does it feel like?” “ How can I help you when you are overwhelmed?” Ask questions that allow her to talk about her feelings and allows you to empathize and apologize for your part in creating that.

At some point, there is only so much you can do. You are not in control of your wife or her healing. You can only give her a safe place to vent, and learn skills to help communication and resolving conflict. You should never allow yourself to get out of control or bash her back. But if she is abusive, that does not have to be tolerated either. It’s difficult to tell what is happening here.

Do people in your country have MC?

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:20 PM, Thursday, June 6th]

BS here. No stop sign.

Gently, I think it's important for a BS to trust their gut. Trauma does strange things to people. I can tell you that until I had the full version, my brain filled in details that FELT real to me. Many of those details my brain came up with were worse than the real thing. Even when I had it and it started making sense, I really struggled to believe it because that is not what I could imagine MYSELF doing in the same situation. The fact that you're fighting your BS every step of the way on this gives your BS no reason to believe you are being genuine and looking out for her. The reality is that if you are fighting her and hurling insults back at her, you are DEMONSTRATING that you will be self-protective fist. I don't know your history but if my spouse pitched a fit every time I wanted to talk about X, I can tell you that I would really have struggled to believe him, and I would absolutely not have been able to heal. Patience, consistency, and openness WITHOUT defensiveness is soooooo important right now. It's like 75% of the battle.

Look, I get it - it is hard to stay calm when your spouse is coming at you from a dysregulated place (and I have no doubt she is). I definitely played a role in escalating conflict post-D-day. I would come at him with anger and my husband's first reaction would be to go on the defense (his built-in protective mechanism that would be triggered by fight/flight), despite the fact that my criticisms were generally pretty valid. Next thing you know things had escalated and I'd end up even more mad than I had been beforehand and we STILL hadn't addressed the thing I wanted addressed, and worst of all, I FELT LESS SAFE AND MORE ALONE THAN I DID BEFORE THE CONVERSATION TOOK PLACE. It sounds like this might be the vicious cycle you're on right now. I agree with Hiking when she suggests on working on de-escalation tactics in MC.

You think you're fighting (with logic) the illogical nature of her gut, but you're not. This is an emotional issue not a logical one. Assuming you are telling the truth at this point, the thing you're fighting right now is her fear and the fact that she does not feel safe with you. That fight or flight that you feel when she comes at you dysregulated? That is what she is feeling almost ALL the time right now. Work on making her feel safe. She doesn't believe you right now - she has good reason not to. Be patient and understanding of that and validate her feelings about that while assuring her of the truth over and over and over again.

Tinytim1980

The thing that you are going to have to work on accepting is that you are NOT fighting her gut...you are fighting her need to make sense of things.

For a BS there is an incessant need to make logical sense of totally illogical actions.
An affair in most cases makes no sense, yet waywards twists themselves into emotional and mental pretzels to justify their actions.

It is those justifications that tend to help make sense of it for a BS and in doing so you as a wayward may find another layer of your why.

I am going to give you an example of a recent trigger/blowup me and my W had that illustrates my point
-----------

During her A she went to an after work get together thrown by a co-worker. She stated that even though her and the AP left work together so she could drop him off at home, she wanted to get rid of him BEFORE she could go to the get together.
Why?
Her answer was because she "did not want to be seen in public with him…she didn’t want to walk into the get together with him and it be assumed that they were a couple."

I accepted this at first, but upon thinking about it, it made no sense. This is because she went other places with him. They went shopping, they hung out in his neighborhood, she drove him around to run errands, etc. So there was no problem being "seen in public" with him on those occasions, why was there at this get together.

Her defensiveness immediately triggered me and we had a blow up. After a bad week, we seemed to come to be able to talk about it and I THINK she began to understand the problem.

It didn’t make sense because it was one of the instances that she used to justify BS in her own head and her willingness to maintain this thought process triggered me.

It was not that she minded being seen with him in public, because she had on other occasions. She feared her "certain" coworkers seeing them and making assumptions about them and challenging what she was doing with him.
It is hard to compartmentalize messy A related things when you are FORCED to face them.

