May hovered for awhile in the state between “He’s not cheating anymore.” and “He’s ready to piece.” The two don’t always happen at the same time. She set boundaries—he didn’t get all of the benefits of having a wife and life partner until he actually was committed to piecing.
We may disagree on how tough your piecing requirements should be, but if he doesn’t make any changes from what he was doing before the affairs that you can observe and measure, you are setting yourself up for a nearly certain repeat. Cheating may even be easier the next time. You doubtless have areas to work on, and I applaud that work, but his giving up and cheating on you is huge. Working through that may be hard for him, because he’ll face he wronged you and it was unjustified. He’ll have to identify his internal issues and learn new ways of dealing with them.
SteveLw although I understand being on the outside your misunderstanding of the amazing statement and whatnot, I was hoping I explained it better, best I can say, is even if I hadn't meant to, I did use this as a weapon later in arguments, Im not proud of it, but I do realize I did it and I have to take responsibility for my own problems.
I do feel the car ride wasn't so much about him complaining about all thats wrong with me, as toxic behaviors I have, as well as he has, accquired over the years, in case I didn't say it, we discussed his toxic behaviors too, as well as our issue with eachothers Love languages as we are not the same on that front. I just want the whole situation to be made clear. But Yes I am still skeptical, I believe he meant what he said when he said it about our M, but thus why I wanted time to pass and I am keeping my eyes open so to speak.
Also so everyone is aware, sadly C is not an option for us, we live in a small area and have been on a waiting list at the 3 only options for C in our area for almost 2 years now, it's highly frustrating.
Thornton, Of course things are hard to hear, but just know I care more about getting a faithful H and a Happy M then being fed BS frankly from people, so always keep it real and trust me when I say I appreciate it that way.
First off this is why I have no intention of giving my H my affection and all of that again right away obviously, I have read enough here I know it would only end up in disaster, I plan on seeing for real his actions for weeks etc. before I'd get back to that point.
And yes I did apologize, for my own behaviors, yes my H did some terrible, gaslighting things to me, that doesn't make my own toxic behaviors okay. There were things I did that are NOT okay, I don't say that to minimize anything he did, let me be clear on that, but I have to take responsibility for my part in our M getting to this point as well and work on myself, not for my M but for me to be who I want to be. 2 wrongs don't make a right. And yes my H took responsibility for alot of his mistakes as well, for his talking to the OW, for his issues with anger at times and walking away, many things. As I said it was the most beneficial talk we have had in a long time. He never stopped saying he loved me, not that its relevant I'm sure but I did read him and the OW's conversation since they started talking and other then a few "babe" drops on Her part, it could have been 2 friends talking, surprisingly my H blew off anytime the OW would make flirty comments, also was complete just online, they never met up.
Again in No way defending My H at all, I just know the only way to get true advice, etc. is to make sure all the facts are shown as well as possible.
I hear you all truly, it's why I'm being so skeptical, obviously I don't believe him yet. I am not going to just go back to the way things were or show my heart and affection to my H. Thats why I am asking you all's advice, obviously I'm going to watch my H's behavior from here on out to see how he acts, until then I'm just trying to figure out how to handle this situation best
Also My H has contacted his Military Chaplain (He is in the Army NG) and has made an appointment to see his for counseling help.... Just found this out as I was typing this.
Sorry missed yours in my last Reply.... And that is what I am trying to start working on and digging through this site for some ideas on requirements I guess youd call it. Obviously this minute I don't believe we are ready for piecing, from what I have read in Piecing its not for NC, MLC, etc. so I want to be more sure of his intentions before I persay go there.
I want to make good boundaries as well, to not let him have me fully back, I don't want to take it to the point of controlling, but I will obviously have some issues with trust for awhile.
As I did say in my reply before this one, He reached out to his Chaplain with the Military to set a meeting and work more with counseling... My H has always been completely against counseling, he just isn't one to want to open up to a stranger, so this was a big step on his part.
Boundaries and Piecing (just to start learning about it) forums are my main reading areas currently, if anyone has any specific threads that would benefit me please send them my way.
Wooooosah, I need a breath before I even begin here. Girl.....where do I start? Story time:
I just had a long talk with D18 last night about stuff that happened in the time when I was with her dad. It started as a budgeting conversation as she'd like to get her own apartment in a year or two, and then meal planning, and then how much we eat out or order in since we've had my now H in our lives vs when we were living with her dad and when we were on our own. We ended up having a long talk about how I didn't realize until years, YEARS after I had left her dad that he was financial abusive to me. That there were weeks I was expected to feed the family on less than $30. That he made 3 times as much money as I did and expected me to cover half the bills no matter what. Even when he cost us more per month than our daughter and I put together, and that included the years she was still in diapers. I knew how toxic we were for each other in the relationship. I knew how toxic I had become, but it took years of distance and healing for me to realize that my toxic behaviors were defense mechanisms, not choices. It's why 95% of the bad habits, behaviors and traits I had in that relationship I haven't had in any other relationship in my life. I became a toxic person in that relationship because my ex was mentally, financial and emotionally abusing me for years, and I'm not the kind to crumble under that kind of abuse. I'm the the kind who only gets more angry, therefore, petty, nasty, and hurtful. I also didn't notice early on because I left an abusive childhood home not long before he and I got pregnant, moved in together and had a shotgun wedding. I didn't have enough time healing from that to understand what was happening wasn't normal or healthy until it was way too late. A- when you get a chance sit and think about this story, and maybe re-read it a couple times to let it sink in.
