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Hi MD: You have received lots of good advice here, but I hope that you will pay close attention to what Cooley has said about how the stress will affect your health. Living in a stressful situation for long periods of time takes its toll, which I'm now coming to terms with.

My wife started secretly eating. She wasn't doing what I'd consider hoarding food, but the Little Debbie's and cupcakes were disappearing from the pantry at an alarming rate and I hardly ever saw her eating them. She would wait until I wasn't home and no one else was around and pig out on stuff. She was hitting the chips and donuts pretty hard at work, too. She's 5' 4" tall and gradually put on about 60 lbs.

About 3 years ago she was promoted from a pretty sedentary position at work to a job that required a lot of running around and some lifting. She started losing some of that weight. When she noticed it she started changing her diet, going from donuts, cupcakes and chips to fruit and yogurt for snacks. She stopped buying the Little Debbie's and junk food at home, too.

She slowly shed most of that weight over time, but kept wearing the same clothes. I only recently (a year ago) noticed she had lost all of that weight. She's looking amazing again, and I'd barely noticed it. I sure notice it now.

Part of the reason was that she was embarrassed so she wouldn't let me see her without clothes on, and the clothes she was wearing were the same baggy clothes she wore when she was heavier and they weren't very flattering. She stopped going swimming at her parent's place, too, which used to be an almost weekly thing in the summertime. Not to mention I was a shitty husband and wasn't paying attention like I should have. She's turned into an exhibitionist with me. She runs around naked more often than clothed when we're home alone now.

The thing that bothered me was the fact that she hid her eating. I thought that was kind of weird. She also had, let's say, a complicated relationship with truth and transparency in general.

She's done a pretty complete overhaul on that since d day. She's been very transparent and truthful with me for the last year now and I believe there aren't anymore secrets. It's kinda like she's now addicted to radical honesty and tells me everything. I think she gets her dopamine hits from demonstrating honesty and transparency now, and I'm pretty tickled about it. I can see it in her face when she opens up and talks to me about stuff now. I've been reacting very positively to it.

I don't know what to make of the strange eating habits, but that's done now. She's on a health kick and wants to lose another 10 or 15 lbs and she's putting the effort into it. Hey, I'm all for it. I've been super supportive and cook healthy meals for both of us.

Hi MD,

A couple of statements from your post on 23 June suggest some cognitive dissonance on your wife’s part:

…my WW’s AP broke it off with her only a few days before she chose to confess to me. Apparently she was emotionally distraught during that time, and was reaching out to a friend for advice because she couldn’t deal with the pain of being dumped by the AP.

she likes to represent that everything ‘meant nothing to her’ but then why did she continue on for months with him…I think the depth of their connection was much more than she is comfortable to admit. I’m going to explore this theme further.

Looked at in isolation, a person being distraught about the end of something that meant nothing to them makes no sense at all. However, in light of your further insight about your wife’s compulsive/self-indulgent behaviour, need for validation, secret bingeing, and kleptomania, is it possible that what she became almost addicted to was the attention/validation she got from the AP, rather than having a strong connection to him as a person? That the attention was like a drug, and its abrupt withdrawal was like an addict having to go cold turkey? Cue the distraught reaction.

What you now know sets the affair in the context of a pattern/history of compulsive, arguably reckless/self-destructive, rule-breaking behaviour. It is part of a bigger picture that really does need work with a therapist to unpick and hopefully improve.

Is it possible that your wife confessed so quickly after being dropped by the AP due to advice from the friend she reached out to for advice? In your shoes, I would be very curious about how much that friend knew about the affair, or if they only found out at the point when your wife reached out and said something like, "You have to tell your husband". Although you would need to ask in a subtle, indirect way, it would be useful for you to know whether the friend is also a friend to the marriage.

[This message edited by M1965 at 2:54 PM, Thursday, June 25th]

Bump by Request

Good day SI team, I hope this note finds all of you doing very well these days! Or, as well as can be expected, depending on where you may be in the process of working with any infidelity issues with which you may be grappling in your own lives. I am very much cognizant of the struggles with which so many of you deal, and my heart goes out to all of you. Each of our situations is different, and yet each of them have a similar ingredient.

I wanted to post a general update and again place myself humbly at your feet in request of your wisdom and input. The knowledge and experiences shared by so many members here have truly been so life-changing for me. I have grown and matured so much by virtue of the knowledge you all have so generously conferred upon me. Thank you all so much.

To be honest, these days, I am still struggling greatly. I’m coming up on the six month mark since D-Day, and so much has happened during this time. My life has always been busy and challenging, but since my WW’s affair, it’s been an absolutely wild rollercoaster. The fallout from her affair has been profound, and I struggle with strong emotions over it frequently. These bouts of emotion tend to be shorter in duration than they were initially, but they still hit me at least a few times a day.

At length, I am starting to feel that my WW may not have the maturity to really do the effective work that’s required for us to have an authentic and successful reconciliation.

