I have a question for you. I feel like you and I came to a similar situation with similar personality types around patience and control and difficulties with the same behaviors in our Hs. And maybe our Hs have some similarities as well in terms of them needing to process all this on their own, etc etc. But I also think we somehow approached the actual reality of the situation -- H "in love" with another person, living in the house, carrying on an A-- and our expectations for the future from a totally different perspective. You have been able to believe to your core that he is walking, and therefore you get thrown when he leans in. I always believed to my core that H wouldn't walk, and therefore get thrown when he reverses course, and probably dropped my DBing way too early. How do you do this? How did you truly drop all your expectations and just live in the now? I know you have a deadline of a year and plan Bs set in place, and you know you're doing what is in the best interest of your Ds, especially his biological D. You've made the decision to be there and not kick him out through all of this for totally logical and unemotional reasons. But in the day to day, how do you keep your expectations so free and live day to day with him leaning in more and more and more?
I think there are a few reasons for this. A big part of this is I did have a traumatic childhood. I have very low expectations for other humans as a matter of course. I also have abandonment issues so I just assume the people I love will leave me. If they don’t choose to leave, they die. Sometimes I get really lucky and it’s both.
I think also being a WW alters my perspective on this a lot. There’s a lot of time on here spent discussing WS/WAS as if they are some kind of monolith and frankly I find it annoying. All people in crisis behave the same so we treat these folks the same and to a point I guess it works but they just aren’t. Every WS/WAS has completely different abilities at coping, introspection, motives, FOO, support systems, education, religion/spirituality, etc. I can’t DB as I’m told to on the board knowing what I know being on the other side of this. There are cheaters who cheat for pleasure, or because they are genuinely horrible people. Most of the time, however, it’s a symptom. Cracks in the marriage. Cracks in their own psyche. And those folks need empathy and patience. It wasn’t about me. The cheating was about him. He was looking for something and he didn’t find it. But I also chose to let this run its course naturally and that I have to say was also me relying on my experience as a WW, knowing my husband as well as I do, and not to be too woo woo but my intuition.
I knew from the night I kicked him out of the bed. We had been fighting about her for days. He said he would never choose me over her because she was like family. He’d known her his whole life. Then I replied with so I’m not your family, ok, I understand. Then you can’t sleep in this bad anymore until your done with this sh*t. I can’t share a bed with a man who doesn’t think his wife is his family. I was ready to let him go that day, but I also knew that wasn’t my husband speaking to me. I knew if he was fighting that hard and they were just talking he was already in love and he would be his own demise in the relationship. I knew it would crash and burn in 3-6 months if I left him to his own devices. So I did. And it wasn’t easy. I cried myself to sleep every night until I invested in some really good CBD and a weighted blanket. But I wasn’t going to let him see me cry until he deserved it.
I treated our lives like a break up. In my head we broke up. We weren’t a couple anymore. I was out there rebuilding a life that didn’t include him in it. When I say I treated him as a roommate I did. I loved him. I wanted so badly to touch him, scream at him, beg and cry to him but I didn’t. We existed in the same space as we do now but anything wifely was removed. ( yes I’m aware I did laundry and made dinner for the house but I did that for my step dad too and I hope that guy dies a painful death so....) As we progress I give a little more to him when I feel it’s appropriate. I still act like we’re in a break up. It’s difficult to navigate the whole married and living together thing with that role play layer I’ve given myself but him sleeping on the couch helps. Having sex is like hooking up with an ex. Hanging out with mutual friends is like that awkward time you bump into each other sober and not at 2am. Raising kids is like raising them with an ex. We were parenting in shifts, then in tandem, now it’s together. It’s easy for me to live day to day not obsessing over the albatross because if we were our 20s I wouldn’t be focused on that, my 20 year old brain would just be focused on the sex and the potential for a future, so that’s where I reside. It’s not a marriage crashing and burning, it’s just a break up.
Originally Posted by may22
I’m also really interested in Cardinal's question, because as you both know, I started to have a really difficult time dealing with my own anger and sadness about the A on my own and felt I needed H's participation to heal. How are you working through this?
Well obviously with IC, but with my bff and her H because of their history and again relying on my history as a WW. My exH held my affair over my head constantly. The pills, the booze, the total lack of sex and affection. His disappearing. None of that mattered because I cheated. I don’t want H to feel like I can’t ever get over this, because I can, and I deserve for my own well being to get over it. I have been forgiving him and sitting in my anger and sadness from the beginning. I think I’ve mentioned this on another thread I was an only child until I was 13. I sit and roll my feelings around in my head over and over like and oyster and grain of sand. I dissect it all and parse out where the blame lies, motives, responsibility, and solutions until I feel like I understand it. But all of it is truly my own responsibility in the end. I control how I feel. He didn’t make me sad or angry I gave him the power to make me think he could affect me in that way. That’s not to excuse his terrible behavior that’s not how you treat your wife. But in the way it’s not either of our jobs to make each other happy it’s not his job to fix my anger or sadness over this. That’s my job. I have to work through my own insecurities and fears and trauma responses and triggers. And he needs too work on his stuff. He needs to figure this mess and himself out. I have to let all that go on my own, and he has to do his own work and release of his complicated and messy feelings around this so I can truly forgive him and he can forgive himself. Neither one of us can move on with or without each other if we don’t reach forgiveness.
