Quote: Do you really think you are helping your wife, by solely carrying the burden of guilt? What responsibility does SHE take for this incident?
Did you ever address the OW in counseling? Is this one of the taboo subjects?
By the by, and I'm being flip but not too much, what DID you talk about in counseling, if not sex related stuff? It seems to me that so many of your problems stem from lack of intimacy in the marriage.
No. As far as I know, none. No. And sort of.
I don’t think I was helping W by being the only guilty party. But I don’t think I’m doing that any more - more on that later. W has never, ever expressed any responsibility for the A in my presence. She may have in individual C sessions, but I don’t know about it. We never really did discuss the OW directly in C sessions we were in together. Obliquely, she was there, but we never discussed her. In fact, we’ve never discussed either the OW or the A. W has steadfastly clung to the apparently paradoxical position of acting like it never happened while at the same time, holding it over my head.
What we did discuss in C is a little more difficult. While she’s not a lot like MrsHD, W did have the same problems with generally unfocused anger and had an admitted hatred of men. There were money handling issues. There were respect issues on both sides. I had completely shut down my emotions (“the C called it emotionally blunted”).
Quote: I think it's time to forgive yourself and your wife (and the OW) for past transgressions. And begin forging a new path whereby you show all involved (including God) that you learned something from it. Require more of yourself than purposeless guilt. Require more of your wife than self righteous neglect.
That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do this last year or so. Around the time I signed up here, I forgave everybody – myself included. I still have guilt, but it’s no longer bothersome. Unlike God, I can’t put my past sins as far from me as the east is from the west. I know I was wrong and I’m sorry for what I did. But it no longer actively bothers me. I know that I learned something. I know that I’ve changed as a person.
As far as requiring more of myself than purposeless guilt, I think I’ve done that too. I’m not all the way there yet. In fact, I’m not sure I’ll ever really be completely there. But I’ve made a lot of progress. You’ve read my posts over the past year and you’re aware that I’ve made some changes. I’ve changed a lot of attitudes, I’ve changed my behaviors toward W (the old me NEVER would have had “the Talk”), and I’ve become more willing to discuss what I want and need from W and from the R.
Your last sentence up there in the quote is the hard one. I would love to require more of her and actually get a response, but that hasn’t happened. I still can’t even get her to talk to me. I had a whole thread on trying to get W to talk, but the fact it, she still won’t. Any time I try to have a serious discussion with her, she stops responding. I know I’m still handling it poorly, but then the discussion turns into a soliloquy, and I end up getting frustrated and angry with her lack of response. I guess I still don’t know how to require more of her.
