Emotional Affair fallout

[Wavesofrage]

Hi

I have several things I need to work through but the most important for me right now is how to deal with the level of rage I am experiencing.
We are 35 years married, were still very close but DH has managed to run a relationship for two years which progressed to an Emotional Affair.

I called time early December, there was lots of denial but gradually over the following weeks I learnt about the level of intensity they shared. The extreme being after she left their shared work place in September 23 then decided to go back there were many excited texts. Her husband to be stopped speaking to her but mine was ringing and texting his support. They kept saying they missed each other and he said she wasn't allowed to leave him again. Meanwhile that morning I'd told him I was feeling rough and suspected COVID. Guess how many messages I got?

She then got married in October and in November DH was one of the first to find out she is pregnant.

He acknowledges the above took place and now feels ashamed but says at the time he felt he was supporting a friend. Please can someone explain this level of disconnect?

And the level of my anger is visceral. One part of the day we are talking things through and rebuilding. Another I'm wailing and another I want to rip him to pieces. He has ruined everything.

On top of which I now can't express my f outrage because I'm also struggling to support my DH before he throws himself in the river and after being gaslit for the last 12months.

How long do the waves last? I feel I need to lock myself away to stop me hurting anyone. Even the dog is keeping his distance. It's horrible.

Apologies if it is disjointed I'm all over the place at the moment.

Why don't the rest of you try to educate yourselves instead making random comments.

Educate ourselves about what?

Because honestly that's got to be up there with one of the most creative excuses I've ever seen for an affair/inappropriate friendship, and I've been here a long time.

What's more is, you can't disprove it. He says it's true, you had have to believe him. Normally a rare and serious diagnosis like that requires a psychiatrist. It just seems a bit odd that after so many years together, you're only learning about this aspect of him now. After he's been caught out and has very deftly manoeuvred you into supporting him - after he at worst has cheated, at best has had an inappropriate friendship with another woman.

Out of interest OP - why did you think this was an emotional affair rather than a case of 2 people's friendship being far too intense for your liking- was he hiding all this communication or arranging coffee meet ups behind your back etc? In my case the stupid sod was busy writing songs about the other person and deleting texts and popping round all the time- and sharing lots of meals out when away on business (which I knew about- but clearly would have felt far less ok about if I had known he was busy writing songs about her ) so it was a bit more clear cut. I will never know if it was a both ways thing- but it was definitely either an affair of 'some kind' or a one sided obsessive crush on his part- (this is what he says by the way)!your situation seems a little less clear- it may just be that if he's a guy who struggles a bit with friendship he got totally carried away with this flirty younger woman blowing smoke up his arse- and him enjoying that- I totally understand your irritation though by the way-

Aphantasia is when your brain doesn’t form or use mental images as part of your thinking or imagination. Experts don’t define aphantasia as a medical condition, disorder or disability. Instead, it’s a characteristic, much like which hand you naturally use to write. Available research indicates it’s simply a difference in how your mind works. There is no definitive way to diagnose it as it isn't a disorder but characteristic. Personally I would be very wary and skeptical of anyone giving me this as an excuse for his behavior. I can't imagine any licensed professional buying into this or selling it to you. For what it is worth I specialize in health and human sexuality specifically couples counseling.

Lots of deceit and lying, arranged to meet during work time but outside of the workplace. Phone calls were mostly his, texts started most days by her. He did say she reminded him of me 30 years ago. Sorry you're having to deal with it, how do you feel about your partner now?

Do you know what he's dealing with today? The thought that when me and his daughter die he is going to be left with the same empty feeling he had when his Dad did. The memory emotion for him lasted about 3 days. He's often referred to himself as Marvin the robot.

How many people have passed through this board? Why can one of them not discover this is part of the problem when it's 3% of the population that are affected?

For every 50 couples 3 will have Aphantasia involved.

Thank you.
As you say there is very little published, I will contact Exeter tomorrow. My main problem at the moment is academically it is seen as a different way of working (computer without the screen) but Reddit is people talking about how it affects their lives and decision making. The empty feeling. It's huge and profound.

DH has always said he can't visualise but we didn't realise poor memory and lack of emotion was part of the same thing. Luckily we had already made an appt with a GP to discuss ADHD (our guess) so when our DD mentioned it after listening to our conversations and having lived with someone with it at Uni it was the first thing we mentioned to the GP.

