SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

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[This message edited by morted at 10:36 PM, Tuesday, December 31st]

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[This message edited by morted at 10:36 PM, Tuesday, December 31st]

Look. I’m a WW myself. And I can truly understand the location that "feeling like a project" can arise from, that deep place inside where you feel like your needs are being devalued.

But… it’s only been 5 months for you guys. Both of you are still so raw and hurt, especially your BS. For him to hear that he’s been nothing but detrimental to your development as a partner and if he actually didn’t "mold you into his ideal person", you two wouldn’t be together, that would just cause hurt feelings.

But in principle, I understand the idea behind this resentment. When we’re not healthy, all human beings have a failsafe mechanism mentally and emotionally that is calling out to get healthy. And that mechanism is basically the resulting symptoms of unhealthiness. They let us know that we need healing. Where someone struggles with addiction, they may have symptoms of withdrawal or breaking skin. Where someone struggles with eating disorders, massive weight loss/gain. And the same is true for your own struggles with your personality Morted.

For so long you’ve been in an unhealthy state of lack of control of your own personality and ideas about yourself that you developed an idea that you could treat yourself terribly, that you could let others be abusive to you. You didn’t ever deserve that and in time, I think that’s a topic your BS would be very interested in hearing. If you would bring it up to him now, in 5 months though, it would just invoke arguments and anger. Because as I’ve said, your BS has a sickness - betrayal trauma and he’s still expressing symptoms of them. Let him heal up first and then try to bring up deeper resentments like this to him.

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[This message edited by morted at 10:37 PM, Tuesday, December 31st]

I think you are looking at your husbands actions in a harsh manner and motivation. My daughter was like him as well. She never looked down on any of her boyfriends. I told her that her picker was broken. She was simply helping, but not helping. She was enabling. She never felt superior. Even as one in particular, constantly struggled. He was never happy with his work and constantly changing. Her income as stable as she always did what she needed to do. She felt she could help him and eventually he would stabilize. Eventually, his unhappiness turned toward the relationship and she was dumped. She went through severe, suicidal depression and eventually learned to seek a healthy relationship. This was not an act of superiority on her part, but inferiority. She spent her energy trying to help someone who was a sinkhole for emotions. While this isn't exactly what you and your husband are going through, I see many parallels. To me, he looks like someone who feels he can help and is likely trying to do right by you.
You may view you have a cancer in your relationship that may kill it in time. Well, even if that is true, you took your marriage and ran it into a wall at high speed. It's on life support and has a decent chance of dying. Yet, you want to focus on cancer treatments? This isn't about you any longer. You threw that away when you chose to have an affair instead of working on your marriage. Now is simply not the time.

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[This message edited by morted at 10:37 PM, Tuesday, December 31st]

Keep working on you. I think you really are trying and seeking help, good. Keep it up, you'll get there.

I think this is likely YOUR issue. Until that can be proven otherwise I would not bother him with it. It puts him in a position to defend his love at a time where he shouldn’t have those responsibilities.

The issue is you don’t love yourself, believe you are lovable or good enough and you are projecting those feelings of inadequacies on him.

I too thought my husband didn’t love me. I learned that I hadn’t created an environment in which I could receive love.

I feel strongly that his comments about having to fix you is just saying the actual pattern of your relationship. I think he would not have done that if he didn’t earnestly believe he loved you and wanted the best for you.

Do not put him in a position to defend himself or use this as a thing to point at as to why you cheated. (Not that you have, it’s just a tendency people with problems like us tend to have)

As for him being the competent one versus you not, it will take showing your reliability and consistency for a long period of time. You can’t ask him to trust you with those things right now.
The very best that you might do is say “I know you haven’t been able to rely on me, I am going to work to change that. I can see I need to do that for me as much as for you and our child”

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:29 PM, Monday, April 29th]

1) I think you need to figure out what the source of your issue is. Are you projecting onto your H your own belief that you're nothing more than a project, or does he really treat you like a project that he can fix?

