Talk me off a ledge- other side of the world and just discovered cheating

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An alcoholic having a secret affair with a bartender. He isn't a very creative thinker, is he?

Been there, OP--and have posted here previously. OW in our situation was not a bartender. But rehab was an essential element of rebuilding.

This is a little harsh, but worth considering IMO.

OP, I truly hope you can repair your marriage and be happy together. But I also think you should prepare yourself for some shocks. To me, your husband seems to be having a mid-life crisis/meandering through life. The secret drinking, the affair with someone who really isn't all that special and has a screw loose, you never fight, you've only been with each other since late teens.

I hope it all works out, but it feels like there may be bigger things going on with him.

100%. I’m the PP. Husband has a trauma history a mile long. OP, if he isn’t prepared to go deep in his own individual therapy, don’t spend your valuable time in life on attempting to redeem this.

Yes, I think one of the most interesting things about all of these posts is that OP has known this guy forever and is deeply embedded with his family of origin. And yet, there seems to be no clue what kind of trauma created all this secrecy and shame. It either means that whatever is going on is deeply, deeply hidden or there is a lot of ignoring red flags.

Honestly, the only thing I can think of is that he has always had some level of self esteem issues and maybe it's greater or runs much deeper than I ever knew? He was consistently bullied in middle school for several years for being short and chubby by a group of 4 mean girls.

All I can say is if there is alcohol or any type of unhealthy coping mechanism like that it is never as simple as it looks on the surface. There are always issues that run deep, usually inter generational.

I’ve known my DH since we were teens. We didn’t date until later but I always thought he and his family were picture perfect. My DH was always a big drinker in high school and beyond. I never thought much of it beyond when I considered to be typical binge drinking behavior (in my circles it was very common).

Anyway… fast forward many many years past engagement and marriage and as I slowly mature myself and I discover that there family is completely conflict avoidant and downplays any potential emotional expression beyond niceties. No wonder I thought their family was picture perfect. They were way to perfect. It turns out DH’s dad had a secret child and whole affair for decades. Their mom dealt with it with silence, and that’s how the kids were raised… in silence when anything was troubling. For years I thought my DH just drank because it felt good etc… no, he drank because he never learned how to feel his feelings, express them, process them (he is sober now).. Not for the good stuff and certainly not for the tricky stuff. To this day this is how their family operates. They still look picture perfect and outside of their family no one who knows this secret or how deep the emotional avoidance runs. My perspective on my in laws had shifted so so much over the last 20+ years. I still love them but it is true what people say - when it looks perfect it is even more messed up.

My point is that the real issues always run deep. The symptom is the drinking, the affair etc… the real stuff is way down under, from child hood or earlier experiences, and almost always involves inter generational issues.

My stomach dropped when I read the bolded about conflict avoidance. I am the PP that said this looks like a mid-life crisis/meandering. And when someone brought up trauma I was thinking, there doesn't have to be trauma - he could have never learned to deal with strong emotions if the absolute priority was to be "nice,' which it a million percent was in my family. There weren't any secret children or anything like that, but there was also never ANY conflict. And guess who the secret drinker was/stuffer or emotions is in my marriage?

That IS trauma. When bad things happen and you are expected to behave like everything is fine, your only real escape route is dissociation. And that is the kind of skill (and it is a skill--a highly protective one) that a guy like this has in spades. It is how he is able to do what he's been doing while simultaneously maintaining the fiction that everything is great. Psychopaths can do it because they don't care. OP's husband is not a psychopath; he is dissociated, to some extent, from his own actions.

Not OP but I'm really curious about this. What sort of disassociation might one resort to, aside from living two separate lives in your head (and in real life, I guess)?

[Anonymous]

OP here- another strange is that I have unfortunately gone through EXTREME traumas in my life (hence therapy since I was 17). So it's not like we haven't been through any really difficult situations, it's just the conflict was never between us if that makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An alcoholic having a secret affair with a bartender. He isn't a very creative thinker, is he?

Been there, OP--and have posted here previously. OW in our situation was not a bartender. But rehab was an essential element of rebuilding.

This is a little harsh, but worth considering IMO.

