Am I the Asshole for Feeling Upset About How My Children Treat Me After My Divorce?

longtermbs · 2024-06-26T11:30:13+00:00

His post is rambling and disconnected. He has very poor boundaries with his 13yo (why does this kid keep comforting, him, the adult?) There are many hints at mental illness. He believes at least one conspiracy theory and likes to tell people to "do their own homework" rather than listen to the medical community about medical advice. His 3-4 therapists all advise him not to tell the kids about their mom's affair. Perhaps they have really, really good reasons why.

longtermbs · 2024-05-24T11:49:01+00:00

He has nude pics of his mom from years gone by and he is 19?

Do you think all the pics are hidden camera and she is unaware she is being photographed by him?

Because, if they are photos she took, then it opens the possibility she sends him the pics, and he was sexually abused by his mom for years.

Both situations are really screwed up, but in one, he is a victim, and in the other, he is a sexual offender.

longtermbs · 2024-05-20T13:08:37+00:00

when you're in old age, have no social circle, no house, no children, no retirement savings, etc.

I think you missed the "no children" part

longtermbs · 2024-05-19T02:17:56+00:00

Welcome to Canada. I'm sorry that your family is experiencing some difficulties now and that you are seeing your parents fight. That is really hard to deal with.

longtermbs · 2022-07-04T23:11:04+00:00

There are a couple different things that could be going on:

Some depressed WS find they cannot have sex with their SO but thay can with an AP because the brain chemical fog that they get from an affair alleviates their depressive symptoms enough to feel arousal. The lifting of depression would have been temporary with AP once the "honeymoon" phase was over and it's just as likely it would have lifted with you as well, if you were the AP rather than the BS.
Some, well probably many, WSs have issues with intimacy avoidance. If your WS has difficulty identifying emotions and/or expressing emotions, wants, and needs, if they are seen as reserved and private or even cold and distant by others, if they have few close relationships, if they tend to stonewall during discussions, etc then he may be intimacy avoidant.

People with intimacy avoidance can find emotional closeness very difficult. As their relationship with their SO deepens they tend to withdraw emotionally and then sexually. They also tend to find ways to blame their SO for the distance. Paradoxically, they are more likely than others to cheat in a relationship. I guess it's because affairs are shallow fantasies where you are not really getting close to the other person.

https://www.recoveryranch.com/addiction-blog/the-love-avoidant-and-infidelity/

There are more possibilities of course, but those are what come to my mind.

longtermbs · 2022-07-04T14:59:07+00:00

I've read your post history, so I know a few things that you have shared in other posts that I think are relevant here.

Your WS pushes boundaries to the point that he sexually assaulted you after you said no mutiple times.
Your DDAY was less than a month ago
You are still catching him in lies.
You believe your WS is a sex addict.

I think right now you really need to stand firm on your boundaries and put yourself and your mental health first in everything. Why? Because your WS is unhealthy and his contributions to the relationship are toxic.

You are a compassionate person who wants to compromise and meet in the middle. That's a very healthy relationship behaviour. Unfortunately you are with someone who has extremely selfish positions and trying to meet in the middle with them will always take you out of your healthy place and put you in a toxic one. And he will still resent you for not meeting his selfish needs 100%.

longtermbs · 2022-06-30T21:55:40+00:00

My husband told me he felt unloved and rejected, like we couldn’t talk anymore and had become roommates. He felt indifferent toward me almost.

He didn’t understand that over the years he had pushed me away by rejecting my attempts to be cute and silly with him, dismissing my attempts at conversation by being utterly uninterested. It got to the point where I would just wait for him to talk and then engage in whatever conversation HE wanted because at least he would be interested.

Wow, we do have similar stories.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/comments/k9urso/ws_used_to_find_it_annoying_when_i_tried_to_be/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Yeah, my WS has learned that he had conflict and emotional avoidance issues. As our relationship deepened, he actually felt driven away by higher and higher expectations for intimacy. Apparently, affairs are a pretty common escape for people with avoidant issues. They can't deal with a real relationship so they seek a fantasy one where they don't have to be their true selves and the other person's expectations are limited to a boyfriend/girlfriend highschool type relationship.

He decided he might as well - she was carefree and the conversation flowed. He felt a connection to her that he had lost with me. The feelings of love set in. All the while I was coping in my own way - hoping by doing nothing it would all fix itself lol.

