SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am going to be honest here, and the truth is not always pretty. Please, if you are going to respond to this post, don't do it from a place of outrage or hurt. I am asking anyone who replies to do so from a place of kindness and support, otherwise keep it moving.

My marriage sucks right now. I have grown to be incredible suspicious that the person I felt the safest with has become abusive, whether he consciously recognizes he's doing it or not. It didn't used to be like that. It seems like something has changed, but he won't clue me into what's going on. It feels so much like he's pushing me away the same way I was pushing him away, that I have actually asked him if there was someone else, and if that's the case could he please just tell me so I know what changed and we could work through it, instead of me being stuck here trying to figure it out. Honestly, that would feel like relief at this point. He laughed in my face at the question. That didn't dispel the suspicion at all.

It's gotten to the point where I feel the need to record our interactions because he "remembers" events so differently from the way I do, and it's always conveniently in his favor. I recorded our conversation today about these feelings, and even within that one, I noticed multiple employed manipulation tactics. It was genuinely difficult for me to listen to it back, because I was so focused on repair during the conversation that I didn't even catch them the first time. It makes me want to hold my inner child and comfort her, and tell her that I'm not going to let this happen to us again. I have a plan going forward to try to navigate out of it. I am praying the ultimate solution isn't separation or divorce, because I do love him and want to be with him. I just can't continue abiding by the way he's treating me right now. I can't understand why this is even happening.

But I'm here right now because I sense that the remorse I hold for committing infidelity seems to be waning, and that scares me too. I think I've gone from seeing my Bh as a perfect innocent angel whom I've mortally wounded atop his gleaming pedestal, to a potential mutual abuser that I've hurt down here in the dust with me. I don't find myself making excuses for the infidelity, because nobody deserves that... I just feel less shame for what I've done. A bit more empathy for myself at the time, and a little less for my BH. I know that sounds awful and regressive.

I'm struggling with the idea that he could hurt me in the ways that he has been hurting me, while I'm also supposed to be bending over backwards to comfort him, reduce his anxiety, and aid his healing in whatever way possible. Especially right now, when I'm going out of town for work for a week and staying alone in a hotel room. I have gotten to the point where I feel more confident about my ability to remain faithful-- though I am still keeping in place strict guidelines to keep us safe at all times, particularly when our relationship is on the rocks. But I know he's not feeling good about it. The idea of telling him where I'm going and what I'm doing at all times, and having to answer his every text or phone call even though I'm exhausted and just want to zone all the way out and enjoy my rare alone time, and sound happy about it... is inducing disgust in me, when previously I would have been excited to have the opportunity to be supportive and prove to him that I can be better. And I feel resentment growing in me as I bust my ass to get the house clean and comfortable for him to enjoy while I'm away working. I also feel guilt for having these feelings.

I do want to continue to work on being better, but more for myself right now. Some deep dark part of me wants to tell him to shove his pain where the sun doesn't shine, because I'm way out of spoons to deal with it. I have to keep that part caged and carefully contained for the sake of the long run.

I don't really know what the point of this post is. Maybe just to get the feelings out, or see if anyone has gone through something similar.

It’s very difficult for someone outside of the situation and who only knows what you say here to get the full picture of what is actually happening.

So, my husband did cheat on me during reconciliation. I did not suspect it, nor did I feel abused or any of those things. But upon discovery, I do not ever remember feeling my remorse waning. I still felt some level of accountability because I do not believe he would have done that had I not done it first.

Now, I don’t blame myself for his affair. He made a lot of decisions and in many ways acted out much worse than I did. But I also recognized that when people experience deep trauma that some percentage of those people will be driven to some sort of unhealthy coping mechanisms.

To me it meant that he had healing to do, and the question was did he intend to do that or were we going to have to part ways?

I will also say it didn’t relieve my guilt, make me feel justified, or any of those things. But I was further out from you if I am to go by your join date. I was three years out when I found out about the affair. I had more time to work on myself and so it’s hard to say what would have happened if I had been 6-7 months out.

My guilt, shame and even remorse wasn’t totally based on him. It was based on who it is I want to be, how I want to treat people, and my responsibility to the situation. I think the healthiest thing is to be able to hold that AND still have compassion for myself in the ways that I landed where I was. Without being able to hold both, I don’t think change is possible. It takes accepting you fully understand the impact, and you also can see yourself as a human capable of change and self understanding.

I could read your post two ways:

Scenario 1-

Six months out is early. It’s about the time the bs goes into the anger stage of grief. Mental and emotional exhaustion is going on in both people. It’s a very difficult stage. So, it could be you haven’t developed enough to deal with the fallout from what you did - that’s not a condemnation —at six months I had barely reached remorse. It could simply be his behavior is simply a an unhealed person who doesn’t know what to do with the trauma and you are projecting his behavior to be like yours and are falsely accusing him of cheating because you can’t relate to his reaction to this trauma. I have talked to too many ws not to consider this as a possible option. We tend to have very convoluted coping mechanisms and distorted thinking.

