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when she seems happy I feel like everything is fine, and when she’s not attentive or distant, I feel like the whole thing is just being slow walked to death

This is a near-perfect definition of codependency. I trust your IC is all over that, cuz it’s a big problem, REGARDLESS of whether you keep your M on life support or mercifully pull the plug.

You could try taking a step back and let the topic rest for awhile to allow both of you some breathing space, and to allow your emotions to settle a bit. I think this is what your ww is trying to tell you. She needs time and space to think about what she wants out of life and marriage. I think you should do the same too. Time apart and healthy outlets could do wonders for both of your souls.

I've also found learning meditation practices has been so beneficial for me. It has taught me how to relax my body and my mind, and bring myself back into the present moment, especially when I'm upset, tense or when my mind is racing which I still find it happens on occasion. Not so much anymore though, thankfully. I found relaxation in yoga too. And Journaling. You may also want to do some brainstorming to figure out ways to help you relax and come back to yourself.

I began by looking up 20 to 30 minute meditations up on YouTube. And actually my therapist is the one who first recommended it to me.

This may not be what you are looking for but I thought I would offer my input. Sometimes the best way to find your answers is to allow things to unfold in their own time.

I hope this helps.

One thing I am wondering about with your WW and marital history is why, since you are now in IC and doing work on your annoying behaviors, she cannot look past her memories of "how you used to be," if in fact she is seeing you change before her eyes! It does suggest she is using that as a tool to break up with you emotionally. Whereas, if she were truly in wait-and-see mode, and she kept seeing you making changes that are meaningful to her, it seems to me that should be shifting her thinking. At least a little bit.

I know my patience would have been sorely tested years ago by what you describe with those anger outbursts and daily escapism, and I'd have probably wanted the heck out. But I have always believed people have the capacity for change if they truly want it. And it seems from your posts that now you really are seriously trying to make those changes. Better late than never and also for your own good.

A couple uears ago I "sent" my WH to our local community college to take a course in public speaking, to see if he could learn the basic rules of civil communication which nobody ever taught him. He is on the asperger's spectrum. Well, he 'aced' his homework, got an A for a 3 credit college course - his first and only one at the college level - yet I saw zero improvement in his learning how to not interrupt, to consider context of a topic before blurting out the first thought that comes into his head regardless of its relevance, and just to follow the train of thought of a woman speaking to him, when I think he has no respect for women. Continues to shut me down every day.

The reason I thought a class would help him with his problem areas was due to my own experience taking an advanced course in counseling, practicing empathic communication with another student while being critiqued. I learned that my skills in that area needed a lot more work! Instructor said I tended not to allow the other person the time to fully expand their story. It was a shock, as I thought I was quite the good listener, compared to all the people I'd grown around or worked with! Maybe they all just modelled poor listening skills, but it was difficult to pick this skill up in my 50's, so I wonder if you are still missing chances to connect when you two "talk?" I hated to read the part about your long walks together in silence, sounds like the frustrating experiences I have with my WH.

Do do you recall if she feels you are dismissive of her in your replies? (Which is intensely more difficult once you are talking about betrayal!) You see, I have even tried to "teach" what my expectations are to my WH but nothing takes with him. Eye contact, staying on topic, showing some reflection ability, he just doesn't do that with me. But seems to do just fine with everybody else!

... Or ...

reconcile /rĕk′ən-sīl″/
intransitive verb

To reestablish a close relationship between.
"reconciled the opposing parties."

To settle or resolve.
"reconciled the dispute."

To bring (oneself) to accept.
"He finally reconciled himself to the change in management."
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition • More at Wordnik

Repair means to fix something that is broken or damaged, restoring it to a good condition. It can also refer to the act of making amends or improving a situation.

Encyclopedia Britannica
Merriam-Webster

repair
intransitive verb

To return.

Similar: return

To go; to betake one's self; to resort; ass, to repair to sanctuary for safety.

Similar: goresort

noun

The act of repairing or resorting to a place.
The GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English • More at Wordnik

In other words, sometimes it's difficult to reconcile different sources. (Sorry, I know that's a stretch, but puns ARE the lowest form of humor....)

