'Not Just Friends'

[Kenickie]

I have received some excellent advice on here before regarding my husband's infidelity. It was recommended by many that I read the Shirley Glass book 'Not just Friends'. This has helped immensely and I realise I am stuck in a phase she describes as 'accusatory suffering'. I am over a year on from discovery, but somehow I still feel that if I completely move on from the pain and don't keep showing my husband how sad I still am, he will be completely exonorated. I realise this makes me sound a bit masochistic, I really do want to get better and feel happy and confident again, but can't help but feel that when he sees me completely healed, he may think he has got away with it! I know this is self-destructive but don't really know where to go from here. Thanks.

Kenickie I have often gone to post on your threads, but as I recall you leave them as suddenly as you have started them. I'm happy to help if you can stick with it.

Tell me about the affair and your recovery to date and I'll try to help if I can. Also, have you had any solo counselling and has your H had any therapy himself?

Thank you WWIFN.
My husband moved here 6 months before I did and in that time had an affair with the colleague he came with. He finished the affair before I arrived, but I found out one week after moving. He didn't want to end the friendship though and that part took a further 6 months.

I think I am stuck in a rut because it has been such a diificult time moving and dealing with this betrayal (we had wanted the move for about 5 years and I thought we were both so happy and in love). combined with the fact that he still works with her.

We had about 6 months of relationship therapy and I am due to go to see someone alone as I am suffering terribly with depression and anxiety, so they are trying to sort out the meds etc. He hasn't as yet gone alone for any therapy.

Make him suffer, give him hell! The other option is to get revenge but im not sure that would ease your pain??? Once trust has gone so has the love, and here is your real problem. He MUST work hard to gain your trust once more, otherwise whats the point??!

I think you might need to reframe your OP, Kenickie.

The truth appears to be that you are only 6 months on from your H putting this woman above you and your marriage, while he continued his friendship. He's still working with her, hasn't made efforts to move jobs and hasn't done anything about getting some solo therapy.

These stark truths might help you see why you are stuck in the rut of accusatory suffering that you describe. I suspect you resent not only the affair, but his behaviour thereafter. It is possible you feel he traded on your vulnerability being new in the country and rationalised that you wouldn't make life difficult, because you were somewhat stuck.

If you've read the wonderful book, you will have seen that the minimum conditions when an affair is discovered is that all unnecessary contact with the affair partner is severed, but most people don't need a book to tell them that. It is impossible to remain friends with an affair partner and rebuild a marriage.

You say you had 6 months of relationship therapy. What did that yield? I have an awful suspicion that this focused on the problems you may or may not have been having in your marriage and concentrated less on his individual vulnerability to fidelity and how you were personally coping with your shattered trust and huge hurt. Hence you have slipped into depression and need more personal help.

Given that it is evident what your H didn't do, what has he done to restore your faith? There are certain behaviours and character traits that permit infidelity in an individual. How have these changed?

What reasons does he give for why the affair happened? Why do you think it happened?

You are quite right WWIFN, I think right now I am suffering more with the aftermath rather than the affair itself, it was easy in the early days because he kept reiterating that it happened because I wasn't there, and it was just a friendship that got out of hand. This would have been believeable if he hadn't maintained contact and tried to still be friends with her.

Our therapy did concentrate too much on what was wrong with our marriage, we both felt it was his failings and nothing to do with the marriage. I think that is why we lost faith in the counsellor. I am definately looking into therapy alone.

One thing that the therapy did help with was his transparency, so I had access to all his emails, texts, etc. This is how I found out about the continued contact, He doesn't seem terribly bright....!

The biggest change has been that I monitor his actions, but I hate this. Our therapist did determine that he was never given any boundaries as a child and so never had to deal with the consequences of his actions. This is so true, his whole family bury their heads in the sand because the truth scares them. However it is not my position to teach him. We were always both very laid back with each other and I don't think I can bear a lifetime of this distrust.

Thanks for all your help.

What an awful situation kenickie. Especially given you were moving locations and all that that entails - do you have children?

When you say you monitor his actions now, do you see evidence that he has put tight boundaries in place for non-work contact with the OW? Can you see him taking active steps to distance himself from her? Without that it would be nearly impossible to trust again, or actually not very sensible to trust again.

My DH had a close friendship with a female colleague and for several reasons they have to continue working together. We have got round this problem by firstly admitting it is a problem and could create ongoing issues for us. Then we have boundaries in place about non-work contact and changes needed about effort into family life etc.

Even with these in place I would not have been able to regain trust unless I had actually seen evidence of these being stuck to and the distance being created between them.

You don't want to go on monitoring his actions - you're right, that is no way to live and you won't get past this if you still don't trust him. But maybe he hasn't done enough to appreciate how upsetting this was for you, how much of a threat the OW was to your relationship and how much he needs to do now to show you he takes active steps every day to put firm barriers in place between him and her.

You can only trust again when you see evidence of his intentions matching up with his actions.

Kenickie I suspected you would say that the therapy concentrated on relational causes and I'm interested that you both felt that this wasn't the issue. I'm curious too, how the therapist dealt with the issue of his continued friendship with the OW?

Given the circumstances you describe, of course you are stuck. If the biggest change to have occurred is to your behaviour and the hypervigilance you describe, this is not progress at all. You cannot go on policing his fidelity, because this will make you feel worse and the reality is that none of us can prevent infidelity in another person.

If he still thinks the cause was your absence - and you rightly disagree, then there is every chance this could happen again with someone else. You are no further forward in determining the cause of this then you were on discovery. You perhaps have uncovered that his childhood produced a lack of boundaries and therefore a personal vulnerability to infidelity, but your H doesn't seem to have bought this either and is stuck in a script of this infidelity being entirely circumstantial.

Plus, if the therapist ignored what s/he managed to uncover about his personal vulnerability and reverted to the "safe" hypothesis that this was relational, I can see why the therapy was less than helpful.

Try to project what you would need from him to restore your safety, lead you to think that he has found the true cause and made sufficient changes to his character to ensure this can never happen again. Write those behaviours and actions down. There is a sense from you that he has never "got this" at all and that you are angry with yourself for not insisting on certain conditions and behaviours before you would continue with the marriage.

Try to think about all the possibilities, if you are feeling stuck. You don't have to stay in this country, you don't have to stay in this marriage. It is also not too late to insist on some conditions and changes. You have more power than you think you have. There is also a sense of your H not taking this (or you) seriously enough and believing that you will not end this marriage, especially because you have so recently faced upheaval and moved to a different country.

Time to wake him up to the real consequences, do you think?

Thank you so much for your insightful response, I see so many people saying that you are spot on and this is definately the case here.

We have just returned from a family holiday, which is why I have been absent so long. It was good and bad but that is a whole other thread! It has, however, given me some space to think over what you said.

It is interesting that you say that he hasn't bought into any of the suggestions as to why he was unfaithful. He is obviously uncomfortable with the suggestion that anything occuring in his childhood could have played a part, because he couldn't bear to criticise his parents, again a whole other thread!

One thing that I can't get my head round is that since I uncovered the truth about his ongoing contact with OW, he has been and done everything that he should have to begin with. He is open and kind and loving, but I am miserable and downright evil to him at times. I don't know if it is because, as you say, I am stuck and still don't have any real answers or because this reformed behaviour is too little too late and I have lost all respect for him.

I don't really know what I am asking here, I am permanently confused. I know that moving has been traumatic in its own right, but I just tend to blame everything on the affair. I just don't feel that I can move my children again and also don't really know where I belong anyway. I have spent most of my life back and forth across the Atlantic and my family is pretty spread out now.

I am lonely and bored, which I know doesn't help.