SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

As a few of you know, I’ve been holding back talking with my wife about my feelings and thoughts concerning her affair. As suggested, by some very insightful people here, waiting 30 plus years to talk was probably not the best plan. 😊

A back story:

In all honesty, when my wife disclosed, she was very forthcoming. She answered all my questions, as well and truthfully as possible. There were some details that I believe she hedged her bets and a few that just didn’t make sense, the math didn’t add up. However, she did supply me with enough information to get across the seriousness of the situation we were now facing.

For close to a year after D-day, my interrogation was relentless. Little new truths or corrections would gurgle their way to the surface which instead of soothing my brain would simply serve to activate more suspicious and questions. We ended up separating about a ½ year in, (My decision) because I couldn’t stop digging. The pain I was causing my wife was unbearable for her and for me. The separation was an agonizing 5 months.

Then a new tragedy struck our little family that had to take priority shifting our attention. It took us a bit over 5 years to come out from that darkness. By that time, we were demoralized and exhausted. The affair had been simmering on the back burner long enough that I think we had just gotten used to its temperature. I tried to turn up the heat and address it several times over the next few years and was met with a deafening silence. In her mind, she was over it and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t. I’ll never unhear her telling me I was keeping her in jail. She’d quip that things are so good between us, why are you bringing things to a boil again? Eventually, I turned the flame back down to a discomforting for me but comforting for her, quiet smoldering.

Sex for decades was a real struggle for both of us. For me the images during intimacies, for her the guilt. But putting that aside, we built a strong and caring relationship. We had become closer than ever, united over slaying two dragons. Then, without cause and without the sound of crushing metal to alert my wife, I internally crashed. I felt I had no right and was failing as a husband to be reintroducing into our successful marriage old crap that I should have been over years ago! So, to shelter my wife, while hoping to discover my way through this, I came here.

I have spent the last 6 months at this site much of the time spent pushing back against advice being offered, stating very logical reasons why I "can’t" talk with my wife about what I am dealing with. (Well, my idea of logic, that is.) That advice was, maybe, just maybe, I might want to reconsider and do something different, like risk sharing with her where my mind is currently stuck. I have assured my fellow betrayeds and a wayward each and every time, why it was not a great idea. (As if what I’ve been doing was a grand plan.)

It began to dawn on me that I was blaming my wife for not being allowed to talk with her. My blaming wasn’t without merit, but it still was cowardliness on my part. Anyway, after a lot of back and forth on several different threads I decided that I would relent on my stance and follow some wise advice, which was: to see my wife as she is today, not as she was then and risk sharing my struggles with my her, giving her a chance to prove she had become a safe partner.

One of the nice things about being over 3 decades post affair is that the intensity of the event isn’t so overwhelming and all-consuming. Anger was no longer hiding up my sleeve, waiting to be slipped out like a card shark’s Ace of Spades, a cheat move to win the round. And all the tears had been shed and most of the fears of new truths quieted.

This post is much too long so I won’t go into the details of the discussion between us for they are immaterial. What is important is that I took the advice to view my wife as I know her to be now, employ new techniques to redirect my mind when it begins to ruminate, and share openly with her my inner suffering so she might have the chance to comfort my still un-mended heart. It was a healing moment that allowed our reconciliation to turn up the heat, not of boiling water, rather passion.

It was suggested by one member here that knows I write poetry when hurting, that I should consider scripting a new poem that matches who we are now verses then. I’m working on it, my 1st, long overdue, love poem. Wish me luck! 😊

Thanks everyone.

Asterisk

When I switched from manipulating to communicating with my wife, it was a powerful thing.

There had been plenty of times in the past where I am sure I brought it up to punish her. Maybe I felt she was being too happy and needed to be brought down a step, or I just wanted to take it out on her. She caused this, and along with me she must suffer. That was a penance.

It was a minor epiphany for me when I read from this one book about how majority of human communication is really human manipulation. How so much of what we say is meant to get people to do things. In a way, well, of course we do. Plenty of times where it makes sense, but once I started watching myself and others, I realized plenty of times where it doesn’t really make sense either. Much more subliminal. Deceptive.

That is what I have been doing when I brought up the affair in the past, I was manipulating. Even when I thought I was just sharing with her my feeling state, the timing of it and the tone and all that…I was trying to push her into her own feeling state. Specifically into feeling shitty.

When I made a concerted shift to just communicating, into talking to her as if she was my current friend and spouse as opposed to the original cause, everything changed. She was obviously guarded at first, because there was a track record. But the shift mattered, and what had been a penance became a gift. The gift being I’m now allowing her to help me.

Nice post, Asterisk.

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 12:47 PM, Sunday, November 23rd]