Counting, Whenwill, Happy, AF and all of you?

[gonnabehappy]

I am spending a lot of time online at the moment. It is this weekend, the second anniversary of me finding out and just over a year that husband returned home.

The advice, especially that given to Cat, is fantastic. I have read and reread your posts.

What I am fighting with is this; I still don't really know from him why he had an affair. The most I get from him is an "I don't know".

It is an uphill battle here (mainly in me!). You may recall he only returned home when OW rejected him; he choose her. He also lied about lots for months.

Should I say to him; 'why?'. Have I left it too late. I feel like I need to know. I know some stuff, he found me unattractive, sex with her was fantastic, he hated(s) our life. You know, the financial grind and hard work boys. We have little in common other than the boys now. Over the last couple of years our relationship has turned into what he told the OW it was. We are usually friends and rarely lovers. Before OW I adored him. I still love him...I think.

Counselling - tried and have not found that right counselor and money is a real problem.

Please help if you can. He has this next week off work and I am on tenterhooks.

Thank you. He says he wants to try and make me happy and has asked me to be more responsive. Seems fair.

What does "more responsive" mean? Is it "I wish you would hurry up and have sex with me again"? And what is he going to do?

Gonna - yes what does more responsive mean.

I know that i was not very responsive for a while - in that i was 'scared' to be happy again.
During a session my h said he did not like it when i took myself up to my room to think and write.
It made him feel bad and guilty that he had caused me pain and was not happy.
The counsellor told him to get over himself and no think EVERYTHING was to do with him.
For me that was the best thing she could have said. I didnt have to feel any guilt if i wanted to go and have a 'wallow' in self pity and write my thoughts - it did not mean it was HIS fault it was just the way i needed to process my own grief.

Please dont allow him to pass anything back to you - if he says you need to do something - tell you sorry but right now i cannot be more responsive and give him the choice to leave (not in such a blunt way).

Accept for now that you cant be more responsive and he should also accept this.

Stop pretending to be someone/something you are not. Accept that you have changed and if he cant handle that well he is not 'the one' is he??

I feel that what he is doing is saying and making you believe that he is doing everything and yet it is still not enough. Poor him - he is trying and yet you want more...... He is then voicing this and you are again taking the blame - thinking it is something lacking in you that you cannot be more responsive.

I wonder whether you are both dancing around asking each other for 'something'?

Be as specific as you can - wanting to feel loved is not really specific is it?

Ask him to be more specific too - more responsive - does that mean greet him with a kiss and a hug? or as whenwill thinks more sex?

Dont be afraid to actually ask for what you want - he can either do it or not.

I still think it would be a good idea for you to have some counselling together where you can both open up and talk and listen to each other - think about how important this is to both of you now and find a way to do it. Failing that make some time when you can both sit and talk - make a timetable if you think it will help.

Good luck - hope the weekend is a happy one for you. But dont be afraid to say it is not - love is about sharing the good and the bad times.

More responsive in that I hug him have sex with him and talk about my day when he asks.

I know if I ask for specific things reassurance, to do some washing, counselling he will say yes then nothing will happen. Each time a little bit more dies.

AF maybe I am getting there. So sad.

But you said that you thought his requests were fair. Do you think that?

And you're saying that he does nothing you request of him?

I'm struggling to work out what you really think and what you're going to do about it.

His requests are fair. We have always been a very cuddly couple and he is very tactile - I guess that is his and my love language; what was that book?! He has good intentions and does try to honour requests. He just doe not see washing etc and I get so fed up of asking. This is not unusual surely? The counselling is something else entirely. The reassurance - well perhaps if I reciprocated more he would find that easier? He has pointed out with absolute truth that I rarely say I love him now.

gonna - each time a little more dies .

Maybe you dont say you love him because at this moment you dont????

I can honestly say that if i have specific requests that my h knew were important to me he would damm well make sure he did them. Its called respect for each other.