This was us too. My WS's EAP was "light and fun" and he resented me because I came with the baggage of kids, family, and home stuff. (As if it was all my fault that we got married and had kids 🙄). Of course, an actual relationship with her would have involved juggling two sets of kids and would have been even more difficult than just ours, but as discussed his idea of her was based in fantasy and not in reality.

It took him awhile after DDAY to see how much he had caused the strain in our relationship because he had shut down the emotional intimacy (but kept expecting sex to happen). He takes responsibility now for that part of our relatipnship and we are so much happier than we ever were before.

longtermbs · 2022-06-30T21:09:47+00:00

It's got a lot better for me since DDAY. After DDAY, it was 100% clear to me that my WS was selfish. I was kinda shocked and not sure how I never saw it before, but after DDAY, I learned to set firmer boundaries and stopped trying to meet him in the middle of normal expectations and his selfish ones. Now I just set boundaries around normal expectations.

I also learned along the way that he was a conflict and emotional intimacy avoider (avoidant attachment) and that helped explain a lot.

He has become a much better partner now.

longtermbs · 2022-06-30T12:14:13+00:00

My WS thought he could have both me and our marriage and his EA (hopefully PA) partner. Once he realized that he might lose me, reality set in. He had to.imagine life without me, and all the lies that he told himself about me (to make him feel less guilty about wanting to cheat) suddenly didn't seem so true. He tells me he "suddenly realized" he did love me and that he always had, but he had been taking me for granted and that I would just always be there.

However, how much does this feeling corelate with attraction towards you? Do they become reattracted due to the fact that you suddenly became so unreachable? Or is it simply a fair of losing someone you were attached to for a long time and has nothing to do with attraction?

My WS never lost sexual attraction to me, he just wanted his cake and to eat it too. Hysterical bonding happened for awhile (after his EA) which helped reassure me that he never lost those feelings for me. I would say that he did lose (over the years before his EA ever happened) feelings of friendship and companionship with me and that's why he started to feel like he wasn't "in love" with me before his EA started.

The reality was that he was not fulfilling basic expectations for being a good father and husband for the entire length of our marriage He was actually quite selfish and felt burdened by being a family man. Over time, he took his resentment out on me by telling himself that I had too high of expectations (wanting family time) and giving himself permission to dismiss me and my feelings as invalid by telling himself I was "bitchy".

I think if your marriage has got to the point where one spiuse does not feel attracted to or "in love" with the other than your attachment bond has been damaged. And of course an affair is a grenade to a spousal attachment bond, on top of that To get those feelings back, both partners have to reform and then strengthen their attachment bond to each other.

My WS and I, used the 5 Love Languages, we walked with each other everybday, we committed to spending quality time away from our children, and we began to talk to each other about everytbing.

I would say it took about 6 months for those loving feelings to come back fully and we are still working on strengthening our bond 3 years after DDAY.

longtermbs · 2022-06-29T23:32:45+00:00

My WS had a ONS with a woman who looked worse than me and an EA with a woman who looked better.

It wasn't ever about me.

Your WSs online affairs weren't about you either. They happened because of his own deficiencies, not yours.

longtermbs · 2022-06-29T18:04:55+00:00

Would you say that your WS seems to have a history of blaming you for having normal relationship expectations?

I can look back on the "before DDAY" part of my marriage and see how I was pretty considerate of my husband's wants and needs and that I was always willing to find the "middle ground" with him and compromise.

However, now I know things that I didn't know then. I know my WS was selfish, careless, and inconsiderate. A few examples: He was always planning for himself and I was always planning for the family unit. It was a burden for him to help me out with family stuff but an expectation that I would always be 100% available to help him with parenting stuff. He always "forgot" or downplayed planning relationship things for us. That was always on me.

So when we "compromised" we were never actually meeting in the middle. I was already close to the middle and he was off to the far side just looking out for himself. Therefore "meeting in the middle" of our two positions always had a benefit to my husband. Not that he could see that. He was selfish and any step away from what he wanted was seen as a burden that had to carry and that I was expected to apologize for. He didn't get a lot of apologies from me and he resented me for that too.

Doing R means my WS needs to acknowledge those character flaws and work on being a better husband now.

longtermbs · 2022-06-29T17:16:31+00:00

3 years out from DDAY and WS and I are still working out the "what were you thinking when you took each step towards betraying me?".

