Me - BH D-day 4/2024 age 42, 19 years married
Her - WW EA 1/2023, PA 7/2023 - 6/2024, age 41, the Love of my life...still is, trying to reconcile.
2 Teenage Children (16, and 14)

Reconciliation questions

It's coming up on the 6 month anniversary of D-day for me, and I've been thinking a lot about reconciliation and what I would like to see happen in our relationship.

A few questions are bouncing around in my head of late:

1. Even if WW does all the things I need, will I ever really be able to trust her again? Am I just wasting both of our time trying to reconcile?

Q: Those who have reconciled, how did you decide that you could trust your partner again? What questions did you ask yourself that helped give you clarity?

2. As I have said in a previous post, our couples therapist is not addressing the affair at all (going to find someone else), and my wife is doing a lot of the things recommended in the affair recovery books, not all, but a lot. I see her efforts, and appreciate them, but in the back of my mind I wonder if she is really digging deep to change, or if she is doing the superficial things in order to say she "gave it a good try".

Q: What did you need to see to convince you that your spouse really did change into a person that would never cheat on you again?

3. Based on our conversations, the affair for her was a very positive time. She has many fond memories of it. She has said many times that she is sorry she hurt me, and that if she could go back in time she would not do it again. She assures me that she would never cheat on me again because letting go of that relationship was so painful for her, and seeing my pain was so painful for her. However saying those things is not the same as saying "the affair was wrong, and I will never cheat on you again".

Q: Should I be concerned about these positive emotions, and the fact that she seems upset by the fallout of the affair not the affair itself? Or is this generally expected behavior from wayward spouses, and part of the recovery process?

4. I love my wife, and really want to reconcile. The last few weeks I've been having a difficult time though. Every time I think positive things about her, the "she intentionally betrayed me" thoughts creep in and ruin my good mood. I'm having a difficult time getting past the idea that she intentionally had an affair, and that this affair really for all intents and purposes destroyed the part of our marriage that mattered - our vows to each other. Without vows we might as well just be friends with benefits.

Q: Is this a normal place to be 6 months out, and how did you move past these thoughts in order to really reconcile?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

7 comments posted: Wednesday, October 16th, 2024

Couples Therapy

I am trying to decide if my wife (WS) and I (BS) need a new couples therapist or if I'm just making a big deal of nothing.

Back story:

My wife told me about her affair the end of April 2024. It was a year long emotional and physical affair, where they both said they loved the other. They had unprotected sex hundreds of times, which eventually resulted in a pregnancy and she had an abortion. Really difficult for me.

From the start I wanted to reconcile. For the first 6 weeks she had a really hard time breaking contact off with him, and he kept reaching out to her. It has really been hell for me, and only recently have I been able to think about other things some of the time.

She is also suffering a lot with her own issues and emotions surrounding the affair. Feeling lots of guilt for what she has done, mourning the loss of her relationship with him, mourning the loss of the baby she aborted, etc.

We both have triggers.

It makes for a lot of volatility when we have discussions. But also she has been really good to help me through my issues, and put my needs and the needs of our kids first. She is doing many of the steps that people recommend to reconcile.

Since the affair, my wife has continually said the affair is 100% her fault. But she also has been bringing up all sorts of things she is blaming me for not doing before the affair, or things that contributed to her having an affair, etc. Things that were almost never communicated prior to the affair. It seems like she is saying something like this for every thing she blames me for: "the affair is 100% my fault, however there were things you weren't doing that I was able to get from the affair, and are part of the reason it happened."

On the one hand I'm glad she is trying to explain why it happened to me. I do really want to understand that. On the other it seems like blame shifting her affair onto me. It's hard to tell which is which.

In the period from then to now we have tried three different couples therapists. The first one was horrible, the second one I liked because she seemed to be able to empathize with my predicament. My wife wanted to go with someone else though; the therapist we are currently seeing every two weeks.

My concerns:

This therapist is very knowledgeable and competent. I don't have any issues with that. But in our last three sessions he has pretty much skipped over the affair completely and wen't straight into using the Gottman methods of repairing relationships. We asked for Gottman techniques, and to get started repairing our relationship ASAP, so I'm glad to learn these skills, and maybe I just need to communicate what I want.

It just seems strange that a couples therapist seeing a couple because of infidelity hasn't yet addressed the issue directly. He's talked about trust in general and what it means to each of us. He's recommended some books, which we are reading. We worked on how we communicate better, which is a good thing.

However focussing only on marital issues we have, or had before the affair, feels to me very much like blaming the affair on our marital issues, and not on the decisions my wife made. Or maybe I'm just focussing too much on that and the way to repair our marriage is actually to fix those issues?

I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's not addressing it directly because we are months into this process. We have had many discussions already, we have had full disclosure already, backed up with a lie detector test which I requested she take.

I expected that a couples therapist would work through and address the affair first, and then proceed on to things that strengthen the marriage.

However I've never been here before and thats why I'm seeking advice from everyone here.

Does it sound like we need a new therapist?

Should I bring up my concerns in couples therapy? (I also considered writing a letter to him alone to avoid stressing my wife out)

Am I focussing too much on the affair, and should really be focussed on repairing issues we had in our marriage instead?

23 comments posted: Thursday, September 26th, 2024