I think what you see as 'normal' are the little moans and the knowing each other so well.

ie - my h is useless at DIY (yet he still thinks he can do it ) so i let him attempt it - he then fails, gets cross, does a bit of shouting or throwing of stuff - I on the other hand have already arranged for someone to come and do it.

I am good at cooking - he is not
I am good at doing the washing - he is not
He is good at loading the dishwasher - i am not
I am good at budgeting our money - he is good at finding things to spend it on.

I suppose we are BOTH comfortable with the level we have achieved between us - we can talk about it without seeing faults.

I think if he said he would do something and then didnt i would be furious - either dont say yes or just do it - simple as.

Gonna - please dont waste your emotional energy on trying to get him to change - he just seem capable at the moment - help yourself now.

Take care - and big hugs to you.

Does he not understand that you were always a cuddly couple because you thought you were in a faithful marriage??
Of course he doesnt understand.

Things will NEVER be the same as they were before - I think you both need to scrap your previous ideas of what your marriage was and set yourself some new 'rules' - it will take time but this is the chance you now have.

In the past my h used to work long hours and often away during the week - this was fine whilst i thought he was faithful.
Now however i just cannot accept that - i no longer want a husband i dont see during the week - i want him to come home at nights and share his day with me.
Somehow we have forged a new life where this is possible (but i really did not think it would be possible tbh).

You have changed - that is ok - either he accepts that and still wants you or he doesnt - there is no choice i am afraid.

Sorry to be so harsh but hindsight is a wonderful thing - i know the moment my h changed it was a few days after i had instucted a solicitor (at great expense i might add).
The moment i truly believed i could do it alone was the moment he started his begging. I was in control then and slowly over time i grew to trust and want him back in my life. (i think i always loved him - i just didnt like him for a while iyswim - in fact i would go as far as to say there were parts of him i hated - and it was those parts i needed to know were gone from him too).

Oh come on Gonna. Doesn't see washing? That's the oldest. most sexist excuse in the book. Yes he sees washing, but reckons you will do it. Which you will. He knows everything with you will go away because you never follow through with your pronouncements.

He doesn't think you've got the courage to leave him and he's probably right. What incentive is there for him to change? He's also always known that he could resist counselling, resist doing anything much really, because you will still be there.

The only thing that bothers him is that normal service has been reduced somewhat and he isn't being told how lovely he is and he's not having sex as often as he'd like. A man like that will carry on for a while and then justify having yet another affair because his wife doesn't love and him and won't have sex with him.

You want this life?

We talked and talked last night. At least I cried and he listened. He said that basically he had to change how he has been for twenty years. He did not sound hapy about it. I tried to keep it to small specific things but it all became about everything again. He said he did not sleep last night bi asked him what he was thinking about. He saud it was because I was snoring. I told him I had dreamed that he was seeing her again but lying to protect me. He said that must have been horrid and did I dream this often. I replied I deamt a lot at the moment. He went to play football. I am in bed with tea looking at the mess that is my house. So tired.

Having read this whole thread, I actually wonder whether your feelings have anything to do with the affair at all.

It sounds to me as if the affair has shifted your perception. So now you see everything in a different light. The minor irritations which you tended to gloss over (ignoring things that needed doing) have become full blown annoying resentments. Another poster on a different thread said that love was about give and take - I make the sandwiches in the morning cos he's hopeless then but he tidies in the evening cos that's when I'm useless type stuff. I wonder if your perception before was along those lines but now you are recognising that actually it's all give on your part.

There are many relationships where one person is the one who largely takes responsibility and the other largely blames (I know as I was in one). It's not always easy to recognise especially if the 'blamer' is very good at manipulation, which, in my experience, they can be. I thought that if I could just explain things in a way that he could hear, things would get better. And I turned myself inside out trying to find that way. Talking, writing it down, joking about it. I got one wake-up call when my 5-year-old understood something in one explanation that his dad had failed to 'get' in 10.