It took her forever to locate a counselor, almost 4 months, and the counselor she has found seems to be doing just kind of OK, but as of yet they’ve only had a few sessions, and they really haven’t dug deeply into the main issues yet.

As one of my conditions for participation in reconciliation, I made a twofold request to my WW in re her engagement in counseling:
1) tell the details of the affair, and 2) then tell about other patterns of prior personal behavior to see if there’s any connection between the affair and past events, tendencies, old patterns, etc., that might provide a clue as to my WW’s motivations and triggers in choosing to engage in this escapade (the reason I want to have the counselor analyze these past patterns this is my feeling that if we can identify my WW’s entrenched triggers, perhaps there’s a chance we/I can watch out for them in the current and future time, thereby hopefully preventing a recurrence?).

I assembled a list comprised of bullet points of negative/disturbing behavior patterns in which my wife has engaged during the two decades we’ve been together, and added some other patterns in which she engaged before we met (about which she’s since verbally told me).

One of the behaviors I’m hoping my WW will unpack is a particular pattern of bizarre sexual liaisons in which she engaged on a recurring basis, with quite a few men (at least a dozen or so before we met…that I know of?). Other behaviors I listed include her self-reported kleptomania, binge eating, a reported enjoyment of getting away with deceiving others, and a desire to have power over others in social settings, a kind of power which is conferred to her through attention from others (as she describes it).

I really feel like her counselor should take all of this pre-existing behaviors to determine whether it helps to identify what might have been going on with my WW in choosing to conduct her affair.

I very much do sense that all of the above odd behaviors are a part of a mysterious internal operating mechanism that allowed, entitled, or justified her participation in her affair.

Initially, to my relief, my WW agreed with me that this counseling approach was a great plan, and endorsed the idea of working on these aspects!
But now that she is only a few sessions in, she’s putting up resistance and wanting to take the counseling in a different direction, essentially focusing on other personal neurotic tendencies that have been bothering her in her current everyday life.

Her move to shift focus in counseling makes me feel like she wants to derail the main emphasis of the counseling, away from dealing with the urgent/emergency situation of understanding and repairing the affair situation and working on our reconciliation, and to replace this imperative with remedying her own personal emotional struggles in her current everyday life.

It bothers me that this shift has come about so soon after starting her counseling. It feels like she is deprioritizing our reconciliation too early on.

Don’t get me wrong: I totally understand that sometimes people just need a counselor, to help them deal with their own problems and issues, but having gone through the intense pain of the affair so recently (which was the entire impetus for my WW to engage in counseling to begin with), I’m now feeling abandoned all over again because of this change in her attitude about how to utilize said counseling.

Another thing that concerns me is now that we are getting some months away in time from the initial shock of D-day, I’m starting to see a more frequent resurfacing of wantonly disrespectful behaviors in my WW.
In particular, her old tendency towards anger and rage whenever there are disagreements, is popping up again.

Most often, our marital disagreements are not in regards to high-stakes matters, and are more routine, such as decisions about how to run our business, decisions on the care and discipline of our children, or the myriad logistical considerations of running our household together.

But my WW often has a strong ego and pride, and she often will not admit when she’s proved wrong on things, even on these more routine matters, and she gets super defensive or angry and will often suddenly speak very harshly, shout, bluster….while at still other times, she will simply abruptly break off from conversation and walk off to be by herself.

I really don’t know how to manage any of these behaviors. It’s making me worry that maybe she simply didn’t mature properly into adulthood and isn’t ultimately going to be able to respectfully handle the challenges that inevitably come up in a marriage?
(please, I don’t say any of this to be patently disparaging to her, or to overtly insult her, but these are literally some concerns that I have)

I’d previously had thoughts like this occur to me during the decades we were together BEFORE she had her affair, but the fact that these behaviors have started resurfacing again after only a short cessation (she had been on much "better behavior" during the first few months following D-Day) is giving me concern that she may not ‘have it in her’ to actually make a meaningful change in herself towards more respectful spousal relations in general, parenting relations, etc., despite "talking a good talk" about being committed to do it.

Dealing with the resurgence of inappropriate attitudes, while simultaneously still dealing with the pain from the disrespect, deception, and contempt she showed in having her affair, is really painful for me, and really difficult for me to endure.
I’ve spoken to my WW about this several times. She has acknowledged that she understands where I’m coming from with that, and keeps on apologizing after she loses control. And yet she just can’t seem to ‘get a handle’ on it, and continually resorts to anger or other abrupt emotional outbursts.

Another thing that’s really troubling is that my WW already has slipped into a pattern of not really putting much effort into talking through the affair issue itself. I’ve asked her all along to please come to me to share her thoughts, observations, recollections, or other personal work she might be doing around trying to figure out her "why" for engaging in her affair, but to no avail: she simply does not ever come forward on her own and provide any input.