That being said, my current H and I had several long calm talks about our MR during his A, and why we were unhappy, and what we wanted, and what the future was going to look like. But in that time, in those conversations I had enough distance to see how far afield my H was. I got to see how skewed his vision was of our relationship, of our history and of me. I was also self assured enough at the time to know, that while I wasn't perfect, there was nothing I had ever done, said, or so much as thought that was truly marriage ending, even if you added it all up. 1 because he never told me anything was wrong (quite literally, this isnt' a LBH thing, he refused to talk even when I knew things were wrong) 2 because as difficult as a partner as I can be because of my depression, my temper, my rigidity, my A type behavior, I had worked on myself long and hard and at that time I was the best version of myself yet, minus the crippling depression, that wasn't in my control. While I was willing to validate my H on things he said that I knew to be true and not said from the place of a caged animal, I was never, never willing to bend on things he said that were completely untrue. That is very anti-DB. It wasn't the right way to do things, but it was my way. My fear here is that you have neither the distance nor the emotional fortitude to stand your ground in conversations like this when your H offers you half truths.
I'm very happy that you had a calm, good conversation about things.you deserve to get some understanding of where H's head is at. I'm happy that you were both able to dig deep and not get uber defensive, but this isn't the end all be all of conversations and to say I'm disappointed that you rolled over and just took his accusations as truth is an understatement. You were doing so well. And I understand that this is very early on and all this takes time, but at a certain point here you need to understand the ground your H stands on is shaky at best. Regardless if you were a screaming, crying, insecure, indulgent, crazy pants, banshee he is in absolutely no position to point out your flaws and failings in all their glory. You shouldn't have accepted that even if you did get to say your piece.
Your H cheated on you repeatedly. I know you don't want to agree that that's a thing but he literally admitted to you he JUST stopped talking to some one a week ago. Not A WHOLE week ago. ONLY a week ago he decided to stop jeopardizing your MR. And he still thinks he's in the position to not only choose the direction of this MR but also that he's in a position to make you the W he wants you to be, while he does what exactly?
Look, I'm not saying you need to leave this guy or forget the MR entirely, but you are just allowing him to slide back and that's not a good place for you, because you've been here before, more than once. How many times can you allow things to just happen the same way over and over? How many times has he told you he only cheated because you.........? How many times has he apologized to you with a BUT immediately following? How many times has he asked to come back after you change something but he's changed nothing? I've never been a person who thing the WS needs to come back crawling on their hands and knees through glass, beating their breast professing their undying love. It doesn't work that way, even in the best of circumstance. In most cases it's a slow crawl towards kindness and care and then a fast jaunt to friendship, and truly trying, and then a paced walk/run to recon, piecing, real work and counseling. I believe very little of what's coming out of your H's mouth right now, and I'm a little scared that you say you only believe half but you believe in all of it.
Going forward here you need to know what you need from him to make sure that you feel safe and secure. What you need to say yes let's try to fix this. What steps he needs to take to show you and prove to you that he's done with all his BS and regardless of how horrible you could possibly be that he's willing to truly work on the MR. You have to stop allowing him to dictate to you what you did wrong. Of course you weren't the perfect spouse, none of us are. Of course you did things that you should work on, but if you really sit down and think about it was any of that really enough for a reasonable person to want to throw the towel in on a marriage? Probably not. You have work to do, but H only gets to dictate what that work is once he's all in. He's not all in. You need to stop eating all the blame he's feeding you. It's not yours to swallow.
Last if you guys can't get to MC there are a ton of "marriage saving" and "affair recovery" online boot camps that you guys can do together. Honestly one boot camp is typically less than the cost of 1 MC session out of pocket so it's truly worth it. There are a lot of other options out there too it's all a google search away.
I'm not sure how to make it more clear that I don't believe what my H is telling me, other then that I don't. I do believe I have said this, and maybe it is getting lost in translation somewhere, I'm not really sure. I in no way believe everything from my H right now, I am merely trying to learn more of steps I can take with what is happening with my current situation.
Although I do know some behaviors I have developed over the past year have been sort of defense mechanisms. I am also aware that due to past relationships I brought many insecurities into this relationship from not dealing with resolving the issues within myself from past situations.
