I need help with a residual feeling I have after 3 and 1/2 years post D-Day.
Does the true respect( and admiration) that you had for your FWS ever completely return to 100% of what it was pre
A?
I've struggled so hard to make it all return, but, alas, I don't feel it has and now have to face the fact that it will never again, be what it was pre-A.
Am I unusual in thinking this way, or is it something every BS struggles with for a long time. For that matter, will it ever improve again in time, to a point where it was pre-A?
I think, somehow, this is an issue that most BS's don't engage in, as, we are so absorbed in desperately trying to salvage our M. Rightfully so, but in my case, 3 and 1/2 years latter, the residual effects sometimes begin to set in, and I would like to know the real answer.
Perhaps, some really old timers (OK PEP) could help me work through the next hurdle I seem to be facing.
All thoughts appreciated.
Blessings,
Jerry

Here is something Pep posted on another thread -

This is taken from the site's Q & A about recovery from infidelity. In particular, overcoming resentments.


One of the most remarkable discoveries of my career as a marriage counselor is that marriages can thrive after infidelity. I would never have guessed it, based on my own reactions. My wife, Joyce, let me know early on that if I ever had an affair, she would not divorce me, she would KILL me (maybe that's why I have taken such extraordinary precautions to avoid it). My own reaction to an affair by Joyce would be as drastic. But I wouldn't kill her, I'd just never see or talk to her again.

That's the way almost all couples feel about infidelity before it actually happens. They can't imagine living with someone who's been unfaithful. But what people think they will do, isn't what they usually do in this case. Surprisingly enough, after the dust settles, most couples try to reconcile.

In the first three parts of this series on coping with infidelity, I have given you advice as to the best ways to recover from an affair. But an issue that I have left for last is one that can ruin an otherwise stunning recovery -- resentment.

This topic is one of the most difficult topics to address in marriage. On the one hand, resentment is a normal reaction to someone who has caused you to go through unbearable pain. It is your emotion's way of warning you to avoid people who have hurt you in the past -- they may hurt you again in the future! But, on the other hand, resentment can also be an irrational reaction to something that is no longer a real threat. In fact, resentment itself may become a greater threat to your happiness than what it is you fear.

Those who have written me understand how damaging their feeling of resentment is to their happiness and to the future of their marriage. But they seem unable to stop it. It's a great subject for a psychologist, who is supposed to know how to help people control their emotions. But, I must admit, this is a tough one.

I have answers to some parts of the problem, but not all of them. So to help you as much as I can, I will lay the problem out to you and give my advice wherever I can.

The more there is to resent, the more difficult it is to overcome resentment.

Both B.A. and S.K. think about their husband's affair when they try to make love, and it prevents them from having a fulfilling sexual experience. And they both learned about the affairs within the past few months. But there's quite a bit of difference between them. B.A. has only one affair to think about, while S.K. has six of them, many with her closest friends. As a result, other things being equal, I would expect B.A.'s resentment to fade much more quickly than S.K.'s resentment.

The resentment of B.A. and S.K. is a normal emotional reaction to the pain they suffered. The pain was directly associated with their husbands, so now, every time they make love, and lower their emotional defenses, they feel that pain all over again.

But emotional associations fade over time as long as there are no further associations with new painful events. In both cases, their husbands have not had an affair after the revelation, and so I would predict that if they have a normal recovery, where they learn to meet each other's needs, avoid Love Busters and learn to apply the Policy of Joint Agreement and the Policy of Radical Honesty to their decisions, the resentment would fade away.

If, on the other hand, either husband were to have another affair, the association would be much harder to extinguish. In fact, when a couple goes through a recovery after an affair, and then experience another affair, the resentment is often more intense and more persistent after the second recovery. With multiple affairs and recoveries, resentment is almost impossible to overcome. But then, in those cases I usually feel that the emotional reaction of resentment is not irrational at all. Emotions are telling the person that it's not a good idea to continue the relationship, and I would agree.

But there is more to resent than just the number of affairs a husband had in the past. In many cases, an affair is discovered while it's going on, and the unfaithful spouse makes matters worse by choosing to be with the lover and abandoning the spouse and children. That thoughtless act is a huge source of additional resentment for the victimized spouse. He or she not only goes through the pain of discovering the affair, but must also go through the pain of being rejected. The unfaithful spouse often moves away to be with the lover, leaving the spouse all alone to face the terror of abandonment.

