Ongoing affair, D papers filed, advice wanted

[SirPrizeMe]

Infidelity is not your only problem, Sir, and it may not even be your #1 problem, long-term. But until the affair is over, and your wife no longer has any contact with him for a period of MONTHS, she will not be open to working on your other issues.

Yep, totally agree with you here. Totally.

I really hope you're not saying that you support her desire to make the independent choice to have an affair? I know you don't intend to accept blame for the affair, only to acknowledge the overall conditions in your marriage that may have led her to feel lonely/neglected/whatever, but you are dangerously close -- if not already over the line -- to doing so.

Whoops! Certainly not condoning her affair. But I must agree that she gets to make her own decisions. I guess where I am coming from is, she has complained about me being controlling. And in the 18 mos since the affair, I have been. I have been unilaterally holding this marriage together when she is saying "I want a D, I want a D". (She waited 10 months to file). I don't take blame for her affair, not consciously anyway! Maybe the way I talk belies an inner self-blame? But I don't think so.

In any case when I say "My approach now is to empathize with her, validate her feeling that she was abused in the marriage, and support her desire to make independent choices, even if I disagree with them." I absolutely mean that if she wants to have an affair, I cannot and will not stop her. If she wants to end the marriage, I cannot stop her and will stop imagining and pretending that I can. I tried to persuade her to stay, but that felt like pressure and control to her, so I am dropping the rope. Yes, she must and will make independent decisions and I need to step back and let it happen.

Let me ask you a question: did your wife ever have these kinds of complaints about you being "abusive" and a "batterer" before her affair?

Never! It all was conjured up very conveniently after the fact. After she started IC you see, she saw the light. That I was the cause of the problems.

I want to be clear, I had a temper and I raised my voice. Never used bad language in the house, never called people names or was mean. But I'd raise my voice. She didn't like it. I was working on it. Clearly our upbringings were different. In my house it was ok to raise a voice. In her house growing up, raising a voice meant a drunken fight and possible physical confrontation. No way my behavior (raising my voice) hit the level of abuse, though surely it obviously pushed her buttons (inadvertently). My behavior seems a convenient excuse NOW.