2) If he treats you like a project that he can fix, he's got a him problem, and you both have a relationship problem.

3) If your H treats you as a project, my reco is to figure out the changes in behavior you want and ask for them.

*****

From what you've said about yourself, my guess is the problem probably is that you see yourself as helpless and incompetent, that there's no solution anyway, and that you reject all evidence to the contrary.

Another guess is that you are not seeing your H as he really is.

In fact, you're strong, competent, traumatized, and you most definitely can heal a lot. Another reco: give up trying to control the outcome - go for healing. Healing is the best way to retrieve yourself and keep your M. Those are frim beliefs I hold, not guesses.

In fact, you're strong, competent, traumatized, and you most definitely can heal a lot. Another reco: give up trying to control the outcome - go for healing. Healing is the best way to retrieve yourself and keep your M. Those are frim beliefs I hold, not guesses.

Yes, exactly this.

After you have had time to heal, you will be surprised how many of these issues disappear. Everything is perception, the healthier you get the more your perceptions will match. Once you have done that, then worry about if there is more to address.

This is the only fixing you need to do for now. Focus on becoming the highest version of yourself. So much will fall into place and it will be the most worthwhile work of your lifetime!!!

Also keep in mind the only thing we can control truly is ourselves. I see you working on that, and that’s the best thing to do.

Sorry for the additional post but I thought of an illustration that might help you.

Your husband is saying "we have a pattern where I feel badly for you and then I try and fix it for you"

The response should not be "you have only wanted me around as a project. There is no other explanation for it. I want you to be with me because you love me"

The response should be, "I can see how my behaviors have largely created that dynamic."

Take accountability for why he feels that way, don’t look at it as he is only with me because he is obligated. It doesn’t honor either of you to think in those terms.

The fact he has stayed so far is a gift. Accept it, honor it, be grateful for it. Become a woman who can’t help but see what you bring to the table, he will see it too. And you won’t keep looking for him to prove your worth to you.

If that sounds harsh I do not mean it to be. Remember, I had to learn exactly the same thing, except O didn’t until I was in my forties! You have time and space to do this!!!!

[This message edited by hikingout at 5:29 PM, Monday, April 29th]

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[This message edited by morted at 10:38 PM, Tuesday, December 31st]

I still don't think he really sees the impact this has had on me or our relationship. He's really focused on how it affected him.

I was told that it's proof that I'm unsafe to communicate with and an insane response.

BS here. Gently, you may not have said "Gotcha" in the moment but you immediately jumped to "YES, see that proves me right and here’s why…." and then you bid your time until you felt like it was okay to bring it up. He came to you with what his feelings new revelations about your relationship patterns and your brain immediately jumped to focus on how those feelings affected you and validated things you’d previously said. Lost was the conversati Its no wonder he doesn’t feel safe communicating with you on this. You’re accusing him of focusing only on how things impact him, but you’re kind of doing the same thing.

Is it too soon after DDay for me to bring up my resentments?

I think it is. I’m not saying your feelings aren’t valid or real. It definitely sounds like its an issue for you, but I agree with those that it seems like a bit of a "you" issue right now. He probably needs to recognize that it’s not healthy for him to feel like he needs to try to fix all your problems, and you probably need to recognize that you need to stop expecting others to fix your problems, and take ownership of your own feelings (instead of externalizing them on others).

