I'm feeling haunted

[Wiseman2]

On 11/16/2022 at 3:38 AM, lftbehind said:

I will do something romantic and see if he responds. I would like to make things better with him. 

The best thing you can do is not involve him in visits to your mother. You claim he's "mean to" her and this causes friction, so it's your job to keep them apart.

[lftbehind]

8 hours ago, pepperbird2 said:

Op,

I’m married to a man with mental health issues, and it’s not always an easy road. Like your spouse, he can be extremely mean at times, and he’s not exactly what’d I’d call supportive all the time.

You sound like me,waiting and hoping things would get better. I figured if I could just be nice enough, good looking enough, was a good enough cook/ housekeeper, if I earned more at my work.

 

the truth as, there was nothing I could do. That’s. Because it wasn’t my problem. It was his. Until he wanted help, nothing would get any better. I eventually told him to either ge help Or I was leaving an taking our kids too. I loved him so much, but I was losing myself.

 

He got help, but it’s been a hard go. Hard for him and us as well.

 

tha’s what was so hard. I loved him so much, but that wasn’t enough. Just because you love your spouse , that doesn’t mean you can stay married to him. If he refuses counselling, how much does he really care? 

Sorry that you are going through problems with your husband, too. The meanness. is one of the hardest things to deal with for me. I can't get over times when he is mean and I don't feel secure with him. How have you been handling it?  And I don't feel supported like I should be. 

That's too bad that he's making you feel like you had to try and earn better treatment. Does he criticize you a lot?  

That's good that you were strong enough to give him an ultimatum and he chose to get help. I'm sure it is hard and will take time. I hope that things keep getting better for you and your marriage. 

I haven't given him and ultimatum about getting counseling. He said that he didn't want to before, though. He also has substance abuse problems and I've talked to him about that. He doesn't want to stop. When he's not using the substance, he's even harder to deal with, it mellows him out. 

[lftbehind]

1 hour ago, Wiseman2 said:

The best thing you can do is not involve him in visits to your mother. You claim he's "mean to" her and this causes friction, so it's your job to keep them apart.

I see what you're saying. He hasn't gotten mean with her too often, though. He and I have done a lot for her in the past year. I have a hard time dealing with her now, but I try to be very patient. 

[Will am I]

Substances tend to make people mellow when using, but way less mellow when they can’t have their fix. In the end what the substance does is to calm the withdrawal symptoms of the very same substance. It’s an endless cycle that doesn’t make anyone more mellow than they’d be without using at all.

 

When you say: “he has a problem with substance use” I think you should rephrase that as “I have a problem with his substance use”.
People with addiction problems are often the very last to experience the problem as such. Usually it’s the people close to them that suffer most. And sacrifice a lot of themselves to fix the problems that the substance use introduces (effectively enabling the user to not have a problem).

I’m afraid when I hear the reluctance of your husband that you twi are still in that (long) stage.

 

[lftbehind]

On 11/19/2022 at 12:27 PM, Will am I said:

Substances tend to make people mellow when using, but way less mellow when they can’t have their fix. In the end what the substance does is to calm the withdrawal symptoms of the very same substance. It’s an endless cycle that doesn’t make anyone more mellow than they’d be without using at all.

 

When you say: “he has a problem with substance use” I think you should rephrase that as “I have a problem with his substance use”.
People with addiction problems are often the very last to experience the problem as such. Usually it’s the people close to them that suffer most. And sacrifice a lot of themselves to fix the problems that the substance use introduces (effectively enabling the user to not have a problem).

I’m afraid when I hear the reluctance of your husband that you twi are still in that (long) stage.

 

You're right about the substance use being and endless cycle. I don't think that he should need to use to feel relaxed and it's like a crutch for him. He is easier to be around when he is more mellow, though. 

I see what you mean about the people that are close to the addict are the ones that suffer the most. I wish that he would stop using, but then he is hard to be around sometimes. I can't make him do anything, he's going to do what he wants to do. I have talked to him about it,  though and told him that it's not good for him and he should quit. 

[Will am I]

Indeed he should. But it isn’t until he wants to quit, that he will.

In the mean time it is vitally important that you stay true to yourself and respect your own boundaries.

Those include which treatment by your husband you will accept for yourseld and for your mom.

And the boundaries also apply to you and how you interact with other men. To some degree the flirting and the affairs have been an understandable escape, but I think you do recognize that it’s crossed the healthy boundaries of your marriage too.

I think you should watch your own behaviour to maintain the moral highground, and be firm with your husband in terms of what you will accept from him.

