Anonymous wrote:I think it's important for everyone in a relationship to recognize their contributions to the successes and failures of that relationship. Affairs confuse that logic because the affair is a huge lightning rod that has a tendency to obscure all the other failures (and successes) present in a relationship.
I had an affair and ended up getting divorced as a result of it. What led to it? PPD (mine - I'm a woman), a relationship that was already emotionally unhealthy and disconnected, a partner who didn't take those things seriously, and someone who seemed to appreciate/understand me more than my husband did. It did not take long for me (and my AP) to realize that the affair was not what either of us wanted long- or short-term. I told my husband, and we separated. We tried to reconcile, but like OP's husband, I was morning the loss of the affair and was not able to get past or conceal that. Our reconciliation was not successful, and we have been divorced for several years.
In the aftermath of our final separation, my ex and I spent a lot of time hashing out Why This Happened. To his credit, he was willing to listen to my reasons for doing what I did, without blowing them off as 100% moral failings that indicated poor character (or any of the other things that people on this forum say about people who cheat). To my credit, I have never shied away from how damaging what I did was or how I hurt him. I have not blamed him, except in so far as that my decision to have an affair didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened in the context of an already crappy marriage that was not 100% my fault.
Affairs cloud everything. It's hard to see good aspects of your marriage (and there are almost always at least a few, even in the crappiest of marriages). It's hard to see the flaws of your AP as well. It does not sound to me like he is compartmentalizing well at all. Compartmentalization would mean that he was emotionally available to his wife, if he was interested in his child, and then had this other thing going on. He is not walling off his feelings. He is shutting his wife out and keeping his feelings front and center, while minimizing her feelings.
There are ways to reconcile, but it does not sound like the OP's husband is actually invested in doing that.
The crappy marriage was not 100% your fault. Did he also have an affair as well?
PP here. I am sure that engaging you is not going to be productive, but no, he did not have an affair. My point, which I am not sure you understood, was that affairs are not the only warning sign of a marriage in trouble. They may be the biggest, most glaring indicators, but I have never yet seen an affair in an otherwise healthy marriage. For couples that DO choose to reconcile after the affair, those other problems must also be addressed. It is not enough to simply discuss the affair, since the ultimate goal of reconciliation is a strong relationship on the other side. That relationship is simply not going to occur if only one problem is the focus.
Mmm... No matter how good or shitty the marriage, some people feel entitled to have affairs. I take what you say at face value, that no, you are not a shitty person, you just happened to have an affair while in a bad marriage, as you found someone willing and able to become your AP.
However, affairs DO happen in good marriages, especially when the spouse is the compartmentalizing type and able to live a double life undetected for a long time.
I don't think I'm a shitty person. I think I did a shitty thing, but I do not personally like to judge people exclusively by their worst moments. I don't personally think that a good marriage exists if one spouse is living a double life. I think there are definitely situations in which affairs are tolerated by spouses for various reasons (don't want to have sex anyway, prefer allowing affair to divorcing, etc.), but in situations like the OP's where the non-cheating spouse is struggling and the cheater is putting all his emotional eggs in another woman's basket, it's not compartmentalizing because he wasn't being a good husband when he WAS around.
One's true colors tend to appear during the worst times. Let us not make it about you. You obviously have forgiven yourself.
Np. You appear to be a pillar of perfection. Because you live up on your high horse, I will spell it out for you. People are allowed to make mistakes. Said people are also allied to forgive themselves. That information may come in handy when you, some day which invariably will happen, you fuck up and hurt somebody.
Sure I have made mistakes. Engaging in a long sustained affair is more than a mistake though and indicates at the very least a sense of entitlement that should not be waved away with just a blithe statement like "I am a good person who did a shitty thing".
Anonymous wrote:Op again. The thing is, I think the PPD was the last straw, so to speak. I used to be be not super demonstrative with my emotions due to a seriously shitty childhood/family. So I was not touchy-feely before the baby. I did tell my husband I loved him and we did have an active sex life, but I think he wasn't getting what worked for him. If he had not had the affair, I would take 50/50 blame for our issues. I am willing to look inward and I want to be a better person. I don't want my partner to feel unloved. I want to be a source of comfort and love, and that's what I want from a partner. The problem is he never once told me how he felt, he just kept it inside. My PPD manifested in a lot of anxiety for me along with sadness. He totally misread it. And he acted completely selfishly and had an affair.
So now I'm left with a lot of guilt over how I should have been more emotionally available before the baby. It's messed up but I do feel sorry for him. I want him to be happy. But I know that my reaction to our problems was to try to work on our relationship. I arranged for marriage counseling for us while he was having an affair (unbeknownst to me at the time). It makes me question his character that he went the opposite direction when the going got tough.
I don't think he's a terrible person. But it might turn out he is a terrible person for me. I love him and I want both of us to be happy, preferably together. I just want to know if he will be able to do the work he needs to basically not be selfish and just protecting himself.
OP, I'm the poster above who had an affair and divorced.
Please do not blame yourself for what your husband did. Your compassion for his pain is admirable, but don't translate that into blaming yourself. You sound like you recognize your own issues and also like you have been trying to address those issues, including before the baby, before the affair. Your husband did not communicate his own unhappiness to you. You sound like the sort of person who would have at the very least tried to give him what he needed if you'd know about it, but you didn't. He kept that information from you and chose to cope with it in another way.
Whether he will be able to do the work is not for any of us to say. I think it's worth thinking about your own expectations, what you really want. What does a healthy marriage look like to you? What does it look like to your husband?
Anonymous wrote:Op again. The thing is, I think the PPD was the last straw, so to speak. I used to be be not super demonstrative with my emotions due to a seriously shitty childhood/family. So I was not touchy-feely before the baby. I did tell my husband I loved him and we did have an active sex life, but I think he wasn't getting what worked for him. If he had not had the affair, I would take 50/50 blame for our issues. I am willing to look inward and I want to be a better person. I don't want my partner to feel unloved. I want to be a source of comfort and love, and that's what I want from a partner. The problem is he never once told me how he felt, he just kept it inside. My PPD manifested in a lot of anxiety for me along with sadness. He totally misread it. And he acted completely selfishly and had an affair.
So now I'm left with a lot of guilt over how I should have been more emotionally available before the baby. It's messed up but I do feel sorry for him. I want him to be happy. But I know that my reaction to our problems was to try to work on our relationship. I arranged for marriage counseling for us while he was having an affair (unbeknownst to me at the time). It makes me question his character that he went the opposite direction when the going got tough.
I don't think he's a terrible person. But it might turn out he is a terrible person for me. I love him and I want both of us to be happy, preferably together. I just want to know if he will be able to do the work he needs to basically not be selfish and just protecting himself.
9:50 here: I still thinking you're accepting too much blame, OP; DH could have done internet research or asked friends to discover your PPD symptoms. Instead of doing that -- or talking to you -- he was OUT looking for AP and then OUT again with that partner rather than with you and the baby. From what I read in this thread, YOU are apologizing, YOU are finding fault with yourself (SO IS HE), YOU are finding therapists, and HE is mourning is ex-AP!
Go ahead and ask the therapist. If DH shows up (which I doubt because "what is past is prologue" as written on the Archives Building), I'm sure the therapist will be the first to call DH on his freely abandoning you and the baby to his outside interests, his deceit and his blaming you instead of owning his part in this, which was the one who left and hasn't returned yet.
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