If we both did what I’m doing where would our relationship be?

[Deleted Account]

You can often judge your behavior by whether it is good for both partners to engage in.
In my case I honestly think if my wife was as interested in creating trust and safety as I am. Was interested in being friends like I am. Wanted to spend time together like I do. Was interested n growth in the way and am. Was willing to take accountability as I do. And was willing to apologize as I have done. Then our relationship would be quite wonderful.
But if I behaved as she does it would be much worse than it already is.
We would be even more disconnected. We would probably be bankrupt. Likely we would just be attacking one another with anger and impatience. I would be looking for the mistakes and being critical about the most minor thing. I would justify any of my behavior and blame it on her. I would do things for people and resent them as if they should have known there was a boundary that I never told them about. I would refuse to be accountable for my actions. I would play the victim to nearly everyone, even my friends and society in general. I would do nothing about my health and complain that it doesn’t improve.
I would refuse therapy or even self help books.
It’s like we were at war and shooting at each other and I said, “I’m done with this, let’s put our guns down and be peaceful instead.” She said, “I don’t trust you, I’m keeping my gun.”
I said, “Fair enough, but I’m putting mine down.” Do I put it down and started planting trees near my trench and setting up a hammock. She stand on her side and occasionally tries to start the war up. I take a bullet once in a while. I ask her to put the gun down. She says, “No, I don’t trust you. You’ve shot at me.” I say, “Fair enough, but you’ve shot at me too. And I’ve put my gun down.”
She says, “I only shot at you because you shot at me. I’m not the bad guy. It was self defense.” I say, “ Well, I’m not shooting at you now and I put my gun down. I’m going to be planting some flowers over here and enjoying life if you want to join me.”
She says no and takes another shot.

 

[CrushedandLeaving]

I wish for both of you, you'd each find a way to be happy and move on without each other. It sounds like you don't like her. It sounds like she doesn't like you. It sounds like you're expecting a level of forgive-and-move-on from her that she's not expecting to ever be expected to give. Whether it's a chicken and egg problem or not and no matter how much my insides are screaming about "duh, I'd never forgive anyone for doing that either and I would holdon to my gun like my life depended on it", you've expressed that her feelings are not stemming from being cheated on, so it just sounds like extreme incompatibility all around. Was your relationship like this when you married? You seem to be having a particularly tough couple weeks lately.

 

[Rudolf Geyse]

Well done @Thor God of Thunder for manning up up taking the initiative in treating her the way you would like to be treated. I hope that it quickly starts to convert into her seeing a difference and following your lead in laying down her weapon. Great analogy by the way. I say stay the course for a season and see where the road takes you. Good luck.

 

[Psalm27:1my light]

You can often judge your behavior by whether it is good for both partners to engage in.
In my case I honestly think if my wife was as interested in creating trust and safety as I am. Was interested in being friends like I am. Wanted to spend time together like I do. Was interested n growth in the way and am. Was willing to take accountability as I do. And was willing to apologize as I have done. Then our relationship would be quite wonderful.
But if I behaved as she does it would be much worse than it already is.
We would be even more disconnected. We would probably be bankrupt. Likely we would just be attacking one another with anger and impatience. I would be looking for the mistakes and being critical about the most minor thing. I would justify any of my behavior and blame it on her. I would do things for people and resent them as if they should have known there was a boundary that I never told them about. I would refuse to be accountable for my actions. I would play the victim to nearly everyone, even my friends and society in general. I would do nothing about my health and complain that it doesn’t improve.
I would refuse therapy or even self help books.
It’s like we were at war and shooting at each other and I said, “I’m done with this, let’s put our guns down and be peaceful instead.” She said, “I don’t trust you, I’m keeping my gun.”
I said, “Fair enough, but I’m putting mine down.” Do I put it down and started planting trees near my trench and setting up a hammock. She stand on her side and occasionally tries to start the war up. I take a bullet once in a while. I ask her to put the gun down. She says, “No, I don’t trust you. You’ve shot at me.” I say, “Fair enough, but you’ve shot at me too. And I’ve put my gun down.”
She says, “I only shot at you because you shot at me. I’m not the bad guy. It was self defense.” I say, “ Well, I’m not shooting at you now and I put my gun down. I’m going to be planting some flowers over here and enjoying life if you want to join me.”
She says no and takes another shot.

