SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Me again.....

I still do not have the full disclosure.

It was promised at the end of May. Then June. Then this weekend. Now it is apparently three weeks from now.

All of that is frustrating enough on its own, but I have tried to tell myself that if the delay means it is deeper, more honest, more complete, and not just another polished version of partial truth, then maybe I have to be patient. I do understand that a real disclosure is not supposed to be rushed if the goal is actual truth and not just damage control. Being the fourth "full" disclosure, three previous full of lies and omissions, this is truly her last chance at it and she knows.

But last night we were talking after I had pulled completely away for a few days, and the conversation turned to her IC and why this is taking so long. She told me, "My therapist has told me over the last few sessions that I am not to try and make you happy, or try to help you in any way. I have to heal myself and that is my only priority. You have to heal you and that is not my concern."

I understand what I think her therapist probably means. At least logically I do. I assume the point is that my wife has to fix whatever is broken in her, because chasing my reactions, managing my mood, or trying to soothe me without doing the deeper work is not the same as becoming safe.

But what I heard was something very different.

What I heard was, "You are on your own."

And that hit something in me hard.

Because why would I heal with her if I am healing alone anyway? Why would I choose reconciliation, with the person who caused the wound still standing beside me, if the message she is receiving is that helping me is not part of her job? It would be vastly easier to heal without her in front of me every day. Without her words. Without her delays. Without her blank spots. Without the constant reminder that the person I am supposed to somehow feel safe with is the same person who made me unsafe in the first place.

That is the part I am struggling with.

I have heard over and over that her healing is hers and my healing is mine. I get that. I am not asking her to do my healing for me. She cannot climb inside my chest and undo what she did. She cannot make the images disappear. She cannot return the years. She cannot give me back the man I was before I found out.

But if reconciliation means I carry my pain alone while she works on herself separately, then what exactly are we rebuilding together?

Because the damage was not separate.

She did not betray herself in isolation. She betrayed me. She betrayed our marriage. She betrayed our children’s home. She brought another man into the foundation of my life and then let me live inside that lie for years.

And sometimes I do not think she understands the difference between working on herself and repairing what she destroyed.

This triggered me so badly because she already has a history of speaking from her own perspective with almost no awareness of what her words do to me. A perfect example is when I asked her why she brought her affair partner to OUR wedding. Her answer was very matter of fact: "Because I wanted to share MY special day with him. I cared about him, you know."

My special day. With him.

There was no pause. No visible recognition of what that sentence would do to me. No immediate understanding that she was talking about our wedding, our vows, my life, my consent, my reality. She said it like she was explaining a seating arrangement.

So when she tells me now that her therapist said she should not try to help me in any way, I do not trust that she is hearing the nuance. I do not trust that she understands the difference between not making me responsible for her healing and abandoning responsibility for the harm she caused.

Maybe her IC is saying, "In this room, we are here to work on you. You need to understand your choices, your patterns, your lies, your avoidance, your selfishness, and your broken thinking." That would make sense to me.

But what seems to have landed in my wife’s head is, "Do not worry about helping him. Do not worry about making him feel safe. Do not worry about his timeline. Just heal yourself."

And I honestly do not know what to do with that.

I do have empathy for waywards, at least to a degree. I imagine it must be an awfully hard line to walk. Fix yourself, but do not become self-absorbed. Help your betrayed spouse, but do not perform healing just to get approval. Be patient with their pain, but do not make their reactions the center of your recovery. Become safe because it is right, not because you are trying to win something back.

I can understand that intellectually. But emotionally, I am sitting here thinking, if I am on my own anyway, why stay in the blast radius?

Am I reading this through a triggered mind? Does it make sense that an IC would tell a wayward not to worry about helping the betrayed spouse in any way? Or is the real message probably being misunderstood by someone who still struggles to understand the difference between healing herself and repairing the devastation she caused?

I am sometimes still very unsure of what I even want or need from her, but this seems like the point was lost. Maybe I am just confused by you heal you and I heal me, can someone explain to me what is meant by this while still trying to make it work? I know for a fact that if I disconnect too far emotionally my analytical mind will take over and that will be the end of US.

