I am doing this while I should be working, so I hope you know this I am taking this seriously and do care about your sitch...First- please read my post to Smothy on her thread, page 4, 6:01AM. The card game. Then read the rest of my post...I'll wait for you
When you say "I am not willing to be his backup plan or treated cruelty, which is what he is doing" I agree to a point. You need to have boundaries, and if he treats you poorly you need to respond in a way that respects yourself.
What you want to do, however, is have COMPASSION for him, understand he is reacting to tremendous pain in his heart that he feels was caused by the way YOU treated HIM.
In fact, his actions are his way of saying HE is not willing to be treated cruelly, which is what YOU were doing.
So go easy on the "not being a back up plan" and "not being treated cruelly" thing. You're 100% correct to take some actions to protect yourself and enforce your boundaries, but please be very careful about doing it out of necessity to care for yourself and stand up for your spiritual beliefs, and NOT to try to control or punish his behavior. Not an easy balance, and I'm sorry if I didn't explain it well.
As for whether you can show your H you can change, and if it's too late...yes you can show him, no it is not too late.
First tip, drop the porn thing. BUT ONLY FOR NOW. See, now is not the time to bring up your grievances in the M. It's not that you don't have the right to your feelings, and that they aren't valid, and that if you were going to R you'd have some things to work through and changes you'd need to see as well...but now is NOT the right time. My DB coach said "not voicing any of my needs and validating everything my WAW says and bending over backwards is not going to be the long term model for our future M if we R...but it is the model for this moment. That will change when WAW is truly ready to recommit to the M and do some real work. At that point we can start voicing my needs as well. But right now I have to carry the full weight of the R". So bringing up porn, etc...
I know you are trying to show him that you had REASONS for doing what you did, and trying to get him to see that he was accountable for a LOT of the problems, because you are convinced that if he understood you were a good loving woman and his behavior was responsible for some of the breakdown, then maybe he'd be open to trying...but he doesn't hear that. What he hears is that you're excusing neglecting him for years, and it just proves to him that you think it's ok to have treated you that way. In his mind this is proof that he can't trust you to meet his needs. Again, like not feeding a dog, and then telling it that "I know I didn't feed you, but you were digging in the back yard, that hurt me and made me not want to feed you". For a dog that was starving (and could think and talk LOL) it would tough to feel safe coming back if you think that not feeding it was ever ok, excusable, or debatable.
So drop all of your issues with him for now. And understand that his behavior is at it's worse in large part because of the pain in his heart from your behavior. HE IS STILL RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS ACTIONS, AND YOU STILL NEED GOOD BOUNDARIES...just don't judge him too much right now, and really focus on you.
OK- so that's what not to do...how do you demonstrate your willingness to change? Quite simply, by changing. Actually, doing the above is quite a big step in the right direction.
See, if you can even understand 30% of how important this aspect of the M was to him, and can find compassion for his pain, his behavior, and can focus on yourself only as opposed to his role in all of this...THAT BY ITSELF MAY BE ENOUGH.
You don't even have to tell him. If you can truly reach that point it will come out non-verbally through your body language, your reactions, your behavior. All of that follows your belief. Little things, like when he does something that is nasty and you don't react hurt because you have compassion...that proves you've changed. When he talks about how hurt he was and you can validate him sincerely and talk about how you wish you could have done things differently because you've spent a lot of time learning from men in sex starved marriages how undermined, disrespected, unappreciated they feel, and how you wish you'd made that a #1 priority and been more adventurous and passionate while you had the chance...wow, that would spin his eyes around in his socket.
But none of that will come across if you don't get there first. I feel you are trying to see how important is was to him, and focus on your role. Keep going down this path. It is much, much, much more important that you think, and you are still reeling from your own pain from his behavior.
So as a follow up I would suggest reading posts from men the "sex starved marriage" section, or google searching "why do men need sex" online. DAILY. I would spend 30 minutes daily learning how it feels to men. Seriously. That and really working on compassion and forgiveness for the pain he's caused and is still causing.
If you can do that HE WILL BE ABLE TO TELL. And as a man that was on the verge of walking away for YEARS for this very reason, I can tell you that if my W had done that I would've been the happiest guy on the planet. Instead we went YEARS at a time without sex, and we went through 3-6 month periods where we didn't even SPEAK because we were both so hurt it was too painful to even interact. Yeah, pretty big difference around one issue.
Hope this helps, keep going!
Me:38 XW:38 T:11 years M:8 years Kids: S14, D11, D7 BD/Move out day: 6/17/14, D final Dec 15