Either he will turn your way (and you have made a start working towards a better relationship) or he won’t (and your course of action is clear).

[lftbehind]

On 11/21/2022 at 1:43 PM, Will am I said:

Indeed he should. But it isn’t until he wants to quit, that he will.

In the mean time it is vitally important that you stay true to yourself and respect your own boundaries.

Those include which treatment by your husband you will accept for yourseld and for your mom.

And the boundaries also apply to you and how you interact with other men. To some degree the flirting and the affairs have been an understandable escape, but I think you do recognize that it’s crossed the healthy boundaries of your marriage too.

I think you should watch your own behaviour to maintain the moral highground, and be firm with your husband in terms of what you will accept from him.

Either he will turn your way (and you have made a start working towards a better relationship) or he won’t (and your course of action is clear).

Sorry, I haven't been on the board for a while. 

It doesn't seem like he will quit, unless he can't get the substance. He uses a vape to smoke everywhere. He was smoking it when we were visiting his family on Thanksgiving. It is hard to be around someone that is on something a lot of the time. 

He has been acting better than he was. I feel like we get along better when he is high. 

I did cross boundaries, too. I don't really flirt, but I let things happen that I shouldn't have let happen. 

I do need to watch my own behavior. He has been using substances for our whole relationship and I don't think he wii change. He knows that it has bothered me, but it doesn't seem to matter. 

[Will am I]

2 minutes ago, lftbehind said:

He has been acting better than he was. I feel like we get along better when he is high. 

That seems toxic.

Though I am glad you experience things a bit more positively. 

Don’t try and control his drug use. Set your own boundaries about how you are to be treated and let him figure the drugs thing out alone. It’s about time that his problem became his problem.

[lftbehind]

3 minutes ago, Will am I said:

That seems toxic.

Though I am glad you experience things a bit more positively. 

Don’t try and control his drug use. Set your own boundaries about how you are to be treated and let him figure the drugs thing out alone. It’s about time that his problem became his problem.

It seems toxic to me, too. 

We get along better, but it doesn't feel real. 

When you're with someone that uses drugs, it becomes your problem. I try to accept it, but it's hard. I guess that I should be used to it by now. 

[Will am I]

8 minutes ago, lftbehind said:

I did cross boundaries, too. I don't really flirt, but I let things happen that I shouldn't have let happen. 

You’re a woman, you don’t necessarily need to  initiate the flirting. There will always be a guy who flirts with you.

Where this went wrong is on the moment you didn’t put up a boundary because you liked the attention too much. 

(which was equally wrong and understandable givenhow you felt in your marriage)

[stillafool]

7 hours ago, lftbehind said:

I did cross boundaries, too. I don't really flirt, but I let things happen that I shouldn't have let happen. 

I'm glad to see you admitting to your mistakes as well in this marriage and not making excuses for it.  That is one of the first steps toward changing things for the better.   I still think you should come clean to your husband about your affair and you both sit down and decide to clean up your marriage.  That of course includes him stopping his mariquana use.

[lftbehind]

On 11/26/2022 at 3:01 AM, Will am I said:

You’re a woman, you don’t necessarily need to  initiate the flirting. There will always be a guy who flirts with you.

Where this went wrong is on the moment you didn’t put up a boundary because you liked the attention too much. 

(which was equally wrong and understandable givenhow you felt in your marriage)

That's true, the guys get flirty sometimes. 

I do need to put up boundaries when it happens. I do like the attention a lot, because I've felt very lonely a lot and felt disconnected and unseen. 

it's wrong and I should have put up boundaries, I feel bad that I had the affairs and like a very flawed person. I can see why I have been open to attention from other men, though. 

[lftbehind]

16 hours ago, stillafool said:

I'm glad to see you admitting to your mistakes as well in this marriage and not making excuses for it.  That is one of the first steps toward changing things for the better.   I still think you should come clean to your husband about your affair and you both sit down and decide to clean up your marriage.  That of course includes him stopping his mariquana use.

I do own up to what I did and I feel bad about it. I don't think that it would be a good idea to come clean to my husband about the affair. I think that it would end badly. I need to be a better person from now on and stop doing what I was doing and be a better person. 

I don't think that he is going to quit the pot usage. He has been doing it for a long time. There are times when he quit for a while, but he is so uptight when he does that we fight more and he is hard to deal with. I've talked to him about it, but it doesn't do any good. He still drinks some, too. 

