SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

How can you love but hate someone so much! (Ok so hate may be a bit strong)

My WH has shown sooooo much growth in a year. Just the other day we were taking about ‘everything’ and he said how much he enjoys talking as a couple. I said yeah see it’s pretty easy and he replied ‘No it’s not easy but it’s worth it and it makes us such a better couple’. It took a lot for me not to just break down and cry in that moment. This comes from one of the most emotionally mute people I’ve ever met!

Then, this afternoon he rang is Nan (we are both lucky to still have living grandparents) after not ringing her for a while and i here him apologise for not being in contact much lately and that he didn’t know about her fall. So an apology from a man who blamed and excused every poor action he ever does.

I’m so proud and happy he is doing all this work and becoming an amazing emotionally supportive man.

But fuck I hate it took an affair for him to see all of this!!!! Like why did he have to scrape the bottom of a barrel before he realised he could be this person.

How do you get over this? How can you know your partner is becoming a better person, a wonderful person but was just so awful and broke you previously to this.

I can totally empathise with your feelings. I don’t have an answer, but at this point I feel utterly the same. I simply cannot compare the callous, neglectful and deceitful person my WH was with the person he is working at being ATM. I maintain that if he had been brave enough to communicate before he had his A, MC would have got us to our current place of enjoying each other’s company. However, perhaps he needed to shock himself with his own behaviour to realise where he was morally and emotionally. I don’t think he had it in him to realise what needed to be done before he totally reached rock bottom.

But now there is the huge hurt to contend with and lack of trust to try to counter. That’s a bigger mountain. IMO, I do think that this agony could, perhaps, be the catalyst to a better relationship, but, man, it’s a long and uncertain road.
Thinking of you.

Hi,

It is perfectly ok to feel both emotions towards one person, despite the reconciliation efforts. I feel it in my relationship with my fWH. And in looking back in my long marriage before the cheating, these conflicting feelings were also present. It is perfectly normal, and it’s important not to beat yourself over this.

There seems to be many good/great things that one’s fWH does in the relationship , so that’s the "love" one feels. I truly believe that defining for yourself what it is that you"love" about your spouse and being quite specific about it, does help one’s healing.
My simplest examples but ones that means the world to me, is him warming up my coffee cup on cold mornings before he pours my coffee. It’s him holding my hand walking ( he began doing this once I took him back from his fAP). etc.

And yet, there are times when one simply hates, dislikes, is frustrated, is annoyed, is hurt etc.when facing other things that the fWS does in the relationship. Today, going into my sixth year of r, there are quite a few "annoyances" I feel towards some of his actions. I will not list them here. And the past has a way to haunt us…remembering the hurts of what was done to us during the cheating a while back ago. Maybe even to the point of masking all the good stuff of today. I acknowledge that past hurt, I get it what it did to me and my family, I know it may happen again, I know that it is up to my fWH to man up and decide what he wants to do, I know I cannot change his spots. etc.

So yes, I hate what he did to me in the past, anyone would. But he is not showing those behaviours today. And the good stuff outweighs the "annoying" stuff of today. For both of us.

Wishing you the best.

I feel the same exact way.
My H also has grown a ton this past year, also openly talks about his A and regrets, kisses his kids in public, puts us first , quit his band, and started investing for our future. We have bonded more over the past year than in the 12 we’ve been together. Today is our anniversary and he planned it all on his own and it’s a surprise. - I still can’t stand him.

Each time I knock him down he gets back up stronger than before. He fights harder than the day before. Why did it take that for him to change, will I ever see him as the better husband and dad he is? I’m scared because idk.

I can empathize. A few years ago I asked my wife what do you think about us finding a marriage counselor to help us to communicate better and her immediate response was I think it's a bad idea.

I asked why and she said it could bring up other problems in our marriage to which I replied but wouldn't it be good for us to discuss problems and she said I think it's a bad idea so I dropped it but that got me thinking, what other problems do we have that are so bad that she does not want to discuss them and I am blind to them?