And when I take the active role reach out to ask her for any information about any personal work she’s been doing, the answer is always the same: she hasn’t been doing any, she doesn’t have time, she’s been too busy at work, etc. and I know I should not be taking the active role, but sometimes I just can’t help it because if I don’t do something, there is simply no activity on the reconciliation front. Which feels intolerable to me. So every week or so I pop off and try to bring up the topic as a way of trying to get us working on it.

To me this feels like another disconnect: the reconciliation should be so important to our lives, right?
But she can’t even spend five or 10 minutes a day doing any work on it?
It makes me feel like she wants to just avoid the topic, and maybe it will just fade away. But it won’t. And I think she knows that it won’t, but she’s engaging in magical thinking hoping it will. It feels like she’s just trying to "Go back to normal".

But I don’t think we are in a place where "normalcy" is authentically possible, at least on my side, I’m still not feeling a sense of security or safety in our marriage. I still feel like the issues in my WW that made her feel emboldened or entitled to her affair, are still just under the surface and have not been properly exhumed and examined… They are still lurking down there, and I feel that the risk of a relapse is still a clear and present danger to me and our family. I imagine I will still feel this way until the issue can be processed, discussed, and analyzed much further.

Essentially, I feel like she just isn’t going to care enough about fixing this issue of her affair: repairing the damage, figuring out the patterns.
It feels like she’s just paying obligatory ‘lip service’ toward the topic, while not meaningfully doing work on her side to make things any better.

Meanwhile, I continue to suffer day by day, trying to understand the affair, the betrayal, trying to find a way to feel a sense of security and safety going forward.

I guess what I’m trying to say is it just feels like she doesn’t care about this issue as much as I do, and she’s not going to.

As I think about the whole ugly situation, I’m also really struggling with a lot of feelings of humiliation and anger these days. The whole thing was so incredibly disgusting. I’m trying to imagine how I can "live it down" long-term. Sometimes I wonder if I may not be able to be successful at that.

I don’t know how long I can go on like this, I certainly can’t imagine living out the rest of my life feeling like this.
I guess six months in is still fairly early on. Hopefully my WW’s behavior will change, and my own emotional tolerance will become stronger?

Meanwhile, I am still employed full-time, still trying to be the best dad that I can to my beautiful daughters, and still trying to show up as a good spouse myself, as much as I can. Trying to practice music as I can, too.
I do sense I’m getting incrementally stronger, but it is a slow process, a tiny improvement each day.

Thank you for your patience if you’ve read this far! Would so greatly appreciate any insight anyone may have. Thanks again!

Hey MD,

Curious: have you taken D off the table? Has she experienced any natural consequences for her horrific choices?

"<But my WW often has a strong ego and pride, and she often will not admit when she’s proved wrong on things, even on these more routine matters, and she gets super defensive or angry and will often suddenly speak very harshly, shout, bluster….while at still other times, she will simply abruptly break off from conversation and walk off to be by herself."

This is the crux of the problem. She wants to rugsweep. It takes real humility to face your brokenness. Her pride and ego are her defense mechanisms. Do not let her slide by. Its hard to face the worst thing you've ever done.

Hmmm ... my W behaved very differently, but even so, 6 months out was my lowest point to the date, but not the lowest point I ...um... achieved. Still, it' a rough time in any case.

WRT to therapy, a person will change only what they want to change. I'll say this, though. IMO, her A (the one you know of) is a symptom of her 'pathology'. What you call 'oddities' are, IMO, real flaws. You know other sides of her and presumably love her, but I think you may be minimizing her flaws.

Have you considered requiring a joint session with her therapist to find out what your W has shared, compared to what she agreed to do in therapy? My reco is to make it a requirement, along with a release she signs that allows her IC to talk with you if you call. (My W's IC told me she would only talk in a joint session if I called with questions, but that was fine with me.)

Also, a good MC should be able to teach your WS - and you, too - new techniques of handling conflict, if all you need are new techniques.

Have you considered IC for yourself, to help you resolve the feelings that come with being betrayed - anger, grief, fear, shame?

The feeling of humiliation is common and maybe even universal, but it's something people do to themselves, not something that is done to them. Our WSes did not humiliate us, IMO. they humiliated themselves. Their As were about themselves, not because of something we did or did not do. Their As say nothing about the BSes abilities in or out of bedrooms. They just say that the WSes failed as human beings. If the realization that the BS has not been humiliated does not come naturally, a good IC can help you see the reality.

Being betrayed attacks the BS's sense of self, and those attacks hurt. The betrayal brings up every shred of self-doubt a person ever felt, and it's hard to stop attacking oneself for the flaws the BS knows they suffer from, even though nobody else does. Change the self-talk, though, and you change your outcome. A good IC can help you see that and put it into practice.

I'll be specific. I've laughed at a lot of jokes about Ws leaving Hes for other women because the H es are so bad in bed. And then my W cheated with a woman, and those jokes dug deep into my sense of worth. Alas, the only one who could rebuild my sense of worth was me, just as only you can build your sense of self-worth.