Also obviously I am NOT allowing him to slide back into anything, I still am unsure how this got translated into that, although I do highly despise electronics and definitley prefer face to face as so much gets lost in translation lol But I have tried to make it clear to everyone on here, I am NOT just letting him come back into my bed, or let him call and talk to me like nothing has happened, or doing things for him, or telling him I love him, or anything of the sort. I know from everyone on here, how detrimental that would, also I just am not willing to do that anyways as I have too much self respect to allow him anything which he definitley doesn't deserve right now.
I am still trying to take time to work on writing down what I would need from him to feel comfortable saying yes we can work on this. I'm at work so haven't had much time to focus on it yet, but I'm working on it. My H and I had gotten a vacation package months ago and I told him last night that I've decided I am taking it with my friends next month. So trust me that alone is a huge 180 for me So I am still doing my best to focus on GAL and not on him right now.
For someone that is insisting you aren't defending him, you sure are spending a lot of time defending him.
Anyway, the reason we are harping on you making sure to understand where you still stand is that we see this all the time. A WAS says the right thing and the LBS goes full bore into accepting them back, open armed, and thinking everything is now hunky-dory.
WAS lie. All the time. If their lips are moving they are lying. You read exchanges between him and OW. Did you listen into their phone calls? I guarantee that they spoke too, and didn't just type. You have no idea the extent of their messages, and you will never know. You saw innocent exchanges.
In my first sitch in 2005, I found my W's EAP OM on her AOLIM friends list. I asked her about him. She said he was a friend from Jr. High School, and that they occasionally IM'd with each other. She didn't know I had installed key capture spyware on her PC. So the next day she started telling her EAP about how I had asked about him and wanted to know what the nature of their conservations were. And then said: "Some night, if we are both online, maybe we could have an innocent conversation so that I could show him that what I am telling him is true." In the meantime they were having torrid conversations about what they'd like to do to each other.
The point is, that if you easily found these exchanges more than likely those were the conversations he wanted you to see. No cheater, EA or PA, leaves easily found evidence when their LBS' suspicions are already elevated. Please do not be naive about the nature of his relationship with her.
Also, in the future, do not give him an out when he comes to you and says "I love you and want to work on the MR." Your response: "Okay." Then go back to what you were doing. "You've said that before and then took it back a few minutes later, so take some time to be sure" was A) short cutting the fact that he may have in fact taken it back a couple of minutes later and B) gave him an out. "She is giving me time so that when I come back in a few days and tell her I am not sure again she'll be ok with it!"
Go back and read your last few posts: He said. He said. He said. He said. He said. Where is HE DID?
Even: "Also My H has contacted his Military Chaplain (He is in the Army NG) and has made an appointment to see his for counseling help.... Just found this out as I was typing this." is all talk right now. When is his appointment? Let's see if he really goes.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
It's entirely possible that I'm missing something here, but I'm not the only one interpreting what you're saying that way. I'm sorry if it seems like we're not hearing you but this is what I got out of it:
As you reiterated that conversation it seems like you patiently sat there and let your cheating husband tell you what's wrong with you. And then you walked away from that conversation knowing there are things about yourself that you want to change because you have some habits and behaviors you're not proud of. While you did mention that you also shared some of your feelings on the relationship the take away from your husband was that since he hasn't been talking to anyone in the last week he thinks he wants to work on the MR.
Either you are leaving out huge portions of what is going down between you and H or you ARE letting him just slide back in the way he had before. Even telling him you need to think about things, you need space and want to take a vacation alone, while those are steps in the right direction it's not going to help in the long run if he's using your space and time to decided if HE wants to actually work on the MR. Like Steve said, it's an out that you handed him on a silver platter.
May's husband took a very, very long road to true remorse, but he showed a commitment to the marriage and their kids while working his way to remorse. It took my H a while to stop blaming his problems in our MR solely on me even when he was remorseful for the affair. It took a lot of time, patience, gentle nudging, and some serious introspection on his part. I'm not beyond understanding that this all takes time and WS doing everything on their own pace, but your H doesn't seem to be in this camp at all. He seems to just be playing with you. And you seem like you're fine with that.
There is something very out of sorts about this interaction that you seem to just be taking in stride and it doesn't feel right to me. Your insistence that everything is fine, you have this all under control after one day trip and a long talk feels like H has done his job in calming your fears enough to get you to stop talking about it and getting you to accept the burden of the blame. Not truly lifting a finger to help you feel secure. Not truly lifting a finger to show he really wants to work.
What I'm trying to tell you is keep your eyes open. This is a calm before a storm not a step in the right direction. Don't own blame that isn't yours just because there's some shame in how you handled things. And keep in mind a saying around here. "When the WS is all in you'll know, there's no doubt or question." This is probably one of the truest colloquialisms around here. You can actually feel it and see it when it happens. The whole energy in the house, between you two, and in your own body changes. There are a lot of things you need to do that are counterintuitive to try to make yourself a better person, and to work on a relationship, but don't let go of your intuition completely it's what will save you from being blindsided again.
