H and I spent hours talking last night and again this morning. It's been very difficult but I think he is now finally being completely honest.
He is deeply ashamed. He said he made the biggest mistake of his life when he took up with ow. He said the guilt and disgust he feels is overwhelming, but he knows that it doesn't even compare to the hurt and pain he has inflicted upon me and the children.
He explained his confusion and vacillation in a way that I feel I can now truly understand. I think he's finally reached a place of clarity.
This is how is happened:
He said when he met her he was unhappy with our M and had felt disconnected for many years. I was also feeling anger and resentment at the time and had even been contemplating leaving the M myself. Even though, I tried many times during that period to get H to read M books, he said he was resistant because his mind-set was one of great immaturity and selfishness and that he took no responsibility for his own contributions to the break-down of our M, nor did he want to at the time. He said he was living a life filled with hatred and resentment and wanted revenge for all the ways he felt rejected and hurt. During that time period, I was rejecting him in many ways including sexually because of my anger and hurt.
He said ow stroked his pathetic ego and he fell for it because he was weak and because he blamed me for everything. He said at first he didn't think I would care and that I would be glad to be rid of him and his needs. Then he decided he didn't care if I got hurt. He said he justified his poor choices and petty attitude because he was living without any integrity.
After 5 months with ow, the guilt of the A started to get to him and he left her for 4 months as wanted to work on our M, but he said at that time, he was still operating at a level of selfishness and immaturity. He admits he did nothing different during that time to repair our M and continued to be an angry, childish man. He again justified his unhappiness as a reason to get back together with her. Then she got cancer earlier this year, and he felt like he had to take care of her, and be there for her in ways he hadn't been there for his mother during her battle with cancer.
He said he tried to leave me in April because he thought he was in love with her, and that our M was doomed anyway. He believed I deserved someone who could make me happy. Then after bombing me, he suddenly became afraid of D and everything that it entailed. It began to occur to him that perhaps he was making a mistake because the thought of moving out did not feel right either. That is why he would take back a bomb so quickly.
But the guilt over the A kept eating away at him. He was afraid of losing me if I found out but then realized he couldn't honestly stay in our marriage without telling me because the guilt kept getting worse. He admitted that's why he was drinking so much during all this - he was numbing the pain and the guilt. He got angry when I had pointed out to him in the past that he was drinking too much because he was projecting all his crap onto me.
He said he would have thoughts of staying in our M all the time but then he would think about all our problems and how he had made them so much worse with his A. He started to feel that there truly was no hope. So he'd bomb me again, and try to be with her, but his feelings for her started to fade and he began to realize she was not what he wanted either.
He read more M books -- one specifically discussed affairs and how they rarely last because they are based on lies and deception. He read about the guilt that he would carry into that R and he realized this explained the disgust he was starting to feel for ow.
So he felt he had no choice but to leave ow as well because he knew their R was doomed. He also realized it had been a facade, an escape and that it was not real. That's when he realized that he did not truly love her. He finally admitted to her that he was beginning to wonder if his M could be saved and she said she wanted him to be happy regardless of his decision. He also told her I would leave him if I knew of the A and that he couldn't live without telling me so maybe there was no hope for our M. Then when he tried to break up with her, she threatened to tell me.
But he said the more he read, the more he realized that he wanted our M. That I was more intelligent and deeper than ow and that I had more integrity. And that he had made the biggest mistake of his life by having an A. He said that it was the NUTS book that was his biggest wake-up call and that's when he decided he needed to live with complete integrity. He knew he had to tell me but he was terrified of my reaction because he knew for certain he did not want a D and that he loved me.
He said ow began sensing she was losing her grip on him because he kept promising to move out and wouldn't follow through, and that's when she started to panic. He also had been ignoring some of her calls, and texts and was making no effort to see her.
He said he was looking for the right time to tell me about the A when she called. He never wanted it to happen when the kids were home but that ow had forced it to come out at the wrong time because she was selfish, and if she couldn't have him, she would make sure she destroyed his M so that I could not have him either.
He has asked me to go to MC and to forgive him if I can. He said he would do anything to go back in time and educate himself before this happened because if he had, he would have made a different choice. He said he will do anything to put our family back together. I told him that I am not in the place to make decisions right now because I'm still processing.
We talked about Retrovaille and I said I would be willing to attend but need a couple weeks to contemplate.
I always said an A was a deal breaker, but then again I thought if a man had an A, he would leave or continue to have A's. That once a cheater, always a cheater because that's what I've seen in other R's. I know I would never take H back if he choose ow but I never considered he would be able to explain in such detail and with such great remorse how it came to happen, or and that he would understand so clearly why the A would never work.
He told me he hates ow and hates himself for what happened. That she is not the type of woman he would ever want in his life again. That he will never allow a poor choice based on pettiness and selfishness to hurt me and our children again. I guess that's a start. Because right now, I'm still VERY VERY angry.
