Hey Lonely, good to see you allowing your emotions to be heard.
I am highly overwhelmed right now, so apologies for any mistakes (English is not my first language, but I doubt I could express myself better even in my mother tongue).
If you are a BS, this post may be triggering. I apologise in advance.
I don’t even know why I am writing and what I am trying to get.
I feel helpless.
I do not see why this it would be triggering even to unhealed BSes. It's a vulnerable post with a lot of sadness but it's actually tickling empathy, not resentment. (I know, you may project fears as if your husband were to read it it might hurt him and doesn't seem your goal. But I don't think even him would be disappointed in seeing you genuinely vulnerable).
Don't worry about English, it's my weak spot as well but if I can understand you native English speakers should have no issues.
I was unhappy in the marriage before the A. I never did a hard 180 on my husband (before A) or mention D, because we have two young children and I knew I’d rather sulk myself than splitting the family.
Obviously that didnt work well, since I had a A. And having an A with a co-worker was the most idiotic, dishonest and devastating thing I could do.
So you were sinking before and possibly desired a divorce but you weren't allowing you because of the kids, is that right?
I understand a parent's love might overcome our needs. Did you try to look into the pre-A marital issues, even in the chance you didn't confront and tried to resolve with BH? I mean to ask if you did so before meeting the AP.
Additional context: my H is highly intelligent (gifted?) and he has a strong personality. My father was a very authoritarian figure (I was not allowed to disagree, express emotions or anything around him. I only had to be pretty, obey and act with decorum). Thanks to IC, I discovered I have a "father wound", and that explained why I always reacted so harshly and defensive (while also having a preference) to authoritative men. I instinctively feel like I am being crushed all over again hence I react nastily (please note I am otherwise a really calm and sweet-natured person)
About the AP: he was the same age as my father, he had the same standing at work (different careers, but both leadership roles and widely recognised in the field) BUT he acknowledged me (despite my father). AP recognised how skilled I was at work (my father always undermines everything I do), he wasn’t harsh (he could be unpleasant but not harsh).
That seems to be fairly common. If it makes you feel better my wife has a similar issue with her father figure and is she was always chasing men who mostly treated her like trash but acknowledged her accomplishments, or her "utility" for their Ego.
The AP was also obviously a despicable character, but for the sake of brevity I only wanted to provide further context about my A (timeline and other details are in my "story" on my profile).
Anyway, I left that job, we moved away and now I have a new job.
We are trying to recover / reconcile.
But there is a fundamental "matter"here: we are both standing mainly for the children right now. None of us feels particularly "in-love" with the other (at least during the bad days). We love each other, but the children are the glue.
Sounds like "I Love you, but I am not in love with you". I can relate to that. Do you wish you could nourish feeling of love as "in love"?
Have you ever been feeling "in love" with BH before?
If yes, what do you miss of those emotions, what do you think is different today and pre-A?
I firmly believe that there could be happiness again. That we can have a good life. I always liked and admired my H for who he is, it was the behaviour and dynamics that made me bitter and hurt.
That's because it is not a belief, it's knowledge of your most intimate self that the happy condition is within reach. But your "self" also knows it can never come from the outside, it must sprout from within.
That is the often neglected seed that can sprout into self love and happiness, and that's the contagious alive energy that can make a couple truly happy. You need to search for what is suffocating that seed.
He is open to the possibility but obviously he believes there could be better partners out there who don’t cheat (fair enough).
It is true you can never undo the infidelity once it happened. But is not necessarily true the other partners will be better. The important part is YOU CAN become a better partner even if you are going through an infernal ashlands survival trial. You may even become better than many, exactly because you have been through hell, and you know what lies behind the Affair door.
It is true that for his attachment a different partner will feel "pure". Is not true you can't outclass "pure partners" once you healed.
Please understand what I am trying to say here in a gentle tone: new partners are "pure" because no tragedy like betrayal have ever happened yet in the new relationship. That is an immense plus.
But many people carry the same flaws you do within, and they never truly addressed them. They might not resort to cheating as a first copying mechanism, but not everyone has boundaries solid enough to prevent it from happening, if they carry similar character flaws as a "cheater". They may never discover them because opportunity and chance never presented it or their boundaries held, but not said for everyone they weren't shaken or cracked.
A truly unpleasant truth is this one, not to feel better because it does actually suck, but it is nonetheless a reality: if you know what character flaws might lead a person astray, there is actually no person alive (male or female) who possesses those traits that cannot be turned into a Wayward. It's just a question of knowing the flaws, and apply time and pressure.
This above is truly sad, and I don't like to mention it too often, because it is exploitable. But it requires an ingredient that many people neglect, in order to hold that boundary "infidelity proof", because infidelity becomes disgusting to yourself first: self love.
True self love, not the performative kind.
