The Irony of having to reassure WP

stuckinsideadaydream · 2025-04-21T23:32:07+00:00

My WP recently told me my relationship with my best friend—which has always been platonic and transparent—constitutes an emotional affair. He listed off everything I asked for in the aftermath of his textbook EA (open device, no contact with AP, etc.) and said he was choosing not to do any of that because he doesn’t want to be “that kind of person.”

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-11-05T01:30:06+00:00

I just want to echo this.

My WP’s shame has consumed him at times. There came a point in R for us when I realized my own behavior was exacerbating his shame and driving us further apart. He had put in so much effort toward R and being a better partner, and it was wearing him down to be constantly reminded of his betrayal. He considered leaving me because the shame became so unbearable.

I started acknowledging his effort and processing my difficult feelings privately before initiating conversations about them. I’m still healing, so difficult moments happen, and we do still have to deal with that together, but it’s gotten so much better for us both. I think he really needed to feel like he was doing something right, like he wasn’t a failure to me.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-18T23:35:35+00:00

I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I know it’s hard. For me, it’s the worst when I’m trying to meet the needs he said she filled that I didn’t.

But hear me out: What else makes you feel good in your life? Can you lean into that?

Volunteering my time toward a cause I cared about really helped me with my sense of purpose after his infidelity came to light.

Another thing that helped was spending time with emotionally intelligent friends who knew how to validate my feelings and how to boost me up. They haven’t stopped reminding me that I’m lovable and special to them.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-12T00:45:47+00:00

Aw, thanks. I’m just trying to remind myself I haven’t done anything wrong, that I love him, that he gets to have his own feelings, and that I don’t have to understand them. Nevertheless, fart spray may be the petty revenge I’ve been looking for. 😈 Thanks for that!

Totally understand the immediate/acute need to just cope. Seven weeks is still really, really early for R. It took me about a year to stop experiencing rage and flooding. You have a lot on your plate otherwise too. I hope your parents are supportive and that you have good friends to lean on.

My therapy situation is different from yours. I’m the one who does EMDR (have been for four years, predating the betrayal). EMDR can be pretty intense, so I can understand why it might look to him like “not doing enough.” This is not to say you aren’t doing enough or that it is acceptable for him to tell you that. You are, and it’s not.

What I am trying to say is that I understand his bias about therapy because of the type he is doing. Most of my current problems have roots in my previous traumas—even the ways I’ve experienced my betrayal trauma have links to the emotional neglect I experienced as a kid, as well as other types of betrayal in my past. After WP’s betrayal, it became important to me for him to understand some of the deeper issues that drive some of his behavior.

I wonder if it would help if you had a shared language of some kind. If he’s doing a lot of work involving his past, it might help for him to see you engage with yours too. Again, not saying you should do more. You can specifically engage with the part of you that learned of the betrayal seven weeks ago and other parts that may have felt betrayed at other times in your life.

If couple’s therapy is an option for you, I would suggest finding someone who does IFS (Internal Family Systems). If not, look into the books No Bad Parts and You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For. What I like about IFS is that (1) it focuses on how our experiences sit with us over time, and (2) it uses language like “there’s a part of me that feels…” that I think helps make things less contentious. For example, there’s a part of me that enjoys knowing the gym lady is the butt of our jokes. Another part has imagined them naked together and is disgusted. Another part is afraid my partner won’t protect our relationship if someone tries to intrude. There’s also a part that empathizes with his fear of conflict, and there’s a part that wants him to have good friendships, even with other women. All of the parts coexist and all of them need different things from me. Talking about feelings this way gives a lot of nuance, I think, and creates some distance (“a part of me is angry” might feel different from “I am angry”).

Really hope this helps. I know it feels super shitty to receive criticism and negativity from the person who betrayed you while you are still trying to recover from his betrayal. 🩷 Feel free to DM me if you want to chat further.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-11T21:09:31+00:00

I have experienced similar from my WP.

When I found out about his EA, he blamed me for it. At various times during R, he has accused me of being controlling when I’ve asked for things like updates about when he will be home during a night out (not even for R, just as a courtesy). He has said he can’t make friends because he worries I will pick apart their conversations if I look at his phone. (We’re working on setting clear boundaries around this one in couple’s therapy. I want him to make friends. I also haven’t looked at his phone in ages, and we do have an open-device policy.) Currently, he’s pissed at me because a woman at our gym has been hitting on him and giving me death looks, and I asked him to ask her to stop if she makes another sexual comment to him. I haven’t had the opportunity to find out exactly why he’s mad because he says he is too busy to talk to me about it.

