Your H hanging on to past GF's....and keepsakes hanging out, is just plain creepy to me. Yes, it is absolutely disrespectful to his W! And the way he talked to you about all his GF's, is inappropriate.
IMHO, when he did not respond to your terms of no more contacting his ex......that was your answer. You cannot trust him. Trust has to be earned by the cheater. You can't just decide you will trust a liar. He has to prove himself. This man is not right. He has toi many secrets and hidden agendas. If you were my daughter, I would tell you to get as far away from him as possible.
You deserve a man of integrity. One who will cherish his W enough to be honest and transparent........and who has no other woman kept standing in the shadows.
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
Your H hanging on to past GF's....and keepsakes hanging out, is just plain creepy to me. Yes, it is absolutely disrespectful to his W! And the way he talked to you about all his GF's, is inappropriate.
Sandi2- Thank you for the reassurance. I hated it but tried to work with it, explaining it away, letting him know how much it bothered me. He's selfish and stubborn and maybe worse.
Originally Posted By: sandi2
IMHO, when he did not respond to your terms of no more contacting his ex......that was your answer. You cannot trust him. Trust has to be earned by the cheater. You can't just decide you will trust a liar. He has to prove himself. This man is not right. He has toi many secrets and hidden agendas. If you were my daughter, I would tell you to get as far away from him as possible.
You deserve a man of integrity. One who will cherish his W enough to be honest and transparent........and who has no other woman kept standing in the shadows.
You are so right about trust. This has been my problem. I kept looking at the situation from one side. Thinking i just needed to reset my mind and start over. To forgive and forget. The problem was I was the only one making changes. He didn't really work on regaining my trust, did he? Even now he chooses to go to a get together where she will be despite knowing how much trouble this has caused and how much of a role it played in the deterioration of our relationship.
My mother and sister have been telling me the same thing for a long time. I have just hated the idea of ending my marriage. I never thought I would be doing this. But I know I have been, and still am, giving it my all.
Day 2, and I still haven't heard a word from my husband regarding the things I put out there.
If you love someone, it shouldn't take time to say, you're right we shouldn't be texting our feelings. Or, you're right, there's no room for the ex in this marriage and I need to figure out how to be with my friends without her. Or, I'm sorry I yelled in your face and was disrespectful and mocked your feelings. Or, I would like to keep working on this marriage...
Seems simple to me, but I guess the feelings aren't there.
Tonight is his get-together with friends (ex included!) to which I wasn't invited. I realize how ridiculous this all is. It's difficult for me because marriage meant forever. Before we got married, he was always telling me how marriage is forever, and then this is how he behaved during marriage. Is this the manipulative behavior of a liar?
What seemed to me to be small things -- forgetting to do something she asked, or putting things in the wrong place -- she'd take as a deep, personal affront, an insult to and an assault on her self-worth. The type of things she'd get angry about, and the intensity of the anger, were astounding to me. For example, once we had just moved to a new town and she asked me where she should go get groceries. So I told her about warehouse-type store where I had gone a couple of times. An hour later, I get a call from her at work, and she is livid. She cusses me out for failing to tell her that they only take debit and cash (she had brought only her credit cards), and she hangs up on me. She stays angry at me for days. No apologies.
And so I sought out couples therapy early on in hopes of resolving that, but really just learned to accommodate her irrational anger and live with it. I didn't really learn until about a year ago that she likely suffers from a recognized mental condition.
Anyway, we are just learning about your situation, and we only have a partial picture of your marriage. And we will always have only a partial picture, a one-sided story at that. So while it's easy for us to tell you that your H should stop seeing his ex, only you have the whole picture and only you can make the ultimate decision on what to do.
It appears to me that your H is unwilling to let go of his ties to his ex, even though his marriage to you has reached a breaking point because of it. Whether or not his relationship to his ex is innocent, whether or not you have an anger problem, his unwillingness or inability to value his marriage to you above his relationship to his ex... that is a very bad sign. You really don't want to be married long-term, not to mention be co-parents, with someone like that. As I said, even people who enjoy a very harmonious marriage for decades wind up here in this forum. Marriage is damn hard, and I don't think you want to start your first year of marriage like this.
Your H coming home from work and going straight to the home office ... maybe he had legitimate reason to be hurt by you, but any man with any kind of a backbone, or heart, would not run away from his woman like that. He'd come talk to you. What the hell is going on. How can we resolve this. I love you.
Me: 50, MLC/WW 45 Young kids Nov 2015: BD1 Apr 2016: BD2 Jan 2017: W filed Feb 2017: D final
If you love someone, it shouldn't take time to say, you're right we shouldn't be texting our feelings. Or, you're right, there's no room for the ex in this marriage and I need to figure out how to be with my friends without her. Or, I'm sorry I yelled in your face and was disrespectful and mocked your feelings. Or, I would like to keep working on this marriage...