It took me a very long time to recognise that things were not changing. We spent over 18 months with Relate which knocked my self-esteem even further as it focussed on what we could both do, i.e. made me feel even more responsible. I followed that with 6 months of individual counselling which was maddening but did help me get in touch with how angry I felt about the situation (crap counsellor but hey). Now ex is also having individual counselling but, as far as I can tell, this is just making him better at blaming others while appearing to take responsibility himself.

One of the major turning points for me was when, in an arguement my H said 'well what is it you want, what's so wrong with our relationship, how would it be if it was how you wanted it?' And I told him, exactly, and calmly. I also asked him how he saw our relationship if it was working well. He did, finally, get what I was talking about. And nothing changed. I do think the relate idea of marriage 'A partnership of two equal adults' is quite a good starting point. By the end of my relationship I realised that there was little partnership, it wasn't equal and one of us wasn't really an adult a lot of the time.

It doesn't make it easy by any stretch. My parents separated when I was young which I found extremely traumatic so I had an added reason for trying to make my marriage work. But we separated in the summer. I won't say it's been easy, though the first few months I did feel as if a huge weight had been lifted. I struggled over Christmas and found life extremely challenging at times with 3DCs who are also upset. But, all 3 have told me that I have been better since we separated (which was a real shock to me as I thought I'd been worse). It just goes to show that children pick up all sorts of stuff.

Now I am beginning to find some balance. I have good days, mostly, with occasional bad days. I am beginning to discover how much of me has been suppressed in the 'us' that is now over. I am looking forward to rediscovering other aspects of myself that have got a little lost over the years.

Sorry for the long post!

Thank you for your post. Lots of things you have said ring bells. I do feel that I could only communicate better ie no blaming crying etc etc then he would understand and everything would fall into place. A magic wand would wave. I would trust and he would love.

Difference is he blames himself not me, now anyway.

I felt absolutely the same way - that if I could only express it in a way he could hear he would respond. But the reality is that he does hear he just chooses to ignore. It took me a long, long time to really get that. I think that it is because it simply wouldn't occur to me to behave like that. If I love someone, then I act in a way to support that relationship. I believe that a relationship should be mutually supportive and supporting. I found it hard to express what was missing in the relationship as he'd ask for specifics so he'd focus on the physical things I'd complained about and then be irritated because I wasn't ecstatic cos he'd done the washing-up once.

The thing about blame is a really complex one and I seriously question whether he truly blames himself. Mine did a great line in how awful he's been and how bad he feels about it all, would get really upset and even cry. But, eventually I started to notice that every conversation we had about how I was feeling turned into one about him, how awful it all was for him. But the reality was that underneath all this behaviour, in his head I was the reason why everything was awful. Again, a big split between what he said and how he acted. Someone who feels responsible acts that way, they are contrite, apologetic (really, not acting) and they try to right the wrong they have caused.

The thing that helped me start to see through what was happening was to watch my own emotions and trust them. Over time, and with plenty of practice, I started to be able to observe more of what was happening between us without getting so caught up in it. I noticed that when he got upset I felt angry rather than sad for him. His upset was not genuine. If I was upset, he would pick a fight. If I didn't react, he would work on me until I did (he's known me a long time so not too difficult). When that didn't work he tried to intimidate me physically. Throughout all of this, he absolutely maintained that he wanted to be with me. Had he told me at any point that he didn't want to, I would have let him go with my blessing.

I can only interpret these as the actions of someone who wanted out but didn't want to be blamed for it. In fact, looking back from where I am now, I can see that he consistently resisted taking any real responsibility for his actions.

I'm also going to repeat what HappyWoman said: "I feel that what he is doing is saying and making you believe that he is doing everything and yet it is still not enough. Poor him - he is trying and yet you want more...... He is then voicing this and you are again taking the blame - thinking it is something lacking in you that you cannot be more responsive." This is exactly what I mean by blaming you.

