Still walking the path to my own happiness

[hopefulinga]

I felt left out from his inner life most of the time, not just left out, KEPT out.

This hits home a lot with me right now and I don't know if it is because of where we are. Right now, I feel like all of H's friends know more about H than I do. Many times H and I would talk about something and he would swear he told me something that he didn't.

He says I could have talked to him about it, but every time I tried to share my feelings with him he shut me down. He actually told me a few times, "No you don't feel like that."

I've had my H tell me more than once that he didn't care about my feelings. While some of these things may be said in the heat of a disagreement, they shut you down.

I still see that we have a lot of similarities in what we think our H's expected and how we are wired. I talked to a friend of mine tonight about my sitch and told him that I knew I was hard to live with and was trying to change. He said, h3ll, all lawyers are hard to live with, that's why I've been married 3 times.

Some days I am so good at putting these negatives out of my head and being loving. Other days the resent rears its ugly head.

It sounds like right now you are angry and resentful. Maybe you are truly done. I can understand wanting your bed and independence.

[FloydMan]

Amazing the hurtful things that are said. It does cut deep. Last summer W said to me "I don't care about your feelings. You are dead to me". With a dead look in her eyes and a tone of utter disdain. Now that hurt. This is only weeks after she said she loved me with love in her eye and said she was proud of me. Said I have so much to give, smarts, looks and humour. How bizarre. Again like the book after the affair says don't pay attention to the words but rather the hurt behind them.

[mamabird]

It's sad. There are so many wonderful resources available out there that we could be taking advantage of to help us get out of this situation. But my H's heels are dug in so firmly... he's so convinced that he doesn't want to repair any of it. This just adds to my list of resentments towards him. I have guilt around it besides - I think this is mostly H-induced guilt in the vein of you f'ed up for good this time and now you (and our children) will have to live with the consequences forever, because you are not worth working on it. Guess that would be good fodder for my next IC session.

I know I need to work on "burning my resentments". I will get there in time. Actions follow feelings which follow thoughts. I have to adjust my thoughts to more of a "letting go" mindset and I'm not really ready to do that. I know I want to let go of it so maybe I ought to focus on doing that.

Hopeful, you are a good woman for hanging in there - at this point I could not imagine myself feeling too loving towards my H or looking forward to seeing him. Once in a while I do get a loving feeling but when I try to act on it he shuts me down.

[Denver_2010]

Hello again RegretfulLA,

I have a call with my DB coach on Friday - we'll see what he has to say about all of this.

Great move.

GH, I haven't read your whole sitch - what turned it around for you guys?

Other than the affair ending, I don’t know where to begin answering this.

I do know that when the nuclear bomb detonated I read literally everything I could about marriage and male/female attraction. Anything I could find. I also had three DB coaching sessions as well as three other coaching sessions with other experts very experienced in saving marriages.

I must have read about 15 books, all of them at least twice. Gottman’s Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is basically tattooed on my brain now, especially his chapter on accepting influence (something I was so atrocious at doing with my wife) and “turning towards”.

I can only really speak about stuff that I personally changed, as “getting” my wife to change or anyone else for that matter was a dead end.

One of my favourite books for years has been Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. A day or two after my wife left I started his 21 day “self image” exercise, completed it, and changed my self image from that of an angry, bitter, cocky and nasty young man into that of an “alpha husband”. I had used this exercise years before to go from being a D and an E pupil to a straight A pupil (without realising what I was doing at the time).

I would mentally rehearse literally every interaction with my wife during my DBing phase, every gesture, facial expression and above all voice tone.

Gottman’s work has become more important for me in recent years. I practise what he suggests to the best of my ability and this makes conflicts when they do occur much less severe.

He actually says in his book that what you do with each other when you’re not fighting has the greatest influence on how conflicts will play out when they do happen. And they happen in all marriages.

So, without even really thinking about it my wife and I chit chat virtually every evening over dinner (after I have put the children to bed), joke about something, share events of the day, make fun of people we know about. If I am on the couch reading and she is at the table writing something (she writes a lot) and she asks me “how does this sound?” I put the book down on my chest and ask her “tell me more” or “why don’t you read it out to me? It’s this little stuff, this “turning toward each other” that Gottman talks about which has made the greatest difference for us.

We always were the best of friends before the bomb but I had a dreadful temper on me and would default immediately to his Four Horsemen, especially criticism and contempt. I virtually never go there now. There was an incident a few months ago where my wife had made a few financial oversights and it led to us having some huge bills to take care of. She hadn’t told me about it and it likely wouldn’t have happened had she told me and had we discussed it together. Naturally I was utterly furious and pre 2008 I would have exploded at her and subjected her to a angry barrage of contempt, mockery and criticism. This time I simply told her ”W, I am going out for a few hours before I say or do something I regret” and so I did. Our conversations once I got back were much more measured than they otherwise would have been.

I know that around the time of 2nd EA, H had been treating me horribly - kind of a common thread in those sitches where there are As and WAWs.

I think so. It’s a pattern you see repeated time and time again.

I can't say I was really deluded but I was definitely not right in the head...

LOL! Tell us more?

I was not in love with OM2 or even close to it .......... I think back on my behavior with him and it was really creepy because I would just basically demand validation from him, and I kept throwing things at him to see how he would react.

So really, that's mostly what it was. Unmet needs demanding fulfillment. The other part of it was "revenge" towards my H for all the horrible treatment.

I heard a lot of this from my W.