My husband could have written something similar this. Consequences suck. I have no interest in creating trust and safety( that I didn’t break in the first place) with someone who has proven to be untrustworthy and unsafe. An addict never drops his gun, he may quit firing, but the gun is always there. So, I’ll never put mine down. I make sure I’m safe first and foremost. I’m not shooting at him, but I’m making sure I can protect myself. Unlike your wife, though , I really like my husband. Not sure where you’re at in life, but once you retire you better like who you’re living with because you spend an enormous amount of time together. At least we do. If your wife has no interest in working on the relationship you don’t have a lot of choices. You leave, or you find a way to live with it. You can’t make her get over it. She will never be the same no matter what you do. Ever. Intimate Deception by Sheri Kefer is a great book on what her brain is doing. It takes two to make a marriage work but only one to destroy it. Has she said why she hasn’t left you? What is making her stay?

 

[Psalm27:1my light]

My husband made a very good point- neither you or your wife knows if you will ever shoot her again. You cannot guarantee you won’t ever do it again. So, that doesn’t leave her a lot of choices either. You walked in and shot an unarmed person. She armed herself and now you don’t like it. If it weren’t for kids and a thousand other entanglements I think most of us would leave. None of us asked for this. We just wanted a faithful, loving, equal partner. Instead we got cheated on, lied to, gaslit. Take the amount of time you gave to your addiction, the hours, days, weeks, years, and multiply that by 10 and realize that’s probably around how much time you need to prove you won’t shoot her again. Even longer if she had previous childhood trauma

 

[Deleted Account]

 

[Deleted Account]

My husband could have written something similar this. Consequences suck. I have no interest in creating trust and safety( that I didn’t break in the first place) with someone who has proven to be untrustworthy and unsafe. An addict never drops his gun, he may quit firing, but the gun is always there. So, I’ll never put mine down. I make sure I’m safe first and foremost. I’m not shooting at him, but I’m making sure I can protect myself. Unlike your wife, though , I really like my husband. Not sure where you’re at in life, but once you retire you better like who you’re living with because you spend an enormous amount of time together. At least we do. If your wife has no interest in working on the relationship you don’t have a lot of choices. You leave, or you find a way to live with it. You can’t make her get over it. She will never be the same no matter what you do. Ever. Intimate Deception by Sheri Kefer is a great book on what her brain is doing. It takes two to make a marriage work but only one to destroy it. Has she said why she hasn’t left you? What is making her stay?

I wish for both of you, you'd each find a way to be happy and move on without each other. It sounds like you don't like her. It sounds like she doesn't like you. It sounds like you're expecting a level of forgive-and-move-on from her that she's not expecting to ever be expected to give. Whether it's a chicken and egg problem or not and no matter how much my insides are screaming about "duh, I'd never forgive anyone for doing that either and I would holdon to my gun like my life depended on it", you've expressed that her feelings are not stemming from being cheated on, so it just sounds like extreme incompatibility all around. Was your relationship like this when you married? You seem to be having a particularly tough couple weeks lately.

All good questions and why I hold back from making this kind of post usually. Just felt like venting.
Why she doesn’t leave. She won’t talk about it.
She has made it clear that she doesn’t want me to leave and constantly throws it in my face that I ever threatened it.
I think she knows I’m a good man and she likes my labor and my support physically but doesn’t have the courage to face her own stuff and work in it.
She doesn’t say she doesn’t trust me because of porn, it has to do with me blaming our problems on her and her not wanting to own it.
She is desperately afraid that she will bear some responsibility for our situation somehow.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that your seek.
All I was saying is that I have to be open to getting hurt to try and improve things. But I want it bad enough that aim willing to. I will sacrifice my own “safety” to try and improve things. Can she hurt me? Yes. Does she? Yes.
She’s not safe anyway. Being mean doesn’t protect you, it’s an illusion.
But it seems the more I won’t engage in a mean way. The more I just take the shots and display patience, kindness, humility, honesty, the more she tries to break me.
It’s fine to test it, but this is who I am. It’s who I’ve always been without my trauma. But she can’t accept that because it means she might have to take some accountability for her own actions.
Be careful when fighting monsters lest you become one.

 

[Psalm27:1my light]

All good questions and why I hold back from making this kind of post usually. Just felt like venting.
Why she doesn’t leave. She won’t talk about it.
She has made it clear that she doesn’t want me to leave and constantly throws it in my face that I ever threatened it.
I think she knows I’m a good man and she likes my labor and my support physically but doesn’t have the courage to face her own stuff and work in it.
She doesn’t say she doesn’t trust me because of porn, it has to do with me blaming our problems on her and her not wanting to own it.
She is desperately afraid that she will bear some responsibility for our situation somehow.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that your seek.
All I was saying is that I have to be open to getting hurt to try and improve things. But I want it bad enough that aim willing to. I will sacrifice my own “safety” to try and improve things. Can she hurt me? Yes. Does she? Yes.
She’s not safe anyway. Being mean doesn’t protect you, it’s an illusion.
But it seems the more I won’t engage in a mean way. The more I just take the shots and display patience, kindness, humility, honesty, the more she tries to break me.
It’s fine to test it, but this is who I am. It’s who I’ve always been without my trauma. But she can’t accept that because it means she might have to take some accountability for her own actions.
Be careful when fighting monsters lest you become one.

