How would/did you handle this betrayal?

[avrilinca]

Has anyone had a D day where their H has sat them down and confessed to an affair (in the past) but neither apologised nor said they want to leave? He says he can't apologise or ask for forgiveness because he doesn't regret it. He also says he doesn't want to be with the OW now but he does want to be in touch with her. I can't find anything anywhere on the internet that has a similar precedent - seems to be either apologetic (cathartic or pre-emptive) confessions or unplanned discoveries. It seems just unbelievably cruel and crazy-making to me.

Lots of people want attention without responsibility. But yes, it is childish to expect that is possible without people getting hurt. But you are very quick to acknowledge fault and blame, very quick. Which suggests that you are not actually entitled (as I would argue your OM is) but instead, as you say, afraid of being wrong or being villainous. 'Yes I see that, I see, I know I'm in the wrong, yes, absolutely.' Even in this discourse you are trying to please us. It's very female, that. You want to do things 'right' be the good girl, get the praise afforded you. But actually it leads you to be villainous, the very thing you wanted to avoid. Culturally we find it difficult to talk about women with commitment issues. The sexist assumption is that all women want to be in monogamous marriages and are trying to force that while men want to be free and independent. It's bollocks. When a woman is a combination of approval-seeking and also commitment-phobic, boom, you get OW. The immoral behavior which leads you to seek out the good feeling again, by being in touch with the person who makes you feel good about yourself. This is how affairs work. And all the time nothing very real is put on the line, just a rather casual, selfish exploration of self, that cycles until either the family or the woman, or both, are destroyed.

I am on the edges of professional. Also been through a lot on both sides of this.

Also, please try and think about the connection between you being approval-seeking (wanting to be liked) and the way that you see your relationships as one-sided. Giving is a great way to be liked. If you give because it allows you to get what you want, the feeling of being liked/approved of, but you do not allow others to give to you (let's bear in mind you were freaked out by a man just ironing a fucking shirt in your direction) then is giving really so generous? Or is it, as with being an OW, simply a way of getting something that you want without the effort, commitment and responsibility of a proper two-way relationship.

So I have to address the commitment-phobia or the approval-seeking or I'm just going to get in the same situation again? Which I really don't want to do, primarily because I don't want more people to be hurt, and secondarily because I don't want to be the person responsible for that (the villain). Might the best approach be to try and shift the approval away from desire/love and into, say, professional achievement (I have massive problems here as well with confidence and self-belief and self-sabotage). I have wondered about having a period of conscious celibacy but I really enjoy sex (physically... I think, but may be more than that as XH was terrible for my sexual confidence so there may be association healing issues) and I'm in my late 30s and worried the offers might start drying up. I'm not trying to accept everything here in a sham show of contrition (like that scary 'ex-EA' man the other day), but sincerely trying to understand how I got and remained in this situation and how I can get out of it and avoid repeating it. So I hope my acceptance doesn't read as any kind of martyrdom (but I'm open to hearing it does).

Wow, that made me laugh and cry simultaneously. I am not good at letting people do things for me, no. I'm not sure I've ever admitted that to myself before.

do you want him? why would you want him... he wants two women and he wants them both to just accept that by the sounds of it. very nice for him.

blimey o'reilly you really are living inside your own head OP.

Okay, let's look at this. Firstly, forget the martyrdom stuff. I don't care about that and it's a distraction right now. Stop trying to be liked. you're okay, let's start from there.

The reason you don't want to get into the situation again is A) Other people being hurt and B) You don't want to be responsible for that.

So, okay, I bet these are true, but they are interesting choices. The first suggests your primary concern is others' welfare when it probably isn't. So this is an approval seeking thing. You want us to know you aren't a monster. I don't think that. It's okay.

The second is another evasion of responsibility. i don't like the way I feel when I feel bad about myself. I don't' want the the responsibility of that. That's a fear of commitment to the idea of what you've done. You've ALREADY damaged people. you have already altered and maybe ruined that marriage. You have already done. that. Take responsibility. It doesn't make you a villain. It is just what you have done.

What we need to do is to move your focus, counter-intuitively, onto yourself. Because this is actually the more honest voice. The reason you don't' want to get into the situation again should be for YOU. What do YOU want? Do you want a proper, full time relationship? To get married again? Or not. Do you want to be single and happy with occasional sex? What do you want for you. Then you can work out how to go about it.

Maybe read 'He's Scared, She's Scared' to look at commitment-phobia. It's definitely good to get your sense of approval from somewhere else. Work, sure. But you need to get to a point where it's okay if someone doesn't like you. And it's okay if you do something wrong. You're self-blaming before anyone else can get to you, even on this thread. I know you haven't responded to it but it sounds to me like you have control issues. By which I mean perfectionism and fear of being judged, which might lead to the self-disgust and self-sabotage you describe.

you have to let people do things for you. you have to have a proper two way relationship. you have to stop being afraid of being judged or getting it wrong. This is why you are having an affair and claiming to be the victim in it. Because he is giving you nothing. And that's how you like it.

