SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have written pages and pages and pages of words. And time and time again they have been filtered through the lens of what hurt people believe WS are like, and the words are misconstrued-- and often enough that my BS, reading along, perceives consensus. More words aren't going to fix it, but I wanted to leave a warning to those who are still here: There is a cost to engaging with poor listeners.

He has beliefs about his feelings: he feels shame over them, he believes they're a burden to me and he should keep them to himself, he believes they are immature and he should just "grow up" and get over them. I have not done a damn thing to create or reinforce those beliefs. But you know who has? This community. So for almost a year now, I've been BEGGING him to share his infidelity related feelings, and I've written about that here. I was wishing he would stop bottling them up, telling me nothing was wrong when clearly something was and I asked him about that, wishing they would stop leaking out sideways in non-infidelity-related marital discussions, making me have conversations that are secretly about the infidelity even though the words aren't, at a confusing intensity. I wished he would engage more with his feelings, be more cognizant of them, and demonstrate that he's working on his own healing. I realized I couldn't do that for him and wrote about offering curiosity and then disengaging.

But you know what this community heard? "She thinks his feelings are inconvenient and they piss her off. She just doesn't want to hear about the effects of her infidelity on him. She wants him to be over it by now. She wants him to shut up and stuff his feelings. She's not willing to wait for him to heal." And my BS READ THAT. Over and over again. And it cemented those beliefs about his feelings, that he should stuff them, that I didn't want to hear them. And so he continued stuffing them, and suffering.

So good job, you lot. Good fucking job. We could have been SO MUCH FURTHER ALONG!

Beware, other users. Poor listening has a cost.

In general, I see five types of responses on forums and social media.

1. "Agreed", said in a word or emoji or a short sentence.

2. Snark and trolling.

3. Responses that show the person keyed in on a word or phrase, has a certain negative reaction despite everything else in the post, and cannot or will not focus on what the OP meant. Instead it is a semantic argument and they choose not to focus on the true issue. (By the way, I am a linguistic analyst, so my ACTUAL JOB is to analyze spoken and written language for underlying meaning and intent.)

4. Responses that disagree, but will explain logically why. They often miss the meaning of the full message, but they do show reasoning well.

5. Responses that further discussion and pose additional questions, facts, or thoughts that show they read for meaning.

In the case of an emotionally charged issue such as infidelity, it’s not hard to understand why people get bogged down in minutiae, because they are trying to heal and the oddest things can trigger an emotional response.

FWIW, I read your posts. You are definitely growing and learning.

Hey.

In a thread of yours a while ago, I attempted to point out something to you. I gave up. We frustrated each other. Ive seen your posts, I can tell you are trying quite hard. Im sorry you are experiencing difficulties. I wish it wasnt so, truly.

Please take this in the candor of someone who wants you to see and consider something, who bears you no ill will and hopes that seeing it might help.

You wrote:

"She thinks his feelings are inconvenient and they piss her off. She just doesn't want to hear about the effects of her infidelity on him. She wants him to be over it by now. She wants him to shut up and stuff his feelings. She's not willing to wait for him to heal."

You put this in quotations. Im not sure, but I dont think you ripped this verbatim from something anyone wrote. I think you are paraphrasing from a multitude of posts, and then saying betrayed spouses are coming at your posts with an interpretation in this vein. Am I incorrect? If so, Im sorry.

But in our conversation, I wrote:

" I'm not sure you have what it takes to set your ego down and grow out of this, but I hope you do."

That was shitty of me. Im sorry I said that. You are growing. Im pretty sure youll be ok, my appraisal was unkind and deserved rebuttal.

Nevertheless, you responded:

""Put your ego down and let him abuse you," is crazy work, friendo. Maybe reconsider what you just said."

Except, Thats not what I was saying, not my position, and not reflective of what i was trying to express at all.

Look, its not the only example of you quotating and replying with your insertion of what someone meant, rephrased into an indefensible argument that the other poster wasnt trying to say.

Its strawman argument construction. I see you do this a bit. Um, some people do this intentionally, but I dont believe you do. I assume you dont.

And if its not on purpose, its a misunderstanding. Its you taking others words and misconstruing their intentions and meanings, just as you hate being done to you, as youve said time and time again. In other words, caught up in your human struggles, as your husband is, as we BS are, as yourself and other WS are, our intended meaning skates over each other and is lost.