I was fortunate, my husband never blamed me. If he had, I would’ve left first dday. There would have been no coming back from that and I would not be able to forgive that while trying to heal. Ironically! I can say, everything in our relationship changed when he stopped pmo. However, we have a friend who nothing changed when he got clean. But, his wife has a lot of trauma ( rape) that she refuses to address. So his betrayal affected her differently than my husbands did me. She refuses to seek help and refuses to talk. Whereas the minute I understood what happened and that *I* needed help, I had an appointment to see a csat the following week.

 

[Starling]

My husband made a very good point- neither you or your wife knows if you will ever shoot her again. You cannot guarantee you won’t ever do it again. So, that doesn’t leave her a lot of choices either. You walked in and shot an unarmed person. She armed herself and now you don’t like it. If it weren’t for kids and a thousand other entanglements I think most of us would leave. None of us asked for this. We just wanted a faithful, loving, equal partner. Instead we got cheated on, lied to, gaslit. Take the amount of time you gave to your addiction, the hours, days, weeks, years, and multiply that by 10 and realize that’s probably around how much time you need to prove you won’t shoot her again. Even longer if she had previous childhood trauma

This was very good analogy...

 

[used19]

Is she willing to work on things at all? I’ve been reading a lot of the work by Dr. Stan Tatkin, notably Wired for Love and In Each Other’s Care. It’s a different approach of putting the coupleship first. Of actively defining what the goals are, what we agree to be and work towards. I wonder if she needs a path out of the pain to get the chance to pivot and actively define what you both want and where you will go. She may find power saying this is what I want, do you agree.

I’m so sorry. It’s a hard place to be to find yourself a shell of the person you once were. It’s hard to love someone so much and also kind of hate him (well a version of him) at the same time. You’re married to the tiger that mauled you. It’s hard. Most of us will never trust our husbands again, but at some point we have to decide that there is a marriage rising out of the ashes that can be turned into something new. It can’t ever go back and it shouldn’t. Back is full of the dynamics that cause hurt. You have to grab what’s good and move forward.

 

[Deleted Account]

I know everyone is going to say. End it. Leave. Doesn’t matter if she want you to go or not. Take care of yourself. If you think she’s abusive, get out.

I stay for the same reason I quit pmo. It’s who I am.
It’s what I feel is right.
I’m just making the point that if she copied my behavior, things would improve.
And I don’t feel like there’s any call to be mean even if you feel you need a boundary.

 

[Deleted Account]

Is she willing to work on things at all?

Nope.
I’m doing a thing where I don’t try to control at all either. She knows what I want. I’ve said it. Many times. I don’t need to repeat it.
I don’t want her to do anything she doesn’t want to. Leave, stay, hug, don’t hug, sex, don’t sex. Whatever it is, don’t do something and then play the victim and be resentful as if you didn’t choose it.

 

[CrushedandLeaving]

Wh

I know everyone is going to say. End it. Leave. Doesn’t matter if she want you to go or not. Take care of yourself. If you think she’s abusive, get out.

I stay for the same reason I quit pmo. It’s who I am.
It’s what I feel is right.
I’m just making the point that if she copied my behavior, things would improve.
And I don’t feel like there’s any call to be mean even if you feel you need a boundary.

What are you calling mean in this context?

 

[Deleted Account]

Wh


What are you calling mean in this context?

I try to start a nice conversation or express an interest in what she is doing and receive a hostile answer. Snarky, impatient, unkind, in my opinion uncalled for.
How was your day?
Fine!
Anything interesting happen?
Why?!
Just curious

Instead of calmly saying “I don’t really feel like talking right now.”

 

[CrushedandLeaving]

I try to start a nice conversation or express an interest in what she is doing and receive a hostile answer. Snarky, impatient, unkind, in my opinion uncalled for.
How was your day?
Fine!
Anything interesting happen?
Why?!
Just curious

Instead of calmly saying “I don’t really feel like talking right now.”

It sounds like she has regularly sent signals that she's not interested in small talk conversations or that kind of check-in connection. Have you asked if she'd like you to stop attempting those? She might not want your interest in what she's doing. Have you thought through a response if that is the case?