Then, if all of that weren't enough, the unfaithful spouse explains that he or she needs time to "sort out" feelings, whatever that means. It actually means that the unfaithful spouse will go to the highest bidder. Whoever makes the unfaithful spouse feel the best, the lover or the spouse, will win the prize of the unfaithful spouse. So he or she spends some time with the lover, and then spends some time with the spouse. Back and forth, trying to "get in touch" with feelings. Can you fathom the resentment that would follow such a horrifying and humiliating experience?

But there's more. After vacillating back and forth a few times, the lover gets sick of it all and tosses the spouse out for good. With nowhere else to go, the unfaithful spouse comes back home. It wasn't his or her choice. It was the lover's choice. How would you feel being chosen because you were the only one left. Resentment doesn't begin to describe the feeling.

Finally, there's all the lies. Your spouse looks right into your eyes and lies to you about everything. Faced with undeniable evidence, he or she grudgingly and defensively admits to one lie after another, rarely accompanied by apologies. How can there ever be trust again?

B.A. and S.K. went through only a small number of the possible painful experiences that lead to resentment. Over time, their resentment will fade, and a passionate desire to make love to their husbands will grow. Both husbands should be patient, and give their wives a chance to overcome the worst of their resentment, before expecting much from them sexually. But a woman in love is usually a great sex partner, and I doubt that either husband will be disappointed if they do their part in meeting their wives emotional needs. I predict that within a year from now, both of these wives will have almost completely recovered from their feelings of resentment.

But if they had gone through the other experiences I had mentioned -- abandonment, vacillation between spouse and lover, returning after being rejected by the lover, and the many lies -- I would not be as optimistic about them overcoming their resentment quickly. It would take much more patience on the part of the unfaithful husbands. But even with all of this past pain and suffering, they too, could have a marriage that would be relatively free of resentment.

Some people are better at remembering than others

I read recently that estrogen replacement significantly improves memory in women. Great! That's all I need. A wife that can do an even better job remembering everything I've ever done to offend her.

It's true that the better your memory, the more difficult it will be to overcome resentment. That's because resentment is tied to memories, and if you forget the painful event, the resentment is lost along with it. One of the reasons I'm not so keen on dredging up the past as a part of therapy is that it brings up memories that carry resentment along with them. If I'm not careful, a single counseling session can open up such a can of worms that the presenting problem gets lost in a flood of new and painful memories. If the goal of therapy is to "resolve" every past issue, that seems to me to be a good way to keep people coming for therapy for the rest of their lives. That's because it's an insurmountable goal. We simply cannot resolve everything that's ever bothered us.

Instead, I tend to focus my attention on the present and the future, because they are what we can all do something about. The past is over and done with. Why waste our effort on the past when the future is upon us. Granted, it's useful to learn lessons from the past, but if we dwell on the past, we take our eyes off the future which can lead to disaster.

I personally believe that therapy should focus most attention, not on the past, but on ways to make the future sensational. And when a spouse comes to me with unresolved feelings of resentment about something their spouse did in the past, I tend to put it on hold and focus on issues that prevent mistakes of the past from recurring. I ask them to trust my judgment, and see what happens to the resentment when the marriage has a chance to become fulfilling. In almost every case, resentment fades, as I predicted. While the painful memories are not entirely forgotten, the most recent marital experiences which are fulfilling and enjoyable, dominate a person's thinking, and resentment becomes weak and infrequent.

Recovery may not be complete

Resentment usually appears when an experience of the present reminds us of a painful experience of the past. For example, if a wife had been abandoned by her husband after a fight on a vacation, left to find her way home alone from Jamaica, the resentment of that experience would pop up whenever her husband walks out the door during an argument. Very often, continuing resentment means that whatever it was that caused the painful experience is still lurking in the background. And it jumps out every once in a while when evidence of it's existence surfaces.

The procedure for recovery that I suggest usually eliminates the root causes of infidelity, and that makes it unlikely that present experiences will remind a spouse of experiences associated with an affair. If the only time you feel resentment about a spouse's past affair is when your needs have not been met, when your spouse is engaged in a Love Buster, or when the Policy of Joint Agreement or Policy of Radical Honesty has not been followed, then it's the completion of recovery that's your problem, not resentment.

