Heading toward affair- what to do?

[hopeOK]

Yeah. Speaking of him turning himself into the victim ...

I'll admit that I haven't read you sitch with a fine-tooth comb, hope. But I'm unsettled by the dynamic I'm reading. He cheated on you and you have proof of that, right? Your H continues to deflect blame. And you seem to continue accepting (too much of) it.

Can you remind me what this situation is that he keeps referring to when he blames YOU? You seem to be apologizing for it, but I must have missed exactly what you did that he says hurt him so bad.

It is pretty complicated. And I don't feel safe posting the specific details online. But what I said to my sister (along w/ making fun of him) was about me questioning his actions in regards to our children. I did say it was unfounded but that during the time of his affair, his behavior was so out of character, it led me to entertain the thought of bad things going on between him and the kids. So this thing, if it got out, could damage his career (just an investigation would damage it), not to mention put his relationship w/ the kids in jeopardy. Now my sister would never say anything but he doesn't trust that. He was extremely hurt by what I said, that i could actually even think him capable of that when all he has ever cared about was taking good care of the kids and being a good dad. I did tell him that it was a thought that came in & out pretty quickly & all based on the fear I was experiencing but that made no difference. He sees it as - how could you really even know me to think I would do something so awful.

So I do regret my actions and not thinking it through before saying anything. When talking to our marriage counselor after this all went down, the marriage counselor understood his reaction & said that it would take time to get over this kind of hurt, especially when one of his core desires is to be a good dad to the kids & give them a childhood that he didn't have b/c of his awful parents. The counselor also said that it was important to empathize and show understanding for his hurt and that it would be unwise to bring up my needs for reassurance regarding the affair b/c that would be focusing everything back on me & not on his pain. So I've tried to do that for a long time... but when I started to feel like he really was talking to the OW, I've had to stop being patient for him to not be so angry about this other ordeal.

So we've gotten a bit lopsided on all this... and he does think that what I did to him has been more painful to him than what the affair did to me. He still thinks I was just jealous and only got mad because of that. So I guess our counseling didn't really teach him much in that area.