How do you think she would describe the situation? And what's behind your expectation that she needs to welcome this interaction with you? Is it mean or is she frustrated that you regularly seem to expect positive interactions after infidelity? (And I'm spitballing based on how I'd see myself reacting. I have no idea if you're actually ignoring signals or not.)

 

[Deleted Account]

It sounds like she has regularly sent signals that she's not interested in small talk conversations or that kind of check-in connection. Have you asked if she'd like you to stop attempting those? She might not want your interest in what she's doing. Have you thought through a response if that is the case?

How do you think she would describe the situation? And what's behind your expectation that she needs to welcome this interaction with you? Is it mean or is she frustrated that you regularly seem to expect positive interactions after infidelity? (And I'm spitballing based on how I'd see myself reacting. I have no idea if you're actually ignoring signals or not.)

I can honor a boundary around any of the things you mentioned above. She is never clear about it. That’s my complaint. She could be kind and clear and still set a boundary and I would accept it.
That’s what I meant by my “mean”.
attack on character instead of attack on behavior. Contempt.
I don’t do it and I wish she wouldn’t either.

 

[Warfman]

Dr. Stan Tatkin, notably Wired for Love

This book is on my nightstand!

 

[Warfman]

All good questions and why I hold back from making this kind of post usually. Just felt like venting.
Why she doesn’t leave. She won’t talk about it.
She has made it clear that she doesn’t want me to leave and constantly throws it in my face that I ever threatened it.
I think she knows I’m a good man and she likes my labor and my support physically but doesn’t have the courage to face her own stuff and work in it.
She doesn’t say she doesn’t trust me because of porn, it has to do with me blaming our problems on her and her not wanting to own it.
She is desperately afraid that she will bear some responsibility for our situation somehow.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that your seek.
All I was saying is that I have to be open to getting hurt to try and improve things. But I want it bad enough that aim willing to. I will sacrifice my own “safety” to try and improve things. Can she hurt me? Yes. Does she? Yes.
She’s not safe anyway. Being mean doesn’t protect you, it’s an illusion.
But it seems the more I won’t engage in a mean way. The more I just take the shots and display patience, kindness, humility, honesty, the more she tries to break me.
It’s fine to test it, but this is who I am. It’s who I’ve always been without my trauma. But she can’t accept that because it means she might have to take some accountability for her own actions.
Be careful when fighting monsters lest you become one.

I really feel for you on this Thor, I know how hard this is. It's not easy to work through that stage of, I was so so wrong, but I've changed so much, and deeply desire your partner to change too. Unfortunately, just as only you can make the choice to stay in recovery, only she can make the decision to want to grow with you in her own ways.

I notice things in my wife's family that are so apparent to me now, in particular from the book, "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents" by Lindsay Gibson. There's some good podcasts on this subject as well. It may not fix anything. But that content does add some perspective for how different people react and it has helped me some.

Your posts are something I relate to deeply. I think your head is in the right place, I wish there was some magic answer. Thinking of you. And praying things get better.

 

[Deleted Account]

How do you think she would describe the situation? And what's behind your expectation that she needs to welcome this interaction with you? Is it mean or is she frustrated that you regularly seem to expect positive interactions after infidelity?

If you don’t want me here and you want me to leave. Just say it. Don’t get angry and act like it’s betrayal when I say this hurts too much because you don’t want me here, I think I need to leave. But then torture me when I stay by refusing to work on yourself or the relationship.
She gets offended if I say she only wants me around to financially support her. Literally says “that’s offensive”. But she also can’t give me an answer when I ask why she wants me to stick around.
Can’t answer “why do you want me to stay?”
That was a 10 years ago conversation. But basically I’ve put my threats away, made peace with taking the moral high ground. Am willing to suffer for my values. And just vent once in a while on an anonymous site.
I’m happy with the rest of my life and my friends and my kids. I have friends, she doesn’t. She treats them only slightly better than she treats me and she only picks people who need her for something. Not real relationships. These are things I feel bad for her about.
she won’t acknowledge her childhood trauma. She won’t seek therapy for it. she represses emotions and thinks she’s protected when they are causing depression, poor sleep, and weight gain.

 

[Warfman]

But basically I’ve put my threats away, made peace with taking the moral high ground.

My therapist would call me out on a statement like this. Basically? Or certainly? What does basically mean?

And then say, do you feel you are weaponizing the moral high ground? Do you hold this against her?

Not saying you are. Just thinking like I think my therapist would.. ha