I think/hope/believe that she realized her actions were not just circumstantial, but were constantly and relentlessly calculated to obtain the result that she wanted. She wanted time and attention with AP, but only on the terms she deemed acceptable. It was ALL about her and she manipulated the whole world to fit her terms. That is often the hardest thing for a WS to accept about themselves..…that they could be so selfish that NOTHING mattered but what they wanted and they made dozens of decisions everyday to achieve their own selfish desires. It is sobering for a WS to realize that EVERY...SINGLE...DECISION was focused on forwarding the A.
-----

She accepted then essentially hasnt accepted the timeline i have produced and at times her rationale for believing I am still lying is because "it's not rationale" an example was her disputing a position we had sex in, this was seated her opinion...
No you didn't because you would have had grass on your ass.

From what you have described, you are not fighting her "gut" but her need to make sense and process as much logic in this as is possible.
Understand that any lie in your timeline will make the whole thing a lie and therefore null and void.
Understand that ANY perceived discrepancies will be challenged.

My advice to you as a BS is to sit with her on each instance this comes up and ask her, what part exactly is she having a hard time believing, and truly examine what she is challenging.

Then take what she is skeptical about, imagine that a known cheater told you the exact same story and assess if you could believe it at face value. Process what detail that might be missing that would explain what she is hung up on. It might not be a lie but a misunderstanding. Or as in my case it may be that a wayward realizes how deep they went to manipulate EVERY detail to their liking with out even thinking about it.

Either way, it is an opportunity for you to rebuild trust. To show her that you are as willing to examine her fears and questions and assure her of your commitment.

I’m going to be a little more challenging to you than other responses. I appreciate that you are posting with no stop sign and I do believe that you genuinely want to fix what you broke.

First point, you lied to her face during the affair right? It’s pretty common. Gaslighting as well? Made her feel she was stupid or the bad guy for questioning you? Genuine question here as I don’t know the full extent of your affair just going off what is most common behavior. If you did, then there is nothing you can do. After giving you the gift of marriage and commitment, trust, loyalty, to lie and gaslight while getting your side piece has done visceral damage that you will never be able to repair. No matter how honest you are now, since you made the choice to cheat and all of the ugliness that comes with it, you have created this situation, but you can’t fix it. All you can do is maintain a consistent change and hope that she can make peace with it.
Of course you want to just move forward, that is still a selfish and cheater attitude. She can’t. There is no just moving forward, and when you say something like that, my response is sorry for the inconvenience caused by your actions of cheating on her.

Second point, do you think it really helped anything getting so mad over something so trivial as throwing away packing materials? I’m sure that made her feel safe and loved, and that she could trust you to be empathetic. How often do you blow up on her over things that are trivial, and yes it is. And you chose to get mad about it. You didn’t have to, it’s nothing. It means absolutely nothing, and you can get more from somewhere else. To a BS, getting angry over things like this only make her trust less and comes off as selfish, because it is. You couldn’t remove yourself from the situation and instead of taking time to see the full picture, you chose to get mad and treat her bad.

You can’t do anything to make this easier. She is still with you, which is more than you deserve. Of course, you don’t have to deal with it and you can always leave. Not being sarcastic, I mean it. You might have to be on the couch for years. By cheating, and given the chance to R, you have to sleep in the bed you made. You lost the benefit of the doubt, maybe for the rest of your marriage. You lost trust and destroyed her feelings of safety, self esteem etc, again maybe for the rest of the marriage.

She can only trust herself, and she is probably struggling deeply with that because of what happened during the affair. Only she can make the decision that you are worth trusting again. There is no time limit to when she gets there, no matter what you do or how much you want it. That is the price paid for an affair

Hi all,

Thank you for all your responses and those from the BS really do help so thank you for your time as I appreciate some threads like this can be triggering.

I recognise that my actions have led to this and I know that I deserve nothing from her and merely being here is a prize.

