EA narrative backsliding?

[MontanaHana]

Does anyone have any experience of this or could they link to any information about it?

We are supposedly recovering though he still struggles to see it as an EA/EA territory. I think it was borderline, and unlike any other friendship I've seen him in: high levels of out if hours chatty/flirty messaging, it caused him to feel guilty and to lie and keep things from me, and he admits the lying/minimising was because he was worried that I "would think he was going along with her obviously fancying him". (For the record, no jealousy/OW drama in our relationship before this - all this hit me like a tonne of bricks when I cottoned on).

He agreed during therapy that the level of contact/nature of contact with her was "too much" and a "grey area", but more recently and since therapy has ended he seems to be saying that what was driving him was less about anything possibly EA-related and more about other circumstancial factors to do with acceptance.

I have pointed out that it is not necessarily one or the other, that from my perspective I believe the "other factors" are significant but that I see them as having led to EA behaviours with this woman. Despite his past admissions, then, about grey areas/"too much"/knowing I wouldn't like it but continuing anyway and hiding it, it feels to me like he is backtracking.

We have been doing well recently and I am a bit surprised to feel him trying to pedal back so much from any suggestion of emotional infidelity. If anything, I thought he would be more equipped now to handle conversing about this stuff with me. Part of my recovery was based on his acknowledgement of those aspects of what happened, even if we don't agree on the labels. But the gulf between our understandings seems to be widening again.

He has just confused me by suggesting that he felt pressured during therapy into saying some of those things (eg. being actively intrigued by and validating her apparently "not just friends" interest in him). I asked him to clarify what he means by this, as it is at odds with what I have been led to understand, but he is shutting down emotionally again just like in the beginning, saying he can't handle talking about it.

I don't know what to think. It's like the acknowledgement/ability to discuss things openly and "honestly" was only temporary or perhaps not so honest at all. Is it because he can't bear the guilt/being the bad guy or something? Does this make any sense? To be clear, I am not so worried about categorisation of EA or not, just concerned that again he seems to want to downplay the significance of the dodgier bits of his behaviour, to explain them away as something other than EA-like behaviours, despite what appeared like progress in the other direction during therapy.

I don't know what to think.

Don’t think. Feel.

There is too much twists and turns and “heady” stuff in this. You are trying to think your way through it but you don’t have all the facts (he does) and you don’t know what’s going on in his head.

BUT you do know how YOU feel.

Listen to that carefully because that is your answer. Maybe your gut is telling you much more than he is. Maybe your gut is telling you that his transgressions (whatever definition each of you gave it, and despite exploring and trying to forgive in therapy) that this isn’t acceptable to YOU.

Don’t try to work him out. Just concentrate on you. Then you will have your answer because currently there seems to be a huge gap between what your true gut feelings are telling you and your head is twisting these feelings in to thoughts and interpretations which are leaving you confused and distressed. Pay attention to your physical feelings.

This just sounds like too much hard work to me
I'd never trust him again so would be happier without him
The trouble with therapy and dissecting each and every sentence is that you risk exploring thoughts and opinions that just rely again on the English language
It's just words ... actions speak so much louder in my mind

@MontanaHana

Honestly, dress this up anyway you need to but 1) no relationship should be this much hard work 2) hes lying out of his arse. It was always an EA... he loved the attention and knew it was inappropriate. All the rubbish he spouted in therapy was what he thought he 'should' say. A liar on many levels.

Honestly, this sounds like a tiresome, boring work project rather than a happy fun relationship to me.

Agree this sounds like far too much compromise and annoyance. What's stopping you leaving and finding happiness without him?

Sounds like you're doing your utmost to gaslight yourself to forgive him.

No ammount of analysing is going to alter the facts, and the fact is you will never know the full truth.
Except you know he is a liar, who likes to distort your reality.

Whilst you are tying yourself in knots he will just be thinking next time I will outsmart her, so she can't find out.

Think about ending it rather than thinking about him.
You can't reform or change him.

@Sssloou is right, it is about how you feel.

He has made you feel like crap, like second best, like you would have a hard time being intimate with him again because you are worried she will be in his head.

He made you feel like this knowingly, he chatted another woman up and kept it from you.

It really is that simple, but incredibly hard to overcome those feelings of being betrayed.

[quote MontanaHana]@Thinkingoutsidethebox I think this is highly likely. Unfortunately, I'm not comfortable with this lack of authenticity. It denies what I've been put through and mocks my forgiveness. I just want an honest relationship.[/quote]
You need to find someone else, then. Face it. He's betrayed you. Now he is being inconsistent. You have expectations that he will not hurt you further and yet he is doing that right now. You keep saying he is surprising you with this backsliding, which means that he doesn't always do what you expect.

So much deliberation over his betrayal. You are so wrapped up in the deliberation that you have lost sight of the fact that you are trying to have an honest relationship with somebody who can lie to you and then minimise it.