OP, I truly hope you can repair your marriage and be happy together. But I also think you should prepare yourself for some shocks. To me, your husband seems to be having a mid-life crisis/meandering through life. The secret drinking, the affair with someone who really isn't all that special and has a screw loose, you never fight, you've only been with each other since late teens.

I hope it all works out, but it feels like there may be bigger things going on with him.

100%. I’m the PP. Husband has a trauma history a mile long. OP, if he isn’t prepared to go deep in his own individual therapy, don’t spend your valuable time in life on attempting to redeem this.

Yes, I think one of the most interesting things about all of these posts is that OP has known this guy forever and is deeply embedded with his family of origin. And yet, there seems to be no clue what kind of trauma created all this secrecy and shame. It either means that whatever is going on is deeply, deeply hidden or there is a lot of ignoring red flags.

Honestly, the only thing I can think of is that he has always had some level of self esteem issues and maybe it's greater or runs much deeper than I ever knew? He was consistently bullied in middle school for several years for being short and chubby by a group of 4 mean girls.

All I can say is if there is alcohol or any type of unhealthy coping mechanism like that it is never as simple as it looks on the surface. There are always issues that run deep, usually inter generational.

I’ve known my DH since we were teens. We didn’t date until later but I always thought he and his family were picture perfect. My DH was always a big drinker in high school and beyond. I never thought much of it beyond when I considered to be typical binge drinking behavior (in my circles it was very common).

Anyway… fast forward many many years past engagement and marriage and as I slowly mature myself and I discover that there family is completely conflict avoidant and downplays any potential emotional expression beyond niceties. No wonder I thought their family was picture perfect. They were way to perfect. It turns out DH’s dad had a secret child and whole affair for decades. Their mom dealt with it with silence, and that’s how the kids were raised… in silence when anything was troubling. For years I thought my DH just drank because it felt good etc… no, he drank because he never learned how to feel his feelings, express them, process them (he is sober now).. Not for the good stuff and certainly not for the tricky stuff. To this day this is how their family operates. They still look picture perfect and outside of their family no one who knows this secret or how deep the emotional avoidance runs. My perspective on my in laws had shifted so so much over the last 20+ years. I still love them but it is true what people say - when it looks perfect it is even more messed up.

My point is that the real issues always run deep. The symptom is the drinking, the affair etc… the real stuff is way down under, from child hood or earlier experiences, and almost always involves inter generational issues.

My stomach dropped when I read the bolded about conflict avoidance. I am the PP that said this looks like a mid-life crisis/meandering. And when someone brought up trauma I was thinking, there doesn't have to be trauma - he could have never learned to deal with strong emotions if the absolute priority was to be "nice,' which it a million percent was in my family. There weren't any secret children or anything like that, but there was also never ANY conflict. And guess who the secret drinker was/stuffer or emotions is in my marriage?

That IS trauma. When bad things happen and you are expected to behave like everything is fine, your only real escape route is dissociation. And that is the kind of skill (and it is a skill--a highly protective one) that a guy like this has in spades. It is how he is able to do what he's been doing while simultaneously maintaining the fiction that everything is great. Psychopaths can do it because they don't care. OP's husband is not a psychopath; he is dissociated, to some extent, from his own actions.

Not OP but I'm really curious about this. What sort of disassociation might one resort to, aside from living two separate lives in your head (and in real life, I guess)?

DP - the dissociation PP is incorrect. People employ defense mechanisms to deal with uncomfortable feelings/events they can’t fully tolerate. Dissociation is one of those defense mechanisms but it’s one of the more extreme ones. OP’s husband sounds like he’s using compartmentalization, denial, likely others, but there are more escape routes than dissociation.

[Anonymous]

Also, we agreed he's just going to do all the work for the party. I'm going to slap a costume jewelry ring on my finger for the party. Cannot stomach putting my wedding rings back on (ever).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, we agreed he's just going to do all the work for the party. I'm going to slap a costume jewelry ring on my finger for the party. Cannot stomach putting my wedding rings back on (ever).