Pre-Dday I had heard this saying about how in every relationship there is a flower and a gardener – someone who is selfless and supportive and expends energy on the other partner, and someone who is maybe more temperamental and requires more attention, who soaks up the energy and efforts of the other partner in order to bloom. For the record, in a lot of ways I identified as the gardener in my relationship and it sounds like your husband probably does too (I think this is common in the BS/WS dynamic). I didn’t mind that too much pre-D-day as ‘gardening’ came kind of natural to me, and I didn’t feel resentment surrounding it, but that kind of changed when D-day rolled around. I kind of felt like I deserved a chance at being the hot house flower that needed tending to for a while – and to be honest, that was probably a good reset for our relationship dynamic. The last thing I wanted to hear was "here is the way all your gardening made me feel….." because I had spent so much time tending to him and it didn’t get me all that much. If anything, the more I read post-Dday the more I realized I was probably contributing to some of his issues (it sounds like maybe your husband has started to recognize this pattern in your relationship). In many ways (like many waywards) my H had justified his A to himself by externalizing the negative emotions he had been experiencing (if I’m feeling bad, it must be because she is not doing X, Y or X). He had spent entirely too much time feeling like a victim of his own feelings over the years, and what I wanted/needed to hear was my husband taking ownership for his own emotions and actions. Part of R was me needing to see him become his own gardener instead of waiting for me (or his boss, or the OW, etc etc) to water/fertilize him. I think this is probably something you would benefit from too. It sounds like you agree that this gardener/flower dynamic isn’t totally productive. What are the ways in which you have contributed to it? What are the things you can do differently moving forward? See if you can focus on that.

A few tips on how to share difficult topics:

1) Up front, say you want to share your thinking or concern about the topic and then you really want to hear their perspective too. This helps reduce defensiveness a bit by letting them know you want a two way dialogue and what they think matters

2) Up front, try to connect the topic to a shared goal all parties are committed to.

3) try to share the heart of your message succintly. Like in just a sentence or two. This can take a lot of work to make it this succint but it if you can do that it bodes well that the other party will understand the message more clearly. Write it out and see if it describes what you actually want to say. After that summary, you can share more detail, thinking, rationale etc to support it as needed.

4) Show sincere curiosity into what they think you may be missing in your perspective as well as what they believe about the topic. Parwphrase what you hewr so they know you are listening

5) when appropriate, summarize what you said and what they said and see how close you are, what next steps might be.

Is that helpful?

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[This message edited by morted at 10:38 PM, Tuesday, December 31st]

Great reflection.

Becoming self aware is a painful process, with many regrets. But as you put into practice what you are learning, that heaviness slowly evaporates. Living our values and bing in that alignment will feel so much better to you.

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[This message edited by morted at 10:39 PM, Tuesday, December 31st]

Your BS is hurting and triggered. It's not necessarily because you said the wrong thing or "fucked up", it's because talking about your affair and especially your sexual relationship with the AP is going to be so full of triggers and there is no "right way" to talk about so that it hurts less. The fuck up happened when you cheated, not when you told him about it. I mean, there are certainly insensitive/inflammatory ways to say things, but I promise you that even if you worded it PERFECTLY, he'd find reasons to spiral because his brain/body/heart is on an emotional rollarcoaster right now. The best you can do is be calm, comforting, apologetic, and honest while he spirals. Don't' let his reactions change your behaviour or your answers. Don't try to only provide him with information you think he wants to hear. PLEASE! That might make the short term more palatable (for you) but it's not going to help him build trust or get past it in the long-term. Let him know that you'll be there for him regardless because you are the one he wants - no matter what. Be honest, don't minimize or defend. Tell him you know it's terrible and that you're sorry. Let him spiral - that is a natural response to imagining your spouse's intimate relationship with another person. Consistency, honesty, and remorse is what he needs from you while he does.

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[This message edited by morted at 10:39 PM, Tuesday, December 31st]

I don't think he wants me anymore.

You are catastrophizing. This is the same issue from the other day. You just finished telling us how he earnestly loves you.

Emergent is right. There is going to be a lot of this falling apart, spiraling. It’s normal. He has been traumatized. You have to find a way to it for the knee jerk reaction to be he doesn’t love you, doesn’t love you.

The reaction should be you love him. You are going to be his rock. You are going to learn how to comfort his triggers. Grief and healing are not linear, it’s going to be all over the place all the time, for a long time.