A fresh start? (probably not!)

[25yearsmlc]

Hi
just a quick update on today's MC session. We have been "discharged" as the MC thinks we are now in a pretty good place. Strangely enough my W asked me last night if there was any need to continue as I was alright about things (and so was she).


Stopping the MC is one thing, pretending all is well is quite another. My stbx h was selfish, and I did not think it required a divorce. (It probably doesn't, if it's somehow not rampant or somehow balanced).

But my h's sense of entitlement only grew, unchecked, while unspoken grievances festered, then morphed into an unrecognizable distortion of our marital history. This distortion helped him justify long term deceit, and an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance in him. I do not know if he feels remorse now or not, but I think he feels sorry for HIS loss of our children and damaged finances. It's about HIS pain, not the pain he inflicted on others.

Your wife's sense of entitlement is a big problem in your m. IMO you both need IC. You yourself have at least 2 issues, as I see it (and I'm biased, admittedly).

You accepted a marriage in which sexual satisfaction was almost a non issue. I think you said you had occasionally gone a year without sex. That's just not healthy (unless you both openly agree to be roommates). But you described the m as a good one, even though a key element was missing for some time.

For most of us, sexual intimacy is a fundamental ingredient of marriage, not to be shared with anyone else.

So some of this^^ is on you, to be sure. It's not all on your w. I'm sure she felt undesirable and you did say you had gotten out of shape and that you yourself felt undesirable, correct?

Anyhow, the other issue is that your wife deceived & betrayed you. Her behavior was not a one night mistake of caving into temptation, It took some planning. That is on her.

And without some sort of IC or spiritual insight for her (you know, like "W, that's wrong & destructive to your family, so stop it now"), I doubt the chances are high that she will stop the A fully.

BTW, What would SHE lose if you two divorced? Why do you think the OM won't leave his wife?


Based on the usual great advice here I ensured that the "elephant in the room" topic was mentioned especially as the MC said it should be addressed as it seemed that we might be rug sweeping the topic at home. I said I had not mentioned it since that period of time after confronting (when the topic would raise its head from time to time) because I had assumed that she would deal with this issue herself as we were making a go of things (anything else on my part could have been viewed as controlling?).

why would you ^^^^ "assume" she'd "Deal with this issue"?

How is that assumption not the same as "rug sweeping"?

My W said both she and the OM had tried to keep things "neutral" and it had been easier recently as she has been snowed under with work and they had both been on vacation at different times.


um, gosh, I sure am glad "it's recently been easier" for her and OM. WTF???


The good thing was the MC (and she has been extremely good throughout the sessions) made sure we brought everything out into the open and particularly on the subject of trust I stated (rather than "I will never trust her again when she goes to work or goes out socialising") that the trust will come from us being more open with each other.


why the blurry boundaries? What's "more open"???? You don't feel like saying "End the A now"??

Are you afraid the answer will be "no" or that she will lie again?

Then what? I understand not wanting to rock the boat. OMG I do.

Thing is, the boat might be sinking and you cannot bail fast enough to avoid that, if you keep on rowing while the hole gets bigger.

Not to carry the metaphor too far, but I think you are ignoring the patchy cover of the hole, leaking.



So on the one hand ending the counselling is the best thing in case the affair is still there, i.e. it is pointless by definition, but on the other it is finishing leaving us definitely at a new level of cooperation and understanding. I openly stated to the MC that I adored my W and she said how much she loved me as well. So she either gets the Oscar or there is something to work on now.

As stated before my mental health now comes first so there will be no more monitoring and I will rely on my gut instincts from now on which unfortunately have served me well to date.

It really is up to her now as I said to the MC that the alternatives will not be nice (especially as I have the solicitor in place). She said she will still have to interact with him at work as her work details support his role so she must keep things neutral.


So if she has come out of the mist then that just leaves the lust and her insecurity and again time will tell. This thing will of course be eaesier to rationalise if nothing similar has happened in the past. But at the same time one of the first thing she said in the sessions was that she wanted things to go back to what it was before the affair.


yes a time machine going back to what things were like BEFORE she betrayed you and you found out, would be lovely. But we don't have one. So her "mistake" is there to be dealt with, and saying this "Just leaves the lust and her insecurity"

is like saying "so it's just the cancer and heart attack, neither of which we are dealing with but which we wish were non existent, like before the diagnosis".

What else is there that is worse, her deep love for OM? I mean, thank God she isn't saying that, yet. But the "lust" you refer to was sorely lacking in the m, so wouldn't you say it's kind of new?

And rather than "insecurity" in her, I detect huge entitlement. It may be true that she did not feel very desired by you. But didn't that go both ways? Did you feel insecure too? Did you cheat?

IMO She does not enjoy "belaboring" the fact that she f--ed up and did a $h1tty thing. She'd prefer going backwards so it's not looked at. Oh, that's nice. I see her point.

Good grief. This^^^ is so familiar...

Hopefully not to be continued..... (but I certainly intend to participate more fully in the boards here!)

I suggest You See an IC and ask about how you can set & enforce boundaries, and how to take the role of leader in your marriage, at least as far as keeping the vows.

Don't tell my feminist friends i said this, b/c I do value partnerships and being teammates, etc.

But there are times we as women want to feel protected by our h's, and that includes being protected from OM's .

We all want to feel desired by our spouses.

(To be sure, most of us like knowing we are attractive to the other sex generally, but we do not need excessive validation or adultery to feel secure in our desirability.)

What are your short term goals? And are you GAL? I sense mostly you talking about what SHE is doing or feeling.

Does this marriage solely rely on how she feels and what she shares with you?

Try hard not to project your own values/moral compass onto your wife. That will leave you baffled and hurt.

If you both had the same values or were operating with the same moral compass, you would not be here.

I'm not saying "give up on the m"! But if there is a chance to restore your m into a solid one,

you must have some level of passion for each other which can absolutely be developed with time and effort.

In the present time, trust is more important than passion, b/c no one feels safe showing their passion for someone whom they do not trust.

Make sense?