I think what you really want from him is the sense that he is treating you with love and respect but if you say that to him he will ask you for examples that he can tick off to show he's the 'good guy'. We all know what that feels like but it is surprisingly difficult to put into words when you are being manipulated into being the bad guy.

just caught up with this thread

am still with you here, GBH

I don't have anything to add to the wonderful insights you are getting on this thread x

listen, listen, listen...but mostly listen to yourself. I think you have been stifling your feelings for a very long time, and don't trust yourself any more.

you are worthy of your feelings

gonna - loads of good insight here.

I am going to echo that i too think he is wanting you take the blame 'make it all better'. He has you believing he is doing everything and yet you still feel it is because you are not communicating it well enough .
It is a hard thing for anyone to grasp - and as he has by his own previous actions already proved he is not emotionally intune with himself it is harder for him.

I am stunned that you said 'he has gone to play football - and i am left here looking at the mess my house is'.

How about this instead?- despite the house being a mess he chose to still go and play football - he actually knows how GBH feels about the mess too' - Explain - or get him to explain what is going on in his head.
I guess he will say 'I have worked hard all week and it really is my only outlet now..... blah blah blah - poor me I need some time for myself .......' oh and you dont really mind me doing that do you GBH????' You then reply exhausted 'of course not honey..... good old GBH will clear up the mess'. If you do actually say - NO I dont want you to go out until the house is sorted and clear of mess - he will again fall into the 'victim' mode and make you feel bad for not being the 'perfect wife' and you will again start to believe you are not a good wife - after all he went off didnt he???

Gonna - it is easy for us on the outside to see the faults and many of us have been in a similar position to you.

I think he is pushing you to end it but making you believe he does not want that at all.

I also think the 'perception' of your marriage is spot on. Everything you once thought no longer applies.
Also think very carefully about whether this about the affair anymore too.
He is not the husband you now want or deserve and it is not your failing - you just need to find your voice to tell him.
If he dose start to 'blame' you - which i think he may well do - i think you will have your answer as to wether he is a blamer or not.

stay strong gonna - all here for you, keep talking and you will find what it is you need to do.

how are you today?

Do something for you today - its great that the sun is shining.

Something I don't understand. This morning in a text he let me know that cricket was on this week and he would not be playing. He then pointed out that next weekend there would be football and cricket b(the overlap between the end of one season and the start of the next). He said he would have to choose which one to play. Why do I feel guilty that he is not doing both?

Well I wouldn't feel guilty Gonna, but you do know why you do, don't you? He knows what buttons to press so that you will go on a guilt trip - "Look GBH, I'm being such a self-sacrificing H that I'm only going to go to one activity next week, aren't I a good boy?"

What do you do Gonna - do you take the opportunity to see friends, go on girlie weekends away, play sport? Does he feel that if and when you do, it's his responsibility to clean up the house for when you get home?

Or do you run around cleaning, tidying, freezing meals, ironing shirts before you do these things? And return to a tip?

Or have you stopped having an outside fun life altogether?

I always remember one of your first posts, when you complained that he had reneged on a promise to "take you out for the evening". I wondered then why you didn't take yourself out, but apart from the awful friend who snogged your DH, I never read about you meeting friends, engaging in hobbies and having fun.

because he has 'trained' you to feel guilty.
Sorry i know that sounds harsh but that really is how it feels.

Poor him again - he will have to choose - well unless gonna gives him permission to do both.

I was once like you - making sacrifices so that h could have the life he wanted.

I was thinking about you today - and can remember when i still wanted/needed to talk about it and it would make h feel sad and guilty and so i would hold back a bit.
Then one day i remember having a 'down' day and wanting to off-load a bit. H looked at me all hurt and said (again) how sorry he was how much pain he was in and that he would make it up to me....... he knew it was all his fault.
Well that day i just stood up and said - actually i dont care about how you are feeling - this is about how I am feeling and i am feeling sad and low and need to rant and rave. It is not always about punishing you.
Just because i needed to talk why should i have to worry about whether it upsets him.
I think that shook him a bit and he could then see that not everything was about always about HIM.

