I’m working on writing a letter (an exercise recommended in therapy) to read to my WH. Essentially to capture what his betrayal has done to me, any personal learnings from this, hopes, loss/grief, struggles, etc.
I have a pretty solid "list" going currently, but would love to hear what some of you might say/have said to your WS if you wrote them a letter containing the impact of the betrayal and what it has done to you.
Boy oh boy do I want this letter to rock his core and hit him hard!
My WW and I bought a workbook from Amazon to help us structure our Infidelity work 5 months after D-Day (about 19 months ago). Part of the work was for the WW to write a disclosure letter and for the BS (me) to respond with an "Impact Letter".
For a little background, my WW struggles with empathy and has extreme shame from her Infidelities. At the time, it was "feast or famine" in talking through them and trying to come to "one consistent story" without devolving into a sobbing mess. We felt the workbook would help with structure. Her disclosure letter was her first attempt at the time of writing out a timeline. Before, all disclosures had been me asking specific questions and dragging details out of her. The Disclosure was extremely disappointing. Her 11 affairs in 20 years were 2 pages. It lacked detail and didn’t broach her feelings at the time or much of anything beyond "I met OM, we flirted, we had sex".
My Impact Letter was 25 pages long and covered our marriage basically in chronological order. It covered how I felt, how she treated me and the General state of the marriage overlayed with the timeline of her affairs. I went into detail on how I felt at the time and how I felt after D-Day. All of the impacts were sprinkled within the narrative. But knowing my wife isn’t quick on processing feelings and impacts, I summarized them at the latter part of the letter and laid them out in clear terms. Here are my impacts with a blurb with each (the actual text was several paragraphs long for each impact but this will give you the gist):
- I am extremely hurt and in extreme pain
This is the worst pain I have ever been in. Worse than losing Grandparents, parents, in-laws, pets, jobs, etc. This makes me feel worthless and stupid.
- I don’t know who you are
I’m flabbergasted at the scope and length and awfulness of the cheating. It’s WAY more than I would have thought you capable of. The lying and selfishness just compounds all this. Who are you? Who does this shit?
- Our marriage is a sham, 20 years is tainted, you stole my life.
This has basically ruined the first 20 years of our marriage for me. There are no good memories for me from that time. Getting married, having kids, where we lived, where we worked, kid’s sports….all tainted now. I was robbed of the opportunity to make decisions. I could have left and met a true life partner OR we could have repaired things and had a better life. You never seemed to even WANT that by not working to solve our problems and reconcile in real time. I regret working so hard to stay faithful when you not only didn’t try, you pursued that and made it your "life’s work"! I regret let you come back home when you left. I regret getting married at all. Right now, I wish I had never even met you.
- I’m not living up to my own morals and commitments
I made a promise to myself on that bridge in the Keys "this is it, no more I don’t love yous or cheating and I’m out". I haven’t lived up to that. I don’t want to live up to that. I always thought cheating was a deal-breaker now multiple cheats over many years and I’m still here. I’ve always been proud that I never cheated. Now I REALLY wish I had. I feel like I’m "letting you get away with cheating" by staying.
- You have betrayed me
To me, this is the ultimate betrayal. So many men, for so many years. Cheating while pregnant.giving me an STD. Not being invested in recovery when we had issues and attempted to reconcile. Shifting blame to me. Never coming clean. Lying when you did come clean. Not caring or trusting me enough to tell the truth. Like I said, the betrayal cover the entire marriage, not just when you were actively cheating.
- I blamed myself
I was obsessed with timelines because I wanted to see "where we were" in the marriage while you were cheating. What was I doing? Why didn’t I suspect? When I did suspect, why didn’t I confront or push you harder for answers? Did I "cause" you to cheat? I’m at a better place now, but this is all part of "how could you do this to me"?
- I don’t trust you
I always suspected there was more cheating that what you had admitted to. I ALWAYS aligned the "I don’t think I love you" declarations to cheating. I believed (or at least told myself) what you said. I always trusted you to be where you said, with whom you said and doing what you said you were doing. The cheating broke that trust. This has been compounded by the recent lying. You looked me in the eye and lied repeatedly to me. It comes easily to you. It came naturally to you. Even, small unimportant details. What else have you lied about? Are you a good enough liar to have beaten the polygraph? You said yourself "don’t believe anything I say. It is all unreliable information". How do we rebuild trust? Being open, honest and vulnerable. You still struggle with that.
- My love for you is diminished
I was in love with you when we dated and got married. Every time you were cheating and said "I don’t think I love you anymore", my love for you diminished. When you treated me as your last priority, my love diminished. When you withheld sex, my love diminished. Then D-Day changed everything. My love for you "broke" that day. The subsequent lying, minimizing, lack of empathy and apathetic approach to recovery diminished it further. It was reduced to the bare minimum. The love that I will always have for you based on history, familiarity and being the mother of my children was all that was left. There was literally nothing left to destroy. We still had a "roof and 4 walls" but barley. There are times through all this I hate you for all this betrayal. It’s fleeting, but there.
- I question your character
I have always known you were selfish. I have joked about you being all about "me,me,me" over the years. There are many character issues revealed that are concerning to me. Are you selfish or a full blown narcissist? How bad is the lying? Is it pathological? Are you a sociopath? Do you have feelings for anyone but yourself? Can you be empathetic? Can you "own your shit"? There are concerns for me that you are a "dry drunk". Though not actively cheating, are all the character issues that allowed you to cheat still present?
- I’m "stuck" on details
My whole reason for asking you about your cheating was to reveal the truth, forgive and move on. That has been impossible. Due to lying, withholding, trickle truth and memory issues, the story has changed several times. Dates shift, number of instances shift, there are no answers about some aspects (when and how they started, how long, how many times, when and how it ended). Regardless of "why", I don’t have the information I need to move on. That is beyond frustrating for me.
- This is eating away at me
The hurt hasn’t eased at all. A continual loop of "how could you do this" plays in my mind. I have intrusive thoughts and images. It affects me during sex. I want to move on but I can’t with all the gaps. I want to focus on the future but I have trouble even thinking about the future. I want to be "one" with you and have a great life. I have to be able to "get out of my head". That’s a struggle. I continue to lose weight and find no joy in life. Things I used to care about are "meh". I have an attitude of "why bother, my life is all bullshit"
I also had my wife read this aloud to me and we discussed it as we walked through it. I would say it met the OP’s goal of "rockin her core and hitting her hard"
[This message edited by ImaChump at 3:44 AM, Tuesday, January 23rd]