Finding and living compassionate indifference

[may22]

Hi Cardinal,

On the friend.. I agree with the others. I'd connect. I have one IRL friend who knows everything and has been so incredibly helpful and healing. I like WF's fight club analogy... cracks me up... but it is true how isolating it can all be.

I feel this need to protect him if any future R would take place; at the same time, I think, if that's the kind of thing that would stop future R, or deter him, than he wouldn't be ready to reconcile anyway.

Honestly? I wouldn't think about it as protecting HIM. He has done nothing to deserve your protection. I would think about it more along the lines of protecting YOURSELF, and to the degree it is an issue in the future, protecting yourselves together as a couple. When I read DR (and all the other literature, it seems people are all in alignment on this one), I took away more around choosing who you speak with carefully but also the importance of having someone to talk to. That it can be really difficult for a lot of people who love you to support you unconditionally as they hate to see you in pain, and may push you in a particular direction and/or have a hard time understanding why you aren't just dumping that creep. So I guess I'd be more thinking about if this friend is someone who can support you no matter what, rather than what your H may think about it now or in the future.

I also totally understand the feelings around censoring yourself. One of my very best friends is someone who cannot keep things to herself and I just can't tell her all that is going on. I found myself actually seeing her less because it was so hard to say yes things are fine! When they weren't. I ended up talking to her about some parts of all of this (she knows H well and we travel together as families so she'd also experienced some of the anger and resentment he was displaying in the past)-- I've told her I think H is in some level of MLC, talked about some of the things he had been saying and about the SSM, both on my side and then later on his. It was really helpful to be able to share at least that amount with her, without going into the full depth of the A. In your case, without an A, I feel like it would be a lot easier for friends to understand why you are choosing to stand and easier for them to support you.

It's been more than a year and your H hasn't forgiven you; it's no surprise, then, that my H still seems super angry sometimes, and he's off in his own MLC world. When I wrote the apology letter last fall, I straight up apologized, without offering explanations or reasons, for my part in the SSM and the fact that I hadn't been able to make changes I needed to make. So, this probably isn't the right attitude, but part of me thinks... really? Why is it taking so long for him to forgive you? You can't change the past! I also realize this is my impatience, my wanting my H to forgive me, my feeling like I deserve forgiveness myself, even though I know that his granting it is beyond my control. I know reclaiming your sexuality has been really empowering for you regardless of your H, may, but in that process did you every struggle with blaming yourself or fully forgiving yourself? If so, was letting go of this a gradual process for you or did it just click one day?

I too have apologized unconditionally multiple times, starting last February. He seems to only remember the times where I talked more about what I was learning about the reasons why, which then became excuses.

I think there are two issues here-- one, I think the SSM and feeling unwanted/unloved was really damaging to him, far more I think than it would be to me, for instance. He has more of a need to feel desired than I do, while he comes off as totally confident and almost arrogant he's actually fairly insecure, he cares waaaay more about what other people think of him than I do. It has always puzzled me, the degree to which other people's opinions matter to him. So partially I think it is difficult for me to grasp just how much the SSM for all those years hurt him. (I actually think some of those feelings for him might have started back when we were first trying to get pregnant, when it was more difficult than we thought it would be and sex became less about desiring each other and more about getting pregnant. I think he felt to a certain degree like I didn't want him for himself but just to make a baby. And truthfully? That isn't totally off the mark.)

The other big issue is that he made the SSM his central platform for justifying his A, so forgiving me for that, accepting it could change-- all somehow makes what he did seem worse. That if he could see it all as an inevitable chain of events that couldn't be stopped and started with me not loving/wanting him, it was less his fault and his choice. It just happened and wouldn't have happened if not for the SSM. Forgiving me for this I think is actually inextricably linked to forgiving himself for the A. And over the past few days thinking on all this and getting input from others here, I think (again, I keep coming back to the same place... slow learner) that this is his journey, not mine, and I need to let go and let him go through this process himself.

On forgiving myself-- I did forgive myself, a long time ago. I am not one for regret. I know I did my best with the tools and knowledge I had at the time. I went to a couple of doctors who all said NBD, happens all the time. I read a lot about it (not anything to the extent I'm doing now... more like articles online) and talked to friends who were barely sleeping with their Hs too. I just didn't grasp the situation, and H didn't do a very good job of communicating it to me. (This is actually one of my beefs I haven't really brought up with him-- literally the only times we talked about it was in bed, when I'd say no, and he'd blow up and I'd get defensive. He thinks looking back he told me how bad it was over and over and I didn't listen... but to be honest, he didn't really tell me in a way I could hear.)

Of course, I wish things had gone differently in many ways, but I know there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. I can't go back in time. We're here now and I'm really mostly concerned with how to move forward (though I obviously still need patience here too.) So no, I didn't really struggle with self-forgiveness on this. I did the best I could at the time. Now I can do better.

And, I don't feel like I need his forgiveness for myself. I have forgiven myself and it doesn't matter to me all that much, personally, if he does too... I more want him to forgive me for the benefit of our R and M2.0. Does that make sense? I'm comfortable in sitting with what happened and what I did and that I'm sincerely sorry. I don't really need him to say it's OK to make me feel better. I want him to say it's OK so that he can let that go and we can be together without that huge pile of resentment sitting in between us.

The other thing that helps me is this-- I know myself at that time would NEVER have opened anything that even smelled of a self-help book. It would have embarrassed me to even think about opening one. It took the depths of that first BD, realizing my H meant it when he said ILYBINILWY, that D was on the table, for me to swallow my pride and start reading. So, the best I would have done in order to address the SSM was the only advice I knew at the time-- fake it til you make it. And I think I never would have come to the place I am today in terms of embracing my own sexuality. I'd probably be where I was before, not that into it but doing my wifely duty as infrequently as I could get away with but keeping my H "satisfied." So... I guess I also am looking at the silver lining to all of this, the things I've learned about myself that I wouldn't have if this crisis didn't happen. We may not have had an SSM if I'd taken it more seriously at the time, but I don't think I would have been all that fulfilled.

Does that help? I feel there are some areas that make our sitches hard to align, with the A being such a major part of mine. Do you think there are things your H is holding onto that you don't know about that may be driving some of his behavior and/or reluctance to move past the SSM and forgive you? I may just be projecting, but it might help explain some things.