Gonna for goodness sake dont feel any guilt about him. He is acting like a child and wants you to mother him.

The other thought i had was that you are angry with yourself - i expect like a lot of us you did not want to turn into a bitter twisted wife - and you probably feel that is the route you are taking - now this is a kick up the backside for you and only you can change that.

Keep talking gonna - i think you will be learning a lot of things about h that you never thought you would and once you realise that what he has done and maybe is even still doing is a form of abuse you may find the strength to change.

The whole going to counselling - well not going to counselling is probably because he is afraid you will suss him out too. I think he knows he has a lot of demons to face and just doesnt want to as he has pretty much the life he wants (well he can always get you to change to suit his needs).

You are so right but also so wrong. He said nothing to make me feel bad it is me. He walked the dog with me tonight. He is trying. I think the block is n me. Of course it is reasonable to do sport. I am not sporty. I loved the gym but could not afford time and money. The dog was my choice and that walK is my exercise and time out! He is not making me feel bad I feel bad. Weight has gone up with attempt to stop smoking. Thnk I will try and sort that first. I would feel do much better.

Hmm that did not come out quite right. HW yes I do want him to be happy. Will i do have little outside fun but I am not very good at making friends etc. I have been and prob will be happy with my family.

This sounds wishy washy but actually does make sense. I have supported (colluded?) this relationship. Now, as pointed out, I see it through different eyes. Took both of us to live like thus tho.

Counting? I don't know if you are watching this thread go round in circles? I just wanted to add a comment to you. Why do these bloody men choose Easter? Don't they realise we have both the bank holiday and the date to think about! I noticed you are going away... Is that to change connatations of the date? If so I really really hope you have a lovely time.

No Gonna, I am lurking. Had a bit of a meltdown last weekend, I think I bottle it up and then explode when really I should just let it all out. DH gets quite cross about it, as he says if I told him I am feeling bad about the affair then he can deal with it but I end up exploding about something completely left field when really I have been obsessing about the affair.

I am struggling atm and he knows it, so he is tryng really hard hence the weekend away again. We haven't really got the money atm but we figure our marriage is important enough. I've been obsessing quite badly abou the OW but it is a terrible time of year, he left me on 3 April last year to stay with "mates" and get his "space" which coincided with the beginning of the Easter holidays (DS2 actually said well at least this holiday is better than last year ) and I realised what he was actually up to on the Mayday bank holiday, actually dawned on me when I was at a nature reserve with the boys so I have said I think it would be good if we went back there together as a family this year to replace the awful memory and for me to confront it and "put it to bed" IYSWIM.

We are making a conscious effort to get out and go away more, so that the kids aren't the main focus to "us" anymore. I need to do more stuff on my own but am finding it difficult to know what to do. Thinking back to what I loved as a child/teenager, it was horseriding, history and cooking so after the Easter hols I am going to start on those things for me alone.

We still have the everyday stresses still - 4DSs with their issues (DS1 with Aspergers and the moods etc that go with that, DS3 also ASD and completely food phobic (saw nutritionist yesterday for what good that will do as he needs a pschologist (sp?)) and DS4 has bowel problems !!! Can you see how the kids took over !!!! And the business (where do I start with that).

DH & I am both aware now how these things take over and how we need to stand back and do "fun" things now as it is easy to get swallowed up by everything.

Thank you for sharing that Counting. I think you are very strong (although I am quite sure you do not feel it sometimes!). I am struggling with the notion of 'fun'. Fun for me...what is it? As for fun for us as a couple - the closest seems to be last night when we were laughing together at the television programme that put a family back into the seventies! We remember so many of the things on the programme!

Fun - my word to muse on for the day I think.