Divorce because I betrayed her trust - I regret it

[BenB]

Dan, most of us here have sent letters. I have read thousands and thousands of pages here and I am yet to read about anyone writing a letter and it went down well. 100% of the cases, it's made things worse. I'm no expert so I can't tell you exactly why but probably the too little too late thoughts in their mind.

Also, you need to remember - actions, not words. Nothing you can say or write will help. Your actions is what maybe will make them believe you have changed. And even then it will take a long time. You just have to accept that.

[DaB35]

It's hard because I'm worried she feels I don't care how she is - of course I do as I'm the one who's caused this damage. She is just so headstrong and stubborn it makes it harder (she's half-Scottish and a redhead!).

I have acknowledged what I've done. She is very sad about how it's ended, so isn't being nasty to me. I suppose that is a ray of light in all this.

I do wish we could R. However, if that does happen it may have to happen after D. I have to show her the new me. It will be difficult as we'll be living 40miles apart. But I am hoping we can still meet up and talk.

What are people's thoughts?

[AnotherStander]

Dan, like the others said, don't give her the letter. Writing letters can be therapeutic but it's for you, not her. Write it and burn it.

You've already apologized numerous times to her over this, STOP APOLOGIZING. Volume is not better than quality when it comes to apologies. Apologize from the heart, then let it go.

A lot of LBS's have gone to divorce court only to get slapped in the face with their very own letter of contrition. What seemed like a good way to apologize is now being used against them as proof that everything is their fault and that they should pay dearly in D court. And guess what, the judges do accept those letters as evidence of marital misconduct, and some LBS's have lost child custody and gained a significant alimony and child support burden as a result.

If your W brings the past up again in person then it's OK to humbly apologize again (VERBALLY), but don't initiate any more apologies.

[unchien]

Unchein, I'd be interested to hear why you believe it is a bad idea? My reasoning is that it focuses on her, not me, and that I'm empathising with how betrayed she feels.

Dan,

I completely understand this strong instinct to write an apology letter. I've been there. You are probably reading advice from people like myself and thinking... yeah yeah yeah these are disgruntled vets and things didn't go their way. There are people here who have reconciled... I have yet to find a case where a letter was the magic wand.

You don't have kids, you're going to split assets 50/50, I would not worry about the legal implications of the letter.

I am going to respond with a bit of a trick question for you:

How do you hope your W will respond to this letter?

[Ready2Change]

When she brings up past hurt in person, then VERBALLY with your full attention and eye contact, you tell her you are sorry for hurting her.

In general, the less word, the more the impact. Use just enough to get the full message across.

I know you have heard me say sorry many times already, and I know that we are both so very sad that things have gone the way they have. I’m not intending to control or force you to do anything by writing this letter. I just want to say a few more things that I hope will help you heal a bit more.

When we got married in 2016 you believed I would make you feel cherished and loved for the rest of your life, and that you’d feel safe with me. However there have been times where I have made you feel neglected, and now - worse than that - rejected and betrayed. To discover that the man you had entrusted your life with had such a horrible part to him that he was too afraid to disclose it to anyone – not even you, the closest person he had – must have caused you so much distress.

I am horrified to see before me the depth of pain I have created. You have given so much in the 8 years we have been together, yet I do see how devastated you are now, and I cannot believe that I did what I did.

Whilst you gave yourself to me, and I totally loved being with you, in the background I was feeding an addiction that was debilitating and degrading because I was using it as escapism from other issues of mine instead of actually dealing with those issues in a mature way with your support. I know that your discovery of what I did was shocking and utterly devastating, since it was something that I had not addressed and instead brought into the relationship without you knowing. I understand how you would have felt so deceived by this.

As a result of inflicting such a trauma on you, I do not blame you for losing trust in me, and that your love for me has been affected so terribly. Words will never fully express the complete and abject remorse that I have for what I did, and how I was too weak-willed, ashamed, and scared to ask for any form of help before it was too late. Your husband became a threat to your self-worth and I am mortified to have done this.

I know that for all the times you have shared your thoughts with me – both good and bad – I did not reciprocate equally. You have not received the same openness from me that I got from you, and I was a fool to be so immature and closed off, to merely accept that I had created these emotional barriers and not seek to actively get rid of them so I could benefit from your loving support even more. When I felt I was in trouble I should have reached out to you, my wife, for guidance. I am sorry I did not do this. Please understand that, for all time, I want to be someone you feel you can speak to, as I would want to speak to you. Whenever you need someone to listen to your concerns or share any anxieties, I will be here.

In the last 8 years you have had such a life-affirming impact on me in so many ways, yet I am so remorseful for the way you have been treated. The love I have for you was something I felt very strongly; I was delighted to feel something that profoundly as I thought it would never come. But I did not have the decency to always let you know, nor did I have the strength to fight my underlying problems before they ended up contributing to your feeling completely drained emotionally and physically.

I think back over our life together often, and am amazed at just how much we’ve done in such a short space of time.

For years I accepted what I feel for you as simply a part of me, flowing through me. In addition, the love and affection I have received from you is something so gorgeous and uniquely precious.

As I said at the start of this letter, I am not trying to force you to do anything. I just wanted to offer you some empathy so you know how much regret I have for what I have done.

W:"H, bla bla bla porn bla bla bla"
H:"W, Words will never fully express the remorse that I have for hurting you. I regret what I have done."
W:"Bla bla bla bla "
H:"I am sorry. I wish I could change the past"


You listen to understand her feelings. Then acknowledged the feelings. She does most of the talking.

[Yorkie]

Hi Dan - I'm UK based also.