OR

Scenario 2: He is abusive, he is cheating, and you can’t connect with your empathy because of the anger you feel.

Anyway, if it’s the second thing, which I have to believe that to be as much of a possibility as anything else, you do not deserve an abusive relationship.

It’s not all that uncommon for two toxic people or two people who lack coping or whatever to marry each other. And if one starts to work in the healing the whole paradigm starts to self destruct.

You are the only person who can identify what is happening. I know as someone who can be very avoidant, and due to the way I was raised, I have serious issues dealing with other people’s anger. I remember feeling like it was never going to end and that distance when I was so reliant on the validation of others was absolutely scathing. I didn’t think we would make it because I couldn’t deal with it at all.

I am not dismissing that it’s the way you are describing. But I also think many ws who come here do not always understand the effects trauma has on people. Betrayal can cause PTSD in people.

I went with my husbands baseline though, he was a really good man, father, husband, friend before my cheating. When he hit the anger phase I knew that it was him reacting. And giving him transparency was sometimes annoying, but accepting it as what he needed to feel safe seemed like the least I could do.

I am really trying to temper this, but knowing your last post was about how you haven’t been a great partner lately, it seems like him being in an anger phase and not getting what he needs from you may be what’s creating the distance. Personally, if you want to know the best thing you can do is focus on who you need to be and be consistent and reliable, honor your angreements and see if it starts to shift the dynamic.

There are books about trauma and learning about that can help you understand trauma-driven behaviors.

Nonetheless, I do commend you for two very honest posts in a row, where you are describing things you are not proud of. It takes guts to do that here.

This isn’t easy, trying to work towards recovery and reconciliation is hard shit to navigate. I don’t know what I am looking at here but hopefully I covered the bases.

[This message edited by hikingout at 5:39 AM, Wednesday, May 13th]

Hi, I think we all have bad days, good days, decent weeks and really bad weeks.
When was your DDay? Did your BS have this behaviour (manipulative) before the A?

I find helpful to separate who my BS was before the A (with all his positives and negatives) and who is now after the trauma of betrayal. It can be difficult in the heat of the moment, but when I focus on this, I can empathise more easily with him. I clearly see that if it wasn't for my behaviour, things (and him) would not be like this. We had some M issues, but the hell we are navigating now is entirely of my own doing.

I feel your exhaustion and tiredness. After all, we are all humans and we all need a break from hardship and pain. And just because we (deeply) wronged our partners, it doesnt mean that we are immune to pain and wreck (even though we know we have to endure it). And having no-one to comfort you is tough as well.

If you feel his attitude is turning manipulative, try to talk to him. Have you tried discussing together some boundaries? That could work for both of you (and that would support yours and his wellbeing). It's not easy to keep them in place when emotions run high. But it's a start.

Also agreeing on times where you can both decompress might help (e.g. 1h each evening when you either do something neutral and pleasant together, or 1h where you discuss only on thigs that worked well)

There is no stop sign so I am going to come at this from the BS perspective, please don't take this as an attack but rather a constructive criticism.

I’m going to try to say this as gently and respectfully as I can, because I don’t think you’re evil, and I do think your feelings are real. But I also think there’s a possibility you are viewing your marriage right now through the same lens that allowed the affair in the first place.

What I mean by that is this-

You seem to be placing enormous emotional weight on your own pain, exhaustion, resentment, confusion, and unmet needs while gradually losing sight of the scale of trauma your husband is likely still living in every single day.

That doesn’t mean your feelings are invalid.
It does not mean betrayal gives someone a license to become abusive.
And if he truly is emotionally or psychologically abusing you, you absolutely should not stay simply because you cheated first.

But I think before arriving at that conclusion, you need to ask yourself a brutally honest question, "Am I being abused, or am I deeply uncomfortable living in the aftermath of the pain I caused?"

Because those are not automatically the same thing.

You mention recording conversations because he remembers events differently than you do. That can absolutely be a sign of manipulation, but in my case my WW did this in her own mind as some way of justifying the affairs I believe. Try and separate what is reality and fiction. It can also be the reality of two traumatized people experiencing the same interaction through completely different nervous systems. Betrayed spouses often become hypervigilant, emotionally dysregulated, reactive, suspicious, withdrawn, obsessive, inconsistent, or difficult to communicate with after discovery. That does not automatically make them abusive. Sometimes it means they are psychologically shattered and trying to survive something they never emotionally consented to experiencing.

