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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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?[/quote]

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