I am doing all I can, and I am even open to a life of misery (for myself) to save the family and provide for the children.
I mentioned that unpleasant part above, because of this very sentence.
Sister (or brother to keep up the joke), you still didn't learn to truly love yourself. I feel that in many of your posts, and by not doing so, you are unwillingly giving up what your heart desires by a worthless self sacrifice that is not necessary.
You will not save the family that you love by opening yourself up to a life of misery. You can only give them love and salvation when you will follow that deep buried voice that is calling for you to love yourself.
But, like him, I don’t feel particularly motivated if I think how I felt in the M before the A. Thats not my "motor".
I am not saying my husband now needs to treat me nicely or whatever (although Shirley Glass talks about finding again a balance in the couple, where both want to stay), but when he comes after me on how I should feel and behave and that the couple should be my upmost priority, that I am not supposed to leave the house for work if he is not happy or whatever… I really have to stop myself (with all my willpower) from asking: "why would I do that?"
This is focusing on the outcome Lonely.
Outcomes are beyond your control. Your Husband's emotions are beyond your control. There is nothing you can enact, do or say that can influence his emotional state.
The trick is to work on your own energy. This is what people see and follow you know why? Because when someone see you in a desirable state, that becomes a light for them to get out of their own darkness.
You cannot control or influence. What you can be is inspirational. And you can become that way if you stop worrying about the outside and its impact on you, and begin curating your inner garden.
You have all the keys (everyone has them), but they are not to unlock any lock outside, they are for the boxes you keep locked inside that traps parts of yourself that were relegated there years ago as they were wounded.
I cheated for my own flawed character. Why am I tasked to give things I have never received in the M? (I know the answer, because I cheated).
That circular logic is embracing the behavior with your identity. The identity is not real, you wear it but you don't recognize yourself with it, you are forcing yourself to wear it because "you were taught you should".
Gently -- You are not "tasked"
Giving some specific things in a marriage devastated by infidelity can absolutely help healing both the BS and WS, and it will make them better, then potentially there is a chance to rebuild. That is true.
The missing important bit is that those things must come spontaneously. They are to be given naturally, if you are doing because you feel "tasked", you can do everything to perfection.... but it wont stick.
Is not "the thing" that really helps, is the energy behind it that heals.
And you need that energy because the healing itself awakes terrible pains -- think snapping a broken bone splintered fracture back in place kind of pain -- the jolts will make you flinch, only the correct energy can overcome those setbacks.
When I calm down, I don’t care about the past, and I am willing to do all that is needed, because I caused the deeper wound. Because this hell is my doing.
It was, but it doesn't mean that you have to encode it into "it is".
You cannot change "then". you can change the "now".
Just by writing this post I realise I may still hold onto resentment. Although it doesn’t feel like resentment anymore, more like the state of things. I don’t feel like that all the time (which is a change) only when there is a particularly intense confrontation.
I feel very lonely. Sometimes I don’t even feel human anymore.
That feels like dissociation sister. I am familiar with that feeling. The struggle on the outside isn't it's real cause, it's a manifestation of another struggle that is fought deeper within you.
The good news is: that's exactly where you do have power. And you do possess unlimited power and agency over it. It's not a struggle that you win by overpowering it. You win it by surrender alone. Because the struggle stops instantly. From that moment on you are free to win the battle you wish, because you already won the internal war.
A few final things;
- my life now is only family and going to work twice week (mostly working from home). I don’t go out with friends, I don’t do hobbies or anything
- intimacy is great (improved)
- I don’t feel a victim
- I know me working is a massive trigger. I’d stop working to avoid the trigger and to re-establish a "balance" (I took advantage of my H trust last year, now I’d have to trust him not to screw me over if I am unemployed). But we can’t afford it. And I don’t want the children to miss out because of us.
- my H acknowledges that I am doing everything for our healing. He doesn’t feel closer to reconciliation though
I am having a tough day, things aren’t always so sad.
There are some good things here and some echoes of the shadow too.
Listen to that emotion because the sadness is a guiding light to follow a thread that will lead you deep inside, where you did not shed a light yet.
Regulation is very achievable, you only need integration.
There is a sentence from Unhinged that keeps ringing in my head about his xWS "she was a better spouse until she wasn’t".
This post is probably as vulnerable as I can be. I am forcing myself not to redact it.
It's interesting you read it this way. It was a observation that carries meaning, but I do read a different meaning into it as well, I wonder if you can see its duality.
And Lonely, being vulnerable is not a bad thing.
Vulnerability ain't weakness, it is strength.
The weakness is the fear of being vulnerable, because that's what closed the channels towards the self and raises the mask of the Ego.
When you hear in this matters "breakthrough", that's exactly what vulnerability is. Braking through the walls and finally allowing some light in.
I think you are going to make it.
You have been heard.
