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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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.  [b]I do not want to be with someone who cannot go through the hard stuff to save our marriage,[/b] 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?  [b]The affair is just the gift that keeps on giving.[/b][/quote]

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.  [/quote]

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