Mostly noone means to do this.

We are too busy listening to ourselves to hear each other.
We cant help but do this when our amygdala gets in front of our aims.

Ill admit, because of our lived experiences, we are a little oil and water. The risk of creating nothing and wasting time is kind of high here.

Noone here is bothering to be because they want harm for anyone else. BS are angry, and assuming the worst about WS. They dont enjoy doing it. They are reacting to an unhealed wound.

Just keep trying your best. Im sorry your husband struggles to express himself to you freely. But words on a forum didnt cause that.

Morbs, I actually understand where you are coming from here. It is true that in spaces like this, people sometimes read a WS through the lens of their own betrayal and project motives that might not actually be there (I'm quite sure I am guilty of this also). That absolutely happens.

But I think this post swings too far in the opposite direction, primarily because you are now directly contradicting things you have written yourself. The most glaring example is this:

"I have not done a damn thing to create or reinforce those beliefs."

Except, you have previously admitted to almost the exact opposite.

Back in May, when you were discussing your BH holding back his feelings, you owned up to falling back into behaviors that triggered his suspicion. You wrote that those behaviors likely reinforced the voice in his head telling him his feelings were unreasonable, repetitive, and that he should just keep them to himself. That wasn't this community putting words in your mouth; that was your own self-awareness recognizing your part in the dynamic. Honestly, I thought it was a remarkably insightful post.

You have also written about being able to handle his feelings when they are expressed in a way you consider appropriate, while describing other expressions surrounding that pain as abusive, exhausting, fight-picking, or derailing. Let me be clear, being betrayed does not give someone a free pass to behave abusively, and there is an important distinction between accepting someone's feelings and accepting every behavior that accompanies them. Boundaries around behavior are entirely reasonable.

But that doesn't mean those interactions have no effect on whether someone feels safe expressing the underlying feelings. You cannot acknowledge in May that your own behaviors probably reinforced his belief that he should keep his feelings to himself, then now say there is *absolutely nothing* you have done to create or reinforce that belief. Those two statements simply do not fit together.

I also struggle with the claim that

"we could have been SO MUCH FURTHER ALONG."

Has this community contributed negatively at times? I can easily believe that. Advice forums are full of hurt people, and projection happens. But your own post history paints a picture of a highly complex, difficult reconciliation between two hurt people. You've documented the triggers, resentment, emotional flooding, his struggles, your struggles, and mistakes made by both of you post-DDay. That is a starkly different reality than the much cleaner narrative of:

"I begged him to talk, strangers convinced him I didn't want to hear it, and therefore he stuffed everything."

People here may have misunderstood you and reinforced unhealthy beliefs in your BH. And your own actions and reactions may have reinforced some of those same beliefs as well. In fact, at one point you explicitly recognized that possibility yourself.

What bothers me about this post is that you used to seem much more willing to hold both of those truths simultaneously. You can and should call out bad advice or poor listening when you see it here. But if your ultimate conclusion becomes

"I did nothing to contribute to this and the internet did it,"

I think you risk throwing away some of the self-awareness you had already fought so hard to build.

I too have witnessed growth even if I did not always agree with you. I hope this post is just a cry into the void, and that you two find your way, I truly do.

[This message edited by Gemmy at 8:16 PM, Monday, August 31st]

Is it possible that your husband just does not see you as someone he can be open and vulnerable with?

Was he able to be open and vulnerable with you prior to your affair?

Were you open and vulnerable with him prior to your affair?

IMO it is impossible for a WS to understand what it feels like for a BS to be open and vulnerable with the person he / she once believed was someone who no matter what would always have his/her back, would always be by his/her side, no matter what. IMO the only way a WS can understand is to discover that the BS is having an affair after the WS put in years and years and YEARS of hard work rebuilding the destroyed trust and felt that everything was going to be okay, we made it, our relationship is better than it has ever been, we are going to grow old together.

I don't know when D-Day occurred so I don't know how much time has elapsed between then and now. Some people are able to process the trauma of an affair and move on much quicker than others. Some people take a very long time, and others never recover. They will always withhold a piece of their heart.

Feel better after that rant?

I swear I am being completely serious saying this...I think if all the posts from this account have always been how you really feel/think, you should consider talking to a mental health professional. It is like there are 2 distinct perspectives or personalities posting from the 1 account.