More seriously, I agree - communication requires agreement on what terms mean, but that agreement includes a lot of fuzziness.

*****

The most helpful thing I heard when I was a new BS was this:

BS heals BS.
WS heals WS.
Together the heal the M.

That made me realize I was not doomed to a life of pain - I could heal with or without my W.

But 'heal the M' didn't seem right. It worked for some people, but I wasn't sure it worked for me. My W' A made me realize I was asking for from her and probably and giving too little. Some SIers talked about a 'new' M, and that made more sense to me than 'heal'.

It's true that many, if not most, repairs do not result in something that's not quite as durable as new - but there are exceptions. For me, 'healing the M' meant taking it apart and putting it back together. And that sort of 'repair' is an opportunity to make it better than it was before the A.

Machines wear out. Human beings can and must adjust themselves as we live our lives. Often, the adjustments improve our lives.

When I married my WW, I thought she was very, very special.

And if she was marrying me, I must be pretty special, too.

Turns out, she wasn’t very special at all.

So I guess I’m not, either (the mirror you see yourself in, right?).

That’s what I’m reconciled to.

@Superesse

You ask a lot of good questions.

First, I too struggle to understand why she’s living in the past when that can’t be changed, and I’m by her own account making great strides to improve. In fact she’s told me I cannot do anymore. On one occasion she said, "I finally have the dream husband I always wanted." That was short lived though, as we were arguing an hour later.

She’s always been enormously stubborn, and it was a joke for years that was the only reason we were still married. She just doesn’t let go off things easily.

My wife also believes I’m on the spectrum and may have an undiagnosed form of aspergers. My family has a history of autism that seems to run strong in the males, on my father’s side.

Not sure how this impacts my wife, but most people find me as annoying as I find them. She’s the exception, even when she’s annoying I still love her. She’s the person that’s understood me the best. She’s really my only friend. And that’s one of the reasons her cheating has been so devastating.

My wife thinks I don’t listen to her. She once sent me to an ear doctor to see if it was physical. The ear doctor had a sense of humor and told me the tests were near perfect but his professional judgment told him I may have a hard time hearing a nagging women’s voice. (My wife is not a nag, btw)

I think the important takeaway here is that I actually went to an ear doctor because I thought it must be that I was getting old. I certainly don’t have a hard time hearing her on purpose.

What I find is that she sometimes talks in the opposite direction that I’m in, and then I only hear bits and pieces of what she says. When I ask her to repeat it, she’s annoyed. But yeah, this is a thing with us.

@formerpeopleperson

I think that’s probably a common reason people get married. You find someone you think is special and by proxy that makes you feel special.

I had dated a lot prior to meeting my wife, and she was so far beyond my dreams compared to anyone else I’d ever met, I couldn’t believe my luck.

But because I had some difficult past relationships (including an engagement that ended because of an affair), I was really nervous about the idea of asking her to marry me. Even though I really wanted that.

So she asked me to marry her.

4characters-

I went through I read all of your posts — one thing jumped out at me as the red flag - resentments.

WS who don’t let go of whatever resentments they used to give themselves ‘permission’ to see validation outside of the marriage, aren’t safe.

My situation was somewhat unique (although happens quite a bit) is my wife didn’t confess her A to me until years after the fact (like nearly 18-years later).

I bring it up, because my wife STILL held on the resentments she had to justify her actions.

Luckily, it didn’t take long for her to realize, there is no justification for cheating. If you hate an aspect of the relationship, or have stacked up resentments, or things driving each other apart, that stuff happens in every relationship. Only one partner chooses to cheat instead of working on the things they are angry about.

This ‘stuff’ your wife is working through sounds to me like it is two-fold. One, she really, really liked that fantasy world she was building, it was an escape from all problems, real or imagined. She was building a dream she didn’t get to finish, and even the broken dream may sound better to her today, than returning to her reality.

Second thing, those resentments.

Okay, you got anger issues, that you can work on. Listening better is a skill, I had to learn that as well to be a better partner myself.

The points in the thread people have made are critical — first thing you need to do is look out for you. There is a chance she doesn’t let go of the shit she has been holding against you for a long time. Misery is a choice. I lived in misery, my wife did as well — misery wasn’t much but it was something we could depend on, and we didn’t have to work on anything.

