Part Two: Counseling with H (WS) - one week at a time

[merrmeade]

Part Two: Counseling with H (WS) - one week at a time.

 

This is my third attempt to keep to the point. Okay, Here is what I want: I experienced tremendous pain and outrage following the discovery of my husband's affair with my sister-in-law and want to clarify up front what this post is NOT about. I am not averse to the possibility of divorce, but I do NOT want this discussion derailed by insistence on that outcome. Please. In fact, I am more averse to the idea of reconciliation than of divorce at the moment, but this is not about reconciliation or divorce. I am just not that far into the future. If I simply divorced or committed to reconciliation now, I feel that I would live the rest of my life in the shadow of this event. What I HAVE TO HAVE is the conviction that H recognizes all that he did and all that I felt as a result of his betrayal and deception. I need to know that he sees what he did and can say why he did it. He knows this very well - I say it all the time - and he is definitely willing.

 

H has come a long way since D-day and has said he is ready to do this. "Whatever you want or need," he says. I have made it clear to him that I cannot think about the future, that we are in the present and the present is about the past for me. I am bound to it and will not be able to leave it until he makes the journey with me back into it, watching and hearing every step of the way and, with the help of therapy, showing he understands where he went wrong and why. I did research, spent hours on LS and interviewed a couple of therapists, and, though I am not sure how to do this, I am convinced in my bones that it must be possible. And I'll repeat: He has committed to doing this with me.

 

Compared to a month ago, we have actually come a long way by ourselves, but it's been more about gaining some modicum of normalcy in a day. A month or more ago, H read "How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair" and got a lot of help himself. I think it gave him hope but it helped me because he started trying to talk. He changed from hiding from the shame of discussion. It clearly gave him hope because it gave him something to do, though I don't think he really understands that we have just barely begun to deal with it. He has continued expressing remorse and has gotten gradually better at conversation and responding to my need to know. It is still not enough. I wrote in my first thread that he never said anything and people interpreted that as not participating. That is not accurate or fair. The fact is I talked and he listened. He listened at 3 in the morning. He listened at 11 at night. He answered and got better at identifying the information needed. He apologized many times. He disclosed to my daughter. It is still not enough. He is not a talker and needs help how to talk to people. We need a therapist and I've been holding out for the right one. I think we found her two days ago. After one session with the therapist last week, I realize that, on our own, we'd just barely succeeded in not drowning. This will be real swimming - fast.

 

So I need a question to get this ball rolling, right? Try this: Has anyone been at this particular juncture - not focused on outcome - with this consuming need for truth and understanding with a 'witness' as I described it. I'd like to hear about therapy with the spouse that helped the truth emerge in a way that one or both spouses could move forward in a healthy way and continued healing.

Edited August 6, 2012 by merrmeade

[merrmeade]

Does it mean something that no one replied in over 12 hours? I wonder if this is the wrong place to post or my conditions are off-putting...

[TaraMaiden]

Has anyone been at this particular juncture - not focused on outcome - with this consuming need for truth and understanding with a 'witness' as I described it. I'd like to hear about therapy with the spouse that helped the truth emerge in a way that one or both spouses could move forward in a healthy way and continued healing.

 

what you're looking for, is a form of closure.

 

And regarding Counselling/Therapy, here's what I have said before:

 

Counselling . is . not . designed . to . keep . people . together.

 

No, it's not.

 

Counselling provides people with a safe, level and even playing field where each partner can express themselves calmly, openly and safely, and really reveal what is on their mind and discuss things logically with an eventual hope of a healthy compromise.

What's more, Counsellors are not there to do the work for you.

They arbitrate and guide, suggest and open up avenues of further dialogue, but their job is neither to teach nor preach, and they can't fix anything.

 

You have to fix ‘anything’.

 

The problem is - both people have to want it.

 

EQUALLY.

 

Because one person, on their own, cannot fix what ails 2 people.

A relationship is a partnership, and both people are 100% responsible for their 50% of the partnership.

 

'Blame' is more proportional, but the responsibility of relationship maintenance goes right down the middle.

 

You are both 100% 'Responsible' for your 50% of the relationship, and as such you have to be accountable for that, and see what has happened to affect that.

 

So while I see that his behaviour created a huge rift between you, and a schism in your relationship, you also have to turn introspectively, to determine what you yourself, can be responsible for, with regard to your contribution to the marriage.

 

you say you are more averse to the idea of reconciliation than divorce right now.

 

understand this:

THIS WON'T CHANGE - unless you decide, firmly that you want it to.

