Ideas how to make amends

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08/24/2016 17:37

Subject: Ideas how to make amends

quote

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I was in your shoes not too long ago. I essentially did the same thing, even though I love my spouse very much. I had a weakness with this one person from my past who I should never have allowed back into my life, even as a friend. It took a good three months until we weren't talking about it and shedding tears about it every day. My spouse never wanted out of the marriage over it, though, that I know of.

What helped was for me to offer complete transparency, which I continued to do to this day, about 9 months later. I also answered all questions openly, honestly, and without being upset that the questions were asked in the first place. I think it also helped that my spouse saw how upset I was, saw the regret and shame I felt. I also went into counseling, which we are now doing together.

It sounds like the difference for you is that your spouse does not seem to want to work on the marriage. Is that true? Are there other major issues within your marriage that you have not mentioned? For us--and I know some people will call BS on this -- but we were actually pretty happy before this happened. Not perfect, but happy and in a loving marriage. What's your history?

If you're both willing to work on the marriage, to express yourselves openly, and to show vulnerabilities, you can heal from this. Dig deeper in order to get to know each other more. Just a short 9 months later my spouse and I are doing so much better, but we have both worked for it.

OP here. Thanks for sharing. This is exactly what happened with this particular person. She doesn't really want to work on the marriage b/c she doesn't think she did anything wrong. It took several weeks to get her to come to counseling and it went better than I thought this past weekend. But out of the session, she is expecting that I am already planning everything out and jumping through hoops.

We were pretty happy in the marriage before this happened just like you. She will work on it, but only if I am able to demonstrate my love. I just need to know what she considers amends so that I am not grasping at straws.

I am the PP you are responding to. The thing is, she didn't do anything to "deserve" your emotional affair or whatever the two of you have decided to call it. My spouse did nothing to cause me to have an emotional affair, either. My spouse did a lot of self-blaming even though I always take 100% responsibility, offering no excuses. Now, throughout the counseling process we have discovered the weaknesses in our marriage. We haven't focused on finger-pointing, but rather strengthening ourselves as individuals and strengthening our marriage. It has allowed us to focus on each of our needs within the relationship, and what the other can do in order to fulfill them. This was sure a shitty way to go about it, and I wouldn't recommend it, but we are ending up stronger because of my emotional affair and the ensuing work we have put into our marriage.

It sounds like the difference is that your wife wants you to just fix things. This is the thing that sucks about affairs. You are the one who betrayed your spouse, but the betrayed spouse, however innocent, has to do a lot of the work in order to heal things. The affair is your fault, but because it is a marriage, you can't fix it by yourself. You both need to do the work. That was the hardest part of what I did-- knowing that I could not just fix everything I fucked up, but that a huge part of the onus was on my innocent spouse.

As a cheated upon wife, I actually find the whole above exchange between OP and PP offensive, delusional and so typical of the kind of "reconciliation" that is forced upon wives. First, when OP says "she doesn't want to work on marriage because she doesn't think she did anything wrong," OP's wife is oh, so right. The failure of the wife to do something or the failure of an aspect of a marriage or the OP's "not getting his need met in marriage" is not the cause of cheating (whether it's physical sex, or emotional cheating). The cause of that is the OP himself -- his own weakness in seeking to get needs met in an inappropriate way. That is not wife's fault. That is not something wife can fix in therapy; it's not her job at all to fix OP.

In fact, I view cheating as emotionally abusive and it is NOT appropriate for a therapist to solve abuse by having the abuser and the victim together in therapy. I know lots of marital counselors take this approach -- putting the couple into therapy to fix the problem in the marriage -- but it is wrong. PP's description of therapy sounds like this approach. Basically the message sent to the spouse by this kind of therapy is, "you failed to provide something, so your spouse sought it outside the marriage. If you provide that something now and in the future, then spouse will no longer cheat." This is really manipulative. Most of the time, cheating partners like PP believe the "marriage is stronger" but in reality, the wife has just decided to swallow the crap and move on. This doesn't really make the marriage stronger.

PP is right about one thing -- you can't fix a marriage by yourself and the cheating partner cannot by himself continue the marriage. It is entirely up to the victim spouse to decide -- does she want a marriage like this (one broken by trust)? Does she want to live, on balance, with this partner (who has X good qualities and Y crappy ones).

First, OP's cheating isn't abuse. People need to stop throwing that word around. (It's like "infidelity" or "affair". Now there's "financial infidelity" too! Is that "abuse"?) It cheapens the seriousness of abuse. What he did may have been mean or thoughtless or selfish. It may have made his wife feel bad. But calling it "abuse" is ridiculous.

Second, seeking validation outside of the marriage is pretty normal. Lots of people want to feel the excitement of new relationships, of relationships not bogged down in the day-to-day. Totally normal. Would have been good for OP to avoid going to another woman for that validation and excitement and find a way to get that in his marriage. That's obviously harder to do, but if you've made the vow, it's the right thing to do. But to suggest that he's some abusive monster for doing it is over the top.

Third, PP is right that, in the end, it comes down to a decision on both sides as to whether it is worth the work. OP can decide whether he wants to stand by if his wife is taking forever to get over it, and his wife can decide whether she finds it worth her time and energy to do the work to get over it.

Finally, I think PP's defensiveness is blinding her to the fact that the cheating may, in fact, be about things missing from the marriage. Might not be anyone's fault, but I do believe that working on understanding what was missing can help strengthen the marriage. But for that to happen, the cheated upon person has to be willing to get over it.