I am so sorry for the pain you are in. So sorry. I so much wish I could take it away.
But you know, I always wanted my wife. I always believed we had a beautiful future together as a family. I never got to the point where I didn't believe we could reconcile. Even now! Even now I think the possibility is there. But we are nearing final divorce settlement discussions. It is not looking good for the union!
So I am maybe not so much like your husband. I think maybe my wife is more similar to your husband than I am.
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All our family an friends are devastated about our seperation but he does not talk to anyone or read. His world there are right and wrong and no grey areas.
Same thing here! She drove the separation, filed for divorce, everything. Shocked everyone. At this point she is selling a story to everyone that I was abusive to her - this is the reason she needs to divorce me. Funny, she never brought this up once, until after she filed for divorce!
Look, my spouse checked out just like yours did. So I don't think I am like your husband so much. Yes, we share the affair part. But I think the affair is not the main, central fact. For me, in the beginning, the affair was the thing. I couldn't get past it. But it really isn't the main thing. I've come to believe that the main thing is the lack of commitment. My wife lacked the commitment to me, and to the marriage. The affair was just a side effect of that. She was able to have an affair (and do many other things), because she didn't really care for me.
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He held me on pedastal and i believed he relied on me for his happiness.
Well, ok, I can see some of myself there. Not so much that I relied on my wife for happiness, but she was the center of my universe, and to be honest, there weren't that many other planets. I mean, I didn't have a ton of friends, otuside of her. A few, but not many. Actually my best friend was the one she had an affair with, so that sort of cut my list of friends down pretty sharply. And as a result, I guess you could say I was too enmeshed with her.
After I learned of the crisis, I thought hard about what I wanted. the one thing I wanted was to preserve the marriage. So I worked at it, hard. I sought the advice and counsel of experts. I began meditating - I spent a ton of time meditating on how lovely my wife was, on how she was a delicate, precious spirit. I cultivated compassion for her in myself, day by day. Every morning I would do this, sometimes for 30 minutes.
I focused on the positives. I looked at my wife and weighed everything and decided, she was still pretty good after all. I bought a bunch of books and tried to learn from the experts how to get myself right.
One thing that helped me is I spoke with people, not just people on this forum, but in person - who had experienced the same thing. I spoke with people who were betrayed and then reconciled. I spoke with them and learned that it is possible to find a brighter future. They gave me hope.
But she never came back to me.
So I am not really going to bring you any revelations. I am more or less in the same boat as you, but my boat is much further downstream. I have no wisdom to impart.
---- Thinking about your situation, Four years ... it's a long time. Are you sure it is really your affair that is the catalyst here?
Could it just be an excuse? He's having his own moment, and he doesn't want to accept responsibility for it. So he blames your past indiscretions. It's an easy out for him. Also, being so long in the past, it is impossible for you to fix (conveniently enough).
I'm not looking to provide YOU an excuse, just exploring some of the possibilities. You might just about wring yourself dry trying to fix something that, in the end, is in his head.
So in this case, there may be nothing you can do but be calm, exude strength, and wait for him to get through his crisis of confidence.
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As a man how did your WA make you feel.
After the initial shock and hurt, I hit a period of sadness. Not quite despair, but a sense of grief for what I thought was such a beautiful thing, our commitment to each other. That stayed with me a long long time. 6 months or so? That was hard. I would have periods where I just felt soooo down, and it would come upon me suddenly. I felt like a teenager with my mood swings.
But later I looked at it as a challenge to me as a man. This happens to lots of people. Your family needs you to be a rock now, needs you to rise to the occasion. So eventually, maybe not soon enough, I got beyond that feeling. Then I looked at reconciliation as a project. a labor of love. Even a gift, a gift I could give to my family. If we could reconcile, I thought, this will be the greatest gift I can give to my kids. They will see what commitment really means - it is not an empty word, it means hard work and perseverance even through doubts and tough times. I thought that would be a nice gift for my kids.
But like I say, my partner did not share that perspective. I told her about the gift idea, and she scoffed.
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If you think there is more I could say that you'd be interested in, I'm happy to share.