I can’t imagine thinking much of a lack of ring. Lots of people I know who are married don’t wear their ring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He doesn’t have to have suffered a huge trauma to be where he is but rather arrested development. You’ve been together since you were so young and have not really experienced yourselves apart as individuals and he did not develop coping mechanisms. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but his affair reads like the fantasy of an alternate life, some carefree stupid partying one. At the same time your marriage was so “picture perfect” (your own blinders here make it esp hard now for you as well as him) and families so
Enmeshed there was perhaps no obvious way to express these issues, no conflict resolution skills built up between uou, added to his lack of emotional maturity.This does not mean he didn’t want kids or doesn’t love you but at some level he did not fully mature even as he took on all the trappings of adulthood. It’s also why you are so shellshocked now, not just all that’s come to light but it sounds like you’ve never really addressed deep conflict before. So it is a lot to suddenly put on a marriage. Plus…Drinking to deal with the affair and, well, it’s addictive once you start to abuse alcohol and encourages more hiding secrecy and shame.

My only thought is that unfortunately you can’t rush to the end here despite the temptation to do so.’There is a long and painful process. It’s not your fault and yet it’s now in part your burden. Even if you kicked him and out filed tomorrow You would still have to go through it all. That sucks hard since you did not break the marriage but what follows requires time. I would emphasize you getting as much individual counseling now.

As for the party I would put his ass to work.

Finally I know there’s the deep need to look for everything to rapid fire a million questions to doubt everything. There is a point where you will need to stop though for your own good and mental health so you can start looking at the bigger picture and take the next steps whatever they are.

I agree with a lot of this. Also reenacting the hs cheating but now as the actor not the victim. Issues being from a blue collar background, a bartender is a better fit with that, no? He needs individual therapy. Both of you do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An alcoholic having a secret affair with a bartender. He isn't a very creative thinker, is he?

Been there, OP--and have posted here previously. OW in our situation was not a bartender. But rehab was an essential element of rebuilding.

This is a little harsh, but worth considering IMO.

OP, I truly hope you can repair your marriage and be happy together. But I also think you should prepare yourself for some shocks. To me, your husband seems to be having a mid-life crisis/meandering through life. The secret drinking, the affair with someone who really isn't all that special and has a screw loose, you never fight, you've only been with each other since late teens.

I hope it all works out, but it feels like there may be bigger things going on with him.

100%. I’m the PP. Husband has a trauma history a mile long. OP, if he isn’t prepared to go deep in his own individual therapy, don’t spend your valuable time in life on attempting to redeem this.

Yes, I think one of the most interesting things about all of these posts is that OP has known this guy forever and is deeply embedded with his family of origin. And yet, there seems to be no clue what kind of trauma created all this secrecy and shame. It either means that whatever is going on is deeply, deeply hidden or there is a lot of ignoring red flags.

Honestly, the only thing I can think of is that he has always had some level of self esteem issues and maybe it's greater or runs much deeper than I ever knew? He was consistently bullied in middle school for several years for being short and chubby by a group of 4 mean girls.

All I can say is if there is alcohol or any type of unhealthy coping mechanism like that it is never as simple as it looks on the surface. There are always issues that run deep, usually inter generational.

I’ve known my DH since we were teens. We didn’t date until later but I always thought he and his family were picture perfect. My DH was always a big drinker in high school and beyond. I never thought much of it beyond when I considered to be typical binge drinking behavior (in my circles it was very common).

Anyway… fast forward many many years past engagement and marriage and as I slowly mature myself and I discover that there family is completely conflict avoidant and downplays any potential emotional expression beyond niceties. No wonder I thought their family was picture perfect. They were way to perfect. It turns out DH’s dad had a secret child and whole affair for decades. Their mom dealt with it with silence, and that’s how the kids were raised… in silence when anything was troubling. For years I thought my DH just drank because it felt good etc… no, he drank because he never learned how to feel his feelings, express them, process them (he is sober now).. Not for the good stuff and certainly not for the tricky stuff. To this day this is how their family operates. They still look picture perfect and outside of their family no one who knows this secret or how deep the emotional avoidance runs. My perspective on my in laws had shifted so so much over the last 20+ years. I still love them but it is true what people say - when it looks perfect it is even more messed up.

My point is that the real issues always run deep. The symptom is the drinking, the affair etc… the real stuff is way down under, from child hood or earlier experiences, and almost always involves inter generational issues.