Well, first thing is that we need to realize that we are thinking rationally - or maybe in a whole different way, or universe, than what our WWs are. They don't, obviously.
Quote:
Seems simple to me, but I guess the feelings aren't there
Sorry to say, but this is probably the correct answer.
Quote:
Before we got married, he was always telling me how marriage is forever, and then this is how he behaved during marriage. Is this the manipulative behavior of a liar?
Manipulative behavior of a liar? Possibly. Or maybe he was sincere at the time, or THOUGHT he was. That's possible, too. Maybe he was rebounding and you came in at the wrong time. There are so many what-ifs there, that you really can't dwell on it.
There are moments in this life when you are so confident in the rightness of your actions, that not even for a second do you consider the option that you might be wrong.
You mentioned that your husband was blaming the lack of sex on him watching too much porn. That could be a bigger issue than you thought. Between indulging in a lot of porn and being in communication with is ex, that is a bad combination.
Time is your friend right now. Use it to focus on being the best NMC that only a fool would leave.
You are at a very fragile point in this relationship and it would be extremely helpful to know what your next move should be. Feel free to give me a call at 303-444-7004 to discuss how we can best help you determine what to do next.
Cristy Resource Coordinator The Divorce Busting Center 303-444-7004
A Divorce Busting Coach can help you save your marriage, even when your spouse wants out.
Email virginia@divorcebusting.com or 303-444-7004 for more information or to get started right away.
Before we got married, he was always telling me how marriage is forever, and then this is how he behaved during marriage. Is this the manipulative behavior of a liar?
Don't underestimate the ability of a person to be irrational.
It's possible he was scheming and calculating the whole time, but I think what's far more likely is that he is just being irrational. This could be a lifelong pattern, or something confined to his relationship with you. You probably have a sense.
So most likely, when he married you, it FELT to him like marriage is forever, and you were everything to him. But when it stopped feeling that way, he no longer believed in it.
Google "emotional reasoning."
Me: 50, MLC/WW 45 Young kids Nov 2015: BD1 Apr 2016: BD2 Jan 2017: W filed Feb 2017: D final
Yeah - XW and I filled out a marriage questionnaire in pre-marital counseling, and it asked about handling divorce, and she crossed out the question and put, "I will NEVER allow a divorce".
At least two affairs later, she seemed less strict about that.
XW and I filled out a marriage questionnaire in pre-marital counseling, and it asked about handling divorce, and she crossed out the question and put, "I will NEVER allow a divorce".
As did mine. And one of this biggest things of hers was that she didn't condone cheating (at the time a mutual friend of ours found out his wife was cheating)...and guess what? You got it. Not only did mine cheat, but I also found evidence of her involvement with married men well before we got together...
There are moments in this life when you are so confident in the rightness of your actions, that not even for a second do you consider the option that you might be wrong.
What seemed to me to be small things -- forgetting to do something she asked, or putting things in the wrong place -- she'd take as a deep, personal affront, an insult to and an assault on her self-worth. The type of things she'd get angry about, and the intensity of the anger, were astounding to me. For example, once we had just moved to a new town and she asked me where she should go get groceries. So I told her about warehouse-type store where I had gone a couple of times. An hour later, I get a call from her at work, and she is livid. She cusses me out for failing to tell her that they only take debit and cash (she had brought only her credit cards), and she hangs up on me. She stays angry at me for days. No apologies.
ForGump- She sounds like someone with real anger issues. I wonder what her childhood was like? Did she grow up in a home where explosive anger was common?
Originally Posted By: ForGump
It appears to me that your H is unwilling to let go of his ties to his ex, even though his marriage to you has reached a breaking point because of it. Whether or not his relationship to his ex is innocent, whether or not you have an anger problem, his unwillingness or inability to value his marriage to you above his relationship to his ex... that is a very bad sign. You really don't want to be married long-term, not to mention be co-parents, with someone like that. As I said, even people who enjoy a very harmonious marriage for decades wind up here in this forum. Marriage is damn hard, and I don't think you want to start your first year of marriage like this.
Your H coming home from work and going straight to the home office ... maybe he had legitimate reason to be hurt by you, but any man with any kind of a backbone, or heart, would not run away from his woman like that. He'd come talk to you. What the hell is going on. How can we resolve this. I love you.
Absolutely. I just didn't know what to make of his behavior for the longest time. I was suffering during the lowest point in my life. In my next post, I'll explain some more and give an update.