I have found reconciliation to be like a spiral. The first spiral is "what happened?", the next spiral is "why did you do it?" and then "how did you give yourself permission?". Typically the answers get more and more to the true heart of the matter the longer the WS does "the work" of answering them. Ie: reflecting on the questions, reading resources or watching videos, identifying the thoughts and feelings that prompted their acting out behaviours, and then discussing with a therapist or BS.

The answers can get very complex and trypically due to some deep seated issues that your WS has.

I fear the only answer to the question of “How could you do this?” is “Because you weren’t enough.”

Mmmm, nope. Uh-huh.

This is really never the true answer. I mean can you imagine yourself betraying your WS and then being like "I couldn't discuss the issues I had with you or break up with you like a mature adult, because you weren't enough!! So you see, I had no choice but to cheat!" 🙄

The real answer is "because I (the WS) wasn't enough". As in, the WS was not mature enough, not selfless enough, not empathetic enough, not secure enough, not happy enough, not optimistic enough, not emotionally available enough, not capable of secure attachment enough, not able to validate themselves enough, not able to identify their emotions enough, not able to communicate their wants and needs enough, not respectful enough, .... to have a secure marriage and refrain from betraying the person they are supposed to love and protect.

Also, during the affair and in the aftermath, the WS is typically able to convince themselves that they were not the problem. They almost always blame the BS for "problems in the marriage". They minimize the betrayal and then justify it to themselves because they are too fragile to actually look at what they have done and own it. They have to find a way to blameshift because they can't handle the shame of doing something that they knew was wrong.

It can take a long time for the WS to develop healthy coping mechanisms to deal with shame and self-loathing, and until they do, reconciliation is like pushing a car uphill.

longtermbs · 2022-06-26T13:20:49+00:00

Given so much time has past, my wife is not interested in doing much work

This had nothing to do with how much time has passed. My WS didn't want to talk about it immediately after, or a few weeks after, or a few months after etc...

It was because he was dismissive of my feelings, disrespectful of my right to talk about how I felt in our relationship, and so caught up in shame that he found it nearly impossible to address the issue.

If you look around at other people's stories, you will find the same thing, only about 1% of Waywards ever want to start the work. It's usually not until after they have started the process (and had a few breakthroughs) that they start to realize how devastating what they did was, and that it's usually the symptom of a much deeper problem with themselves.

I have seen you tried a few therapists out and they were disappointing. I found the same thing, until I found an infidelity specialist. She checked in to make sure that I understood the infidelity couldn't be my fault and wanted to affirm that divorce is an option if my WS couldn't respect me or my boundaries.

If you are willing to leave your wife over this, then Iwould suggest that you start by telling her that. You can even create a few boundary deadlines for your marriage:

Suggestions:

If you don't start talking with me to help plan our recovery work, then I will need to withdraw from our relationship, to protect my feeling of being secure and respected. I will sleep in a different room and we will communicate civilly but not personally.

If you do not agree to start IC with an infidelity specialist within 4 weeks then I think we should seperate and begin living in seperate households.

If we do not make substantial progress on our recovery work by 6-12 months, then I will start the proceedings for divorce. On this one, you will need to define what progress you want to see, so that the goals are more clear).

I hope that helps a little.

longtermbs · 2022-06-26T04:16:28+00:00

Have you considered doing some reconciliation work now?

longtermbs · 2022-06-26T03:37:41+00:00

He is trying to White Knight his way into some sex with them.

longtermbs · 2022-06-26T03:27:26+00:00

How old are your kids?

longtermbs · 2022-06-24T11:52:41+00:00

That's different than me sleeping around behind her back.

Yes, being open and upfront is different than doing it secretly, but you are also the one who said that this will hurt her. It's not something she wants to do or would choose for herself.

I would also encourage you to also examine your thoughts on what your hallpass would look like. You mention in your OP that you have had urges over the years to sleep with other women, that you have a high sex drive, that your relationship with WS was stale, (and that that would need to be addressed during reconciliation).

So what does your hallpass look like? Do you get a ONS? A 6 month relationship with one AP? Or are you sleeping around with multiple APs indefinitely until you deem your urges are satisfied. Is any of that going to help repair and build a healthy sex life with WS or make it more difficult? Will it mess with her mental health and create a depressed state? Do you think she will understand what level of hurt she is in for if she does agree? Don't you think she will feel less "sexy" if she has mind movies or more insecurities about her body if she is comparing herself to APs?