Using resentment as a way to control and punish a spouse

I'm convinced that what's kept the resentment of S.R.'s husband alive for so many years is that he has found it to be an effective way to control and punish her whenever she doesn't do what he wants. Whenever they have a fight, he brings it up, and it causes her such guilt that it gives him a decided advantage in winning the argument.

By this time, I don't believe that her affair is the problem that she thinks it is. Instead, it is an issue that her husband is using to get the upper hand in his relationship with her. It probably shows up the most whenever she has been reluctant to have sex with him. It throws her off balance whenever he mentions it, and makes her feel guilty, wanting to make it up to him somehow. He may also bring it up whenever she is winning in a power struggle he is having with her.

What she describes to me in her letter is abuse, pure and simple. There is no excuse for the way her husband keeps bringing up her moment of weakness she experienced years ago. He is disrespectful and abusive.

I suggest that she look him right in the eye and say to him, "Listen Buster, do you love me? Do you want me to love you? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me? If the answers to any of those questions is 'yes' you sure are going about it the wrong way. You are not doing things that I admire, you're doing things that I find disgusting!"

What if he says, "Fine, then lets just get a divorce and end it all."

To that I would say, "It's up to you. I married you for life, but if you want a divorce, it's your call. If you want to be in a love relationship with me, however, you're going to have to treat me much better than you have been treating me. You must never again bring up my affair, and if you are upset with me, you will have to treat me with respect until we can solve the problem. If you are upset with our sexual relationship, I want us to discuss it as adults and solve it with mutual respect. I refuse to be treated like this, especially by the man I love."

My advice to her husband is to never mention her affair again. It's a good example of one of the enemies of good conversation, dwelling on past mistakes. Whenever you keep bringing up your spouses past mistakes, you not only make your conversations incredibly unpleasant, but it cannot possibly lead to a resolution of a conflict you may be discussing. And as soon as his resentment doesn't pay him any dividends -- no longer helps him get his way -- he will find that it hardly ever occurs to him.

Hanging on to an unpleasant thought because it helps us somehow is what psychologists call "secondary gain." It means that even though the thought is unpleasant, it gets you something you need, so your mind keeps it around for its usefulness. There are many unpleasant thoughts that have this characteristic, and I have helped many people let them go by helping them destroy the usefulness of the thought. Making sure that S.K.'s husband never gets what he wants by bringing up her affair will help him overcome his resentment.

Other considerations

I'm running out of room to adequately address all aspects of resentment about affairs (I try to keep these Q&A columns reasonably brief), but there are a few other important topics that I will briefly mention.

One topic is loss of trust. How can a spouse ever trust an unfaithful partner again? My answer is that the spouse should never have been trusted in the first place. I shouldn't be trusted by my wife, and I shouldn't trust her. The fact is that we are all wired for infidelity, and under certain conditions, we'll all do it. The way to protect your marriage from something that has been common to man (and women) for thousands of years is to recognize the threat, and do something to prevent it from happening. Basing a marriage on the Policy of Radical Honesty and the Policy of Joint Agreement goes a long way toward preventing an affair. Being each other's favorite leisure-time companions, and not being away from each other overnight are also important safety measures. Meeting each other's most important emotional needs, avoiding Love Busters and building an integrated lifestyle, free of secret second lives, are all ways to affair-proof your marriage. With these measures in place, we end up trusting our spouses because an affair becomes almost impossible to achieve.

Another topic that I will briefly mention is obsessive thinking. Some people feel that if they stop thinking about something terrible, it will happen to them. While it's not all that common, it effects certain people known to be obsessive, where regardless of the low probability of risk, they treat some thoughts as if they were an ever-present danger. Those who compulsively wash their hands for fear of being infected by germs are an example of this type of person. The solution to their problem often lies in medication that helps them overcome obsessive thoughts and compulsive behavior. There are some very effective medical remedies that a doctor trained in obsessive thinking can prescribe that often help a person rid themselves of pervasive resentment regarding an affair.

Admittedly, I have not covered resentment regarding an affair completely. But it's a start. If your problem with resentment is not covered in this column, e-mail me issues that you are still struggling with, and I will try to help you with them.

