Does love come back/what do I do

[helplesshopeless]

Nc for this.

Advice needed please, I've created a huge mess and can't see a way out/what is for the best. This may be long.

I am married with a 3yo. DH has always had a nasty temper, I've suggested anger management counselling numerous times but to no avail. The last few years since having my child have been really difficult. He's generally spoken to me with contempt and disdain a lot of the time, with occasional temper flashes, arguments are always toxic, things could get very nasty (never physical). On a day to day basis we would be civil enough to eachother, but nasty looks and snappiness from him were definitely daily as well, with bigger flare ups fairly regularly. We have had happy family times too and we both dote on our child.

All of this treatment from my DH culminated in my withdrawing from him and ultimately having an affair the last few months, with someone who made me feel loved and cared for. It was mainly an emotional affair but there was a small amount of physical contact (we did not have sex). This is someone that I work with, so although we're wfh at the moment, he is in team zoom meetings etc.

My DH found everything out last week. He is angry but also devastated. I have never seen him so upset and it has shocked me that he cares that much about me. He has completely woken up to how he's been treating me and is committed to having anger management therapy and working on things with me. I obviously am ashamed of what I have done and there is no excuse for my behaviour, but he does recognise that his treatment of me took me to a place where I was open to someone else. I still can't believe I had an affair because it is so against my morals and I fully deserve to be judged for it.

We are working on things and will get relationship counselling. There's a lot of self esteem issues that my husband struggles with, especially since we had our child as he's felt like he's been stuck on the outside looking in, and he thinks this is why he's been treating me how he has. I do understand this and it makes sense, but it doesn't change how he's treated me in the past and how damaging I have found it.

My husband wants me to leave my work so there's no interaction with the other man. I totally understand his point but am reluctant to do this as I'd then feel trapped.

I want to get back to a happy place with my husband. I don't want to feel trapped with him. I don't know if I can find my way back to loving him, whether all of this is coming too late after years of awful treatment. I accept I have behaved in a disgusting way and deserve all of this fall out, and am so worried about the impact on our child and how I'd manage if we separate. I am also concerned about the impact on my husband if things don't work as he has been explaining how it will crush him and he'd never be able to trust anyone again if we don't manage to work through this.

I just don't know if my heart is in this anymore, I want to be able to be happy with him and love him and our family deserves for me to work on this and fully commit to getting back on track, but I have no idea if I'll ever get back to where I need to be.

I am ashamed to admit I still have feelings for the other guy. I could obviously never be with him anyway so that is irrelevant, but it's clouding my judgement. I need to hear from people who have learnt to love their husbands again. Is that a thing? Will we ever get there?

I still can't believe any of this is happening.

@Alcemeg and @QuentinBunbury wow ,what insightful replies to my question !

I need to give some time to consider them ,but just the quick read I've had has really given me food for thought .

That's so kind of you both to go to the thought and trouble of replying .

I completely understand your thinking.
Imagine a new sheet, he is nice & never sulks, shouts, glowers, shows anger. You live happily with DD, (& more DC & change job obvs.)
He never mentions OM again & you never recall the loneliness of being a new mother cut off from family.
You look forward to coming home after work to a harmonious loving partner, who helps you, who cherishes you.
You all live happily ever after.

Except have you ever heard of death by a thousand cuts ?
This person has done so much harm, & continues to manipulate & gas light, he is piling on layer on layer of pressure to get on & move on,
He's fed up of trying to be the new good guy, he wants your enthusiasm NOW, he wants sex NOW, he wants to own you again. He wants his comfortable status quo back. he wants you to have no recall.
He wants reassurance that you are back to being wifey, & no one else can get in your mind & make you see real happiness.
He is taking you on a w/e break, whereas what you asked for was a break, alone, to breath, to feel, to rest your mind, get away from the pressure of having to be indulgent, force the love that's lost back...
oh hang on, its all about HIM..... What about you ?

You already know in your heart & in your guts that its a lost cause,
This new him, is not the person you originally fell in love with, this is someone who showed you his disdain, & hurt you repeatedly when you were at your most fragile, then has pasted on a paper mask of the original & says, Hi I'm back...

Forget the OM, he is nothing to do with this choice you are being hurried into making. although sounds like a far far better option
He is being weaponized against you. Yes it shouldn't happen in happy marriages, but it wasn't a happy marriage, you were drowning & OM was the fresh air.

God there are some insightful people on this thread. @IND1A your post blew me away.