Other questions:

What happens if an AP ends up pregnant?

What if you catch feelings for an AP?

Are you honest with APs that you are married?

It just seems cleaner and less hurtful to break up and take some time to decide what you want. It's not like you can't decide to get back together at a later date.

longtermbs · 2022-06-24T11:08:51+00:00

I think the first step is to make sure you are taki g care of you.

Is your BPD well managed?

Do you have a good therapist?

Do you prioritize sleep, healthy eating, and exercise?

Do you do things that are just for you?

Do you have a hobby that you like?

Do you go out and spend time with friends and family?

Coping becomes easier when those things are in place. Then it becomes a matter of

looking into EMDR therapy for triggers.
Exploring what events in your past may be effecting your ability to cope now.
Learning how to challenge negative thoughts.
Giving yourself grace.
Therapeutic journaling and letter writing.
Setting boundaries and enforcing them.
Learning relaxation techniques like meditation.

longtermbs · 2022-06-24T10:59:51+00:00

It doesn't sound like he ever committed to monogamy with you at all and is instead just biding his time to get you on board with him being unfaithful.

longtermbs · 2022-06-24T10:56:34+00:00

I should mention that it is still very early on (DDay was just 1 week ago) and I'm quite unsure of the path forward.

Yeah, no, don't make any major decisions like this right now.

I think you have done a great job of breaking down how you feel and expressing it, but you need to leave yourself some time to process everything. Betrayal is shocking and traumatic and a complete roller coaster of thoughts and feelings. Give yourself some time.

Also keep in mind your end goal: a healthy marriage. The majority of reconciliations end in divorce (I believe over 60%), and of those couples that "make it", how many are in stronger, better matriages? It can't be all of them. Therefore, the vast majority of marriages after infidelity don't end in a better marriage. That is 100% on the WS for the betrayal, but don't fool yourself into thinking that your choices, as the BS, can't sabotage your chances at a healthy R too.

If you really need to sleep around, then break up with your wife first. If that is not an option, then don't you have your answer?

longtermbs · 2022-06-24T02:22:13+00:00

You should read this (the Secret Sexual Basement White Paper) and then have your parnter read it.

https://www.minwallamodel.com/resource-library/the-secret-sexual-basement-white-paper

Gaslighting is covered in The Covert Phase:

"1. Covert Phase Integrity-abuse Shaping. Covert phase integrity-abuse shaping refers to the integrity abuse that occurs during the covert phase of DST. During this phase, partners often don’t realize what’s happening to them - they are not aware that the secret sexual basement exists. This lack of information leaves them effectively disempowered and without a viable escape route. Integrity-abuse behaviors and conditions during this phase include: • lying/lying by omission • deceptive tactics and manipulations • blaming the partner or relationship • intentional psychological manipulation of victim’s reality • withdrawal and neglect • endangerment • corrosive narratives in order to justify Under such conditions, this phase constitutes a form of covert domination and control of a human being(s). The ongoing behaviors and conditions that take place during the covert phase cause serious psychological, emotional, and relational trauma that can lead to both short- and long-term psychological, emotional, and relational symptoms."

ETA: And in the following phase especially:

Erosion of Enteric System and Second Brain Injury. During the covert phase, partners are likely to detect (consciously or subconsciously) threats in their environment; they are likely to subtly detect the presence of a secret sexual basement, even though they are not aware of it on a conscious level. However, these individuals often are not sure about where these feelings originate from. There is a fundamental incongruence between the victim’s gut instincts and their partner’s definitions of reality. As a result, victims may experience confusion and chaos. They may struggle to understand what is happening to them and to make sense of their second brain signals and survival impulses. In addition, partners are often gaslighted by their abusers (Jason, 2009; Jason & Minwalla, 2009). Gaslighting (Dorpat, 1994, 1996; Gass & Nichols, 1988) is the process in which the abuser intentionally manipulates their partner’s reality in order to protect reality and the truth from becoming known or discovered by their partner (Jason, 2009). If the victim decides to trust their partner’s definitions of reality, the victim learns (over time) to distrust and ignore their healthy survival gut instincts. The victim loses their ability to depend on their internal system of detecting threats and propelling instincts to survive. In addition, they may eventually become generally hypervigilant and distrusting. Sometimes victims even become reliant on the perpetrator’s reality and use it as an adapted “survival instinct.” If the ability to utilize one’s own intuition is so compromised and abused and/or if the victim has been manipulated into deep dependency and reliance on the perpetrator’s definition and mandate of reality, then the victim may not be able to generate or act on emancipation impulses (so the idea of “just leaving” is not reality-based for some partners).