You could have a life where you don't spend your time trying to work out precisely how bad your partner's behaviour is. You could be spending that time doing things you love, or laughing or learning or loving someone who treats you great.

Why are you wasting your time?

Don't let him gaslight you OP. He was flirting and that is pretty much inappropriate for someone in a relationship most of the time, most people wouldn't be happy with it. If it was repeated flirting with one person more than others, and was even reciprocal to some extent, then of course it was an EA.

He's now being obnoxious and annoying. Not easy to RTFT on phone and after a sip of cider, so sorry if I've missed anything, will catch up now. I hope to read that you've binned him- he's a twat, as well as his EA being hurtful and disrespectful.

He's backtracking on what he said sometimes, when he thinks he has you where he wants you and can get away with it. Then when he thinks he needs to he tries to charm you, claim he feels guilty, is a tortured soul etc. It's all arseholery and manipulation one way or another OP.

Thanks for all your replies. I'm just so tired. Last night he tried to say that her apparently fancying him was basically irrelevant. That the problem was what I might think about what he was doing, not what he was doing in itself. I counter that with "why all the lies/secrecy then?" and "you know I've never had form for worrying about OW/female friends". Then lots of crying from him about how I'm always going to think the worst and there is nothing he can do and he doesn't even know what is true and can't explain his contradictions.

Then, this morning after me saying I feel my reaction/feelings have been invalidated: "I think, on some level, I was probably going along with it" (no explanation on what 'it' was, or how he related to 'it', just "i don't know"s when asked for any specifics).

It's like we are back at day 1, after he has given the impression of progress/acknowledgement/taking responsibility. It clearly wasn't real. It also clearly wasn't a normal friendship because that wouldn't be this complicated.

The mad thing is I am prepared to forgive him if he would be ruthlessly honest. But he literally can't get over himself to allow that to happen.

You don't trust him.

The person who is invalidating you here the most is you. You have all these feelings about how uncomfortable you are that he won't be the man you want him to be, and he won't exhibit behaviours that you need him to, and how you don't like that he's changing his story, and how you feel you've taken 10 steps back... all those feelings are horrible, and all those feelings are caused by your choice to stay with him You can't live with these feelings forever, can you? And he lies and changes his story to suit himself, so he's not going to help you settle them.

If you choose to stay with a partner a) who you don't trust and b) who doesn't prioritise your feelings, you choose to continue feeling the way you do.

There's a difference between fault and responsibility. The way you are feeling is due to his faults, but the responsibility for you feeling better is yours. He wasn't born onto this planet to make you feel good. He can do what he likes (within the law). We all can.

Your job isn't to grit your teeth until a lying cheat becomes the man you want.

Your job is to design your life so that the people you spend most time with are people with whom you feel you can be yourself, and who love and respect you.

Stop wishing he would change. Change yourself.

@MontanaHana

The mad thing is I am prepared to forgive him if he would be ruthlessly honest. But he literally can't get over himself to allow that to happen.

You say he was honest at first, and things were getting better. If that had continued, would there ever have been a point when the whole thing would never have been brought up again and you'd have been comfortable and equal together, rather than him forever being the guilty husband and you forever being the forgiving wife?

You can't forgive him and that's ok.

You have to find acceptance to forgive and you are not at that point, he is trying to speed things along for his own benefit. He would like the relationship to be equal again as ravenmum says.

There are many stages to go through if you decide to stay together after an affair and at no point during that time are you not allowed to change your mind and say his effort is not enough.

He should be doing the work, not you.

@ravenmum i actually thought we were approaching that point. Until he let slip that he felt pressured to say things in therapy, which then led to him saying things about not knowing what the truth is, his head is scrambled, he can't remember/doesn't know etc. That has destabilised the "open/honest/taking responsibility" basis on which I thought we were recovering. It's like he has used the last couple of months of calm to dissociate from his bad behaviour, rather than to build upwards from it, to the extent of going back on things he has said previously and returning to a slippery handling of truth. I honestly don't know what truth means to him. I seem to be living in a post-truth relationship, where clarity and and certainty are inaccessible and he won't can't provide that. He keeps emphasising that he is not meaning to do this, as if it makes any difference.

We took to writing things down, to help him gather his thoughts. But, as I've noticed, his written statements are liable to change completely, particularly around the topic of her liking him/him knowing or not knowing that. These is also the topics he is least comfortable talking about and gets most stressed/sulky/defensive over.

The mad thing is I am prepared to forgive him if he would be ruthlessly honest. But he literally can't get over himself to allow that to happen

You have to consider why he is making the choice not to be truthful. The contradictions are a barrier to forgiveness and repair and he knows this.

@Mary1Mary he is adamant he is not choosing for any of this to happen. That he is just trying to be honest and that he is overwhelmed. It's completley disorienting.

