Hi all. Thank you so much for your input- I didn’t abandon the thread, I just haven’t been home, I’ve been staying with friends while waiting for the landlord to change the locks* and haven’t had internet access. Also, I think my scabs have come along well enough to drop the “hypothetical” charade, though seeing you all play along made me smile, and is pretty much why I even considered posting this on the internet at all. Dopers=the bestest.
A few things- the “friend” mentioned above isn’t one of the directly implicated parties, that’s the friend’s erstwhile girlfriend and housemate. I’ve pretty much worked that situation out.
As far as the timing of the marriage, I don’t know what to say. It was never consciously about trying to fix anything- I wasn’t expecting things to “get better” or be different, but I also wasn’t expecting them to crash and burn. That said, given that I’ve felt all week like I’m steadily falling out of love, to the point now where thinking about the acts in question really doesn’t even bug me, I’m wondering how much energy I’ve been devoting to hanging onto said love. I’m not saying the towel’s been thrown in, but at this point I just can’t picture ever trusting him, or respecting him as an ethical, reasonable person, ever again. The months of lying, during which there were constant opportunities to come clean and start to pick up the pieces, are much more horrifying to me than any one act.
Getting in touch with a counselor is first on my list for after I get back from my vacation next week. Mostly so that I don’t have to keep bending the ears of friends with this nonsense.
I’ve spent the week reconnecting with old friends, both to get perspective and to help with the crippling lonliness. Actually telling the story out loud has shown me what a soap opera my life has become, and I really don’t like it. To torture the analogy, I was a peripheral character, maybe a recurring extra on this same soap for a number of years, then I moved away in part because watching people I love tearing each other and themselves apart got to be too much. Now, since I’ve moved to this town, which might be considered a spin-off, with some of the original cast, and a few new players who arrived while I was off the show, I’ve been like a regular cast member, and now I’ve got my own storyline, and the problem is that I’m a terrible actor!
What nearly everyone has said, that it’s not about the infidelity, but about the lies and the rest of the relationship, is so true. I see that now that the shock has worn off, and the lack of honesty and respect that I see now when I look back is shocking. I can’t believe I put up with that for so long, and I didn’t even see it.
I think that I’ve always known that my husband has a very poorly developed conscience. When he does good things it is either because he loves someone and wants them happy, because he wants something and doing the right thing is the easiest way to get it, or because he is forced to. I was lulled by the whole “loves someone and wants them happy” thing, but now I don’t think that he has any internal mechanism for doing what is right “just because.” The reason I say this is that based on what he has said, what led to the lies and cheating was that he “went crazy” and didn’t love or like me much anymore, and so “said fuck it” and did very bad things. This freaks me out because even now, as angry as I am and as much as I feel I don’t love him anymore, I still have my own standards of behavior to hang on to, which help me make decisions I know I can live with for the rest of my life, while if I made decisions based only on what I’m feeling (or not feeling) right now, I’d surely hurt myself or others pretty badly.
This may be my fault- my overly-developed sense of right and wrong (which has its own problems) may have allowed him to skate by without developing his own. And I do think it is possible for him to develop one, assuming I’m correct that that is the problem here anyhow, I don’t think I’m willing to be the guinea pig for it. But if it doesn’t work out with us, I can believe he could be true to someone else some day.
*Not a punishment, I just don’t feel safe. Heap scorn if you will, fellas.