My stomach dropped when I read the bolded about conflict avoidance. I am the PP that said this looks like a mid-life crisis/meandering. And when someone brought up trauma I was thinking, there doesn't have to be trauma - he could have never learned to deal with strong emotions if the absolute priority was to be "nice,' which it a million percent was in my family. There weren't any secret children or anything like that, but there was also never ANY conflict. And guess who the secret drinker was/stuffer or emotions is in my marriage?

That IS trauma. When bad things happen and you are expected to behave like everything is fine, your only real escape route is dissociation. And that is the kind of skill (and it is a skill--a highly protective one) that a guy like this has in spades. It is how he is able to do what he's been doing while simultaneously maintaining the fiction that everything is great. Psychopaths can do it because they don't care. OP's husband is not a psychopath; he is dissociated, to some extent, from his own actions.

Not OP but I'm really curious about this. What sort of disassociation might one resort to, aside from living two separate lives in your head (and in real life, I guess)?

DP - the dissociation PP is incorrect. People employ defense mechanisms to deal with uncomfortable feelings/events they can’t fully tolerate. Dissociation is one of those defense mechanisms but it’s one of the more extreme ones. OP’s husband sounds like he’s using compartmentalization, denial, likely others, but there are more escape routes than dissociation.

I don't want to derail the thread, but do want to note that this is an unhelpfully rigid way to think about what dissociation is and how it works. Dissociation is a normal feature of the human brain and we all do it all the time. Whenever you drive from A to B without a clear memory of every point along the way, it's because you were dissociated to some extent, even while driving quite sanely and safely (in fact, this is the only way to drive sanely and safely--if your mind were actively forming memories of everything on the route it would not be doing the other things it needs to do in order to safely drive a car).

Compartmentalization, denial, and dissociation from one's own actions, feelings, and self-concept are on a spectrum with one another. Dissociation in this sense is more severe, in that it involves not just avoidance or rejection of unpleasant realities but walling off of episodic memory (sometimes the wall is porous; sometimes it's almost impenetrable).

Alcohol consumption, at the level OP's husband has been at, hastens that along, and it's very common for people with trauma histories to use alcohol abusively because dissociation is an escape mechanism from otherwise very painful realities.

OP's husband may not be diagnosable with a dissociative *disorder*, but he had to separate himself to some extent from his identity as a "good husband" and "good father" in order to do what he did. This is different from not giving a damn about being a good husband or a good father in the first place. We don't know where on that spectrum he is--that is something for his therapist to work out. He needs one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here- another strange is that I have unfortunately gone through EXTREME traumas in my life (hence therapy since I was 17). So it's not like we haven't been through any really difficult situations, it's just the conflict was never between us if that makes sense.

Op I am so sorry that you have experienced this, it makes so much sense to me now why it is so hard to imagine reconciling. I am one poster who said your marriage may be with saving, and I will say now that I understand you’ve experienced such deep traumas I can completely see how it may be incredibly, incredibly difficult to consider moving past such a huge break in trust. I am so sorry this happened to you, it is wildly unfair. You sound like an extremely strong person who will find the right path for you. This new information is one reason these dcum threads can be so hard, we are commenting with so much missing information and context.

[Anonymous]

^ this. Exactly. My spouse had a very traumatic childhood with a lot of unaddressed/suppressed pain, that welled up when our kids were the age he was when most of it happened to him. I think they brought up a lot of those suppressed memories and he could see the difference between what he went through and hence how he was robbed as a kid of a normal childhood with loving, caring and involved parents.

His coping and disassociation were very rigid. When the wall came down and he was forced to face how what he was doing didn’t align with his values or picture of himself or what he wanted to be, it caused a very big mental breakdown, alcohol abuse became part of it too during that time.

The way he and his therapist described it to me was different boxes. When he was with us he didn’t have any thought of her or what he was doing and vice versa. It was an escape from pain to meet for an hour and drink and then at home it was like that didn’t exist. Until the guilt and shame and stress started bleeding into our life and it became inescapable and felt like there was no way out from what he started. What he thought would alleviate pressure, stress and pain now was the biggest source in his life. The emotional burden being lifted was palpable, but so was the pain of seeing the trauma he caused to the people he really cared about it over someone who meant nothing. This person also represented all the things he always disliked.

