Wooooosah, I need a breath before I even begin here. Girl.....where do I start? Story time:
I just had a long talk with D18 last night about stuff that happened in the time when I was with her dad. It started as a budgeting conversation as she'd like to get her own apartment in a year or two, and then meal planning, and then how much we eat out or order in since we've had my now H in our lives vs when we were living with her dad and when we were on our own. We ended up having a long talk about how I didn't realize until years, YEARS after I had left her dad that he was financial abusive to me. That there were weeks I was expected to feed the family on less than $30. That he made 3 times as much money as I did and expected me to cover half the bills no matter what. Even when he cost us more per month than our daughter and I put together, and that included the years she was still in diapers. I knew how toxic we were for each other in the relationship. I knew how toxic I had become, but it took years of distance and healing for me to realize that my toxic behaviors were defense mechanisms, not choices. It's why 95% of the bad habits, behaviors and traits I had in that relationship I haven't had in any other relationship in my life. I became a toxic person in that relationship because my ex was mentally, financial and emotionally abusing me for years, and I'm not the kind to crumble under that kind of abuse. I'm the the kind who only gets more angry, therefore, petty, nasty, and hurtful. I also didn't notice early on because I left an abusive childhood home not long before he and I got pregnant, moved in together and had a shotgun wedding. I didn't have enough time healing from that to understand what was happening wasn't normal or healthy until it was way too late. A- when you get a chance sit and think about this story, and maybe re-read it a couple times to let it sink in.
That being said, my current H and I had several long calm talks about our MR during his A, and why we were unhappy, and what we wanted, and what the future was going to look like. But in that time, in those conversations I had enough distance to see how far afield my H was. I got to see how skewed his vision was of our relationship, of our history and of me. I was also self assured enough at the time to know, that while I wasn't perfect, there was nothing I had ever done, said, or so much as thought that was truly marriage ending, even if you added it all up. 1 because he never told me anything was wrong (quite literally, this isnt' a LBH thing, he refused to talk even when I knew things were wrong) 2 because as difficult as a partner as I can be because of my depression, my temper, my rigidity, my A type behavior, I had worked on myself long and hard and at that time I was the best version of myself yet, minus the crippling depression, that wasn't in my control. While I was willing to validate my H on things he said that I knew to be true and not said from the place of a caged animal, I was never, never willing to bend on things he said that were completely untrue. That is very anti-DB. It wasn't the right way to do things, but it was my way. My fear here is that you have neither the distance nor the emotional fortitude to stand your ground in conversations like this when your H offers you half truths.
I'm very happy that you had a calm, good conversation about things.you deserve to get some understanding of where H's head is at. I'm happy that you were both able to dig deep and not get uber defensive, but this isn't the end all be all of conversations and to say I'm disappointed that you rolled over and just took his accusations as truth is an understatement. You were doing so well. And I understand that this is very early on and all this takes time, but at a certain point here you need to understand the ground your H stands on is shaky at best. Regardless if you were a screaming, crying, insecure, indulgent, crazy pants, banshee he is in absolutely no position to point out your flaws and failings in all their glory. You shouldn't have accepted that even if you did get to say your piece.
Your H cheated on you repeatedly. I know you don't want to agree that that's a thing but he literally admitted to you he JUST stopped talking to some one a week ago. Not A WHOLE week ago. ONLY a week ago he decided to stop jeopardizing your MR. And he still thinks he's in the position to not only choose the direction of this MR but also that he's in a position to make you the W he wants you to be, while he does what exactly?
Look, I'm not saying you need to leave this guy or forget the MR entirely, but you are just allowing him to slide back and that's not a good place for you, because you've been here before, more than once. How many times can you allow things to just happen the same way over and over? How many times has he told you he only cheated because you.........? How many times has he apologized to you with a BUT immediately following? How many times has he asked to come back after you change something but he's changed nothing? I've never been a person who thing the WS needs to come back crawling on their hands and knees through glass, beating their breast professing their undying love. It doesn't work that way, even in the best of circumstance. In most cases it's a slow crawl towards kindness and care and then a fast jaunt to friendship, and truly trying, and then a paced walk/run to recon, piecing, real work and counseling. I believe very little of what's coming out of your H's mouth right now, and I'm a little scared that you say you only believe half but you believe in all of it.
Going forward here you need to know what you need from him to make sure that you feel safe and secure. What you need to say yes let's try to fix this. What steps he needs to take to show you and prove to you that he's done with all his BS and regardless of how horrible you could possibly be that he's willing to truly work on the MR. You have to stop allowing him to dictate to you what you did wrong. Of course you weren't the perfect spouse, none of us are. Of course you did things that you should work on, but if you really sit down and think about it was any of that really enough for a reasonable person to want to throw the towel in on a marriage? Probably not. You have work to do, but H only gets to dictate what that work is once he's all in. He's not all in. You need to stop eating all the blame he's feeding you. It's not yours to swallow.
Last if you guys can't get to MC there are a ton of "marriage saving" and "affair recovery" online boot camps that you guys can do together. Honestly one boot camp is typically less than the cost of 1 MC session out of pocket so it's truly worth it. There are a lot of other options out there too it's all a google search away.