Protect you and take a step back.

Her first step is understanding her resentments DO not make her shitty choices okay. They don’t, no matter what her issues with you are.

WS who don’t let go of whatever resentments they used to give themselves ‘permission’ to see validation outside of the marriage, aren’t safe.

Yes. This. 1,000 times over.

My wife still holds to her resentments (we are divorcing). They are her security blanket, her justification for her indefensible behavior. A WS cannot hold on to those resentments AND commit to R, they are diametrically opposed to each other.

Quite honestly, 4characters, from reading all your various posts it does seem to me like your wife is already mentally and emotionally checked out and has been for quite a while... she just doesn't want to be the villain who cheated on and then divorced her husband of 22 years.

So instead of doing the right thing-- which would be to accept responsibility for her betrayal, be honest about the fact that she doesn't love you anymore, and offer you a clean break-- she's going to go through the motions of IC/MC, and tell you she's trying to think things through.

Then, when you eventually get fed up, she's going to spin the narrative that your marriage ended not because she cheated and didn't do the work to rebuild, but because "you just couldn't get over it."

If you're like 99% of people on SI (such as myself, InkHulk, and others) nothing anyone says is going to convince you to not attempt to single-handedly drag your recalcitrant spouse kicking and screaming through the reconciliation process. Normally, I would say, "Oh well, he's just going to have to figure it out for himself."

However, in your specific case, I don't think you have the luxury to wait months and years to reach your breaking point and then file for divorce. The reason for this is the nature of your wife's affair with a felon through her work, which involves serious ethical violations and potentially legal ones as well.

If you get out now, while she's still gainfully employed, you might be able to avoid or at least reduce spousal support and protect yourself and your family's assets from the consequences of her affair being exposed in the future. If you stick around to try to save the marriage, just be aware that there's a huge risk involved.

@oldwounds
Yes, the resentment feedback loop is absolutely killing me.

I’ve tried to say, we can talk all about my mistakes in the marriage and I will take accountability for my mistakes. But when we’re talking about the affair and the impact it had, we have to table what happened over the last 22 years.

She’s just not able to do it. She says she knows it was wrong and there’s no excuses. But then proceeds to boomerang back to the 22 years of marriage stuff the moment she gets uncomfortable.

@inkhulk

A WS cannot hold on to those resentments AND commit to R, they are diametrically opposed to each other.

I keep hoping either the MC or her IC will tell her this. She doesn’t want to hear it from me, that’s for sure.

I keep hoping either the MC or her IC will tell her this. She doesn’t want to hear it from me, that’s for sure.

I had always hoped for the same, and no one helped me.

I would recommend that if you insist on doing MC, you absolutely shop for an MC and find one who will.

My wife’s IC only further drove her into her own selfishness.

And I agree with BTB’s risk analysis of your situation. That is an absolute ticking time bomb.

4characters, thanks, it's simple: I just recognized some of the complaints you've heard from your WW and for the sake of a fair analysis, am trying to discern whether she may be already completely checked out of the M, as others are wondering, or if there could be any ONGOING validity to her frustrations with you. You mentioned she has noticed and praised your changes; wow, I'm impressed - and jealous! I don't see anything like that changing here. Sorry but she may just be using that resentment about the past as a smoke screen, if you are really eliminating poor listening-speaking with her. Which sadly, you may have learned as a child, like my WH did, if your father was like that.

Are any of the annoying behaviors my WH still does to this day sounding familiar to you? Like: lack of eye contact while listening, lack of mirroring the other for 2 seconds before moving on to tell them your thoughts on the matter, or just switching the subject in an ADD way, all of which tend to send the message the other person is not that important to you? My WH really cannot grasp that he is sending that signal with his ingrained dismissiveness.

In his communications class, I think his homework from lesson 2 was like over 80% of communication takes place at the non-verbal level. This is often where things go so wrong at least in my case. After years of disrepectfulness towards me after betraying me multiple times, a disrespectful or patronizing attitude I never detect when we are out with his work buddies, where he's always nicely animated, smiling appropriately, making meaningful eye contact and facial gestures and most of all, listening to their stories like a champ, it just says F U to me when I get the stony face, expressionless, guarded and shamed-based mug all day, every day! It might help you to go back and read my posts from the last year and check off the issues, and see what you think.