We had a talk this morning, still no further forward...its frustrating as hell as we are at a stale mate. She has my timeline (revised version with all the details) yet insists without actually challenging me that I am still hiding stuff.

She refuses to speak with me about it, refuses to sit and ask me questions that are directly affecting her that she believes I am lying about as she feels that I should be coming to her and telling her! My point is though I just havent a clue what it is she believes I am lying about and with nothing further in my mind all I keep doing is telling her that i am not with her keep telling me "well that's what you said before" "you got angry like this when youn
Were still lying" "what's the point as I did thst before, you were lying". I made some truly fundamental mistakes in the first 18 months and as a simple warning to anyone out there reading this NEVER LIE it makes this all so much harder to recover from.

So I guess you're all right, nothing i can do but not get shitty and pissy and try to be supportive as she tries to work out what she wants.

Further to my last I have also previously begged molt bs to sit with me and discuss my doubts.she did do this. But still lied to her. That's why she is saying, she won't do that again..... all which I understand but doesnt help where we are now and still precedes when I told her everything and finished the timeline.

I’ll tell you this, my wife’s anger directed at me during attempted R was (long pause to find an appropriate word) soul scorching to me (totally worth the pause). Honestly man, basic table stakes, that shit needs to stop.

"you got angry like this when youn
Were still lying"

Whether it is correct or not, because you gaslit your wife and used your anger as a tool to make that work, probably by verbally overpowering her, she now associates your anger with your lying. And that makes all the sense in the world to me. It’s much easier to hide and deceive during conflict and chaos.

Her broken heart needs calm. Her rightly suspicious mind needs humble and plain logic. Her lizard brain needs a break.

To me, this is obvious, trivial. Stop giving yourself the right to get mad at your wife. Everyone wins. And while she may have other reasons to not trust you linger, you have complete power to remove this one that frankly you have no defense for having anyway. Knock it off. Now. If you can’t then tell her you are going to seek help to get it under control and do it.

I’m going to challenge you again. You say you know that you don’t deserve to have the relationship, however the way you describe your actions say otherwise. Statements like "I just want to move forward" are entitled, and getting angry over trivial matters are not actions of someone who truly feels they don’t deserve how good they have it.

I figured that anger was a reoccurring issue for you, and like many other cheaters, you used anger as a power move during your multiple affairs.

Anger is a choice. You don’t have to get angry. Sometimes it’s a necessity, more often than not it’s a way to get what you want. Anger is selfish, exploding at little things, especially post affair, that is going to be the final kiss of death. I of course don’t mean you can’t get angry or upset. But I do mean the over the top, the feeling that you have to explode and brood and be mad about something trivial is specifically what I mean. And surprise, every time you do, your BW is going to automatically assume that you’re up to no good. I am also speaking from very personal experience here as my WW would use anger as her weapon of choice, and still gets ridiculously angry about trivial things. I told her if she keeps it up then our marriage is going to fail as I can’t tolerate it anymore.

You have gotten some fantastic responses from the bs here. I had several epiphanies reading what they wrote too.

Anger is an emotion that I have the opposite relationship with. I avoided anger because I watched it growing up and very much saw it as a negative emotion. I now understand its importance, but still struggle with my view of it, and I have had to consciously connect with it after my h’s affair. I still have to be conscious of I am suppressing it. It’s hard to change one’s default.

However, that’s what I want to talk to you about.

Just telling you to not get angry might not be enough. I don’t know if you went to therapy or not (if you have the resources to go, put yourself in it) not only will it likely be a step that could potentially be favorable for your wife, it will help you realize your patterns and teach you to mitigate it. A lot of people think therapy is about talking about your feelings. That’s true, but really it trains you to have emotional skills that you lack. It lets you figure out the origins of where it comes from and instead of holding it in and trying to manage it until you explode, it will give you things to practice that actually allows you to circumvent it when needed.

Practicing taking a beat, empathizing, breathing through it, whatever you need to do.

