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11 weeks ago I found out my husband have a 2 year affair (one year PA, one year EA) 12 years ago. I know it's early days and I know recovery takes 2-5 years but I am just so upset and angry and feel like my life is hopeless. We have both been counselling, we had lots of stress in our lives at the time (not that that excuses it) and I do believe my husband has been faithful since and has changed in many ways and is continuing to change. However, I cannot stop shaming him for what he did to me and our children no matter how hard I try and I go on and on and on. Other days are better, but every few days I revert to shaming. I just want him to feel my pain. He is doing everything right, accepting responsibility, reading the books, taking on all the work at home, going counselling. I believe he is a good man who did a bad thing and therefore believe he deserves forgiveness and I DESPERATELY want to forgive him and be with him and we really do love each other so much I just don't know if I'll ever be capable of moving on from this
How will I know if I am capable of forgiveness and we can reconcile? Is forgiveness and reconciliation sometimes impossible no matter what you want?

What do you mean by "shaming" him? Can you give an example?

I tried really hard to share my feelings and thoughts in a healthy manner. Sometimes I would slip and say mean things, and then apologize for being shitty, then mine out the authentic underlying feeling behind what I said and try it again. "I'm so incredibly hurt. I'm angry. I'm scared." Etc.

I thought for a long time that forgiveness was necessary in order to reconcile, but I learned that I don't have to forgive what he did, I just need to understand how it happened and determine for myself if my trust in him going forward is justified or if I'm glossing over misdeeds in order to maintain the status quo. That takes time and positive experiences. There's no way to KNOW someone else's intentions, thoughts, and feelings, but we can decide to believe them. If the trust turns out to be misplaced, we can decide to handle it then. I'd rather leave my heart open to receiving the goodness, if I see the work being done.

I'm shaming him by asking him how he could do this to his kids, how he put his dick before us all, how he chose to ruin our lives for an ugly whore etc.
Really vulgar things and shaming his core values and who he is as a person, a husband and a father 😞
I am just so bloody broken 💔

You're feeling bad about shaming him, which is good indication that it's a not a healthy behavior. Change your tactics for you. Stand in integrity for you.

You could start by working on catching yourself in the moment, identifying the thoughts and feelings behind what you're saying and sharing them with your H. "I'm hurt and angry and I'm lashing out. I'm sorry." "I want to make sure you know how badly you hurt me." Whatever applies.

FWIW, I don't think an apology is necessary for calling the AP names. She doesn't matter to me, and I'm not hurting her by denigrating her to my H. In fact, I wanted/needed him to acknowledge and vocalize that he knew that she was not a good person. Others may disagree.

Thank you for your reply. I will definitely try that. I have a lot of childhood trauma and struggle with Shame myself and I think I feel ashamed my husband had an affair...that I am unworthy and a laughing stock

I want to reconcile so much but I'm worried I have such unhealthy coping strategies myself and struggle with holding grudges that I never will and I will lose my beautiful family

Evio
I really understand your statements. If DDay is near the time you joined, you are in fresh Hell still. While you do want to work away from the insults and start noticing the feelings behind them, give yourself some grace. I said everything you listed and more to my husband, who in 23 years hadn’t heard a raised voice from me. I didn’t know who I was, or where these things came from. There was a rage that I’d never known and had to learn how to control. IC was a great help for me as was journaling. But it’s still not perfect and there are still times I say ugly things. We all keep trying to improves ourselves.

Yes DDay was only 11 weeks ago. I think my WH is just hoping as it happened so long ago I'll heal quicker but it doesn't work like that! He can't understand how I can be happy and loving one minute then triggered and upset the next. I just still feel stuck in 'how could he do this to us'..I can look at it logically at times and feel upset seeing him sad and coping with his shame and then I'll see something or he will say something about the kids and I just think 'this is all your fault' and start shaming.

One thing I really don't get either is, how could they not consider the impact this would have on their children? I would die for my children and cannot ever imagine jeopardising their happiness like this.