@superesse

I’ve never been able to make eye contact with people. It’s been that way since birth. My father really had a hard time with it. He used to yell at me all the time for just about everything, but the eye thing really bothered him.

I also changed the subject a lot, but it’s usually because I see parallels between seemingly unrelated things.

Okay, may we start to rephrase those 2 problem areas for even more change, if you want to try?

1 Instead of saying 'I've never been able to make eye contact...." try saying instead "It has always been difficult for me to make eye contact and so it's not something I like to do." At the end of the day, you have a choice, a freedom of will we humans possess. You can make the executive decision that this bit needs to change, and then you can choose to start practicing it, hard as it may be. Even in a mirror by yourself, if need be. And since your father was on your case as a kid about it, I know it will be hard work, but far from Impossible! Try to break out of the self-imposed mental prison.

2 Instead of using your pattern identification skills to comment on parallels, recognize the other person fails to be heard whenever you choose to do this. This is one trait I found out I did a lot, too, as I learned that style of conversation from listening to my narcissistic, talkative father. Throughout his life, any story we'd try to share with him would "...remind him of the time when...." and he'd launch into a funny or otherwise fascinating story he wanted to share but...do you know how that left us kids feeling? Loved, yet UNHEARD. Sadly, we knew Dad was really trying to "relate" by sharing a similar story so we wouldn't feel so unique; I give him credit for that. (Just occurred to me I often do the same damn thing here on SI. Please, no comments, hahaha).

See, we can all improve!!

[This message edited by Superesse at 2:51 PM, Tuesday, January 14th]

My take on what I’ve read here is that your W is emotionally checked out, not sure that she can - or wants to - check back in, and treading water while she works to figure out what’s next. It could be that she’s trying to see if she can catch feelings for you again, or she may simply be getting her financial ducks in a row.

I don’t see her three statements as cruel or selfish; I see them as transparent and honest. If you were as you described - a raging video game addict - she’s right that she should have left you a long time ago. She muddied it up by cheating, and she’s trying to let the water settle so she can see clearly. That takes work and time.

I recommend that you continue IC so that you can bring your best self to the table. Consider asking your IC/MC about taking a break from working on the marriage while you focus on yourselves. A moratorium on relationship decisions might help, too.

You’ve got to stop putting all of your focus on her. Since she’s got one foot out the door, you being too attentive to her can come across as cloying and off-putting.

Regarding listening, I offered a personal example: when an important person I'm trying to share thoughts with jumps into sharing their own thoughts before they even acknowledge they've received my message or given it any consideration I tend to feel UNHEARD.

After this kept happening in my M, I started to test my WH's recall ability, to see if his "listening" style is a significant barrier to our mutual understanding or just a petty annoyance. Turns out it's a huge barrier! He can never recall what he swears he "heard me saying" during or after the moment he began to interrupt or switch topic, yet he can perfectly recall details of what I told him from just before he did that. Proving that interference of his own thoughts prevented him truly HEARING me. (Technically it isn't "hearing," it's "processing auditory input.")

So that's one reason why someone might say you have a "hearing" problem.

I asked my WH to go see an audiologist to get his hearing tested for this same problem. Turns out his actual hearing was normal, and better than mine. Before the test started, the audiologist told him: "If this test shows you have normal hearing, the problem is going on higher up in your brain."

What can a speaker do about that kind of problem? Not much, other than repeating the message. Makes for a lot of extra effort for the unheard person. Over the last 25 years, I feel like this problem burned through countless hours of my time. Wouldn't it be so much easier on both parties if the listener could change that bad habit? (It's getting worse in my WH's case!)

Similarly, on lack of eye contact, what message does refusing to make eye contact send from you to the other? It can easily be interpreted as "I don't want to look at you, because I don't really LIKE looking at you!"Yikes. What lover wants to find that out? It's a big time love killer. Being UNSEEN is a dehumanizing feeling, like the message sent when a royal potentate walks right by poor street people and pretends not to "see them." They know by his refusal to look st them that the king feels they aren't "on his level." Do you want to send your beloved that kind of message? I get that all the time from my WH, and that's painful, on top of his cheating on me.