"how does one square making ones own life happier if in doing so you are making others unhappy?"
Isn't that a question that should be asked of the OP's husband? I bet he isn't asking himself that one bit. Where two people want different things and one person's happiness is at the price of another's, ask yourself why is his inherently more important than hers? (Not saying you believe that it is, just that the question works both ways)

@Mix56

I completely understand your thinking. Imagine a new sheet, he is nice & never sulks, shouts, glowers, shows anger. You live happily with DD, (& more DC & change job obvs.) He never mentions OM again & you never recall the loneliness of being a new mother cut off from family. You look forward to coming home after work to a harmonious loving partner, who helps you, who cherishes you. You all live happily ever after.

Except have you ever heard of death by a thousand cuts ?
This person has done so much harm, & continues to manipulate & gas light, he is piling on layer on layer of pressure to get on & move on,
He's fed up of trying to be the new good guy, he wants your enthusiasm NOW, he wants sex NOW, he wants to own you again. He wants his comfortable status quo back. he wants you to have no recall.
He wants reassurance that you are back to being wifey, & no one else can get in your mind & make you see real happiness.
He is taking you on a w/e break, whereas what you asked for was a break, alone, to breath, to feel, to rest your mind, get away from the pressure of having to be indulgent, force the love that's lost back...
oh hang on, its all about HIM..... What about you ?

You already know in your heart & in your guts that its a lost cause,
This new him, is not the person you originally fell in love with, this is someone who showed you his disdain, & hurt you repeatedly when you were at your most fragile, then has pasted on a paper mask of the original & says, Hi I'm back...

Forget the OM, he is nothing to do with this choice you are being hurried into making. although sounds like a far far better option
He is being weaponized against you. Yes it shouldn't happen in happy marriages, but it wasn't a happy marriage, you were drowning & OM was the fresh air.

Great post.

I don't believe the OP ever knew her husband, or she turned her head to the bits she wanted to ignore.

But he is who he has shown her to be.

That genie is never going back in the bottle, no matter what bullshit he feeds her.

"how does one square making ones own life happier if in doing so you are making others unhappy?"

Or

"how does one square making ones own life unhappy if in doing so you are making others happier?"

I know you were referring to leaving but the same applies to staying. Two sides of the same coin, the answer to which ultimately come down to compromise versus excess.

Is there a way you can compromise, so that both of you are a bit happy? For example, moving to the remote countryside might be one person's dream and make them very happy; it might also be the other's nightmare. And being with someone who is forced into living somewhere that makes them totally unhappy and miserable isn't actually going to be quite the dream the other person imagined anyway, so you find a way to compromise. And each person seeing benefit of them having compromised on the other, increases the happiness overall, I find.

But what if the other person can't or won't compromise, or the requirements for compromise are still so excessive that the balance of happiness isn't ever going to fair? Then it cannot work.

In this relationship, compromise is not possible - OP's husband is not able to dilute or change his own fundamental beliefs and values, and what he requires of OP, to the extent OP (or anyone in her situation) would need, in order to make them both a bit happy. He requires complete ownership of her, which makes her very unhappy and unable to love him. This, in turn, makes him very unhappy. So the circle cannot be squared any way at all.

You can flip it and say well, OP leaving makes him extremely unhappy so she should stay. But she can never stay and be with him in the way that he needs. Which makes him very unhappy (and angry, because he doesn't realise this, and never will).

Hence here we are, does love come back? Because if OP could just find a way to love him anyway, he'd be happy and she'd be a bit happy. I think we've got to the point now where it either doesn't or it's going to take an unacceptably long time (for OP's H) to come back. So now the question is - is it possible for me to pretend to love someone in a convincing enough way that means they're extremely happy and I don't mind that I don't love them? And of course the answer is no, it's not. Especially not if, like OP, you've experienced an alternative. The level of cognitive dissonance required for her to convince herself she loves her husband and is happy would drive anyone mad.

So - to the original question- how do you square it? By realising it's not binary - solving their unhappiness by making myself unhappy ultimately just makes everyone unhappy in the long run.

God that was very long and rambly, apologies! Hopefully it made vague sense

if OP could just find a way to love him anyway, he'd be happy and she'd be a bit happy.

Are you sure he'd be happy, though?

I tend to feel that someone like him is rather like a black hole in space. The more energy you put their way, the more they need. It's never enough.

Yes I agree. It was dodgy wording because I mean "love him" in the sense of the way he wants to be loved by her. Which is, imo, not actually love, it's unequal and submission. And never ending. He'd say he was happy though.

I think there's a different interesting debate to be had about whether men who are emotionally abusive in this way can ever be truly happy (surely their behaviour comes from a place of deep unhappiness within themselves which no partner can "fix") but I don't want to derail the thread to be about the psychology of Extreme Dickheads!!!

@peridito
how does one square making ones own life happier if in doing so you are making others unhappy ?

I square it like this:

We each are responsible for our own lives and our own personal happiness, all of us (including those 'others').