OP, his first very serious girlfriend (high school) also cheated on him and it was traumatic for him. I remember when we first started dating a conversation we had about cheating and how he couldn’t tolerate it if it were to happen. It was still raw. His home life was an alcoholic parent cheater and chaotic divorce. The girlfriend the cheated was his prior safe place.

[Anonymous]

^ a lot of people that say they will never end up like their parents, end up repeating the same exact sins in midlife. It’s traumatic for them when they realize it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^ a lot of people that say they will never end up like their parents, end up repeating the same exact sins in midlife. It’s traumatic for them when they realize it.

Traumatic for them AND they are passing their trauma on. I will never forget the moment in marriage counseling when the therapist turned to my husband (who was cheating, abusing alcohol, and seriously symptomatic in other ways—the reason I had not left him was because it was pretty clear he would die very fast if I did so) and said “You are on a cusp here. You are turning from being the person with the trauma to being the person inflicting the trauma.”

OP, I am so sorry all of this is happening to you. You can get through it, you will get through it—it’s just going to suck extremely hard in the meantime. Sending only good thoughts your way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ a lot of people that say they will never end up like their parents, end up repeating the same exact sins in midlife. It’s traumatic for them when they realize it.

Traumatic for them AND they are passing their trauma on. I will never forget the moment in marriage counseling when the therapist turned to my husband (who was cheating, abusing alcohol, and seriously symptomatic in other ways—the reason I had not left him was because it was pretty clear he would die very fast if I did so) and said “You are on a cusp here. You are turning from being the person with the trauma to being the person inflicting the trauma.”

OP, I am so sorry all of this is happening to you. You can get through it, you will get through it—it’s just going to suck extremely hard in the meantime. Sending only good thoughts your way.

Oh yes! My anger was always: I was mentally sound and healthy for 50 years and now I am a person with serious trauma on meds because of what you did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ a lot of people that say they will never end up like their parents, end up repeating the same exact sins in midlife. It’s traumatic for them when they realize it.

Traumatic for them AND they are passing their trauma on. I will never forget the moment in marriage counseling when the therapist turned to my husband (who was cheating, abusing alcohol, and seriously symptomatic in other ways—the reason I had not left him was because it was pretty clear he would die very fast if I did so) and said “You are on a cusp here. You are turning from being the person with the trauma to being the person inflicting the trauma.”

OP, I am so sorry all of this is happening to you. You can get through it, you will get through it—it’s just going to suck extremely hard in the meantime. Sending only good thoughts your way.

Oof. How did he react?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ a lot of people that say they will never end up like their parents, end up repeating the same exact sins in midlife. It’s traumatic for them when they realize it.

Traumatic for them AND they are passing their trauma on. I will never forget the moment in marriage counseling when the therapist turned to my husband (who was cheating, abusing alcohol, and seriously symptomatic in other ways—the reason I had not left him was because it was pretty clear he would die very fast if I did so) and said “You are on a cusp here. You are turning from being the person with the trauma to being the person inflicting the trauma.”

OP, I am so sorry all of this is happening to you. You can get through it, you will get through it—it’s just going to suck extremely hard in the meantime. Sending only good thoughts your way.

Oh yes! My anger was always: I was mentally sound and healthy for 50 years and now I am a person with serious trauma on meds because of what you did.

Oh-and I refuse to pass it on to my children and everything I have done has been to protect them from receiving and caring on that trauma. These people have the ability to break the chain, end the intergenerational trauma that has carried on several generations. This is what I instilled in my spouse, you can be the change in your family’s history of pain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ a lot of people that say they will never end up like their parents, end up repeating the same exact sins in midlife. It’s traumatic for them when they realize it.

Traumatic for them AND they are passing their trauma on. I will never forget the moment in marriage counseling when the therapist turned to my husband (who was cheating, abusing alcohol, and seriously symptomatic in other ways—the reason I had not left him was because it was pretty clear he would die very fast if I did so) and said “You are on a cusp here. You are turning from being the person with the trauma to being the person inflicting the trauma.”

OP, I am so sorry all of this is happening to you. You can get through it, you will get through it—it’s just going to suck extremely hard in the meantime. Sending only good thoughts your way.

Profound. So true.