Divorce because I betrayed her trust - I regret it

[Ready2Change]

Hi Dan,

You definitely need different advise than most here. Most are dealing with infidelity of their spouse.

Your W is hurt and angry and you need to rebuild trust.

Do not send what I am writing, but use it as a guild line for future in person communication . I believe you should script out a "What will it take" speech. We can help if you want.

She has since texted me to say that she is very sad. She says "It's all very final, I'm so sad it has all had to end like this, I wish things were different and none of this ever happened."

H:"I am so sorry I hurt you. I wish I could change the past, but I can't. I wish I knew then what I know now. I can't believe I was so stupid"

She has also said "I want a friendship from this as I care very deeply about you and your happiness" and "I would like to be friends."

I cherish our relationship, but if we do divorce, there is no way I can just be your friend."



What are your thoughts?

[AnotherStander]

Dan, things are moving fast for sure, I suspect she's got her parents or someone in her ear pushing her to end things ASAP. Don't help her along but don't interfere either. A lot of marriages end in divorce before starting over again in recon, so divorce doesn't necessarily mean the end of things. Sometimes a WAS has to divorce the "old spouse" before they can appreciate the new one. I've seen it a lot. Hang in there.

[DaB35]

I have kind of done this.

To the first quote, she said "I'm sorry, this is horrible."

I texted back "It must have been so hard for you to go through the terrible process of filling in the divorce application form. This is all horrible. You don't need to apologise at all. I really am sorry."

She is going on holiday on Thursday 22nd for a week. I am writing her a letter where I'm explaining how I messed up and offering some empathy for her - i.e. make the letter about HER ("I'm sorry you feel like this etc.") instead of about me ("I will do anything to make it right.").

I don't like the thought of never seeing her again. I don't want to cut her out of my life.

[DaB35]

Dan, things are moving fast for sure, I suspect she's got her parents or someone in her ear pushing her to end things ASAP.

I have a feeling it's her sister, some of her friends, and her work colleagues.

A lot of her work colleagues are separated or divorced. She even told me they have said to her, "Well I took my husband back and now I'm trapped, I regret it." etc. She says her parents haven't influenced her, and I do believe her. They have been very neutral and just said they'll support her with whatever she does. They are just sad about it and "hope that I can get better".

[DaB35]

This is the letter I want to write her

**

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.

All I can say now is that you are still one of the most important people in my life. I will always care for you at a depth that is ‘without fathom’. [note 1]

“And in the hush, remember us.” [note 2]

You are - and will forever be - my soft. [note 3]

*****

NOTES
1. This is an in-joke - It's from the film Megamind which we saw on our first date and we always laugh about that line. A character cannot say the word unfathomable, so gives up and says "without fathom"

2. This is a line from a song by one of our favourite artists, Aqualung.

3. We used to call each other 'soft' - it was our pet name for each other.

[unchien]

No letters. NO LETTERS.

I will respond later why. Read my sitch if you want. In the meantime hold back on giving her any letter.

This might be the most important piece of advice I can give

[Traveler]

Dan, please re-consider sending this. I didn't read anything that changes unchien's "No Letters!" It's a common desire to want to lay everything out in words. It's rarely a winning approach.

[unchien]

OK Dan I have a few more minutes here.

NO LETTERS. Do NOT send it. You can draft as many of these as you want, burn them and throw them in the trash or delete them.

I have never felt more strongly about any post I have made on this forum. If you want to argue why you should send it, go ahead and post here and I will try to respond.

There is a lot to unpack here. But if you want to earn back trust with your W, the only way to do that is through consistency in action. Words are empty at this point. This letter will dig you a much deeper hole, I can promise you that. It will be pored over and criticized to the Nth degree for everything it does or doesn't contain.

This all may sound harsh, but I firmly believe that this forum exists to help people and sometimes we need to strip away the politeness to really help. I'm sorry you are here, and I hope you keep posting. I've been here 4 months and this place has in many ways saved my life.

[Traveler]

I am horrified to see before me the depth of pain I have created.. how devastated you are now.. must have caused you so much distress.. inflicting such a trauma on you.. contributing to your feeling completely drained emotionally and physically

Dan, if I'm reading correctly--you looked at porn (like 98% of men and 73% of women in the past 6mo), asked two women for pics, sent a pic of her sister without permission, and kept this hidden. Is that all? I'm not trying to be snarky. You did wrong, but her reaction's strong, almost like you shared about your life with those women (emotional affair) or let your wife's sex life suffer (getting satisfaction elsewhere).

You hint at deeper issues. You ordered the wrong size part and she "had a go at you", and you escaped into porn. What did "having a go at you" entail? If it was excessive, did she apologize and make up?

[DaB35]

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.

CWarrior - yes that is the situatoin. However, she says she cannot forgive that because "you took a marriage vow KNOWING you were doing this behind my back. It was not a clean slate."

I did not have emotional affairs with the 2 women. It was some dirty talk and some pictures. The only non-sexual thing was one of the women said something about her dog dying and I said I was sorry to hear that. But my W beleives that I'd "formed a relationship" with them.

Our sex life was up and down really. At the beginning it was fantastic. In the last couple of years or so less frequent. My W has a few illnesses and also often feels tired, so sometimes I would be in the mood for intimacy but then she'd say "I feel really tired" so I backed off. But then I wouldn't instigate anything for weeks, because she wasn't giving anything back either. She felt like she was "doing all the work". I just think it was lack fo communication; she didn't tell me there was a problem, and my male brain thought, "Oh she hasn't brought up a problem, so there can't be an issue."

Sex with her was always great.

By 'had a go' I just mean she was annoyed at me and had a bit of a rant, nothing abusive or anything, just a telling off really. I just mis-read the measuring instructions on the blind company website. She did apologise and things were then fine.

She feels that in doing all this in secret I "preferred this life to your life with me", or I "was more attracted to the porn girls than me" or "lied to me for 8 years".