But when I got angry last week, he said he was going to have to choose to stay in the M because if I was going to be this angry there was no way he could S from me and do this to the kids.
That is sheer manipulation and head games. He knows he cant offer you what you want, but he doesn't want to leave either, so he's going to claim he's staying because you're not fit to navigate a divorce in a way he feels is appropriate. Can you see that's some version, more or less precisely, of my H saying to me he isn't leaving because I'm too incompetent to manage on my own? It's another way of failing to take responsibility and putting the blame for that on to your emotional state - which you are controlling and which is highly justified. Even reading this makes me FURIOUS for you. Does it make you angry?
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I see what you're saying, Alison, about that then being him staying out of fear of my anger and not because he wants to be here. But an ugly part of me wants that, wants him to suffer, wants him to lose the "love of his life" and suffer the endless consequences of his terrible carelessness and selfishness. I can't stand the idea of him riding off into the sunset with this person. I feel like a bad person even typing that out here. But I worry that a part of me is sticking around out of pure petty spite and suppressed anger.
This is good May. Your honesty is very good. Anger is not ugly. There are ways to act it out that are not okay - but whatever your anger is saying, no matter how unreasonable, needs your attention. It will not go away and you will not be able to choose your best course of action until you hear this out. Don't be ashamed of being a normal human being. Last weekend I felt like chucking all my H's clothes onto the street. It was petty and unreasonable and vindictive but I had every right to be angry and I needed to hear it out before I could get underneath it.
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Maybe it is about freeing that anger to transform into something else-- which is what I think you're saying in your post-- harnessing the energy into something positive and using it to fill yourself rather than hammering on the barbed wire fence of trying to change someone else and that great beautiful bear getting bloodied and exhausted and emaciated in the process. I clearly have so much more work to do here.
YES. You said to me - on my thread 'you came by those feelings honestly' and you were right and it really helped me. So I am saying it to you. Whatever vindictive and crazy fantasies your anger leads you to, listen to them. I AM NOT SAYING ACT ON THEM. But if your anger is making you want to punish your husband, or humiliate him, or make him suffer, sit with that without shame or guilt and dig underneath and see why. Your anger wants to look after you, but it's like a crazy toddler with badly thought out plans. You can ignore the plan (obviously I wasn't ever really going to chuck my husband's clothes into the street) and try to get at what the protective spirit is. You can do this.
And May - you have every single right to be as angry as you feel like for as long as you feel like. Your husband has acted absolutely terribly and to my mind, the continuing manipulation of you is 100% worse than the affair. I really really really want you to see this, because you can't do anything about his affair or feelings for his mistress, but you can get yourself out of the dynamic where you allow him to manipulate you. You could stop that dead today if you wanted to. I KNOW when you are good and ready, you will do that, and I wish with all my heart I could be in the room to see his face when he realises - really really realises down to his bones - that he doesn't have you as his puppet any more, you are seeing clearly, and you have his number. I would pay good money for that. And I KNOW it will happen when you are ready.
Do you think one of the reasons you might not be ready yet is because there's a part of you that knows if you saw it really clearly and listened to what your anger was telling you, your marriage as it stands would be over? Is that a part of it?