I've got a sackcloth and ashes you can borrow if you wish. You've apologised. I think she knows you're sorry but she isn't interested. Don't do that awful thing where you keep saying over and over, louder and louder, slower and slower because you haven't got a response from her.

I too am stubborn but I can promise you that she is going over and over in her head everything that you've said to her in relation to this. Also, when we're angry we rewrite history and everything that you ever did was wrong, immoral, insensitive etc etc It fades with time. Give her time and space.

However, what I really want to ask you is why are you facilitating the estate agents? Why have you responded to her requests to do so when she is on holiday. Let her do the hard work. Don't stand in her way but don't do it for her. You see in our sometimes complex female logic, we can turn round your nice guy actions in our heads and come to the conclusion that you don't want to be married either. Otherwise why would you be helping. If you pursue and are all sorry all the time we see you as weak. If you are nasty then it shows us that we were right about you all along.

The point is that you are very unlikely to get it right or choose the right option. It may seem unfair but because she has decided that she's done, whatever you do can be misconstrued.

The guys on here are often heard to say that you can't nice her back. You also can't force your remorse on her. It is her right to not accept it and to end the marriage if she wishes. At the moment she wishes to, so have some respect for that. It may turn out to be all hot headed celtic blood.

In the meanwhile do all the DB basics if only to stop yourself obsessing and definitely stop yourself from sending a letter.

She only needs to glance back once and see a strong, together man who obviously has remorse for it to sow a seed of doubt in her mind about what she wants in the future.

Do not panic. Gain yourself some time wherever you can.

[Ready2Change]

She only needs to glance back once and see a strong, together man who obviously has remorse for it to sow a seed of doubt in her mind about what she wants in the future.

THIS



Focus on your personal growth. I did and do not regret it.

Take this time to work on you. Use your W's input as a spring board. Make positive changes in your beliefs and behaviors as well as how you respond to other peoples actions, including your W's.

[crdcheck]

Agree with the suggestions for personal growth. She's giving you the gift of space and time, make use of it. Who did she fall in love with? I'm guessing that it was someone who was confident, focused, and true to himself, not someone who was following her around like a lost lamb, begging and pleading. You don't have to go back to the person you were (he's gone anyway), get out, experiment, try new things, and find out who you want to be. If that turns out to be someone she wants to be with, great! And if not, well, do you want to be someone you are not?

Side note: agree with the advice to stop helping her to execute the divorce. I felt intense guilt at my transgressions and would have happily moved my W's stuff, piece by piece, by hand to prove my commitment and shame. I stopped doing anything I wasn't asked specifically to do (except, of course, anything that involved my daughter) and, even when she asked (which, as I'm finding, was rare - she has a sense of entitlement so it is usually more like "hey, someone needs to be here when the realtor comes to take pictures"), I generally had something [legitimately] better to do. In my mind, the divorce is my wife's project which I'm giving her the space to run as she sees fit. I will go to mediation sessions with her, I will review documents (e.g. house sale agreements) in a timely manner, but that's about it.

Now, to be fair (and R2C is probably thinking this) - I failed to heed advice from here, especially early on. I wanted to show what a good husband I was (and would be) by doing her laundry, giving her the holidays she wanted. And folks on this board said "you'll get nothing in return, she's vilified you." They were right. W was not happy that I didn't help with the divorce but I genuinely feel that she respects me now more than when she dropped the bomb, and probably more than she has in years. For what it's worth, I didn't even get a thank you for doing her laundry/picking up/etc./etc. So, learn from my mistakes as much as you can.

Finally, someone mentioned that this was due to you looking at porn and how your wife's response seems extreme. I have to agree - you should validate her emotions about this but the reality is that this betrayal is relatively light. What condition could your relationship have been in that this nudge would push it over the edge? I think that you need to look beyond the porn to understand the causes. Without a solid understanding of those getting back into an R w/ W will lead you to the same conclusion (and it is likely that an R with someone else may hit the same challenges - I suspect communication is an issue here).

As always, best of luck - I'm rooting for you.

[DaB35]

She doesn't want to be in the house alone. She has been for 3 months and hates it. It's a big house.
So she wants it sold asap (I hate the fact that our house that we put so much effort in to is going - I hate that she's just casting it aside and not really seemingly thinking aabout what it represents).

So she's asked me to "get the ball rolling." She is also scared the house price value will plummet after Brexit (31 October).

I have done stuff around the house (mow the lawn, washing, cleaning etc.) and she does always thank me for it afterwads, usually a little text.

She was quite a fragile emotional person even though she puts on a 'front' of a real extrovert, life and soul of the party. I think she REALLY needs IC but she is adamant that she doesn't ("I've got my family and friends. I'll be fine."). Stubborn like I said before. She was also lovely and hilarious and was great for me.

She hates porn in any form, and says that me being on these sites and commenting in a vulgar manner on some of the models etc means that I hate women and don't value our marriage and prefer them to her. Weirdly although she has a bit of a potty mouth and jokes about sex all the time, she is quite a prude really. Possibly due to a staunch Christian upbringing and even now my W and her sister have talked about feeling 'guilty' about sex. The family aren't religious at all now. But it clearly has had effects on them.

I'm trying to be pleasant and helpful. She has thanked me for organising the estate agents. I really don't want to as I adore our house. It is such a waste to throw it all away. It was the summation of our 8 years together. Now it'll be a memory.

I went to London with my best friend today. Had a lovely time with him (mate from school, known each other 25 years), and I was distracted for most of the day.

[unchien]

Did you know she hated porn in any form before this happened?