Have you been reading my mail? :) I am the betrayed and I gave this exact explanation to my wife last week! I said I only have bandwidth right now to understand how I contributed to our marriage issues, and how it left the door open for her emotional affair. I'm putting my hurt on a shelf right now and will get to it after I've understood her pain. I feel the counseling I have received has encouraged me to do this. But my whole life so far has been about stuffing emotions. I've stunted my personal growth because I was all about being a pleaser, and actively avoiding conflict. Counseling is pointing all this out and I can see that fear from, in part, my family of origin, has far too much control over my life.

Sure enough, we are at about 7 months from D-Day. But she has only recently decided to step away from her AP for good, so she says. I've been encouraged to not demand that she share her phone or email nor demand she be accountable to me in regards to that decision. "That needs to come from her counselor" I'm told.

So are you saying get anger out now rather than wait for her to be emotionally understood by me? The answer is probably messy; do both at the same time. Hard for me to do. But right now we are mostly talking about day-to-day issues, and our interactions are pretty cold to each other. However, we also have had more heart sharing in the past 4 weeks as we have ever had in our previous 17 years.

So thank you for this blog. Your insight is prescient

Cguy, I agree. This couldn't have came at a better time. Samuel, you are amazing! Thank you for pointing this out. I, the betrayed, always, I mean ALWAYS, shelved the emotions and put my unfaithful spouse first along with many other people. Your description fits me to a T. I am curious though how do I deal with this anger? I'm not an angry person by nature, but right now the anger can be borderline rage and that is a lititle alarming. Do you have any suggestions on how to work through this anger?

Again, perfect timing and a BIG thank you!

Was dumbfounded by your precision timing!?! Right between 6 & 7 months. Thank you! I wasn't sure what my problem was. I thought there was something wrong with me. That maybe we weren't meant to work things out after all. Empathy is one of my superpowers, so I thought maybe I was going to somehow get by without the anger, etc. I'm not accustomed to the feelings of anger that I've been experiencing. To the7