New and Suffering

[Accuray]

Captain,

I really hope you appreciate how much your contributions have meant to me, you really seem to have this figured out, and you are an excellent writer.

For your questions:

>>It could be that your wife has shared more with the therapist
>>than she has with you as a sort of “progressive reveal.” Does
>>that mean that there have been other men you don’t know about?

The therapist told me that my wife confined her to only talking about our relationship. She would not get into her family, her own feelings, and did not share anything about the affairs she was having. I got the sense that this made the therapist angry, as my wife had "put one over on her" by not baring everything. My instinct tells me there is some of that going on, so I'm convinced that the therapist does not know more than I do. A lot of what the therapist understands about my W comes from me. To your point, my "instinct" tells me that the therapist has misdiagnosed, and is reading to me out of an affair playbook.

>>Think about that for a moment. If she sees (saw) you in that
>>way as being unwilling to change…didn’t you train her to see
>>you that way?

For sure, I am not innocent here. I was never mean spirited or hurtful, I've always been supportive. My sin was inattentiveness. I definitely felt the relationship was secure and took it for granted. I was selfish in many ways in terms of pursuing my own happiness at the expense of spending time with my W. With regard to "training", I was not ready for parenthood when we had our first, and had a hard time with the infant stage with each child. My wife did twice come asking me for more, and at the time, I didn't feel I had more to give her, as all my energy was going into the children, the household, and preserving my sanity. That was over 10 years ago the last time she asked. I think the breakdown here is that she interpreted that to be my feelings and capacity "now and forever" and for me it was just a temporary stage. I definitely don't feel I reinforced that "training" over the next ten years, I just wasn't given another chance. When I later came looking to give more, she was detached, angry, passive aggressive, and I could no longer get in, so I retreated and tried to make the best of things. After reading the SSM, many of the dynamics in our relationship became clear, my feelings of rejection and being unloved, subsequent withdrawal, contributing to my wife feeling disconnected and neglected, and around we go. At one point you commented that my M was intimacy starved rather than sex-starved. I definitely agree with you there, but it was sex-starved as well. The SSM defines sex starved as being characterized by a desire gap that leaves one partner dissatisfied and contributes to negative relationship dynamics, and we had that in spades. When we did have sex, it was always intimacy starved.

>>It is clear that you love your wife and, despite everything
>>you know so far, you wish to stay married to her and forge a
>>stronger marriage. Yes, the trust has been damaged and perhaps
>>you have no real reason to trust her (ever again). But your
>>heart tells you something else.

Yes, my heart tells me to trust again, to accept her explanations at face value and to rebuild. I was there emotionally before, but the therapist session was like getting a cold glass of water in the face. You are helping to reinforce that the therapist was probably way off base, and I should trust my instinct.

>>I recognize that because I felt much the same way with my
>>first wife. In my case, we were never able to get to the place
>>where she was willing to take a chance, that the changes to
>>the relationship would be to the positive and would be built
>>to last….a loving relationship with me once again. I had often
>>wondered if I had fought harder for our relationship, if I had
>>not followed my instincts to give her space and “let her go”
>>whether we would have rebuilt or relationship.

I am very sorry to hear that, and hope that you will take some solace in the fact that you are helping to prevent me from getting to the same place. I do believe that my W is willing to take the leap of faith, she is just more hesitant and tentative about it than I am, and that is a challenge for me.

>>She told me that she was grateful for the space and the fact
>>that I didn’t make it hard for her. But no, nothing would have
>>made a difference. She had made up her mind about me and
>>nothing I could have said or done would have swayed her.

I wonder if that's true, or that's just what she's convinced herself of? I am definitely learning that talking only goes so far, the "doing" and the "being" seems to be equally if not more important.

>>The point is that intuition informs us. If your intuition
>>tells you that your wife is willing to rebuild something with
>>you know this: your intuition is fallible and yet you should
>>trust it because you only you have a sense of how good your
>>intuition is.

Golden words of wisdom that I will always remember. Once I decided to follow my intuition and disregard the therapist's warnings, things felt "right" again.

>>That doesn't make you a doormat.

Oh boy I hope not! I definitely cannot go through this again, it has been more awful than I could have ever imagined.

Thanks again for your support