In general, women have a better sense of smell than men do, or so I’ve read. It’s definitely true at my house. My husband showers once or twice a day because he can’t stand feeling oily or sweaty for long. But he’s always had some hygiene issues that interfere with how close I want to be with him. He doesn’t… Read more →
Category: Denial
He projected his anger & contempt onto me
“Essentially, all narcissists tell on themselves.” ~ Meredith Miller, innerintegration.com I’m still savoring the insights from a video I watched earlier this week. It talks about how narcissists inadvertently reveal details about themselves through what they are projecting onto you. The one thing that my husband kept saying over and over and over after his affair came to light was,… Read more →
‘Don’t throw that away. It can still be fixed.’ … Right?
“Focus on self, and not what ‘they’ should be doing.” — Jaime Primak Sullivan, in a 2017 video Damn, that’s good advice. And very hard to faithfully follow. Like Jaime, I’m mindful and try to be the very best version of myself. I believe that a living person is always learning. But when I’m unhappy with someone it’s very easy… Read more →
His illusions reveal his character
This article was piercing for me. It talks about understanding what a cheating spouse was thinking during the affair. It was written by Rick Reynolds, founder and president of Affair Recovery, a marital counseling company. I have never been able to grasp my husband’s mindset about his affair, and probing doesn’t help. He clams up. Any info I get by… Read more →
So he didn’t love her
I never talked on the phone with the other woman, but we did exchange some blistering texts. One of the things she said after their so-called emotional affair was, “Effie, he never told me he loved me.” I have such mixed feelings about that. Thoughts that I left unvoiced to her included: Sarcasm: “Well, I guess dick pics just had… Read more →
Some Debbie-Downer observations
Some recent random observations that either occurred to me or were voiced by others (and which I identified with): Recent therapy session My therapist and I discussed my realization that my husband may love me, but he loves himself more, even though my husband fondly thinks of himself as a deeply-in-love romantic. My therapist agreed. It’s not as gut-wrenching of an… Read more →
How not to cook a frog
I had a bittersweet talk with my husband this morning. Bittersweet because I love him, and he’s trying, but I don’t think he can or will really hear me. I finally mentioned that I had been thinking for about a week off and on about an aspect of his affair. I recalled how he feared his affair partner’s husband would… Read more →
They know they did wrong
Even now, three and one-half years after finding out my husband was having an affair, I still occasionally have revelations. My husband was typical of most cheaters having emotional affairs, in that he tried at first to draw me into his delusion that they were “just friends.” I didn’t buy into that view, because I know intimacy in a relationship… Read more →
Mental struggles over his affair
I don’t want to convict my husband in the court of public opinion — or even in our private lives — about his affair or other problems in our marriage. He has many fine qualities. That makes it doubly hard for me to mentally and emotionally reconcile his long-term infidelity with the kind man I’ve known for decades. We met… Read more →