Did he feel like you were approaching that point? It must have been hard mental work for him to spend so long embracing his guilt that enthusiastically. Maybe it was such hard work that as soon as it had the chance, his mind gave in to the much more relaxing habit of ironing out cognitive dissonance.

Memories of unethical actions become obfuscated over time
Unethical Amnesia: Why We Tend to Forget Our Own Bad Behavior
It did not mean anything (about me): Cognitive dissonance theory and the cognitive and affective consequences of romantic infidelity
USING COGNITIVE DISSONANCE THEORY TO INVESTIGATE THE THOUGHTS AND BEHAVIORS OF INDIVIDUALS WHO COMMIT ROMANTIC INFIDELITY
Cheating, thinking, and memory - Cheating affects your memory and beliefs about rules
These are only theories, though - this study didn't reproduce the findings on unethical amnesia

You’ve spent over £1k on therapy so you’ve been discussing this for, what, around 12 to 15 hours ? Plus time he spends writing up his thoughts. Plus any other work you do on the relationship outside therapy?

I sort of don’t blame him for being fed up. It sounds like torture if you are going over and over this EA. My DH would feel the same - he would be tied in knots in counselling because “I’m clever with words” and he would find it hard to articulate his thoughts and feelings. If he was given homework to write it all down, he’d hate that even more, especially if I came along pointing out errors and inconsistencies and picking it all to pieces.

You want brutal honesty, you say - but what you really want is a heartfelt confession admitting it was an affair, it was his fault, he was in the wrong, he knew it would upset you that’s why he was so secretive. He tried admitting that at the start to calm you down, but really I suspect he’s thinking, “I knew it would upset her, but only because she would have got the wrong end of the stick, and it wasn’t an EA it was just fun to make me feel good and never serious for me. It wasn’t really a proper affair because nothing physical happened, I was flattered but not really emotionally engaged, so she is really exaggerating how important this is.”

If you are going to remain hung up on a different interpretation of what happened, you may as well give up and split up now. You need to move the conversation on, to describe and agree what behaviour you expect from each other in future, and to find a way to forgive him even if he hasn’t fully accepted your interpretation of events.

I don’t think you will find any peace or progress if you continue to harangue him about the nature of the EA.

From his point of view, if you really are back to square one, then the strategy of admitting and apologising didn't work, so there's no incentive for him to start doing it again now. (He might not be consciously thinking that, but just baulking at the idea of having to do it again.)

Could you also come to terms with the idea that we have no control over what our partner is thinking or doing, and that they simply might have an affair?

Three options occur to me:
He may feel guilty/embarrassed and wants to minimise it.
He may be self justifying because he wants to do it again.
He isn't in the same place as you regarding reflecting and analysing and given you've agreed to stay together, thinks that should be an end to the matter.
Imo the reflections and the acknowledgements, and the words and the theories, and the analysis are complicating things, when its behaviour that matters. You need to be clear about what you will and won't tolerate from him going forward and the consequences, and he either will or won't comply. Anything else is probably not going to achieve a great deal.

@ravenmum - it did seem to be working though, we have barely spoken about it for the past 2 months and both been acknowledging that things were improving, making future plans etc. It came up calmly every now and then, but no long talks or arguments.

Then I said the other night about feeling we have come really far but that I do feel distance between our overall interpretations and that I wish we had a more integrated/agreed upon narrative (he had been emphasising the social acceptance thing more and more, I'm more interested in the "grey area" stuff, which, despite labelling, he has never really delved into as much as the social side of things. When he has touched upon it his language has been slippery and jargon-filled. And his social acceptance narrative now seems to have come to completely dominate his interpretation of events. Despite gestures in the other direction previously (which I found important as acknowledgements) he now denies ever consciously dabbling in a grey area with her (despite consciously lying to me/minimising/omitting!) Hence back to square 1. This is exactly how we first started arguing: him - 'it's just friends', me: 'then why the dodgy behaviour'. He has gone completely full circle and then went further by trying to rewrite what he has said previously, suggesting that what he has said in therapy might not be 100% accurate.

I think he just wants me to live in fantasyland with him.

[quote MontanaHana]@Mary1Mary he is adamant he is not choosing for any of this to happen. That he is just trying to be honest and that he is overwhelmed. It's completley disorienting.[/quote]
If someone is so overwhelmed that they are confusing the hell out of their partner, the responsible choice to make, if they care about their partner's feelings at all, is to separate.

That's the choice he would be making here, if he cared about you. Currently he is choosing to drag you into his confusion, instead of taking some time out to pull himself together, and come back to you as a healthy partner.

He is choosing to stay in your life and be bad for you. Don't labour under the misapprehension that he's 'doing his best for you'. He has options. He is choosing to drag you through hell.