He would threaten to D me routinely

I used to say some dreadful things to my wife like this.

I would say ”I love you W, but I don’t need you” which really cut her to the core. If she voiced a complaint with me I would snap at her and say ”Get over it.”. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Who knows if H will ever have that awakening.

I hope he does.

Gottman also talks about the mortal sins in a R, the worst one being "stonewalling" or withdrawal/rejection. If stonewalling were an Olympic sport, H would be a contender for the gold.

This jumps out. Stay with me for a minute....

He really inflicted a lot of psychological damage on me over the years (but I guess he'd say same about me).

You mentioned in a previous post that you can be quite harsh in your opinion.

Can you tell us more about this?

Also, those horsemen (criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling) can be a dance that both of you engage in. Very often it increases in severity with time until the marriage buckles. He writes that half of all marriages end do so within the first 7 years and if a marriage ends this quickly it is usually because of these bitter fights getting out of control. That was certainly the case for us and it was virtually all my fault.

All my wife wanted to do was to love her husband, conceive a baby and have a nice life. She hated conflict (and still does) whereas I actually enjoyed conflict (how depraved is that?). I don’t fear conflict if it comes up but I certainly don’t go looking for it anymore.

It's all so broken, and only way it will get fixed is with time, perspective and willingness on both parts. This is why I chose my screenname RegretfulLA, because I have so many regrets about everything that's happened to us.

I really think it’s salvageable (hell if my situation was just about anybody’s is) but where you start I don’t really know.

Shame and regret are unpleasant but they serve a very important purpose. They ensure you don’t ever repeat your catastrophic mistakes again.

GH31

This was a great post GH... and you also regretful. GH, you and I sound like we are very similar in our personalities. At least how we were pre-bomb. Regretful, your description of your EA provided me with some valuable insight into my W's A/R with OM. Something that I needed right now. Thanks.

[afa75]

Wow Regretful. That's a lot more than I had thought as far as a response to ending either of the Rs with the OMs. At least you're able to recognize what purpose they each served; and that you're taking steps towards finding ways to ask / receive those needs to be met in a new R (H or otherwise).

Again, I can only commend you for the strength and courage it takes to look so hard at your faults to make improvements.

[mamabird]

Denver, I'm glad I could help. I did take a look at your sitch yesterday as a matter of fact. I have so much respect for the men on here who are fighting for their W's even after they have had EA's, PA's or whatever. It is a tough blow to the ego for sure and you have managed to put that all aside even though it's hard sometimes.

Thinking about that, I mentioned to my IC this am that there are men who fight for their W's in the face of much more serious transgressions. He reminded me that my H has a serious wound from his mother's abandonment that he still has not resolved. He also said he thought that's what caused my H to "overreact". It was nice to have that POV validated by a mental health professional. Not that it was a wrong reaction, it was just way on the end of the reaction bell curve.

We figured that if you liken this experience to the 5 stages of grief, I've already gone thru denial and bargaining, and am now moving thru anger and depression towards acceptance. It was a good session. I'm so tired of feeling guilty about my own feelings...

[mamabird]

Interesting, H just checked in with me from his business trip via chat... Not that we talked about much but at least it was something. Kind of unexpected.

[mamabird]

Hopeful, you said it would be interesting to see how H was towards me while he was gone. This morning he called to talk to the boys then asked to speak to me. We didn't really discuss anything, I just asked him how his meetings were going. Kind of like yesterday's chat. But it feels like he's reaching out a bit more now that he's been away for a few days.

One other interesting thing. When we said goodbye, I am not sure about this, but I think he might have said ILY... ??? I am not sure what he said because I was in the process of putting the phone down. I am a little weirded out right now. He's coming home tomorrow and then we'll see how the weekend goes. Then, in a week, he leaves for 2 weeks in Europe.

[GH31]

Hopeful, you said it would be interesting to see how H was towards me while he was gone.

I was kind of curious also

This morning he called to talk to the boys then asked to speak to me. We didn't really discuss anything, I just asked him how his meetings were going. Kind of like yesterday's chat. But it feels like he's reaching out a bit more now that he's been away for a few days.

I have to say I'm not surprised

One other interesting thing. When we said goodbye, I am not sure about this, but I think he might have said ILY... ??? I am not sure what he said because I was in the process of putting the phone down.

A big smile spread across my face when I read this.

Especially the"??"

He's coming home tomorrow and then we'll see how the weekend goes. Then, in a week, he leaves for 2 weeks in Europe.

I am really curious about how he might reach out during this trip.

If I woke up in RegretfulLA's shoes I would make sure his week at home was good, i.e. responding to his bids if he "turns toward", wish him a very pleasant trip to Europe and then do what you've done (or not done) whilst he's been away this time.

Dare I say it, I think there's a remote possibility that he wants to "soften" somehow but just doesn't know where to begin. I certainly didn't before coming here. Just a hunch though, please don't take it as objective fact.

If he's anywhere near Munich then send him to me .

Hang in there RegretfulLA.

GH31

[FloydMan]

I think this is great RLA. I really do. Smile came to me too. Take baby steps as they come and don't overbear it. The week home as GH says should me made a good one, but don;t pressure yourself on it to make it perfect as that puts everyone on eggshells too. Just take it as some time togther to be pleasant. Let him leave with a good impression but don't pressure yourself.

GH31 gives you, and everyone great advice.

I have similar sitch as you GH31. Many bizarre things. I look through where you were and where you are.