If you had an affair, did you bury your feelings?

[Anonymous]

My husband had a year-long affair with a coworker. During that time, he seems to have convinced himself that it was all my fault because he didn't think I cared about him enough. I had just had a baby and was pretty preoccupied with newborn stuff and some pretty hardcore PPD, and I was definitely not paying as much attention to him as I used to. I guess the mistress was very complimentary to him, told him how great he was, etc. So his justification was that I didn't love him enough. Note that I do not think anything was justified here - if he was so unhappy, he could have come to me, which he didn't.

Since I found out about the affair and he ended it, he says he will do anything to get us back on track. He seems rather upset that he did this, and his identity seems to have taken a pretty large hit that he could do something like this. He admits that he spent a long time basically funneling the good feelings towards the mistress and pulling away from me. Now, he says all of his feelings about everything are muted - he says he loves me but he feels like the love is hard to access, and his love for our kids is more muted too. From what he describes, it sounds like he has basically walled himself off. We are in marriage counseling and I have told him I think he needs his own therapy too.

My question is whether others have experienced this and been able to unblock/unbury themselves? I think it's a defense mechanism so he doesn't have to feel the pain of what he did. If he is unwilling or unable to go through that to access his feelings, I don't think I can stay with him. It's hard enough to deal with this, but the strange bottled up thing is really a dealbreaker to me. I do not want to be with someone who cannot go through the hard stuff to save our marriage, and I don't want to be with someone who cannot fully feel the love that he claims to have for me. Or maybe he's depressed? The affair is just the gift that keeps on giving.

[Anonymous]

He's morning the loss of his lover. It's natural. Give him time. Back off or you won't have a marriage. He will come around.

[Anonymous]

It natural to close the door to your marriage and open it to something else.. alcohol, drugs, gambling, and affair partner.

The phenomenon is described in a book called "not just friends".

It takes about 6 months of going cold turkey from the addiction. Affairs are no different than an addiction, something that masks real feeling instead of dealing with them.

Now he has to deal with his feeling and the fact he is weak and pathetic.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like his affair has emotional elements too (meaning it wasn't just sex). In order to become emotionally involved with someone else, he had to convince himself that you were not right for him. Some of what he told himself in order to mentally detach from you is probably correct (because no person and no marriage is perfect--please understand that this is in no way an indictment of you). It's hard to unconvince yourself of that and just check back in to a relationship.

And he is going through a breakup, just like PP said.

I am sorry you're going through this, and I wish you the best.

[Anonymous]

Why so much empathy for the DH?

[Anonymous]

People do this when there're no emotions involved too. When my husband was cheating (not a long term involved affair, just for sex) he suddenly got more critical of me. It was a defender mechanism - if it was ME who was the asshole, he didn't have to feel as guilty about being the actual asshole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why so much empathy for the DH?

OP asked why he was emotionally shut off. We are offering explanations.

[Anonymous]

I had an affair like your DH's. Kids came, sex dwindled to very little, an occasional sympathy fuck if my DW felt like it had been a while. Nothing I did mattered to get her attention. I am not justifying my behavior but man, I was so lonely for affection and I found a great woman in the same situation.

We broke off the affair before either of us got caught. I can tell you I liked and cared for my AP but I could compartmentalize it. When I was with AP, I felt connected to her. When I was with DW, I felt connected to her (as much as you can feel connected to someone you aren't having sex with).

I am glad we got through the rough patch without getting exposed. Our marriage is getting better. Good luck OP. You can work through it.

[Anonymous]

OP at least your husband is honest about his feelings now and agree with the PP who said that he's mourning the lost.

[Anonymous]

OP, you need to realize one pivitol aspect here. YOU are the victim here, in every single way. YOU are not to blame for your husband going outside of the marriage. He had every chance to come to you about how ''neglected'' he felt, but instead he CHOSE to run to another person to feel truly validated.

So please, do not blame yourself one iota here. You did nothing wrong. NOTHING. At. All.

In order for you both to overcome this hardship, he needs to admit that none of this was any fault of yours and that he was the one who created this ugly mess, him and him alone.

Until he can do this, the state of your marriage will only stay the way it is right now.

If he cannot or will not budge on his perspective of why he cheated, then your marriage is toast. You will have no other option but to leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband had a year-long affair with a coworker. During that time, he seems to have convinced himself that it was all my fault because he didn't think I cared about him enough. I had just had a baby and was pretty preoccupied with newborn stuff and some pretty hardcore PPD, and I was definitely not paying as much attention to him as I used to. I guess the mistress was very complimentary to him, told him how great he was, etc. So his justification was that I didn't love him enough. Note that I do not think anything was justified here - if he was so unhappy, he could have come to me, which he didn't.

Since I found out about the affair and he ended it, he says he will do anything to get us back on track. He seems rather upset that he did this, and his identity seems to have taken a pretty large hit that he could do something like this. He admits that he spent a long time basically funneling the good feelings towards the mistress and pulling away from me. Now, he says all of his feelings about everything are muted - he says he loves me but he feels like the love is hard to access, and his love for our kids is more muted too. From what he describes, it sounds like he has basically walled himself off. We are in marriage counseling and I have told him I think he needs his own therapy too.

