My husband's emotional affair

[justpeachy]

Is he showing sincere remorse here or do you think he's chuckling about it after you leave the room?

I genuinely believe he is showing true remorse. I just think he has no solid role models, and no clue about what to do. His friends are either morons when it comes to this stuff (his best friend keeps telling him "I really like Peachy a lot. She's really cool and smart and funny and blah blah blah. But don't you want to explore the world some more? Don't you want to experience some other relationships? Maybe your marriage should end." And he also recently told DH that he and his girlfriend decided to never marry because of what's gone down in our marriage!)

Whenever I push and guide him enough, he eventually seems to take my lead and does what's needed. He has made some changes in himself that he used to stubbornly fight me on (and which I had been asking for for years). He also keeps saying he really wants to fix this and make it right. He keeps saying he "really wants to be the man I deserve". He keeps telling me that I am an "amazing wife and person" and that he's "incredibly lucky to have me" and that he "knows he has taken me for granted over the years", and that he's "very sorry" for that.

I feel like he just needs someone, outside of me, to guide him well and he'll follow. I can't do it alone though because it triggers the rebellious teenager vs. "Peachy the Parent" inside of him.

He seems to think the boundaries are open for discussion... But the point is, he has so little education on this subject he's just going to be wasting your time and talking in circles...

This "harmless" comment he made is a perfect example...

You have TOLD him you are HURT by his communications and he claims its harm-LESS... It's a logical contradiction but he's standing there maintaining its harmless just to spite you. You tell him you ARE hurt and he just contradicts you and tells you its harmless...

To be fair, he said he justified it while it was happening by believing it was "harmless". He wasn't saying he still thinks it was harmless. He said last night that he does in fact know now that it IS and WAS harmful. And he kept saying "it was so stupid and pointless" and "I can't really understand why I did it because it wasn't real, it wasn't anything I actually wanted, and it wasn't ever worth what it's done to you/us."

Three possibilities here :
1. He is INDIFFERENT to your feelings...
2. He is passive aggressive and is TRYING to upset you on purpose
3. He sympathizes but lacks the emotional intelligence to understand this is causing you harm

Have you researched passive aggression?

As long as he's being passive aggressive you negotiating is a waste of time... He has to be grown up enough to own his role in the marriage or be honest enough to walk away from it

I don't think it's passive aggressiveness. Although, his parents are experts at being passive aggressive, so maybe I should read up on it more to be sure.

I think it's a combo of 1 and 3. The indifference comes from his flawed/childish thinking that he needs to look out for his happiness first. He has an extremely hard time grasping the concept of putting your marriage first, and doing what's right for your marriage even if it's not what you want. This has been lightly touched on in FT. Although I'm not sure DH picked up on that yet, because our MC talks in a way that DH has a hard time understanding (he and I just talked about this on Tuesday after our session, and DH confessed he keeps hoping that I'll pipe up in session and translate for him -- but instead of asking the MC what she means, he tries to pretend like he gets it, and the MC isn't good about bringing him back on point).

On the other hand, I do believe he sympathizes with me on some levels, but is very emotionally stunted and doesn't know how to handle it. I've always been very emotionally expressive and insightful, and he has distanced himself from his emotions. With an emotional basket case of a mother, and a father who is either emotionally cold or aggressive, he doesn't have a clue how to manage feelings, so he reverts back to his childish methods of dealing with them. (As an example, he's been known in the past to start making faces, noises, childish jokes, etc. when I'm trying to talk to him about something serious/emotional that is bothering me -- he doesn't know how to deal with it like an adult, so he tries to "act cute" to distract me and make me giggle. I wonder if that's what he did with his parents as an actual child... Although, to his credit, he has NOT done that to me since I discovered the affair, so maybe it's a small sign of growth?)