Just quickly,

If it were me, I think my response would be, "If you’re trying to avoid getting divorced from your counselor then you should follow that advice. If you’re trying to avoid a divorce from me, following that advice to leave me to myself is a path straight to divorce."

Yes there are things she needs to do for herself to fix herself. There are things you need to do for yourself to heal yourself. More importantly right now, whatever list of things you want from her in this moment is more important for her to do than all the above.

I’d probably send a note to that counselor and get clarification. I’d probably also tell him/her verbatim what I said above as well.

While you have plenty of work to do, she has 10x more.

Hi Gemmy,

'My therapist has told me over the last few sessions that I am not to try and make you happy, or try to help you in any way. I have to heal myself and that is my only priority. You have to heal you and that is not my concern.'

Being completely honest, this sounds horrible.
And when you add her statement about bringing her AP to the wedding, it compounds the hurt.

She sounds like she's still compartmentalizing the affair, and thinking that her reality doesn't affect yours.

This is toxic af.

If she can't step up and provide the full disclosure after 3 months, I'm immediately thinking the affair is still happening or it's so bad that she's thinking once you know it, you're gone. I'm not one for ultimatums but perhaps it's time for one - she either tells you everything and submits to a polygraph or you separate.

She needs something to snap her out of whatever fog she's in.

I understand that your wifes therapist is HER therapist but it sounds like your should have a conversation with your wife stating that if she agrees with her therapist, then there is little need to continue this marriage. When I read it, I thought that it would be similar to your leg being broken and her physician saying it would be easier for your wife to have you euthanized than for her to deal with you in crutches.

Does your wife agree with this therapist?
Is your wife just trying to delay taking responsibility?
Does she think the problem will just go away if its ignored or that their is a statute of limitations to addressing this?

Why are you putting yourself through this, and why don't you just take all that energy you're wasting on your endlessly long posts and just get a divorce?
Do you think you'll be happy with her in a year, or in three?
What are you hoping for?

So, I think that either you're probably right that she misunderstood what her IC told her, or that the therapist is not a good one for the situation.

There's a massive difference between not trying to manage your BS's feelings (as I have learned here-- for example, not withholding things that you think will hurt them more, and not "performing" self-healing inauthentically, as you phased it, or exiting unhealthy codependency)...

and not caring about them at all.

A WS is meant to disclose everything to their BS in order to choose honesty and authenticity, let the BS have their hard-earned feelings about whatever is disclosed, and sit with the BS while they have them. We are not meant to try to change those feelings, but rather bear witness to them, empathize with them, validate them, and face them head-on, along with whatever consequences there are for our behavior. (Easier said than done, of course, but definitely necessary.)

What is meant by "the WS heals the WS, and the BS heals the BS [and both of you heal the marriage]" is that the WS processes their shame, digs deep into themself, identifies those internal issues that enabled them to cheat and betray their spouse, and fix all of that. The BS can't do that for them (though many try to make it happen.) The BS has to process the betrayal, the anger, the pain, the grief, the destabilization of reality... And then work through the consequences of all of that, whether they stay in the relationship with the WS or not. The BS must make sense of it all, integrate the new information they're receiving into their mental model of reality, find relief from triggers and mind movies, define and enforce boundaries going forward, figure out how to trust again, etc. The WS can't do that for them (even if they want to.)

This does not mean that the WS does not have to do additional things to help the BS feel safe while the internal work is in progress, like maintaining NC, getting rid of artifacts from the affair, providing the full truth and timeline, giving over all their passwords, sharing their location, letting their BS know when they'll be late, change jobs (where feasible)... Or whatever other reasonable behavioral changes the BS requests of them. This does not mean the WS does not have to sit with their BS in the worst of their feelings, and try to provide them comfort. That's all part of healing the marriage, where the BS's and WS's healing journeys intersect.

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 6:30 PM, Thursday, July 9th]

Thank you MORBS for this response, as stated I have a feeling I am being a little sensitive to what was trying to be stated. My wife has a tendency to take what she means and turn it into the worst sentence available to explain. This helps.

OHITSYOU I will ask her directly what exactly the IC said, and if it is verbatim, then further that conversation accordingly.

