Rebuilding Marriage After Infidelity Community Group
A community for those who have been through the heartbreak of infidelity and decided to stay with their partner and try to re-build the relationship.
For those of you that are rebuilding, did you ever reach a point when you really felt loved again? I felt very loved and cared for during the first 11 years of our relationship.
Like so many others, my H distanced himself from me and was less nice to me over time after he started his affair.
Since the news of his long affair came out, I just don't feel loved. My H says he never stopped loving me, never wanted to leave me -- just got caught up in the ego stroke and the sex and the constant attention of the A.
I believe that he wants to stay, but I think it's more because he wants to minimize the after effects of the affair. He doesn't want the family to break up because that will make him feel even worse about what he did.
He just isn't kind and loving to me the way he used to be. When I talk to him about it, he says it's too hard for him to be nice to me when I am so sad or mad or whatever. He wants me to just pretend like nothing happened and then he will reward me with his kindness. It's classic passive agressive controlling, but it doesn't leave me feeling like he actually CARES about me, my feelings, my happiness.
How do you go on to truly feel loved again by someone who could choose to hurt you so badly?
Like so many others, my H distanced himself from me and was less nice to me over time after he started his affair.
Since the news of his long affair came out, I just don't feel loved. My H says he never stopped loving me, never wanted to leave me -- just got caught up in the ego stroke and the sex and the constant attention of the A.
I believe that he wants to stay, but I think it's more because he wants to minimize the after effects of the affair. He doesn't want the family to break up because that will make him feel even worse about what he did.
He just isn't kind and loving to me the way he used to be. When I talk to him about it, he says it's too hard for him to be nice to me when I am so sad or mad or whatever. He wants me to just pretend like nothing happened and then he will reward me with his kindness. It's classic passive agressive controlling, but it doesn't leave me feeling like he actually CARES about me, my feelings, my happiness.
How do you go on to truly feel loved again by someone who could choose to hurt you so badly?
Seananne - everything you are saying is correct. I have been doing the coaching program that accompanies Debbie Ford's book "Spiritual Divorce" and it has been helping me work on my own stuff/my own life ALOT. It's not just for people getting divorced, it's also for people trying to heal a broken relationship. I reccommend the book to anyone dealing with infidelity.
Needhelp - what you wrote really struck a chord for me. I always feel sad that even if I make the marriage work, it feels like my life will always be "less than". Like when he took what we had and just flushed it with his used condoms, that it's gone forever and it's not something you can get back. Our young love, our marriage, the memories of our first 11 years together, the births of our three children...I will always feel now like it just didn't mean as much to him as it did to me. I would have weathered any hardship to protect it -- it meant, literally, EVERYTHING to me. More than work or money or success or anything. My dream of the happy (intact) family for my children that I didn't get and so wanted as a child.
Like growing said, we also have "happy" moments - times when we laugh and have fun or enjoy each other's company -- but it's not like before -- never like before. There's always that cold hand of betrayal clutching it's tight grip on my heart. I never feel happy and carefree and safe in the relationship like I did before.
The scars from his A are still here...at times I don't think they'll ever go away completely. We haven't talked about it lately, and I don't think about it as often. But boy when it comes out of the blue, it knocks the breath right out of me.
Yorick...your comments are just wonderful. They really help me see things from my H's point of view.
That was a rambling post...this week has really worn me down.