My question is whether others have experienced this and been able to unblock/unbury themselves? I think it's a defense mechanism so he doesn't have to feel the pain of what he did. If he is unwilling or unable to go through that to access his feelings, I don't think I can stay with him. It's hard enough to deal with this, but the strange bottled up thing is really a dealbreaker to me. I do not want to be with someone who cannot go through the hard stuff to save our marriage, and I don't want to be with someone who cannot fully feel the love that he claims to have for me. Or maybe he's depressed? The affair is just the gift that keeps on giving.

the two bolded sentences are the most important ones you wrote.

re: the first sentence - you will likely have to make the choice to stay or go. in my experience, some (many?) men have no idea how to got through the hard emotional aspects of a marriage and instead just sit there and spin their wheels, especially ones who do not go to individual counseling. i almost walked out on my DH a year ago. he had become emotionally unaccessible, we almost never had sex, and i had to handle most of our family stuff (we have two young kids) with working full time. anyway, we have been in marriage counseling for a year. i went through 7 months of individual counseling as well; DH refuses to go to individual counseling, saying that he will figure it out. well, a year later and while the family aspects of our lives are better in that he is carrying much more of his weight around the house, emotionally he is still pretty inaccessible. it is like having a relationship with myself. moral of the story: there is only so far couples can go in marriage counseling alone.

re: the second sentence - a lot of affairs happen when somebody is faced with a difficult situation, they do not know how to handle it (or they tried and their partner resisted), and instead they find an outlet to make themselves feel better. do not give the affair more power than what it was, which was an escape. let me ask you - did your DH help you address your PPD? did he pull away from the family? did you feel emotionally abandoned? these things matter, trust me. i've been there, done that. think hard about those things.

do not try to make sense of his feelings. do not try to impose what you think about his feelings on him or even in your head. that is his responsibility to figure out. focus on yourself. focus on how he makes you feel. focus on how you feel having the family intact. in the end, since you only have control over your choices, forget about him and figure things our for yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, you need to realize one pivitol aspect here. YOU are the victim here, in every single way. YOU are not to blame for your husband going outside of the marriage. He had every chance to come to you about how ''neglected'' he felt, but instead he CHOSE to run to another person to feel truly validated.

So please, do not blame yourself one iota here. You did nothing wrong. NOTHING. At. All.

In order for you both to overcome this hardship, he needs to admit that none of this was any fault of yours and that he was the one who created this ugly mess, him and him alone.

Until he can do this, the state of your marriage will only stay the way it is right now.

If he cannot or will not budge on his perspective of why he cheated, then your marriage is toast. You will have no other option but to leave.

stop. this is WAY too black and white for most marriages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, you need to realize one pivitol aspect here. YOU are the victim here, in every single way. YOU are not to blame for your husband going outside of the marriage. He had every chance to come to you about how ''neglected'' he felt, but instead he CHOSE to run to another person to feel truly validated.

So please, do not blame yourself one iota here. You did nothing wrong. NOTHING. At. All.

In order for you both to overcome this hardship, he needs to admit that none of this was any fault of yours and that he was the one who created this ugly mess, him and him alone.

Until he can do this, the state of your marriage will only stay the way it is right now.

If he cannot or will not budge on his perspective of why he cheated, then your marriage is toast. You will have no other option but to leave.

stop. this is WAY too black and white for most marriages.

Agree. And I think OP was pretty honest in seeing her side of this, i.e. PPD and not putting effort into her husband. I am not justifying his affair but I can see how it happens. For me, I handled closing my affair by just putting it behind me. I was just over it. No need for deep introspection, and mine was similar to what her DH's was, except I did not get caught. Once my DW was ready to be a full partner, I was ready to end the affair. I don't know what else I could do other than just forget about my AP.

[Anonymous]

OP here. I never stopped loving my husband even though we were having tough times. I am having an extremely difficult time realizing that, in the tough times, he resented me so much and engaged in an affair and basically squashed his love for me down. I believed in marriage - that it's for better and for worse and that when bad things happen, you talk about it and try to work on things. He did not give me a chance to work on things, he never talked to me about his feelings changing. And now it feels like not only did I endure the same tough times he did, but I also have to deal with an affair and how mean he was to me during the affair (he was very cold and unfeeling and insulting to me during that time) AND I am supposed to be able to work on our marriage now and the underlying issues. I am supposed to somehow not be destroyed when he tells me that his love for me is "muffled" and that his full range of emotions seems inaccessible. There is a limit to what I can take, and he doesn't seem to be doing much to unearth his feelings. Maybe there's nothing to unearth and his love for me is just not as strong. But it seems like it's somehow my responsibility to make him feel safe enough to be vulnerable. And that is just monumentally unfair when I feel completely insecure and unloved.

And as far as the PPD goes, he was not supportive at all. He thought I just didn't enjoy being a mom and he feels deprived of super happy time with the baby. The times when I would ask him to look after the baby and I would take a walk he refers to as my "me time." That "me time" (which was maybe an hour every other day) was the time that I would be able to breathe and cry by myself. I got myself out of the PPD via therapy, with no assistance from him. He just now seems to understand this a little. But I was going through tough times individually as well as in our marriage and it seems like a lot to ask me to do basically everything now.

He is in counseling with me, he does say he is very sorry, and he is acting loving now. But then he goes and says he feels bottled up. I just hate it. And the idea that the bottling up is due to mourning his mistress, as suggested by a PP, makes me sick.

[Anonymous]

Men- What exactly do you mean when you say you can compartmentalize the AP? I've heard this many times and truly don't get it .... Help?