Answer to: "why didn't you hear it from ME?"

[Flight]

I should trust my intuition. I have always been empathic and know something is up. What I believe to work and not work is dead on. I will trust myself to still maintain one-way texts and even relationhsip talks when appropriate. They work in my case. So going dark isn't the way, though knowing when to give space is important. Something happened that caused a rift that I didn't know about, and that was causing my confusion in her behavior. As is often the case, she will hold something in, punish me for it, and then later tell me what is bothering her.

Here is today's question. I reached out to people months ago at the beginning of this crisis and asked for advice and help. If they tried to give advice that I knew wouldn't work or asked outright "is there someone else", I told them. Now, months later, it is coming back to bite me even though I stopped sharing my story all those months ago. On the one hand, pressure from people who know was actually a good thing. Can't very well introduce the new guy and expect them to accept it when everyone knows who he is and despises him. Family keeps saying, "do the right thing". Easier to come back to the relationship. On the other hand, this provides the WAW an easy distraction to project the blame back onto me for "bad mouthing" her to everyone. So instead of looking at her behaviour and seeing that no lies were told and if she is ashamed, it should be for her actions, not people knowing about them, she can say how I "haven't changed".

How do I answer the accusations when they were all the things I did MONTHS ago? Do I set a boundary here to not transfer her shame onto me? Or just validate her again for sharing too much in her opinion when I was needing Prozac? Can I make this "right" for her?

One goal for me would get her to worry about her issues and not mine. I thought of having something to say gently like, "I have been working intently on my own issues and being the man I want to be through this crisis. We can only look inward, learn from our mistakes, and move forward. Like you I assume are trying to do". Somehow I want to just plant a seed that she needs to look at her own actions and reactions, not mine.