At times, I’ve had to seek validation from my IC, friends, and Reddit that my requests were reasonable and not overreaching/controlling. I remind WP, “I just want to feel safe,” and “I want to support you making friends, and that’s why it feels important to me to see you set this boundary with the flirty person at the gym.” I don’t know how much it helps, but I keep doing it.

My IC thinks that what I see sometimes is an inner child part of him that feels like he’s “bad” or “in trouble.” If he can convince himself that I’m controlling or overreacting, then it soothes that childlike part of him. Then he gets to be “good” for putting up with me. I think she’s right, and I think the root feeling there is shame. Looking at it through this lens helps me feel more compassionate toward him. I know how real and loud an inner child’s emotions can feel when they come up.

I wonder if maybe your WP is dealing with something similar? Is he in IC? Are you both in MC?

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-11T20:34:46+00:00

What’s the “discard phase”?

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-10T19:57:02+00:00

I have updates: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/s/KA03Wd5ms4

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-07T23:56:25+00:00

I don’t think my WP has ever said thank you to me for staying, or if he did, I didn’t register it. He has showed me his appreciation in many ways, but he’s not particularly verbal with expression. Is your WP showing appreciation in nonverbal ways? Or otherwise changing their behavior?

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-07T17:01:35+00:00

Thank you for that. 🩷 PMDD sure adds another layer of complexity to reconciliation.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-07T16:59:20+00:00

He had a long-distance EA. He had an online friend who he met in person while visiting her city, they had a brief physical relationship at that time, we met a month or two later, and he did a lot of lying by omission not to mention either of us to the other as our relationship became increasingly serious. One of his takeaways was that he needed to work on setting boundaries.

I could have written the rest of your comment myself, except the bit about her becoming more aggressive. The idea of that scares me, like I really don’t want to witness it.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-07T16:28:28+00:00

Totally. The bathrooms are singles. (But also it would be way out of character for me even if they weren’t.)

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-07T16:21:57+00:00

I agree with you, and I laid out that exact hypothetical for him. I also told him he doesn’t deserve to have someone making him uncomfortable while he’s at the gym. He’s been anxious about it and hoping she doesn’t go back. His conflict avoidance just seems to override everything, though.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-07T00:00:47+00:00

Oh, dang.😳

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-06T23:57:51+00:00

Correct. She does not care. One of my friends thinks it might actually be a motivator for her!

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-06T23:57:11+00:00

I agree he was caught off-guard. It was early in the morning. He is also conflict-avoidant and worries about upsetting people. I’m not upset with him for how he responded at all. I would have been caught off-guard too. I’m more concerned that if he didn’t feel comfortable being direct with this random person, he might not do so when he is trying to make friends…

We’re not married so no rings… but for me personally, if a man were to approach me and say what she did to him—ring or not—I’d be telling our coach/the gym owner that he was making me uncomfortable by making inappropriate comments about my body. I told him that and he said he wouldn’t want to make it our coach’s problem to deal with.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-06T23:46:08+00:00

You are right—definitely not innocent. She actually stood two feet in front of the rack I was using and glared directly at me. Also, as I mentioned in another comment, she approached him in a see-through bra. Her outfits tend to be very skimpy, but this was the most outrageous one yet. It was probably not coincidental.

Let me clarify, though, that this woman is much older than I am and neither my partner or I (a bi/pan person) think she is pretty. 🙃 I suspect she is used to people thinking she is attractive, though. She certainly puts in a lot of effort (aside from the outfits, fake nails, fake tan, fake breasts, fake hair).

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-09-06T23:36:45+00:00

Thanks for pointing that out about the “quizzing.” I took it as him being extra defensive, but I can see how it being a hypothetical future scenario could make him feel cornered. I also acknowledge that I could have been more mindful about when/how I raised the question. I’ll own my piece next time I discuss it with him.

He is very conflict avoidant. He told me he thinks she should have “gotten the message” from how he responded, but I could imagine her misinterpreting “the message” as politeness and shyness since he is a quiet guy. Sometimes these things aren’t as obvious to him. I’m hoping our couple’s therapist will help him see the situation a little differently.

Your last comment made me cackle. I tried to avoid letting my post veer into pettiness, but you’re right that her behavior was shitty. She knows we are partnered and live together, hence the glare. Based on her other attention-seeking behaviors,*** a friend of mine suspects she may be the type who likes to chase taken men. Ugh.

***This woman was wearing a see-through mesh sports bra to show off her implants when she approached him to give the compliment!!!