[Will am I]

Right now you show remorse and feel bad over the things that happened.

While it’s a good thing that you recognize these things, there is a certain risk of a “feel bad, need comfort, find comfort in the wrong place” cycle. I believe you have been around that cycle a few times.

This may sound counterintuitive, but try forgiving yourself and being kind to yourself instead. Things happened. Your husband and you are both partially to blame. But you chose to stay with him, let’s work from that.

Ideally you and your husband would talk to eachother, share, confess, forgive and accept forgiveness. Not saying you need to share every single detail. But there has to be a good understanding on both sides what your spouse did, and how your own actions affected your spouse. Then there has to be the will to forgive and recommit to the marriage.

This may be an incredibly difficult thing to do (especially since you both have a tendency to avoid confrontation). But the current status quo where you both know little fragments and suspect other fragments, is not working.

[lftbehind]

23 hours ago, Will am I said:

Right now you show remorse and feel bad over the things that happened.

While it’s a good thing that you recognize these things, there is a certain risk of a “feel bad, need comfort, find comfort in the wrong place” cycle. I believe you have been around that cycle a few times.

This may sound counterintuitive, but try forgiving yourself and being kind to yourself instead. Thuings happened. Your husband and you are both partially to blame. But you chose to stay with him, let’s work from that.

Ideally you and your husband would talk to eachother, share, confess, forgive and accept forgiveness. Not saying you need to share every single detail. But there has to be a good understanding on both sides what your spouse did, and how your own actions affected your spouse. Then there has to be the will to forgive and recommit to the marriage.

This may be an incredibly difficult thing to do (especially since you both have a tendency to avoid confrontation). But the current status quo where you both know little fragments and suspect other fragments, is not working.

I see what you mean by men getting comfort from the wrong place cycle. I guess that I haven't felt like I could get comfort from my husband, so I look for it with someone else. It's a bad pattern. 

I do need to forgive myself and try to be kind to myself. I try to do that, but it's hard sometimes. 

I can see talking out other issues in the marriage, but not my infidelity. I think that would be a disaster. We have a hard time talking out problems and sometimes he gets defensive when I bring up the substance use. We never seem to get anywhere talking about it. I do need to recommit to the marriage, but a lot of times I'm wondering when he's going to get mad at me again for little reason. A lot of time when we fight, I can't reason with him. 

You're right, our current communication is not working well. 

[Will am I]

I understand how afraid you must be to share about the infidelity. It was one of the hardest things I have ever needed to do in my life.

I will share a bit. I told my wife that I had for a while fallen in love outside the marriage and that there had been a period of very inappropriate contact. The affair had already ended, I guess this made the message somewhat more manageable for my wife. I did not add details, but said that she could ask me anything she needed to know and I would give her an honest answer is she did.

I was prepared that she might want to end the marriage. But then, by that time I had already spent a lot of time preparing. My own take was that I wanted to change certain dynamics and patterns, and that I was prepared to leave the marriage too. So it would either be "we fix this, together" or "we don't fix this (and split up)". Letting go of the fear of divorce was a big factor in my preparation. I think it was necessary to ditch that fear. If you're afraid to split up, it's just too easy to settle for less. Next thing you know, years pass and things never changed. I believe that nothing will change until there isn't an alternative anymore.

 

You do not seem ready to have a similar talk with your husband. But you're not happy. And you seem to be repeating a cycle of loneliness and unhappiness and the occasional affair. Essentially you have two options: stay in that cycle or break free now. 

[Wiseman2]

2 hours ago, lftbehind said:

I can see talking out other issues in the marriage, but not my infidelity.  he gets defensive when I bring up the substance use. We never seem to get anywhere talking about it.

If you don't want to bring up the infidelity, don't bring up the substance use. You know the saying about glass houses.

He knows how you feel about it. However you claim you get along better when he's high. So repeatedly talking at him about it won't help.

Basically he'll quit when he is ready willing and able to, just as you will change your ways when you are ready willing and able to.

[stillafool]

1 hour ago, Wiseman2 said:

If you don't want to bring up the infidelity, don't bring up the substance use. You know the saying about glass houses.

He knows how you feel about it. However you claim you get along better when he's high. So repeatedly talking at him about it won't help.

Basically he'll quit when he is ready willing and able to, just as you will change your ways when you are ready willing and able to.

