Infidelity/WAH, my story pt 10

[25yearsmlc]

Sara,

((( )))

I'm not sure if you caught my thread situation, but there are similarities.

It's so important not to project our situations onto others. So I caution you to always take this into account.

Yet this is a support group and we all share some universal truths, and in some cases we share a lot of fact patterns.

A decade ago I spent a lot of time pondering the whole MLC versus WAH issues and in hindsight it makes no difference, since our approaches are the same.

I think people excessively focus on MLC b/c 1) they want to explain bad behavior in their spouses b/c they believe it will lessen the pain

and 2) b/c they believe, (without much empirical data supporting this belief ), that MLCers are more likely to return to the M's.

I asked and read so much about MLC's - and now I'd just say That's over a year+ of obsessing and being sad, that I'll never get back.

I do not regret wanting to be home for our kids.

I felt that if I hung in there long enough, my loyalty & devotion to our family would be rewarded and in time...(oh my God, so very very much of my life ) ...THEN it'll make up for all the sacrifices we have made. H will return this loyalty with the passionate love we once shared (and then some). I subconsciously felt "owed."

But what I told myself was something like ..."h will see how lucky he is and THEN we can get back to what we once had, AND OR have the future we once planned..."

I wanted my kids to be raised in a good home with a solid marriage. And for at least 12-18 years, they were...I no longer can assess when h changed or when I saw the realities of him, or whatever it was. (Can people "become" a narcissist or were they always one, or is it something else??)

Here are some random things to share.

When we were piecing, h said a lot of things I needed to hear in order to agree to recon, and reconciliation had been my goal, without reservation for the first year.

But when we began to piece, We did not specify behaviors or changes other than "we will both be making joint decisions AGAIN" so it was more like we were going to return to the marriage we had before 2005...

but later on, when boundaries got blurred, I did not enforce them.

Also h's mother became terminally ill a year into piecing and so our focus got derailed...and then we never really faced the causes of the idiocy in the first place.

IF I HAD IT TO DO OVER AGAIN and if i were to choose to reconcile again, and piece,

I would absolutely require my h to get IC. Your h refused to do that and to me, in hindsight, I'd tell anyone that it's crucial.

I know with all my heart that we once had a really good marriage and family - yet h was willing to throw this away to follow his fantasy in Alaska.....he missed 2 years of our d's lives...he inflicted deep pain on the 4 people who loved him the most.

That's ^^ not normal, healthy, moral behavior. I wish we had gotten to the underlying issues IN H - but we didn't. Oh well.

Also when you speak of the having your kids grow up in a stable home...think about that phrase. I mean I get it, but there's another reality going on. Like your h's cognitive dissonance. That will not "fade", but will fester (I mean, without IC for him).


Fact is, my kids saw a lot of things I glossed over or turned away from in the m AND in h. I wanted to see things that validated my choice to stay.
I feel as if I was asleep and only now am awake. It's a scary place to be.

Also your medical issue and your h's behavior resonated with me a lot. Without going into more detail here hijacking, suffice to say I was very sick last fall, out of nowhere. And I was back east for a wedding that h did not attend. H is my h of 35 years, and an MD...(WTF?? I'd have been deeply embarrassed if I'd been "with it" enough).

When H FINALLY came to retrieve me after 6 days of being hospitalized, when my neurologist said I should not travel alone, he was weird.

H's behavior and his DELAY in coming, was just appalling. My family was stunned.-

So i related to your ablation story and how your h was "not sure he could get that day off".... I'm sorry to say I literally laughed out little b/c it SO reminded me of h.
(You're an MD, right? I mean, wtf?)

It was long a marriage in which h's dreams and goals and needs were eventually THE priority...and I bought into that. Pretty much anything he wanted and needed or said he needed, was okay as long as the family was intact. No h did not hit me or openly cheat (who knows what he did otherwise??)

Maybe if I had filed years ago, he'd have snapped out of it before too much damage had been done OR maybe I'd just have gotten back 10 years of my life.

So for a moment, forget the affair your h had. Just process the fact that although You are the mother of his children, when the chips were down, he did not have your back.

For ME, this was a devastating but clarifying realization.

I believe there is a lesson for you in my situation. Make of it, what you will.


And dear God, take care of yourself.