 

And counselling may well render the aversion to reconciliation concrete. The more you'll learn, the less you'll want of any of it.

 

What you are seeking, is closure - though in what form that would be I cannot say, because in spite of "all the right moves" on his side, it sounds to me as if you're beyond letting go, and forging on.

the past is too close, too painful, too wounding, to be released, yet.

 

Hence, my signature....

[merrmeade]

I think that does say a lot about what I'm looking for.

you also have to turn introspectively, to determine what you yourself, can be responsible for, with regard to your contribution to the marriage.

I am not sure yet about that - my contribution to the marriage - or even how I feel about my H.

 

I thought about starting this thread under "Second Chances" but just couldn't do it. There wasn't really a right category for this. "Coping" doesn't quite do it either. All the headings sound like choices have been made and the future has started. It's under "Breaking up, Reconciliation, Coping." I would call it more "Taking stock" or "Making choices" because, for me, this is a crucial time. An opportunity to choose the rest of my life.

 

Another interesting thing I find happening to myself is that I'm making myself look - really look - at who H is. For the first time I'm not sweeping the truth under the rug about a lot of things. For the first time, I got my H to tell the truth and wasn't gaslighted myself. It was a new experience in our relationship or in any relationship for me (except my children). Anybody can gaslight me usually, but this time it didn't work. I'm all about the truth now, all the time, and don't want to go back to rug-sweeping.

 

I realized this morning that one of the most important things I've been doing in making myself face the truth is read his emails - over and over and over. (He knows I do it.) Usually I dig into the emails between H and my SIL (the OW), trying to put together all the pieces of the 'story,' but always so much more is revealed about him. I never thought about this, but emails contain the hard evidence of what a person is really like - hundreds and thousands of interactions with people. Does he always tell the truth? Does he give different versions of events to different people? Does he try to win sympathy? When he is modest, is it genuine?

 

In the past, I've always brushed aside certain things about him that I felt were opportunistic, self-serving or dishonest in his dealings with others and saw it as a personality difference between us. Don't get me wrong. He's not a criminal or anything, but he does not share my absolute allegiance to objectivity and truth uncolored by personal interest. He always shares information according to the need of the moment.

 

Of course, this question is not irrelevant at all. It begs the very root of infidelity. In the case of my H and SIL, they were living a lie to each other as well as to everyone else. (I'm resisting and deleting over and over the possibilities of EXAMPLES here. Believe me; it's a much more insane and fun exercise in absurdity.) So lying to themselves, each other and everyone else a little bit all the time became a necessary way of life. What I'm saying is that I think it's a way of life and thinking that he does all too well and easily. THIS IS THE PROBLEM. My tolerance for dishonesty on any level about anything with anyone is 0 now. I think it always was but I rug-swept rather than rocked the boat.

 

I think this is a good topic for MC.

Edited August 7, 2012 by merrmeade

[TaraMaiden]

It might help you to keep a personal journal to write this kind of stuff down; the danger is, that you live so much in your head, you can genuinely make yourself sick in thinking, over-thinking, analysing and trying to find reasoning behind your own thoughts for everything in the dynamic.

 

If you do - don't correct, alter, re-word, re-phrase or modify - in many, many cases, what you first write - is exactly what you mean.

 

How you then put this journal to use, is up to you....

[merrmeade]

It might help you to keep a personal journal to write this kind of stuff down; the danger is, that you live so much in your head, you can genuinely make yourself sick in thinking, over-thinking, analysing and trying to find reasoning behind your own thoughts for everything in the dynamic.

 

If you do - don't correct, alter, re-word, re-phrase or modify - in many, many cases, what you first write - is exactly what you mean.

 

How you then put this journal to use, is up to you....

 

I see your point and I do re-re-re-write, trying to get the idea across exactly, overthink everything and spend WAY too long on the computer in general. Also the nature of my profession. But in this, everything changes a few days later anyway.

[merrmeade]

The journal has been suggested by others. I've done it before and know how useful it is. Will try to get back to it.

[TaraMaiden]

I see your point and I do re-re-re-write, trying to get the idea across exactly, overthink everything and spend WAY too long on the computer in general. Also the nature of my profession. But in this, everything changes a few days later anyway.

 

This is very true, but after a while you note a common thread....

 

I don't know what you do, but if you are precise to the point of being obsessive (and I don't mean that unkindly), then you'll see it pretty quickly.

 

I'm an absolute stickler for grammar, and correct writing.

Capital letters drive me barmy at the moment, because my 'shift' keys don't always work....and I often edit my posts to correct stuff...

 

So I re-re-re-write too, if that helps at all!