SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Today I'm feeling frustrated and confused about what to do about my relationship.

TLDR:
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I feel that recent progress my wife has shown might just be my wife stuffing her feelings again, and not doing genuine work to address what led her to betray in the first place.

I don't know the best way to handle this situation.
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For those who have not been following me, a little back story:

My wife confessed her infidelity to me in spring of 2024. A year long affair with another man that involved a pregnancy and an abortion. Soon after her revelation, like within a week, she started blaming me for things that happened in our marriage before the affair. She had a LOT of anger, resentment, and bitterness towards me, and every time we fought she redirected our conversations back to her complaints about "the marriage" before the affair and her criticisms of me - which are essentially the same thing. She was highly resistant to anything I suggested she do, and any "advice" I might have on how we could salvage our relationship. She hates this site, and strongly prefers normal marital counselors because they are "experts" which I strongly disagree with.

She would say things like "you need to take responsibility for your part in our bad marriage", and "you hurt me too!", and "affairs don't happen in a vacuum", and other things that I know now pretty much every wayward says, but I took them to heart back then. I doubled down on the pick me dance and did everything I could to make her happy, but of course the desolation and trauma that I was experiencing caused that to go off the rails on a regular basis.

Now don't get me wrong, these are the parts I complain about because they are what I view as a problem. However she has done a lot to help our relationship and to help me with this trauma. She is normally very kind to me and helps me when I'm having hard days. It's definitely not like she is all bad or not doing a lot. If that were the case I would have left long ago. Instead I've remained in this strange middle ground or limbo where I don't feel bad enough to pull the plug, but don't feel good enough to be able to convince myself that all is well.

This constant bringing up the past has been a real problem. Every time I did or said anything that caused her to feel defensive, bought up her shame or guilt, or highlighted the fear that I might leave, she would reflexively lash out with criticism. Since most of our conversations about the affair cause these feelings in her, most of them got redirected back to my faults somehow. It was extremely frustrating. So much so that I now refuse to discuss these issues at all since all of our conversations go in circles and those circles always seem to end with blame on me.

Anyway 6 months ago we started seeing my counselor as a couples counselor. Almost all of our sessions have resulted in continuous bickering and fighting. We have made some progress but it's been very small progress and very arduous. In between sessions, or arguments things are mostly good.

I still struggle with the affair, and she has been doing much better. Less anger towards me, less bringing up the past, more seeming to understand where I'm coming from etc. I was very hopeful until this week when we had a session go off the rails.

In our session I asked her to work on communication about finances because that is another issue we have argued about a fair amount. Essentially I asked her to be less defensive and to communicate with me more about it instead of it resulting in fighting.

This caused her to get extremely defensive, and we spent the next hour and a half arguing with her again bringing up all the things from the past, criticizing me for all sorts of things and essentially reverting to six months prior.

She said that she had essentially been setting her stuff aside to help me, and is not getting the same back from me.

We left the session and I felt lower about our chances of success than I had for those six months. I asked the therapist if it's normal for couples to fight as much as we do in sessions and he said that he does not see that normally.

The next morning I brought it up again complaining that I needed her to stop sabotaging our conversations and getting so defensive and things like that. Another huge fight. We each said things we weren't proud of and later that day we apologized to each other and made up.

But those two days has left me feeling like she is not really working on the core of why she betrayed me. These hard feelings from the past are a big part of why she was unhappy, and what eventually led to her betrayal, and she is over here doing what she has always done in our relationship - acting like a martyr and stuffing her feelings "for the sake of our relationship". I told her that this is not acceptable and that I need her to be working on resolving these things with her therapist.

Our relationship is still mostly good, and she is doing a lot, but this stuff is weighing on me.

Now I have conflicting ways I want to handle this situation:

- I want to insist that we see an affair specialist instead of a general relationship counselor.

- I want to insist that we go take an infidelity course at one of those places designed to help people recover from infidelity.

- I'm exhausted and I want to take a 6 month moratorium on discussing the affair, and stop seeing the couples counselor for that time. I have gotten a lot of advice on this site about not trying to force the outcome and stepping back and letting her do her thing. Maybe thats the right path.

- I want to tell her to find a new individual counselor because clearly they are not making progress on this issue and I suspect that her counselor is actually advising her to continue pushing this issue with me. This is likely a no go though as this is an off limits conversation topic for her.

I have had plenty of advice here and much of it says that this is her thing and not only can I not force her to change but that I need to allow her the space to do just that. But now I'm afraid that she is just stuffing her feelings again, and not really dealing with it. I'm also tired of going to therapy where we essentially pay to argue in front of a therapist.

How would you handle this situation?

P. S. Sorry for the very long post. I felt that I needed to give proper context.

[This message edited by Theevent at 7:28 PM, Sunday, May 31st]

I also wanted to say that often the advice I get here is to communicate that divorce is a real option. I think she is very aware of that, and I know it's a bad idea to threaten divorce if one is not really willing to go through with it, and at this point I'm not there.

I still love her and hope we can work it out. Yes I struggle with this question, and I especially struggled with it after that therapy session. But however this ends up I want to be able to say I really gave it my all before pulling the plug. It doesn't seem right to go down that road while she is still trying.

However give it my all does not translate to taking blame that is not mine, or allowing this to be swept under the rug. I need real reconciliation to happen where I feel like issues between us have been resolved, and she has changed into a safe partner.

Has your wife read How to Help Your Spouse Heal by Linda J McDonald?

It really is step one if she isn't reading here from WS who take responsibility for their choices. Sounds like she isn't reading here because she is avoiding responsibility.

Until she owns ALL of her choices, there is no healing the M.

I absolutely had to learn to be a better partner, but nothing can go forward, until you feel safe.

That's your lead line:

"I do not feel safe in this M."