I have to agree that this is like the pot calling the kettle black.  You are having sex with other men while he smokes pot and drinks a little which you are aware of while he has no idea what you've been doing behind his back.  He would probably view what you're doing to the marriage a lot worse than his pot smoking, which you yourself agree he's in a better mood when he does it.  So I wonder, how bad do you really want him to quit?  Until you come clean to him about your wrong doings I don't see where you have room to complain about him.

[lftbehind]

On 11/28/2022 at 5:12 AM, Will am I said:

I understand how afraid you must be to share about the infidelity. It was one of the hardest things I have ever needed to do in my life.

I will share a bit. I told my wife that I had for a while fallen in love outside the marriage and that there had been a period of very inappropriate contact. The affair had already ended, I guess this made the message somewhat more manageable for my wife. I did not add details, but said that she could ask me anything she needed to know and I would give her an honest answer is she did.

I was prepared that she might want to end the marriage. But then, by that time I had already spent a lot of time preparing. My own take was that I wanted to change certain dynamics and patterns, and that I was prepared to leave the marriage too. So it would either be "we fix this, together" or "we don't fix this (and split up)". Letting go of the fear of divorce was a big factor in my preparation. I think it was necessary to ditch that fear. If you're afraid to split up, it's just too easy to settle for less. Next thing you know, years pass and things never changed. I believe that nothing will change until there isn't an alternative anymore.

 

You do not seem ready to have a similar talk with your husband. But you're not happy. And you seem to be repeating a cycle of loneliness and unhappiness and the occasional affair. Essentially you have two options: stay in that cycle or break free now. 

It's good that you were able to talk with your wife about your EA. I"m sure that it was hard for her to hear that you had fallen in love with another woman. It probably helped that it was an EA and not a PA, too. 

You definitely need to have your marriage possibly be over, if you confess the infidelity. I'm not ready for that, yet. I don't like settling for less and would like for some things to change. I guess that I have given up on talking to him about our problems, it doesn't seem to help. 

I want to get out of the cycle that I've been in but I need another way of doing it, besides confessing. 

[Will am I]

57 minutes ago, lftbehind said:

You definitely need to have your marriage possibly be over, if you confess the infidelity. I'm not ready for that, yet.

I believe that in a situation like this, you need to be prepared to end your marriage before you can make real steps in your marriage. Otherwise there is always going to be the convenient alternative to change: to carry on. It isn't until you're ready to close that door that you'll be motivated to pursue change.

 

57 minutes ago, lftbehind said:

I don't like settling for less and would like for some things to change.

I think when you write you don't want to settle for less, you mean financially. Because in anoither sense staying in a not-so-good marriage is exactly that: settling for less.

I guess some people may care more about financial considerations than others. For you it's an important factor, whereas there are probably also women out there who would prefer crashing on their friend's couch over staying in a marriage where they are mistreated. So you are willing to make some trade-offs for the sake of living in a nice home. Not judging, observing. It's good to understand your position on these matters.

 

57 minutes ago, lftbehind said:

I guess that I have given up on talking to him about our problems, it doesn't seem to help. 

He either doesn't realize that you his behaviour is affecting you so much, or doesn't believe that you would actually leave him, or he doesn't care. Whatever it is, it is putting him in a position of power. I mean: where is his real motivation to cut down on the weed?

 

57 minutes ago, lftbehind said:

I want to get out of the cycle that I've been in but I need another way of doing it, besides confessing. 

I wonder how realistic that is. Healing requires exposing. Not necessarily the details, I believe they can do more hurt than good sometimes.  But the fact that you feel so alone and isolated and rejected and mistreated that your heart is essentially out of the marriage and out on the street, that message seems pretty vital.

Of course you are ashamed and embarrassed and of course you fear your husband's response. Very understandable. But this is where you need to toughen up and ditch the fear.

[Wiseman2]

1 hour ago, lftbehind said:

I want to get out of the cycle that I've been in but I need another way of doing it, besides confessing. 

Don't confess anything. You're just adding insult to injury with something like that.

He copes in general and  with the bad marriage with alcohol and drugs and you even claim you would rather have him somewhat obtunded to deal with him.  So as dysfunctional as it seems, it works for both of you. This is why you resist change or help.

Believe it or not it's not that unusual for an enabler to prefer their partner to be intoxicated because the enabler maintains control.

On the other hand having or confessing your affair doesn't benefit him.  In fact sometimes confessing affairs is to change and manipulate things  by claiming they ran to another's arms because of (insert list of desired changes) so that the betrayed actually feels guilty and feels they need to give 200% under veiled threat of further infidelities. Sadly cheater-as-the-victim is a more common scenario than you might think.

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by Wiseman2