This is my opinion so take it with a grain of salt but recording the conversations is likely breeding even deeper mistrust with him, and may appear that every conversation is more like a battle to be won rather than an issue to work through.

And I say that because several parts of your post read less like accountability and more like the beginning of reframing yourself as the primary victim of the relationship.

Again, I mean that respectfully.

You describe him once as a "perfect innocent angel atop a pedestal" and now as a "mutual abuser down in the dust." But most marriages are neither of those things. Almost no long-term relationship is perfect. Most contain disconnection, resentment, communication failures, loneliness, immaturity, unmet needs, and periods where both people fail each other emotionally. That is true in probably the majority of marriages that have ever existed.

But those imperfections are not unique to your marriage.
They also are not what caused the affair.

The danger here is that you may be unconsciously starting to use the normal imperfections of a human relationship to emotionally rebalance the moral scales in your own mind.

And that is a very slippery slope.

Because once the betrayed spouse becomes "also flawed," or "also hurtful," or "also emotionally damaging," it can start feeling easier to carry less shame about the betrayal itself. You even admit this directly when you say your remorse feels like it is waning because you now have "more empathy" for yourself and less for him.

That should concern you deeply.

Not because you deserve endless self-hatred forever. You don’t. Shame alone helps nobody long term. But because true remorse does not disappear simply because the betrayed partner later handles their pain imperfectly.

Your husband may genuinely be acting unfairly at times.
He may be reactive.
He may be bitter.
He may be emotionally flooded.
He may even be treating you in ways that are unhealthy.

But you are also talking about a man who allowed the person who traumatized him back into his life. That is not a small thing. That is an extraordinary act of vulnerability whether you currently feel grateful for it or not.

And honestly, parts of your post sound less like someone protecting reconciliation and more like someone becoming resentful that reconciliation still requires labor from them.

The disgust at transparency.
The resentment over reassuring him while away.
The exhaustion at having to answer texts.
The desire to "zone out" from his pain.
The part of you wanting to tell him to "shove his pain where the sun doesn’t shine." (The very pain you created and curated)

Those feelings may be understandable in moments of burnout to you, but they should not be normalized into a worldview where his ongoing trauma becomes framed primarily as an inconvenience to your healing journey.

Because the truth is, he did not ask for this emotional reality. You both now live in it because of choices you made.

And I think you need to be careful that you are not interpreting his pain itself as abuse simply because it is persistent, uncomfortable, emotionally demanding, and preventing you from emotionally moving on at the pace you want to.

To be crystal clear:
If he is truly manipulating, degrading, threatening, controlling, gaslighting, or emotionally harming you in an ongoing way, then yes, leave. Infidelity does not obligate you to tolerate abuse forever.

But if what’s actually happening is that he is broken, terrified, hypervigilant, emotionally inconsistent, and struggling to reconcile the person he loved with the person who betrayed him… then that is a very different conversation.

One final thing I’ll say gently:

Several of your recent posts seem intensely centered around your emotional experience, your exhaustion, your discomfort, your resentment, your healing, your shame reduction, your need for safety, your inner child, your disgust, your overwhelm. There is very little space in them where your husband exists as a full human being outside the context of how his pain affects you.

That mindset may be worth examining carefully, because self-centered emotional reasoning is often part of what enables affairs to happen in the first place. Ask yourself why you wanted the gift of R, and do it honestly. Not all relationships are going to make it nor should all.

Again, not saying you are malicious.
Not saying your feelings aren’t real.
Just saying I think you may be standing at a crossroads between deeper accountability and deeper self-justification.

And those roads lead to very different outcomes. Take my opinion for what it is worth as I too am still in the deep chasm of pain and despair, and I am sure I too do not come across extraordinarily helpful or understanding at times.

I don't know you BH's personality, but it's my natural inclination to detach physically and mentally from a person when they have hurt me. In fact, I warned my WS at the beginning of everything that if I saw signs that he was giving up on the marriage emotionally and physically, I would definitely give up too and not fight it. It's an emotional protection device probably.

It's all painful, and there were times I did want to give up due to the pain, even years out. I can empathize that it's also painful for the WS, but my reasoning for not putting in more effort was that I was going to try to fix what I didn't break. My WS kept showing up though. I'm 10 yrs out, and it wouldn't be my first thought to detach if he seems distant or frustrated.

You have said in a few of your posts that you are frustrated and tired of dealing with his pain and emotions and needs. Then you seem to cycle back around to worrying that he's withdrawing and not coming to you with all of that. Maybe you are both in a self-enforcing loop. You pull back. He sees that and pulls back. You see him pulling back and pull back more.

Oh, and I hope you are not recording your conversations without his knowledge. That would definitely be a "straw that broke the camel's back" moment for me in a marriage.

[This message edited by KitchenDepth5551 at 7:03 PM, Wednesday, May 13th]