Resentment seems insurmountable when an affair is first discovered, and as it unfolds, with its attending lies and thoughtless acts, it's amazing that anyone can actually overcome resentment. But it's a fact that people usually do, especially when the core problems leading to infidelity are resolved. It's a good illustration of how our instincts lead us astray when trying to resolve our marital problems. Most of us cannot imagine overcoming resentment after a spouse's affair, but those who have gone through it know that it's not only possible, but it's likely that resentment will fade away.

Thanks Believer,
I've read that section of the web site many times, as I've had to find a way to deal with my resentment at many different levels.
What I find interesting is, that your somhow intereperated my question about respect, to mean resentment.
Are we, somehow, talking about the same thing? I understand my resentment issues, but I was specifically refering to RESPECT. Is there a difference or am I clouding the 2 issues?
All Blessings,
Jerry

Gosh, I'm not the one to advise you on that. I resent my WH and don't respect him either. Have you read Lemonmans thread on admiration? There were some great posts there.

Hi Bleliever,
Yep, read LM's thread and I'm not trying "one up" him here. To me , it's about how much respect you still have for your FWW after infidelity, that leaves me pondering.
You see, after many ups and downs(like any marriage), it all eventually comes down to how highly you respect your spouse.
Might seem kindof trivial, but notheless, it's very important as to how you view your S in the future.
I dunno, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but I know I have certain struggles that face me, even if I don't face them, in the not too distant future.
All Blessings,
Jerry

Hey Jerry,

Respect does return, but it is contingent upon the behavior of the WS. In my situation, 5 yrs post D-Day, my respect for him today greatly exceeds the respect I had for him before the affair. And that is because he EARNED it. He demonstrated honorable, respectable behavior on a consistent basis over the years. I can say, without reservation, that he is a better man of stronger character than before the affair.

So, to answer your question, yes, respect can come back, but only if the WS EARNS it.

I would qualify all of this with caution that the BS must be willing to respect and show respect if it is warranted and is not being mean or stubborn about it.

You are not unusual. This is a struggle for awhile.

I just woke up from a nap .... lemme think about this some more...

Respect is more ~how you behave~ and less about how you feel.

think about that

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .... has a REALLY wordy discussion of respect:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/respect/

the following are exerpts from the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy

~~~~~~~


Must persons always be respected? One view is that individuals forfeit their claim to respect by, for example, committing heinous crimes of disrespect against other persons, such as murder in the course of terrorism or genocide. Another view is that there are no circumstances under which it is morally justifiable to not respect a person, and that even torturers and child-rapists, though they may deserve the most severe condemnation and punishment and may have forfeited their rights to freedom and perhaps to life, still remain persons to whom we have obligations of respect, since the grounds of respect are independent of moral merit or demerit.

Some philosophers argue that the obligation to respect person functions as a negative constraint: respect involves refraining from regarding or treating persons in certain ways. For example, we ought not to treat them as if they were worthless or had value only insofar as we find them useful or interesting, or as if they were mere objects or specimens, or as if they were vermin or dirt; we ought not to violate their basic moral rights, or interfere with their efforts to make their own decisions and govern their own conduct, or humiliate them, or treat them in ways that flout their nature and worth as persons.

Others maintain that we also have positive duties of respect: we ought, for example, to try to see each of them and the world from their own points of view, or help them to promote their morally acceptable ends, or protect them from their own self-harming decisions. And some philosophers note that it may be more respectful to judge someone's actions or character negatively or to punish someone for wrongdoing than to treat them as if they were not responsible for what they did, although requirements of respect would impose limits on how such judgments may be expressed and how persons may be punished.

I think it is key that you realize what you are struggling with is a feeling ... and a residual one at that....

you know Jerry, you are under no obligation to act on your feelings .... and you are also free to act on your feelings if you so choose

to me ... the more important issue is that you show your wife respect ~despite~ these residual uncomfortable feelings .... good for you!

These feelings will likely diminish over time .... especially if/when your wife shows you behaviors that you can see are worthy of your respect .... that's how it went for me

and the other side of this coin, I think ... is your wife's self-respect is euqally damaged and she may struggle for years with nagging doubts about whether or not she will ever regain full self respect ...

it can unfold very slowly

you are doing great