Evio have your husband read Cheating in a Nutshell. It will give him a good idea of why the BS gets the thoughts they do and the reactions they have to the A. I just want to preface this is not an R friendly book but really goes into and explains very well the trauma the BS experiences. You may even want to read it yourself. I found it to be very eye-opening and relatable.

He must earn forgiveness, but you might not be able to.

Some WS aren't cut out for R, and some BS aren't "compatible" with R. I wouldn't use "cut out" for the BS because it isn't their mess to fix. But some BS don't really have the capacity to R. They cannot make peace with the loss of trust no matter how hard they want to.

Evil your statement of how could he disrespect you and his children is important but the real reason was that it was never about you or the children.
It was about the emptiness inside him. His low self esteem, conflict avoidance, misguided attempt to avoid the truth and the dopamine hit from the allure of the sexual addiction of that moment.
He needs to find a counselor that will help him deal with the ugly truth of what he did, and why he did it!
You had nothing to do with his choices to lie and cheat! That’s on him!

I know the 11 weeks have seemed endless, but it's not. You're at the very beginning of healing.

A couple of recommendations:

1) Be kind to yourself.
2) Have faith in yourself.
3) Think in terms of years for recovery. You'll probably start to see glimmers of joy in the next few months. Your ability to feel joy will probably ramp up slowly, but it WILL ramp up and get back to where it should be.
4) When you feel like attacking him, figure out what you're feeling - sad, mad, scared, ashamed, whatever. Then instead of going with, 'How could you be sucha loser,' go with 'I'm _____about _____.'
5) If what you say is, 'I'm furious that you betrayed me,' say it with anger. Don;t hide from your feelings. Don't hide your feelings from your WS.
6) Be true to yourself. Ask for what you want. Say 'no' when you want to refuse something. Say 'yes' when you want whatever is on offer.

Evio....it absolutely IS possible. Everything you'd said sounds so very familiar to me. The first year I did a lot of "shaming". I was so very, very angry that he could somehow decide that this was something OK for him to do to me and to our son. Bottom line, he never considered it. He was certain he'd never be caught. Such is the reality of affairs. They lose all grounding in reality...and then it comes crashing down around them.

IF you're both committed to recovery and reconciliation, in some ways you can come out better on the other side of this. I know we have. I hate the reason why, but I am grateful for how far we've come.

What Sisoon said about taking care of yourself.....is priceless advice. Take care of yourself, be kind to yourself. I found some solace in not committing to "saving our marriage" in that first year. I committed to the next right thing. One small step at a time. Most days, that was treating myself as a china doll....very, very carefully. We were imperfect. But, we both learn new ways of interacting with each other.

The forgiveness takes time. I wanted to be able to forgive, long before I actually could. Looking for the glimmers, the opposite of triggers, gave me some solace. For me, forgiveness began when I no longer wanted to punish him for the pain he caused me. And that took a helluva lot longer than 11wks.

I'm so sorry you're here....but I'm glad you found this place.

Thank you so much for all your replies...they have helped so much. I haven't had much time for self care as I had just started a new job when this started but I have some annual leave coming up and am definitely going to book in some nice relaxing activities for myself.

My husband and I have talked so much about everything the past few days and he takes full accountability for his behaviour and is starting to realise why he was so entitled and selfish (a family fill of cheaters including a mum who has an affair in his teenage years and the whole family split but rug swept the whole affair and his father moved abroad for 10 years).

I just hope we can get through this as I love him and my family so much and can see how different he is from the man who cheated on me 12 years ago

I’m so sorry you are struggling but I understand all of it.

One thing that may help you and this worked for me. I had to constantly remind myself for years "my husband is not the cheating jerk he was" last month or last year or 3 years ago etc.

Also I agree that the cheaters never consider the impact on the betrayed spouse. My H has guilt and remorse for what he did and never really understood how devastating his affair was.

He just figured "it’ll pass".

Hope this helps you.