So I went out and found a therapist just for myself and my wife was none too happy when I told her. She asked why didn't you talk to me about this and I said I did and you were adamant against it so I'm going by myself and it was the best thing I ever did

At 50 years old I finally had someone I could talk to and it was simply amazing. I told my therapist everything about me and my marriage and our problems and she said well, you and I have a lot to work on

The therapy was hard at times but the improvements I made I brought home to my marriage. I tried to have conversations with my wife about problems but she would just cross her arms and shut down and deflect and sometimes get upset which would just shut down the conversation.

And this was our status quo until April 4th when I discovered that she was sexting with a 40-year-old married male coworker

This happened on a Thursday afternoon. She tried to dismiss it as harmless flirting and then she did her usual of get angry and deflect and try to gaslight me so after an hour long conversation I was convinced we were finished.

Friday afternoon when she arrived home from work I said there is a suitcase upstairs, I need you to leave the house. So she packed a bag and left. We met two days later to discuss the next step which I was convinced was divorce because of our conversation on Thursday afternoon. I was convinced she had an exit plan with this guy already in place and I just happened to stumble upon the affair which would probably just speed things up for them.

Suddenly she wanted to talk. Suddenly she wanted to work things out. She had two days to realize that she had possibly destroyed our marriage and I was ready to let her go. Suddenly she was open to the idea of marital counseling so I told her it's up to you to find a therapist and she did Monday morning.

The first therapist was a complete waste of time as she was in my opinion sympathetic to my wife because my wife was closing in on 50 and unhappy with herself and her body. So I fired her after three sessions.

The next therapist did not let my wife deflect any of the blame on to me. She sent her straight from the get-go. She said there is no justifiable excuse to have an affair and that was like a landmine going off in the room. My wife for a long time just couldn't accept 100% responsibility because it made her uncomfortable that she was completely at fault

She slowly started to see the light and finally accepted full responsibility and even though our conversations make her uncomfortable because I got to the point where I did not hold back, I did not feel any need to protect her feelings, so I would say what was on my mind, not in an ignorant fashion but just completely honest. And there were times it was brutal on her but unless I process all of my feelings reconciliation just will not work

Now we have great conversations and I love it but I get so God damn pissed off that it took her blowing up 27 years of relationship because she was uncomfortable opening up to me. But she had no problem exchanging sex messages with a married guy. She had no problem doing that for 8 hours and then coming home to me with a smile on her face and a hug and I love you and everything else that goes with what I thought was a great relationship.

If I hadn't followed up on my suspicions of the picture I saw in my wife's phone of her standing in her office I would have never known and I truly believe it would have progressed into a full-blown physical affair. The school year would have ended in a couple of months and the building would have been a lot more vacant of both kids and staff which would have created ample opportunities. My wife says it never would have become physical and I said you can't say that because 6 months ago had I asked you if you would ever hide something like this behind my back your response would have been no so you don't know what two more months of flirting would have brought

She had the audacity to reply with you know me better than that and I had to fight back a laugh. Then she tried saying 3 months into reconciliation that she was becoming uncomfortable with the messages and I said you don't get to use that excuse this far in. You were not uncomfortable with it based on what I read.

I recently contacted his wife, brought her up to speed, and she said she has zero doubts that he would have gone full blown affair.

An affair, the gift that keeps on giving. There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not reminded by a hundred different things. And now I will get off my soapbox because this has become way too long winded, my apologies

To me it is the feeling of how dare they get all the good things. They get the excitement and validation from someone else in the affairs. Then they get the personal growth and become better partners for someone (us or someone else). And all of it at our enormous expense! We don’t get the first one but can have the second…also at our cost. It leaves a humongous feeling of inequity. Accepting that has been very hard for me.

Here’s my two cents.

Sometimes it takes losing something before you appreciate it.

Sometimes it takes something life changing up make people decide to change.

And I am certain my H does not look back on his affair with "good" memories. Rather he has admitted he looks back on it with shame and regret. He once told me he wished someone would have sat him down and tried to straighten him out.

Of course I laughed b/c I knew he would not have listened at that time.

Unfortunately healing means you accept certain aspects of what occurred as best you can.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you sweep it under the rug. It means you forgive the person and figure out a way to move forward together. With happiness.