This is a great discussion. I can relate to all the different perspectives. In Joe's defensive, I don't know if I could have done that right after my H came back, because my emotions were too raw. Joe, you might not be there yet and that is okay! If you are not in a place where you feel genuinely sorry, then you do not have to apologize. Your lack of feeling remorse may be an indication that things are moving too fast.
If I could have done things differently, in hind sight, I would have moved much, much slower in piecing. At a snails pace. As the others have said, it is hard to work with her on the M, if you are still recovering your own wounds. In my sitch, my H left OW and then came back to me right away. My H had already tried on something different, failed at it and realized that was not what he wanted. I was more in a place of trying to keep my head above water, follow the rules here and just learning to let him go and detach. We started attending MC and this therapist was excellent. She only worked with couples, she had seen it all, and she gave great advice. She did say after several weeks that in order to work on the M, he should move back home. I don't know if that was the best idea, but he did. I think my triggers and emotions only increased with him there all the time. We also had young kids, so it made sense for our family.
We attended Retrouvaille 1.5 years later. It still felt like too much too soon! I have mixed feelings about that program in general, but I will not go there on your thread. My point is, even if you consciously choose to work on the M with her, it doesn't make the emotional pain any less. That just takes time. And the more personal growth and development you go through on your own, I think the more equipped you are to handle the stress of the M problems. Does that make sense? I developed some unhealthy coping mechs and I can see now how I held myself back from healing. Looking back, I think part of that was the pressure I felt to make it work.
I also want to say that it is okay that you feel that you were a victim and she should be more sorry. You feel that your feelings are more valid and you do not have to take that back for our sake. There is a reason you feel that way. I'll take a different spin on this than the others that perhaps will make more sense. I think you know logically, as do I, that you cannot fix the M problems if there is one perpetrator and one victim. Of course there are mistakes that you have made and before her A even started, you both most likely contributed to the break down of the M. The thing is, in your eyes, she did make the mistake and you do feel like a victim to that mistake. Just because you want to be with her and make this work, does not make your feelings any less valid. But here is the question and a question I have had to ask myself: do you want to be in a M where you feel that someone has wronged you and is now less than you? I do not mean are you right or wrong to feel this way about her or is this "fair" to her. I mean, from your perspective, in order to heal, how do you want to see her? Just think about that for a moment.
This is important to me because I (myself) do not want to be in a love relationship with someone I see as "less than." So this is not only about fairness for her, as others suggest, but also about how you want to see her. Does that make sense? I don't want to see myself as a victim any longer. And I don't want to see my H as someone that is not only a perpetrator, but as a man that has that kind of power over me. This understanding took me several years to come to, but it has been a pivotal turning point for me. I now choose to be in a M where I respect and admire the person I am with because that is a more loving R and that is what I want. For me, I have had to learn to understand him and forgive him for that to happen.
Lastly, and I think I will add this to the piecing thread, our perspectives of how many assaults he made on the M are quite different. I viewed my H as killing our M with a 1000 cuts -- every lie, deception, selfishness and hurt he caused -- and each one stung as much as the next. He does not see it that way! Yes, he feels remorse for each cut, but he did not see each as it's own intentional assault. He feels that this was one giant mistake and that these are all fragments of that, as they were all interconnected. You cannot have an A without lies and you cannot lie without hiding things and on and on .... I think I'm starting to really get it more now. Again, this has taken me years.
Be kind to yourself first. Patience and kindness. I promise you are not alone.
Blu
“Forgiveness liberates the soul. It removes fear. That is why it is such a powerful weapon.” – Nelson Mandela