I understand op that right now you're feeling a lot of sympathy for him, and in a lot of respects it's good that he's been able to learn this about himself and understand that it's maybe been a contributing factor to what's happened. But, I'd just urge you to tread cautiously. Aphantasia alone doesn't make someone unfaithful or deceitful to their spouse. This might be a contributing factor in his decision making, but the final decision to stop investing in your relationship and invest in her was his decision that he choose to make and its now his responsibility to take accountability (not make excuses but full and proper accountability) for his poor decisions aphantasia aside and to work hard to recommit to you and help reassure you that he is fully recommitted.

When someone is working out the reasons why they've screwed up their marriage, it's often hard to stomach, affects their mental health and is a difficult pill to swallow all round because it means looking at the ugly side to yourself that noone wants to look at. It's your dhs job to work his way through that with professional support, it's not fair for him to lean heavily on you at this moment as you need to be able to recover from the hurt and betrayal you've felt. Naturally you love and care for him and are highly empathetic for what he's now experiencing but it's not for you to fix this for him or help him through it. This is still his mess and his responsibility to take the necessary actions to clean it up. You deserve that from him. I found it very hard standing by and watching dh go into a very low spiral of shame and self hated after his EA, it was hard for him to recognise that he was depressed and had been for some time which was a contributing factor. But it was not my job to go in and rescue him out of that. He needed to feel the consequences to his actions and op, if you go in and make this too easy for him you're essentially rug sweeping and my worry would be that you'll fall into old patterns where you make yourself responsible for his behaviour while he absolves himself of his responsibility by making the aphantasia the reason this happened which is an excuse unfortunately. So by all means have empathy, but make sure he's still doing the work and don't be tempted to make this a free pass because you're recognising that he's in a hard spot mentally. He needs to go for counselling to manage the worries and feelings he's having properly so they don't impact on you. That's owning your shit and he needs to learn that that is an essential part of a healthy relationship. I think other posters are just worried because God knows I know how it feels to want a reason why, and to want there to be a good excuse why. But the sad reality is that there just isn't... but working through that is essential to moving forwards fully and properly. Look after yourself op.

I wish you and your family the best. All I would say is to be careful. It seems as though this doesn't badly impact every part of his life?

He’s been able to plan enough to fulfill daily functions, sort out housing, have a successful career. He was emotional enough to choose to date you, have an emotional connection with you and get married, have children and so on.

He seems capable of now having an emotional, regular, connection with another woman, planning to meet her and think about how he enjoys her company. And as always, this issue has arisen with an attractive, 30 years younger woman, not a burly colleague named Dave.

I’m not trying to sound unkind at all, but would gently say that your description of aphantasia and how it’s impacted your DH sounds like a story he’s telling you and you are now telling yourself to avoid the hurt, root cause and consequences of what he’s been doing. It seems like there’s a large amount of imagination involved here. That’s not to say that what’s happened is irredeemable, but I’m not sure that using this reason entirely will be the way through.

I’d be worried about my DH if he suddenly developed such an intense relationship with anyone!

OP I’d feel exactly the same. Ignore the cool crew.

But if he genuinely doesn’t understand actions and consequences, lives in the moment, lacks empathy, no view of the future or past etc…. then how has it only just become relevant? He’d have been doing things like this, probably full on affairs, regularly over 35 years as he wouldn’t have a conscience there saying “no”. Doesn’t make a lot of sense…

My DH has severe ADHD including memory issues and life can be very disjointed with him. He would never use his ADHD as an excuse to hurt me. I would never accept that as a reason for betraying our marriage vows and neither would he. If he does something that upsets me he stops and that is the issue here. Your DH knew it hurt you and didn't stop. It is hard to comprehend that your DH was so distraught but then turns and says he doesn't have emotions as his excuse. He was invested in this other woman and missing her so much for months after she was gone. He can't claim he doesn't experience long-term emotions yet be emotionally invested months later. It doesn't add up as it can't be both.

Often people who do wrong will reach and search for a reason instead of just admitting they made a poor choice and didn't care what the consequences would be. Please don't let this be an excuse all for his behavior that has left you emotionally wounded. It is very easy to cling to something you don't understand that explains it all away rather than accept the pain and realization that they were just thoughtless and horrible to you because they made the choice to do so. You deserve more and are worth more than that.

Hope you’re ok OP. The main takeaway for you, this being the case, is how to move forward and how both of you navigate his friendships into the future. Some things are unacceptable regardless of someone’s condition, it is up to them to get help and educate themselves, so more specialist advice than you could ever get here on how to deal with this would be the most beneficial. He needs to learn how to recognise what you find hurtful and not acceptable and stick to those parameters. I wish you all the best for the future.

