Finally confronted H on affair...Now what????

[keep_going]

I was doing a personal review of my part and responsibility in the demise of my marriage. I find that seeing things objectively helps me get rid of resentment and helps me see what I need to work on.

H and I were together for a long time before getting married and we got along fine. We were in the "honeymoon period" for a while, we became best friends and even dated long-distance for some time.

Yet, from the beginning, our M was tumultuous due to a lot of reasons.

1) My H has been the only serious R I have ever had, so I brought A LOT of inexperience to the marriage.

2) We never lived together pre-marriage. At least for me, learning to live together and compromising was a RUDE awakening to married life. For most of our marriage, I felt the need to get my way. When I didn't, I would get upset. I realize now how childish and selfish I was and how that was something I was used to... I was very pampered by my parents as a child. Now I understand how crucial compromise is to ANY R.

3) Our backgrounds and the way we dealt with conflict could have not been any more different:
- I am the last of four and was used to getting my way; compromise was not a common word in my vocabulary. So needless to say, all that came with me to the marriage.

- I also come from a latin family and culture, where arguing and raising your voice is common-place. People are used to speaking their minds all the time and not holding back that much. I thought this was normal... Now I see that it is not a healthy way to communicate.

On the other hand, my H comes from a divorced household. His dad was an abusive alcoholic for many years before his mom left him when H was a teenager. As the youngest of 6, H got sheltered by older siblings to keep him away of all the chaos.
Once his dad left, as a family, they developed a dynamic of never raising their voices, and avoiding conflict and confrontation. Issues are never brought up to the surface and hardly ever resolved.

I value open communication and don't mind confrontation. My H values peace, conflict-avoidance and raising the voice is a definite NO NO. I never really respected what he valued and avoided these things that triggered him. Now I know how detrimental they are for our M and how averse my H is to them.

4) We had financial issues from the beginning.
- I brought a lot of debt to the marriage. (I paid my own way thru college and had thousands of dollars in debt from student loans.) In addition, I got laid off shortly after we got married. I felt pressure from H from the start. He would constantly ask me when I would get a job, complain about finances, etc. I felt extremely guilty for his stress and our sitch, so I always felt I had to be at least an equal provider in our marriage.

- My line of work in the entertainment industry meant a lot of sacrifices in terms of time - I was working AT LEAST 12 hrs. a day and our marriage suffered tremendously for it. I always felt my hard work was a way of showing my love and commitment and didn't realize how much I abandoned my H. Looking back, I realize this was NOT one of his love languages.
I was NOT happy with my job, but I always felt pressured to continue since I made a very good living and I always believed finances were so important for H. I felt trapped and tried to express this to H, but I felt he never heard me.
He said he would support me in whatever I decided to to, while at the same time expressing his concerns re. finances... I was also fearful that I would not find anything else that would provide such large income. And I also got complacent - I am a person who values stability and has a great fear of change and the unknown. I now know I should have done more to get out of that unhappy situation and not let resentment accumulate.


5) I felt abandoned by H
- H and I always dreamed of having our own business. After all, we were just as smart as other people who succeeded financially... We finally decided to pursue a business in Real Estate together. I saw this as my way out from my own bad work sitch. as well. I was so hopeful.
Shortly after I got pregnant with D4, H one day just announced that he was going to pursue his own business idea - judgement recovery.
- I was crushed. I felt that he unilaterally abandoned our joint plans to open a business together, that he disregarded me completely, our dreams and our plans as a team.
- I not only felt further trapped in my crappy work sitch, but now found a new pressure of having to support our household while he got his business going - and I was pregnant...
That business never took off, I was the sole provider for two years, and we ended up borrowing a lot of money from our line of credit to keep above water.
- I don't think I ever got over this - I tried to explain how hurt I was to H, but he never really completely got how abandoned and betrayed I felt by all of this. I just accumulated more resentment towards him. I should have just forgiven and moved on and found out my own way of dealing with my feelings of entrapment. In a way, I think I was bitter he found his own gig and I didn't...

6) Our intimate life was never that fulfilling for me and eventually also for H
- I am the kind of person that cannot easily get intimate if there are unsolved issues. I just cannot pretend everything is right and have a good time in bed.
- I was also very inexperienced sexually when we got married, had not had that many partners and I never knew how to communicate my needs and wants. I always just expected H to either figure them out on his own, or that he should know them... Obviously this did NOT work out.
- Things started suffering right away and I just accepted it, assuming that this is what people talked about - once married, intimacy fades... So I settled and resigned. I love my H, so I always tried to make him happy in bed, but you cannot just keep this frustration inside and I accumulated a lot of resentment.
- We grew farther and farther apart, I never initiated sex, which my H resented and the frequency diminished as time passed
- Eventually we both kind of gave up on having a healthy and fulfilling sex life and settled for very little
- I now know I am responsible of my own happiness and sexual fulfillment - It is my responsiblity to make sure things work for me and that my H knows what I need. I wish nothing more than have an opportunity to fix this aspect of our marriage... I just don't know that I will ever have another chance with my H

Ultimately my resentment permeated all aspects of our R. My H tried for many years to make things better, to please me, to resolve conflict (with his family background, he was always trying to please others...)

He also is a person that needs LOTS of attention, encouragement and attention and I fell short in providing that.
I always thought because he was frail and vulnerable, that he wanted me to be strong for both. I also crave and need lots of physical affection and affection, but I felt like being vulnerable and showing what I needed made me weaker and would undermine our R.

Once kids came along, things got more and more complicated. The routine, both settling, dealing with kids, financial pressures, etc., made us grow apart more. When H left he said he tried to reach me, but I was just not available and open to hearing him, until he gave up and had enough. That's what happened this past December when he left.

I agree with his assessment- I never wanted to accept I had a problem. I always thought we should be able to solve our problems together and never looked at myself individually. I was not open and humble enough to look in the mirror until I hit my bottom. It took him leaving to really understand the depth of our problems, the dysfunction in our M and the dispair and hurt my H had lived with for many years.

Granted - I also felt a lot of hurt, dispair and abandonment, but H kept trying. I think that little by little we both built a wall until we were not able to communicate with each other and eventually he just gave up.

As you can see, I have A LOT of responsiblity in the demise of my M. I take full responsibility and have identified my failures. I am willing to work on fixing everything, if just given the chance, but now it might be too late.

H says he cannot see us ever fixing our problems, he never wants to put himself on the line to be hurt again. That he just cannot live in constant fear of my reactions and my anger and that when he left he felt a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. He says he misses the kids, but has not missed our R at all. (He has always been a great dad and adores his kids. That is why it is so painful to see him so detached from his kids now...)

He said that once he left, he decided to actively look for someone to love him and has now found her.
He is not willing to give our R another chance, too many problems, too much work and he doesn't want to risk losing OW. She loves him, she appreciates him and she loves life. And he just has no interest in giving that up and take a leap of faith for a R he feels is beyond repair.

He said if I had realized all this two years ago, we might have had a chance, but now it's just too late for us. He wants me to find happiness and for us to be friends and raise our kids in peace. Ideally for him, we would all get along (and go to soccer games together, where OW and I could be cordial to each other).