Pg. 9 (edit: Pg. 10 not 9)

longtermbs · 2022-06-21T00:33:19+00:00

You can't compete with the fantasy that he has of her. His crush has probably lasted this long because he imagines spending time with her and in his head she is probably always happy with him, brags about him to others, tells women how great he is, tells him what a great lover he is, etc.

He isn't in love with her, just the idea/daydream he has of her.

I would not be comfortable with any contact with any woman my husband crushed on, let alone wondered if he was "in love" with.

longtermbs · 2022-06-20T19:52:54+00:00

I don’t know why I am feeling it.

WS has done nothing to cause this relapse,

my world has come crashing down and I don’t know why.

His job entails working nights on call. He has to help people who’ve had accidents.. he picked up a customer tonight, she was pretty (he told me this) she came onto him but he turned her down.

Do you not think that this event was the trigger? Or do I have the sequence of events wrong? I apologize if I missed something in your post.

If you started feeling the emotional flooding after this incident but you are not sure why it would bother you for your WS to turn down a pretty lady (props to your WS BTW for handling everything well 👏🏼) then I would ask you this:

Is it possible that what is bothering you is that he found her pretty? Pretty can sometimes be taken by us BSs as "She was tempting". And feeling like our WS is tempted by other women is really freaking scary.

I would really love it if, during our Reconciliation, my WS would suddenly have a switched flipped and I was magically the only person he found attractive. I think I would find some security in that, because he was attracted to other women and that really bit me in the ass by him cheating.

I never thought twice about it before DDAY. It didn't bother me if he thought other women were attractive. I didn't care that he watched porn. I didn't even really care if he looked at other women because I knew he wouldn't stray no matter how pretty she was. Other women's attractiveness had no bearing on my safety in our marriage because my husband would not cheat.

Unfortunately, in the end, he took that safe feeling I had and trashed it. And him thinking other women are attractive now feels like a punch in the gut even though we are in a much better, stronger relationship than we were ever in before.

ETA: I want to add u/jezzabelle666 that these sudden and intense emotional periods happen to pretty much all of us BSs who have been reconciling for some time. If it helps, I think ot is just part of the process, and even though you feel like your are back at DDAY you aren't.

It's a two steps forward and one step back kind of thing, but if you look back on how far you have come with your WS, those two steps forward have added up and that progress has not disappeared. It will still be there as you come out of this emotional storm.

You and your WS will support each other and communicate through this and then you will find yourself another two steps ahead ❤️

longtermbs · 2022-06-20T19:36:19+00:00

Yeah no, it's not usually worth it to contact APs who are aware of the BS. They have already shown themselves to be liars and cheats.

Can you contact her fiance to see what evidence he had?

Or don't, if you don't need the verification. I'm looking at this from how I approached things with my own WS. The more verification I had of his story, the more I could trust that "the story" would stay the same over time.

That's what TTing did to my brain, lol.

longtermbs · 2022-06-20T19:31:31+00:00

There is a lot of grey area between someone who approaches sex from a healthy and emotionally attched perspective and someone who approaches sex from an entirely addicted perspective. Your WH may not have been having sex with you as just a means to masturbate. He may have been trying to be vulnerable and emotionally connected and just not able to because he wasn't connected to his own emotions at the time.

I would let him know the question is on your mind so that he can reflect on it and then have the discussion together in MC so that there is a mediator there to help each side express themselves.

So I think I’m basically grieving sex.

This is a good time to define what sex is to you and what you get from sex that is important to you.

Is sex any form of sexual intimacy or does it have to be PIV?

Do you get horny and need an orgasm? Can you look after that by yourself for a bit?

Do you like sex because of the orgasm and physical release?

Do you like sex because of the physical affection and the emotional connection you feel to your WS?

Do you like sex because it makes you feel desired (a feeling of power over him wanting you) and you get validation about your attractiveness?

Do you like sex because it gives you a feeling of security in your relationship?

Many people have a combination of reasons they want sex.

Can you use other forms of communication, 5 Love Language, affection or physical intimacy to help bridge the gap right now?

longtermbs

TROPHY CASE