I thought I'd finally get to your questions regarding what I need/want to know.
Originally Posted by may22
In your sitch, though, I am wondering-- what more information you need about what was going on in his mind? is it specifically around the cascade of choices he made to cheat? Lost and foolish and probably some MLC stuff mixed in there, seems to me-- girls getting ready to be out of the house, you're talking about a baby, his old chair, and wasn't she like a childhood family friend? Feels like he was just regressing, looking backwards, scared of growing old and wanted to rewind to when he was 20. That's just my armchair read on it, though. Does it bother you because you're worried it might happen again?
So to start with, I'm always worried it'll happen again. I try not to let it eat away at me. I try to let that part live in the recesses of my mind because frankly I have no desire to live in the fear that I'll be utterly devastated and betrayed again. As a person who had a year long PA I know if you do it once it's easy to do it again. The opportunity just needs to present itself, and you just need to be in the right frame of mine where your MR means a lot less to you than you're own happiness. If you got away with it once you could easily do it again. The flip side of that is that there's a huge potential for that never happening again. In the MR that succeed after an A there's a lot of talk about the MR being stronger and better than before. I know that's the case here and I try to keep that in mind. Who we are on the other side of this we are just in a better position for this to never happen again. I know there's a ton of talk around here about being seen as a person of value. Which is important but it's really more important in the earlier phases of this as that's how the WS/WAS is drawn back in. But on this side of an R it's really more do they see the MR as something of value? Is this important enough to put your individual ego, expectations, and unreasonable needs on the back shelf for the betterment of your MR? Are you willing to unpack all that ego, expectations and those needs to see why they need to go if you want a long lasting life time relationship?
I've seen a lot out there on how if the spouse never really saw the MR as a M, or truly understood what a MR is you're MR is already wide open to cheating. H never really understood M, or what a MR really means. Through this process has started to understand that love isn't just about individual happiness. It's not about being in a transactional relationship. That it's truly about being willing to sacrifice you're own happiness for the MR, your spouse and your children. He says that I got him there. That it hurts knowing that I loved him so deeply and until now he really didn't even know how to give that kind of love. The self sacrificing kind. It's in moments like that that I realize keeping that lighthouse imagery in my head in my hardest times was the very best thing I could've done for myself and for us. I'm not all about the good Christian wife stuff. That's just not who I am. But being an example of how to love trauma after trauma after trauma makes me feel like I'm not just doing something right in my MR or my family, but that I'm just doing something right. Not letting all the bad in my life chill my heart. Knowing that it's still beating and ready and willing to love no matter how many times it's been broken.
As to what I need to know now, it really isn't about the doing it again, or even the cascade of choices. I know how the cascade of choices works. I've been there. You tell your guilt and your gut to shut up once and when your life doesn't completely implode after that first questionable act it gets easier and easier to keep making wrong choices. Especially when the pay off is feeling something when you've felt nothing, or feeling good after feeling miserable for so long. Feeling seen after you've felt invisible. Feeling wanted and worthy after feeling rejected and worthless. Affairs are like a drug. It fills all the emotional holes that need plugging with none of the real work it takes to actually fill them. The function of the crappy choices need zero explanation to me. What I do need is one of Esther Perel's questions. Why did he feel entitled to the A? But also my own versions of some of her other questions. Like what was sOW offering that I wasn't? What was it like to be with her and then come home? Or be home and then be with her? Was he thinking about me and the girls at all when he was with her? What made him feel entitled to be my friend after what he did? What would've happened if it was me that had done what he did? That last one we've grazed. We wouldn't be where we are now I know that. But I need more insight into his head during that time. I need to understand where his head actually was at. I think because he's looking back on it and seeing how illogical and ridiculous his thought process was he doesn't want to talk about that. But I need confirmation that he was not ok in that time. That he wasn't processing and synthesizing things at the time like he normally would. I really just need to know that he was having a rough emotional time that he was ill equipped to handle and not a sociopath. But I think we run into that wall of he doesn't want to look stupid or foolish around me. That intelligence gap was/is a sticking point. I think that's why he only wants to talk about his "smart" choices not his stupid ones.