It's our duty as a human being with a limited time on earth, to be the best person we can possibly be! Only then is it possible to be in the position to help others, especially our children. If we take responsibility for the happiness of another person, at a cost to ourselves, then we are also preventing that person from taking responsibility for themselves, which is a disservice.

Being a martyr, by minimising our importance in the world and putting others above us, is not living at your fullest potential!

If you don't take full responsibility for your own happiness, who would you make responsible for it? Because it works the other way round too. Implies that your own happiness will be sorted out by another person, not you.

I was in your position a few years ago

I left exh and married the lovely loving man who made me happy and feel cared for without any abuse

is it possible for me to pretend to love someone in a convincing enough way that means they're extremely happy and I don't mind that I don't love them?
You only have one life, this is it, every minute, day, year being in this limbo is wasting your precious life. & you are still unhappy.
He was unhappy with your marriage before the OM, when purportedly you were still trying your best to gain his love. Happy people aren't angry & throw insults do they ?
Even if you offer him your soul on a platter, why would it make him happier than before ?
IMO The only reason you are staying is because currently you are too afraid of maybe making the wrong decision, & his venom if you leave.

I was in a similar situation to yours. Have now moved on and have a wonderful partner. Even after leaving I don't think I realised how conditioned my behaviour had become.

DP popped over the other night to watch TV. I automatically handed him the controller which puzzled him. We were part way through a programme when he asked me if I was enjoying it. I said not really & he asked me why I hadn't said. It then hit me that I had never even been allowed to choose what to watch or have an opinion on it.

Being treated well is really opening up my eyes to how badly I was treated. I just didn't realise it & didn't think I deserved better. I am now with a man who makes me feel special by respecting me.

Your AP has opened your eyes to how you should be treated. You deserve better than you are getting.

What an amazing insights from all of you. This thread is like an amazing book of wisdom every woman should read.

An interesting thing that I found in most of the threads is something I think that have not been mentioned before. The fact the people like OPs husband are never happy, they are never satisfied, they always ask for more, more, better...you cannot make them happy, that is the thing. No matter what you do, no matter how happy you appear doing it they will be asking for more.

To the question of how you square being happy by making someone else unhappy.

My ex would have been happy, I think, if I had bent to his wishes in every aspect and fitted in the box called ‘dutiful’ wife. Only it was not that simple, because the box called ‘Dutiful Wife’ had expectations that shifted and were beyond me to meet, whilst also doing the job I was expected to do so I could contribute equally and bring up the children which I was expected to do way more of. And that made me ill. That is the first thing.

The second is that for me it came down to who do I want to make more unhappy - my children, who this situation affects as I become stressed, snappy and anxious or my husband, whose expectations I am going to fail to meet because I am being set up to fail.

I would always put my children’s happiness first, and while life has not been straightforward, they grow up in a house which is peaceful and without conflict, where they learn autonomy and are not, for example, being brought up to a quite rigid set of expectations including hugging when they don’t want to hug (which to me is a boundary violation).

But even if there were not children involved, then it would seem to me that we do have a basic right to freedom and autonomy, and that it is not our responsibility to make another adult happy. We cannot do that, it is a basic lesson we teach our children, is it not? That they should respect others and be kind but that they cannot keep everyone happy and should not feel bound to. Be gracious and polite and considerate, but sacrifice your emotional and physical well-being to someone else? You would not teach a child that, so why expect it of yourself?

Of course, thinking on it, we do sacrifice our emotional and physical well-being to children when they are babies and they don’t sleep at night and need constant care, but then we want to teach them to be autonomous adults who can function in society. Unless they have additional needs, and even then, we try to give them as much experience and self-sufficiency as possible. That is the only instance I can think of where you would sacrifice your emotion and physical well-being: for a child of yours who needed you.

I think that was garbled, sorry.

No ,not garbled ! Makes sense to me .

From my point of view is not so much that I struggle to make my partner happy but that I'm pretty sure that if I moved out to live independently it would cause a lot of distress and damage to him .And our son ,who although an adult still lives at home .

@peridito

I'm pretty sure that if I moved out to live independently it would cause a lot of distress and damage to him. And our son, who although an adult still lives at home.

Is it you moving out that would cause the distress and damage? Or the fact that neither has learned yet to stand on their own two feet? What would prompt them to do so (forgive me if it's complicated by disability)? Probably not you sacrificing the rest of your life to keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed.

Thank you @TheThermalStair

I agree this is a lovely thread, with so many posters engaging thoughtfully and kindly with the OP as she wrestles with the complexity of the issues/ options.

I’ve found it so helpful and I’m sure others have too.

Some further thoughts on the sacrifice question, because I think it depends what it involves.