@Wavesofrage I was in an unusual position I found out 10 years after it all happened - at the time I would like to have scratched his eyes out with a rusty nail- I was absolutely enraged - 7 years later we are still married- we get along well but I've NEver felt the same on a romantic level - he was devastated I found all the stuff he had written and recorded- and extremely upset that he had caused me such hurt- his only reasoning was that he didn't think he was thinking straight at the time, his mum was terminally ill and very unwell indeed and our business had issues- he said it was a pleasant fun distraction and the young woman had no idea just thought it was a close friendship where it was normal to text him 7 or 8 times a day ! I do think your H sounds like he has a bit of a personality disorder- I don't think it excuses his behaviour though and it sounds very much like a co dependency from 2 rather disfunctional adults - problem is OP , although there may well be reasons you may find like I did that you struggle to feel the same or trust 100%

Kindly op, if he is unable to live beyond the present or unable to visualise consequences, why did he hide this from you? Unless I’m wrong, you had no idea of the level of communication that was going on? If he’d had no thought that it would hurt you, you’d have seen it, he wouldn’t have had any reason to hide it, because he couldn’t have thought there would be any consequences?

Well that didn’t turn out as expected! Seems OP’s DH is now the victim and that’s the official line taken by both parties. What an original ending.

I have adhd. I've never cheated on my husband.

He's taking you for a fool.

Sorry OP but your husband is full of shit.

You’re one of the most understanding posters I’ve ever come across. And I’m really sorry, but your husband has pulled such a number on you.

He had a deeply inappropriate emotional affair with a colleague because… aphantasia. And the OP is absolutely lapping it up. It’s absolutely bloody tragic.

Apologies if I’ve missed something. I’ve tried to read all OP’s posts but sometimes wasn’t quite sure what it was in response to.

Firstly, OP, I think you are right, it does sound like an emotional affair or at least some kind of emotional neglect of you eg: the response ( lack of) regarding your Covid messsge.

I can understand your feelings of emptiness and anger , and even, I suspect, plain jealousy.

Beyond that I’m a bit lost. I know you said to educate ourselves but I thought aphantasia was just an inability to form mental images along visual lines. I don’t understand how that means he couldn’t grasp consequences of his actions etc ( though Im guessing it might be something of a comfort if there were sexual feelings involved as I guess it would rather put the brakes on a lot of more lurid fantasising).

I don’t want to discourage you from being understanding of him, and in fact it is in ways a credit to you; but just remember that you are a person in this too, and him having these issues has essentially meant knock-on issues for you too. I hope you have your own support and think you should seek it, as I worry your needs are being steamrolled by some rather complicated issues your DH is generating.

Not quite sure how this lines up with OPs nonsense explanation

I hope it’s not that he simply didn’t recognise who was who!

More seriously, while I don’t see a direct link to justifying an emotional affair, I suppose all these things would significantly alter the way one navigated the world, and OP isn’t wrong to be sensitive to that. I just think she needs to not underestimate the impact on her - whether it is or isn’t the root cause of his behaviour. Presumably a relationship with someone with a very different way of processing is a strain in itself. Be kind to yourself OP and try to make a clear list of what you feel would help you move forward so that he knows what to aim for in his behaviour: his cognitive state is as much his responsibility to work around as yours and I think that’s what it comes down to.

I’m just trying to think quite hard about it and what I would say is I have often heard that most of us operate to a larger degree than we realise in a fantasy world. Not to say complete detachment from reality; but most have a world or a thought to retreat to, which might look like an entirely different house they live in, or a holiday they’d love, or something they just call a hope and I guess most people are able to access that in the sense of mental visualisation. I suppose what he might be saying is that if he can’t do that efficiently, perhaps he finds he acts things out so he can experience them in the moment, given he can’t access them easily as hypotheticals.

Perhaps a part-answer OP might lie in trying to carry out some projects etc together IRL so he has something tangible to feed that dream or pleasure centre of the brain. I know adhd can also have links to differences in that part of the brain. But it sounds like he maybe needs actual distraction where some of us can escape more easily in our thoughts.

Erm, really? I’m still wondering how this “poor man” got to see a psychiatrist in the blink of an eye and be diagnosed on the spot. Maybe the NHS is better than any of us dreamed?

I wonder if there are any other health issues that allow one to have guilt free emotional (or physical?) affairs that one’s partner will forgive on the spot? Asking for a friend 😉