Shino I will keep my endlessly long posts short moving forward, but my energy is two fold. One to organize my thoughts and sort, two to try and make an informed clear decision about my future. I still love my wife in ways that confuse even myself, so I question more experienced members who have been through this hell. I may or may not leave her in the end but thank you for your constructive feedback.

I think it's a good idea to investigate what exactly your wife meant by her words. Sometimes words come out wrong... But sometimes they indicate precisely what the speaker really means.

Speaking as a reformed WS, I don't see any hope here. She's not working on giving you what you need to heal. She's assessing how little she can do and still have you stick around. So far, that's been a winning strategy, and she appears to be doubling down on it.

The choice before you isn't how long you should wait for the status quo to change. It's whether you can live with it never changing. If you believe there are advantages to staying with her exactly as she is now, without expectation of improvement, then work on acceptance of your new reality. If you can't, or believe you shouldn't, then put down the hopium pipe, end the marriage, and move on.

There's a small chance that the divorce filing will be a bucket of cold water that makes her realize she's not in control of this situation anymore. I've seen that happen. I believe it's more common for the WW to drop any pretense of remorse and allow the divorce to proceed. If so, at least you can start healing.

Oh, good grief. Either your WW is completely misinterpreting what her therapist has said, or her therapist is one of those 'you go girl!'-types who hates the patriarchy and who is encouraging your WW's continuing nonsense. I would not be so shocked if it is the latter as many of them are in fact QUACKS who got their certificates from The University of Rugshaweeping. Very bad school by the way.

I don't think your WW is learning boundaries. What is missing from your WW's thinking is accountability for her destruction. You NEED the truth if you are to move forward in your marriage, and as long as you are to stay with your WW, her continuing to withhold information from you is actually HURTING you. Your WW doesn't get to think of herself and her pain over yours if she loves her family--not after all the damage she has done.

If you LEAVE however you can heal if only because you no longer won't be exposed to WW's nonsense. You maybe will still have to deal with her but hopefully it is in manageable doses.

By the way, is this why I STRONGLY encourage BHs to leave their WWs. Most of the time, if BH stays it is a parasitic relationship for him--with him the host and WW as the parasite--where BH is told to 'get over it' by The Reconciliation-Industrial Complex. In most instances the BH ends up having to shut up about and swallow his pain, whereas WW gets to keep the respectability of marriage and her lifestyle. If you and she were to divorce though, her scarlet letter would make life very VERY difficult for her--and somehow that is viewed as your fault. BUT, there is so much happiness that comes from leaving a cheating partner....

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 7:25 PM, Thursday, July 9th]

First off, make your posts as long as you want. Nobody is forced to read them at gunpoint.

Back to regular scheduled programming…

I never got the direct verbal confirmation, but I surmised at the time that my ex got the exact same advice from her IC, and she implemented it in the tone deaf, nuance-less way that you fear your wife is. And, yeah, fuck that.

Yes, you heal you, she heals herself. HOWEVER, those are not magical words that absolve her from the guilt of being the cause of your pain. She is the drunk driver that caused the wreck. She has no ability to magically make your shattered bones heal. HOWEVER, if she is showing even a shred of remorse she should be acting like the most kind, attentive nurse on God’s green earth.

I was stretching to meet my ex, she didn’t even match my effort, much less exceed it. If we as victims can find in our hearts room to care for them, there is no excuse for this disinterest coming from them.

ETA: the length of time to get disclosure is bullshit. This should take days, not months. This is not zero cost, it keeps you in pain and uncertainty just so she can avoid the task. Are you asking her questions, or is she stonewalling you there as well?

[This message edited by InkHulk at 7:20 PM, Thursday, July 9th]

I have to assume that her therapist does not have training in betrayal trauma.

Does she, and does your WW, not realize that you can’t heal yourself without the full disclosure? That each new disclosure resets your healing to zero? You’re supposed to wait until she’s healed and then you get your turn? Is that what your WW actually wants? Surely not…right?

I can understand her focusing on her own healing, but she can’t ignore yours, because she is in possession of the information you require to begin your healing. So…maybe she can put her healing on pause for a few days, get all the facts out there, and then you can both go to your respective convalescent wards?