And you are modeling behavior for your kids too, so this is important for you as a man, husband, father. It feels crappy to get mad and say things you don’t mean. It feels good to show up, be there for your loved ones and be the man you know you want to be.

[This message edited by hikingout at 5:51 PM, Friday, June 7th]

BS here as well. No stop sign at this point.

Since she has a very detailed timeline, I would guess that she maybe has some ideas in her head about what she thinks you are still lying about or hiding. So why not offer to do the polygraph that people here usually suggest after a timeline is written? She can work with the examiner with the timeline to craft some questions.
You offering to do it and to do it her way I think would be a great gesture on your part.

Hi HINHF,

The anger that I get only stems from these times where she accuses me of still lying, most if not all the other times we are ok and have a really good relationship but when I find that she comes at me with the venom and hatred I just get defensive and can't help but match her.

I know though it isnt good enough, I just feel that whilst it is easy to say that if I do XYZ she will settle and calm it just sadly isnt the case. She has had a horrid day with work today and I ended up having to collect her and support and try to pick her up but yep again we repeat the above cycle .....just no anger from me.

Anyhow, I've gone through gottman, numerous other books, IC etc but as you all highlight I cant influence or change her but I just feel she isnt helping herself or trying to heal, as I keep seeing on here

Bs heals the bs
Ws heals the ws

Anyway she says she is done, she is never going to change or trust me and as she puts it just wasting my breath now.

Oh it's you,

I dont have much to say about polys really, I have read alot about them and feel it's a false science and that they are hugely inaccurate plus we dont have the money and they arent cheap over here.

My bs did find one, but when I spoke to him he plucked a random figure out of thin air to come down to where we are to do the test...one review said it was done in a costa which was bizarre and his figure essentially made him earn in excess of £100 per hour.

Interestingly the UKBPA website lists a large number of testers in the UK of a say list of 20 there are only a couple still operating.

I have my own opinion on them, I havent an issue and would take one as I have said but I just dont believe in them....but it's still better thn a divorce.

So why not offer to do the polygraph that people here usually suggest after a timeline is written?

Spot on.

I just get defensive and can't help but match her.

What you really mean in this statement is that you currently lack the self control to not match her. If you want this marriage, go create that self control.

Anyway she says she is done, she is never going to change or trust me and as she puts it just wasting my breath now.

Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t, that isn’t in your control. If she hasn’t signed the papers yet then there is still life, and if you want this, then show her.

Regarding a poly: it’s not an exact science, that is NOT the point. If she would want one, don’t argue. And even if it cost you $10,000, which it won’t, how does that compare to losing your beloved wife, half the time with kids, not to mention the far greater loss in wealth you are sure to encur with a divorce. If ever I have heard a penny-wise, pound-foolish statement….

Come on man. You are here, you clearly want to rebuild. This is the hard, step up to it.

Matching her venom and hatred has pretty much killed any chance you may have had at R. That’s your ego and pride. Think about what you’re saying. You lied, had multiple affairs,
probably continued to lie after discovery. She’s beyond hurt, lashes out at you, and you match her and get defensive because why? Pride/Ego. Imagine if you had just told her you deserved all these things, humbled yourself in front of her pain, and actually showed you gave a damn.

She probably can never heal as long as she is with you. You’re the source of her pain. No matter what you do, how deep and significant you change, all she is going to see is the mask you wore while cheating on her and the pain you caused.

She said she is done, give her the grace and respect to make the separation painless. Take the full accountability. Don’t say "she couldn’t heal herself, or wasn’t committed to R" or anything else like that. She’s done because you had multiple affairs. Own it, and allow

Her to move on as painless as possible.

[This message edited by HellIsNotHalfFull at 6:46 PM, Friday, June 7th]

She said she is done, give her the grace and respect to make the separation painless. Take the full accountability. Don’t say "she couldn’t heal herself, or wasn’t committed to R" or anything else like that. She’s done because you had multiple affairs. Own it, and allow
Her to move on as painless as possible.

Yep, I get this point but even if I agree and say ok fine.....that's wrong and I've been told I'm abandoning her all over again!!