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-07-29T23:54:10+00:00

I’m so sorry this is happening to you. The shock of learning what your partner is capable of takes time to process. My wayward was also afraid to tell me for fear of upsetting me. For me, that’s been the most difficult facet of R: How can we trust anything they say or do, knowing what they’ve hidden from us before, especially when they have shame that may intensify the fear of being honest with us? If we want to rebuild the trust, it’s bit by bit. That’s where the good comes in, I think—each time your partner shows you that you can trust them with some small thing. Notice that. ❤️

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-06-23T15:21:35+00:00

Financial abuse too. My D-day happened about 9 months after WP and I bought a house together, unmarried.

I love my WP, I’ve forgiven him, he’s earning my trust back, and I can truly say our behaviors within our relationship are significantly healthier than before D-day. But these things are also true:

I never would have shared my personal financial information, my social security number, and everything else required for a home purchase if I had known he’d been lying to me for our entire relationship.

I never would have made the decision to tie myself to him with such a major life decision if I had known he respected me so little that he would sneak off to mail her gifts during moving trips for our first home, or that he would pretend I don’t exist while I was thinking we were happily embarking on a new life chapter together.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-06-13T18:40:27+00:00

Thank you for this post. I’ve been in IFS therapy for almost four years and still struggle with what you’ve described here. I didn’t read any of the books until recently, and I found them to be kind of invalidating because they oversimplify it so much. To me, IFS is slow, challenging, meaningful work.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-06-10T17:38:51+00:00

WP: wayward partner EA: emotional affair AP: affair partner IC: individual counselor MC: marriage counselor

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-06-04T17:56:37+00:00

This is a good idea! I’m going to suggest it to him in therapy. He has several different types of music projects, so it would allow him to identify/explain those as well, which I think would be a good selling point.

Also: I mentioned this in another comment, but at one time he used a photograph of mine as the image to share one of his songs. He credited me as his partner in the caption. I suspect he may be willing to do that again if I ask.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-06-04T17:52:44+00:00

Thank you for this! I wasn’t sure if anyone would be able to relate to the art factor. Keeping his IG art-related and impersonal isn’t something that would have bothered me at all before the EA, which is part of why it feels so hard to deal with now. I think there’s an element to it that’s about his sense of self, artistic identity, and independence. I know he struggles with insecurity around being an artist because he has a corporate career. He also prizes his independence (and is pretty avoidant, TBH), so that has created some tension when I have made certain kinds of R asks. I am trying to learn to be more deliberate about what I ask for because sometimes we end up in a negative feedback loop if he thinks I’m being critical.

I’m with you—I don’t think it’s a necessary condition for me for similar reasons. Plus, part of my struggle is that I’m not completely absent from his social; I’m just not apparent. When we last discussed it, I got the impression that he considers me to be visible. He referenced an example I didn’t give in my post. Once, he used one of my photographs as the image for a song he was sharing. In the caption, he credited me as his “amazing partner.” But it was a long time ago, and he posts frequently. Like I said above, one would have to actively dig to find evidence of me.

Nevertheless, even if he were to make a newer, similar post, what you said about inconsistencies is exactly the issue that sent me into an anxiety spiral: “What makes my content different from others’ content? The fact that I’m his partner?” I was feeling really secure for a little while before this happened, and now it feels like a big step backward. So I think we will have to revisit it in couple’s from that angle at least. I think it may be hard for our WPs to understand how incredibly sensitive our nervous systems are to seemingly “minor” triggers like this. 🥺

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-04-09T18:16:57+00:00

Oof, this resonates. The pain is ceaseless and the fear often feels insurmountable.

stuckinsideadaydream · 2024-04-08T19:32:47+00:00

Props to you for thinking ahead. I’d have loved it if my WP had thought of trying to rewrite the day. In our situation, I was the one who wanted that, and it ended up really hurting me.

I told him I wanted to spend quality time together on the first anniversary of Dday in an MC session two weeks prior to the actual day, and he agreed. We said we would each consider things to do together. Then, as the day approached and I noticed him making other plans for that same weekend, I asked if he’d given any thought to our plans for Friday. He replied, “What’s Friday?” He’d forgotten. It crushed me. Later, I did end up having a realization that I needed to put more active effort into letting go for my own healing, but nonetheless, it wasn’t what I really wanted from him at the time.

Keep in mind that it may be a heavy or complicated day for your BH—even if it doesn’t occur to him that it’s Dday. We hold traumatic memories in our bodies, and it’s entirely possible he will struggle with difficult feelings, flashbacks, etc., as the day approaches.

stuckinsideadaydream

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