since I last wrote, H and I have had ups and downs. sometimes he is “nice” to me (e.g. if I pretend nothing has happened in the past, and don’t ask him about it, we can have good times together). and sometimes he is just not nice to me. sometimes he can be reassuring and sometimes just hurtful for no reason.
the problem is, I still don’t know whether I can trust him. he says he is not seeing any other women – but he also said that in the past, when he was actively having multiple affairs. so how can I know if he is telling the truth now?
he still refuses adamantly to answer my questions about the past. I haven’t pressured him about it, because I realize this is a sensitive point with him. (some of what he did with the OW’s was apparently “kinky sex” and he is embarrassed to talk about it. or at least that is what he says. anyway I am not pressuring him on that for now.)
instead I have tried to concentrate on at least getting empathy from him – with mixed results. again, sometimes he will be reassuring, and sometimes say things that are very hurtful.
last week we finally had a conversation about what I am feeling, and he said some nice, encouraging things. I want to be reassured by this, and I want to be able to trust him, but how can I be sure about it when he is away from home so much and has so many opportunities? since he travels for his work, there is no way for me to know (short of hiring a PI) if he is spending the weekend alone or with a “guest”.
while thinking about this, I went back and looked at one of the IM conversations we had in the summer of 2011, soon after I found the old letters from several OW’s. here are some of the things he said at that time:
“I am more than happy to share my life with you.”
“I am really willing to cooperate with you to rebuild the trust between us.”
“I also want to fix our marriage. I love you and I respect you.”
“I am willing to share with you more about myself.”
“I want us to go on into old age together.”
“I really want to do my share to put this stuff behind us.”
when I wrote "I am willing to forgive the past, as long as I know that it is all in the past and not continuing”, he replied "Yes. Just in the past."
so that’s reassuring, right?
the problem is, I later found out that when he wrote those nice things, one of the OW’s was right there in his RV spending the weekend with him.
even though I have access to his email account and cell phone records, he could easily have one (or more!) email accounts and cell phones that I don’t know about.
so how could I possibly know if I can now trust him?
Originally Posted By: Starsky309, on 5/16/2012
TT,
I must admit, I only got about halfway thru your long post, but I think I pretty much got the gist of it:
Your husband is a serial adulterer, and refuses to end this behavior and be fully transparent with you (at least without you hounding him about it).
The question is, what are you going to do about it? What are you WILLING to do about it? You do realize that his current attitude about it all is because he's pretty much been able to return to the marriage each time in the past, without any real consequences from you, don't you? I mean, you'd cry or get angry or beg or plead, but I'm not seeing where there's ever been any real meaningful consequences for his destructive behavior. Because of that -- and because he's probably a narcissist personality to begin with -- he's developed a VERY strong sense of entitlement and even INVINCIBILITY, and I highly doubt he even thinks he's in danger of losing anything meaningful to him at this point.
What ARE your true, core dealbreakers? -- your "N.U.T.S." as it were? I like to call them "My Boundaries of Personal Integrity," and with most married people, one of them is "I will not live in an open marriage," or "I refuse to share my husband" or "I refuse to make a priority someone who treats me like a convenience," etc.
Without these, you will find yourself adrift, like the proverbial "frog in the pot of boiling water" story, and then suddenly you wake up, look back at your life, and say to yourself "What was I THINKING???"
Put another way, would you have even CONSIDERED marrying a man like this, if you knew he was capable of this? Now that you ARE married to him, why should you tolerate it now?
Starsky
I would point you back to this, from last year, TT. Did you ever do any serious thinking about this? This is a great example about how such a framework could help you, because either "I need him to be open with me about the past affairs, and he won't" is a dealbreaker for you, or it's not. In my experience, some betrayed spouses need to hear these kinds of details while some do not, but those that DO usually really DO need it before they can feel safe in the relationship again and begin to heal.
Find your non-negotiatable core values, and everything else will flow from those.