Oh, I dunno

blah blah blah

I can think of a possibly more apt summation of all this navel gazing to excuse what is self deluded shitty behaviour

narcissism

stick that in your mirror and see what comes back atcha

Even narcissists need to be helped to treat people better, AF.

They need to accept they are narcissists first. Good luck with that one.

Thanks, AF, that made me laugh as well. (You don't need to read what is essentially a free therapy session for me if it's boring, by the way. I am immensely grateful for it.)

I will think about what I want from a relationship. Not marriage, not more kids, and I'm quite clear about that. Not full-time cohabitation. My reasons for these are prioritising my kids and the difficulty of managing blended family, but I suppose that could just be an excuse. I guess I should look back at my marriage and think how many of these issues you've identified were instrumental and how many are resultant.

You're totally right about the control. I find it hard to admit because XH's controlling behaviour is how I gave myself permission to get out of my marriage. He did tell me I was controlling and I do recognise it. I had a chaotic and uncontrolled childhood owing to DM being alcoholic. I am a neat freak and fascist about finances/domestic management etc but professionally disorganised. Actually this polarity runs through a lot of me - I have high/low self-esteem; I have a limited-control relationship with alcohol (can abstain but am shit at moderation). The professional thing should probably be my main concern and I might find addressing that necessarily takes the spotlight away from obsessing about relationship(s).

Not laughing because I don't accept it. I fully accept it. I recognise lots of narcissistic traits in myself. XH told me his therapist suggested I was narcissistic as a result of XH's accounts of me and I have discussed it with both my therapists, each of which were eager to discount it on the (easy) basis that narcissists aren't self-aware. I think I'm probably a kind of adaptive narcissist if anything i.e. a narcissist who has observed the negative effects of their narcissistic behaviour and adapted them to further their narcissistic ends. So I'll put that in my Mobius pipe and smoke it.

I wouldn't presume to diagnose anybody by internet (or in real life, tbh- I'm not a psychiatrist), but this is awfully wahwahwah. Is this really how you want to live?

No!

Do you need a label? Does it make you feel better to have one? Does it help you to address the unpleasant aspects of that label, or does it somehow give you permission to stay that way because of the label?

Frankly I'd discount your ex's opinion, and that of his therapist, who would only have had his immensely skewed version of "you". If he's an EA then of course he's going to blame you for any of the relationship problems, accuse you of many of the things he was actually responsible for, palm off onto you all his less attractive character traits - that's what they DO.

So unless YOUR therapist agrees that you are a narcissist (and you've said both have discounted it) then throw the label out and bloody well get on with addressing any problematic areas of your personality in the free knowledge that there IS no label to hide behind.

Your mother being an alcoholic is another thing to look at in terms of the relationships you seek. What about your father? Was he in the picture? What sort of person was he? An enabler?
Your mother, as an alcoholic, was a selfish addict who was also probably abusive in some respects just as a result of her alcoholism. You would be deeply unusual if you weren't seeking her approval, so let's assume you were. I bet you looked after her too, didn't you, when she was out of it? Ran the house for her? Protected her?

Is any of this triggering any bells that your therapists haven't covered yet?

Op stop analysing. What you need is simple cbt techniques to distract you from contacting him until the "habit" is broken. Ask your therapist to teach you a few, set a date to stop contact, and then stop. And use the techniques to stay away. Start an accountability thread if you like.

After a few weeks you'll stop craving and you'll begin to find space to recover.

Ruminating will not get you anywhere. In fact it's probably making it worse. You cannot fantasize that you'll one day understand him. He's not going to reveal enough to you for that to ever be a possibility.

Focus on breaking the habit of contact. When it's broken, use all this energy to improve your relationship with yourself and your children.

Good luck

Haven't disappeared, just morning-busy. Thanks so much everyone for your constructive and sympathetic posts - given me lots to think about (feel like I should rename thread 'ME ME ME').

I was starting to wonder why this all sounded so familiar and it does. I think you're exactly the same poster, OP. Your sentence construction is the same, the wording is the same, punctuation and syntax... all the same.

AnyFucker called it and I agree. You are h----sh-p-d.

I think you just want to talk about him. You can't stand not knowing what's going on in his marriage and you want the posters here (many of whom have been on the receiving end of this crap) to fill in the blanks for you.

You won't stop, you'll never stop. It's not fair to use a chatboard like this for your own means, it's horrible in fact.

Glad to see I am not the only one who thinks this all sounds sooooo familiar.

Genuinely not but will look up her threads to see how offensive/revealing that is. Please don't colour my situation with your preconceptions about another poster (or at least entertain the idea I'm someone different and leave my thread alone as it's very helpful to me).

I don't have a therapist at the moment but will look into CBT.

I don't think I have talked about him much, have I? I've mainly banged on about myself.

I have never had anal sex. I haven't slept with MM for over a year.

If it isn't you, avrilinka, you need to read that thread very carefully indeed. You are being compared with her, and when you have a think about why that might be so, I hope it gives you a massive wake up call.

Have just been doing that! Don't have time to do it justice now but will read properly tonight. Is it just the TMI one? (I googled it.)

Just out of interest, avril, did someone pm you the full name of that previous OP ? I am just wondering how you knew it.