If let’s say, the spark has gone but there is still trust, mutual respect, friendship, laughter and you get along well, then I think that might not be a sacrifice, but more of a recognition that love changes shape, and there is enough in common that it makes sense to continue rather than split From the perspective of being single, I think there could be a safety in a comfortable life with someone you know and trust and mutually respect but are not necessarily in love with anymore. However, this presumes a more mature kind of love, in a way, not no love. Not staying somewhere you don’t want to be because you fear you will hurt the other person. It also presumes enough space in the relationship to be fulfilled generally in other areas of your life, and to see your marriage as just part of yourself not this one great life-affirming relationship, but more of a practical arrangement with mutual respect.

However, if the sacrifice involves you basically servicing the needs of the other person, losing your own identity because your time and energy is taken up with their needs, or you are being emotionally manipulated, abused, and want to leave, except you are scared you will hurt them, then that is a different story.

My DS has some additional needs and I do worry about whether he will live independently. But making sure he is okay is not the same as being in a coercive controlling relationship or unhappy marriage, because I legally and socially function as an independent adult. So I guess what I am saying perdito is that there are two separate relationships which you can look at separately, even if they live in the same house right now. The relationship with your husband and the relationship with your son. And I also think that there are people who manage to separate amicably, and remain friends. I don’t know what the issues are, though.

helplesshopeless I wanted to also say that I am glad your therapist did not think you are over-reacting, and checked that you felt safe. I hope you don’t get put through the emotional wringer this weekend and that your husband respects your privacy with the therapy session.

Kary, in this first example, where its an arrangement, do you think Ops H would accept that ?
In the OPs case, She is going to have to prove her love contrition
Is H ever going to forgive & forget the OM ? it is his "go to" justification to prove he is the wronged person, he has convinced OP that hers is the worser crime.& not the a symptom of his abuse.
So now, if she throws up her arms & capitulates, she is going to have to prove again & again that she is devoted to him, not just resigned to staying because she might hurt his feelings, she will have to change her job, (she loves her job) she will have to allow him sex every single time he decides to demonstrate his power mark his terrain, (think every night) she will gave to ptove her devotion by having more children ( the more the better so she becomes utterly trapped) she is going to have to justify where she is going & who she has seen, No nights out with the girls, private phone calls only made on the way to work, (maybe a second phone at work) because he will check her phone history, & she cant change the log in because he will accuse her of secrecy..

So is the H going to wipe the slate clean.? Accept that both have to start again, accept OP has decided to stay not for love, at this stage, but for peace & on the hope she can rub along without making him angry.
But woops, we have just gone full circle

"Katy" sorry !

@Alcemeg*,@QuentinBunbury ,@TheThermalStair,@Cavagirl,@FantasticButtocks,*@KatySun

thank you so much for your thoughtful ,kind posts .Reading them has helped me sort things out in my mind .

My situation is not the same as lovely OP's - a phrase I heard in a Ted talk by Esther Perel resonates for me "people used to leave marriages because they were unhappy ,now they leave because they think they can be happier " .

I dont wish to hijack the thread and going back to the lovely OP I feel ,as others on here ,that compromise ,squaring the circle is not going to be possible .It seems that the OP would be leaving a truly unhappy marriage ,not trying to be happier but moving out of a very unhappy situation .

@peridito I've seen some of Esther Perel's talks. I think she places too much emphasis on desirability and "keeping the spark alive" etc. It's easy to "rekindle" that kind of thing, especially as physical attraction can be persuaded to thrive on conflict and polarity. To me, it's more important to have real emotional/intellectual intimacy and trust. I haven't seen her saying people "leave because they think they can be happier," but I wouldn't be surprised if she means they get distracted by fancying someone else when they could just as easily "rekindle that spark" at home?! 😁 Forgive me if I'm wrong!

With OP, her DH is saying it's tit-fer-tat: her affair is an offence equivalent to his usual former behaviour, and both are in the past. So if he is prepared to be magnanimous and set aside her affair, she should be happy to do the same, in the interests of going forward.

The problem with this bargain-striking is that it takes no account of the fact that our emotions cannot just be switched on and off at will. OP's heart just isn't in it, which is quite sensible taking account of their entire history together (and even if it wasn't sensible, is still an emotional fact).

Seeing that OP's heart isn't in it, instead of respecting her feelings he taunts her as a "zombie" or a "vegetable" ... and although she knows this could not be further from the truth, it hurts, and some of it sticks.

@Alcemeg

I kept waiting for the crunch to come, the moment that would definitely prove beyond all doubt that things had reached rock bottom

I think that's the step that I'm sat on at the moment...and possibly @helplesshopeless is too, unsure whether we should climb up, or down...