I'm betting you have already told her you will work on you, but if she still thinks the M caused her to run to another person -- she isn't safe.

It begs the question she needs to answer, what happens the next time she is angry with you and the M?

In essence, let us say you wake up tomorrow, and you accept all the BLAME she is trying to give you. Now what? You're just as unsafe as ever, because she hasn't accepted the idea that ADDING a THIRD person to a marriage ALWAYS makes it worse. There is no defense.

Cheating does happen based on the choices of ONE partner.

It really is that simple.

Until she owns it, you don't have someone you can work with.

Stepping back for six months without talking about your concerns will basically leave you feeling the way you do today.

You have to reach a point where you ask for what you require to stay, you have to heal enough to let go of the outcome.

It takes two people to want to save the M.

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 8:32 PM, Sunday, May 31st]

Oldwounds
Thanks for taking the time to read through all that.

Has your wife read How to Help Your Spouse Heal by Linda J McDonald?

Yes. She listened to the audio book in fall of 2024, absolutely hated it. I complained several times over the next 10 months that she listened to it, hated it, and didn't implement anything Linda suggested in the book. She agreed to read it this time and spent her time underlining the parts where she felt that she was doing as the book suggested.

She feels that the book paints the wayward partner in more of a bad light than they should be, and doesn't take their side into account at all, or take a compassionate view of them and what they are going through. She said reading the book made her feel worse about herself.

I'm betting you have already told her you will work on you, but if she still thinks the M caused her to run to another person -- she isn't safe.

I have explained several times that I will work on the things that bother her NOW, and try to be a better listener and see things from her perspective where I can.

Yet she continues bringing this stuff up.

She wants me to admit fault, apologize, and convince her that I am never going to act that way again in future similar situations. I disagree that I acted the way she complains I did at all. We have no common ground, and have talked about this over and over with us ending up in the exact same place. She won't let it go.

Lately I've realized that whats probably happening is she isn't really upset about this stuff necessarily. But she is feeling shame and guilt, and she feels that I could leave at any time now because an affair is such a good reason to leave. So whenever she feels shame and guilt her defenses come up and she starts lashing out defending herself by bringing up all the faults she feels that I have. It seems like she is trying to level the playing field between us because she is afraid that our relationship will be unbalanced. So she brings up all this stuff, and she says things like "well you hurt me too!", and "you did wrong too!" and similar things like that.

She has also in the past made statements that indicate she feels that the "conditions in the relationship" led to her affair.

This is true from the perspective of thing made her unhappy -> she responded with an affair.

But I'm concerned that this view is taking away personal responsibility for how she reacted to her unhappiness. She wants to focus on the things that made her unhappy rather than focus on the ways she handled those feelings.

This part of your comment applies directly to what I'm saying:

In essence, let us say you wake up tomorrow, and you accept all the BLAME she is trying to give you. Now what? You're just as unsafe as ever, because she hasn't accepted the idea that ADDING a THIRD person to a marriage ALWAYS makes it worse. There is no defense.

This part is what has been hard for me:

It takes two people to want to save the M.

I believe she really does want to save the marriage, but that bad therapists and her trauma are getting in the way.

...she is not really working on the core of why she betrayed me. These hard feelings from the past are a big part of why she was unhappy, and what eventually led to her betrayal,

The state of a marriage has absolutely nothing at all to do with why a spouse chooses to take a stroll down Infidelity Lane. I've read from more than enough BS and WS to know this as axiomatic.

Some BS will freely admit that their marriages were already on the rocks or that they could have been a better spouse. Some truly believed they had a great marriage and know that they were a good spouse. And, of course, there's everything in between.

Some WS will freely admit that they had a good marriage and that their BS was a good spouse. Others will justifiably complain that their marriages were already on the rocks and that their BS could have been a better spouse. Not all BS are saints. And then, of course, there's everything in between.

None of that fucking matters one fucking iota. The state of a marriage has absolutely nothing at all to do it.

Let that sink in, brother. And then, make it perfectly clear to your wife. Her decision to betray herself had absolutely nothing at all to do with the state of your marriage and EVERYTHING to do with her unwillingness or inability to cope with her own issues.

Infidelity is self-destructive. Sometimes people simply break. It happens. They are either unwilling or unable to cope with their own issues in healthy ways. They reach out for anything to help numb the pain or escape from it. They betray themselves and their own best interests.

Your wife seems to be stuck in her own shame. She's either unwilling or unable to focus on her own issues and do her best to unravel whatever issues she has - issues that have been tripping her up for most of her life, issues she had long before you ever met her.

But however this ends up I want to be able to say I really gave it my all before pulling the plug.

Understandable. I think most betrayed spouses feel the same way. Here's the thing, though. The bulk of the work in R falls squarely on the shoulders of the wayward spouse. You can do what you can to heal yourself, to improve yourself, to offer grace and acceptance. You cannot, however, force her into doing the work that reconciliation requires.

Hi,

I am a WW and I was reacting very much like your wife at first. This was mainly because that was all I knew about "cheating" from TV, the environment I grew up in etc.. I genuinely had no clue of the real "anatomy" of an A and how to start working towards reconciliation.

Unfortunately, many therapists don’t know either. My own therapist is great when we work through my stuff and roots of things, but I don’t see her particularly helpful when we discuss how to move forward from infidelity.

What changed my perspective was this forum. It was incredibly painful at first to realise what I had actually done, but I am glad I kept reading because I finally started getting many things (still getting them).

Are there any similar forum where she could find a similar community? Maybe just reading and absorbing what she reads could help her move forward.

Lastly, what also helped me get less difensive was this book "Rising Strong" by Rene Brown (hikingout recommended it to me).

[This message edited by LonelyGuilty at 10:11 PM, Sunday, May 31st]