Even most dogs like to make eye contact with us and when they do, it actually releases the bonding hormone oxytocin in both the human and the dog. Our German Shepherd puppy arrived from Europe inside an airline crate at 10 weeks old, after being flown 11 hours over the North Pole to arrive in the USA. The second I opened his crate door and he crawled out seemingly none the worse for his world travel ordeal, the very first second he was free to move, he just stared right up into my eyes! Oh wow, talk about love at first sight! He still likes to make eye contact more than my older girl Shepherd ever did. We've bonded very well.

I am so sorry your old coping mechanisms were shutting your family and kids out as you described in one of the recent posts. But there is still something you can do to help them heal, even today. Apologize by bringing this up with each child, one-to-one. That will help each one of them know their father feels it was a mistake, and ask them to forgive you for it. I'm sure they will. Children are usually so quick to forgive their Daddy.

I can assure you they will each always carry painful memories of having been snapped at for interrupting your gaming. I'm in my 70's and still cringe when I remember those days, when my father only came out of his TV den to holler at us kids "Shut Up!" whenever our noisy play got too loud for his comfort behind the closed door to his television sanctuary. He had 3 TVs going at once: 1 for football games, 1 for baseball games, and 1 for golf, the 3 sports he had lettered in as a high school student. He had been a fighter pilot in his 20's and I think he liked an intense "cockpit" feel to his environment. But when I was 21, I once said "Dad, you never wanted kids, did you?" He was so angry when I asked him that. But that was what we kids took away from his actions towards us. And by the way, he never did apologize, either.

[This message edited by Superesse at 4:25 PM, Tuesday, January 14th]

@sacredsoul33

My take on what I’ve read here is that your W is emotionally checked out, not sure that she can - or wants to - check back in, and treading water while she works to figure out what’s next. It could be that she’s trying to see if she can catch feelings for you again, or she may simply be getting her financial ducks in a row.

Yeah, she is check out for sure. That's where she was weeks/months before DDay. And even though I've made a lot of changes and I'm working hard, she's still really check out. Sometimes it feels like she's checked out more because I'm working so hard. Other days it just feels like the weight of her life is more than she can bare.

I think the financial angle is an interesting one. I too have felt that she's playing the long game and once she has her financial footing it will be divorce time. But the financial reality is that she can't afford to pay the mortgage of this house herself, not even close. She's 1000's of dollars a month short of that being practical. And since she absolutely loves our 4 kids (there's no doubt about that), she needs a house this size to make that work. So financially, it wouldn't be a good move for her to divorce, even though I would do everything I could to help make that transition fair and amicable.

@superesse
Thank you for sharing. Your stories are very helpful to me, as I do want to be a better listener.

I think you're right, I probably need to practice more care before I speak, by letting my wife know that I've heard her (which would also help to reinforce my own memory of the conversation).

I have a background in Information Technology (IT) where network communication often requires what's called a three-way handshake. The transmitter calls out to the receiver, and upon getting the message the receiver transmits back, "I got the message", the transmitter then responds back, "I got the message that you got my message", and that helps to confirm that no messages were lost during communication.

I've often told my wife that when there's a communication problem, you FIRST have to check the transmitter before blaming the receiver. Meaning that if she as a transmitter is not listening for my message back saying "I got the message" then in fact SHE is just as much the problem as I am.

If feel strongly in saying that both people need to be actively listening, that just because someone is the transmitter does not mean that they don't have a responsibility to listen. Still though, I need to get better at receiving, and I'm working on that.

Again, thanks for help!

Then, when you eventually get fed up, she's going to spin the narrative that your marriage ended not because she cheated and didn't do the work to rebuild, but because "you just couldn't get over it."

This^^^ and I would get ahead of it if you can. It's exactly what my xWS did. He waited me out. When I finally pulled the plug it wasn't because of a new D-Day or an A it was because of who he was, how damaged our M was, and I wasn't coming back from it. He has labeled me the one who broke up the M. It is the tale he spins to everyone who will listen including our kids. Thankfully I don't care anymore and am very happy with the decision I made to end the M.