When my W started telling me things I wanted to hear, it actually made things more difficult, it wasn't the panacea I fantasized it would be.
Then, after a while, it became almost irrelevant whether I heard them or not.
Now, I hear some things from her on occasion that I never thought of from perspectives I never considered, and you know what? Much more satisfying in a way.
The way I see it, there is no way to heal the past. That will always be a wound. We can heal the relationship, protect it and each other, make sure we don't wound it again like that. All you can really do with the past is maybe learn from it a little, but then turn your back on it, make peace in the present, and make plans for the future that are healthy, sensible, and loving.
Reminds me of something I tell my kids all the time: Life Isn't Fair. It's just not. Politicians make careers and steal our money pretending that they can make it so, but they can't. No one can. It's not designed to be fair.
I think we tend to forget that cheating spouses may hold all the cards, but they're lost. They're so lost that it takes them a long time to come to terms with it. Until they do, I don't care what they say, it doesn't mean much anyway because for it to mean something, it has to be based on their actions, and a history of acting right, and that just takes time for them to get comfortable in.
In other words, they don't like to tell us what we want to hear even if they believe it themselves because they feel like liars and imposters if they do...because they not know what WE know about what they've done, they know a whole lot of things we DON'T know and will NEVER know. It's hard to swallow.
I actually think it's a good sign that they have trouble saying or doing some things (for a time) because it means (to me, I think) that they're paying the piper, balancing the books, taking an honest look at themselves.
When they get there, I believe they crave personal integrity more than anything. In a misguided way that's what "allowed" them to cheat, because they wanted to act on some of their true feelings. Unfortunately, they left out the third part of the equation, which is the values and commitment part which is there to temper the feelings.
Unfortunately, in our world, acting on impulse and pleasure is glorified as the route to true happiness; ironically, it's only by living a life guided by right thinking and allowing values to trump destructive pleasure that people really start getting some payoffs from true happiness.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. -- Inigo Montoya, 'The Princess Bride'
