Once again, Tonepoems, your post topic caught my attention. Then reading through it, I relate even more. It's like we are married to the same person! It seems we also deal with the issues in similar ways & stay in the r/s for some of the same reasons.
Here's the thing though, while he's sorry for everything he does, I can tell he truly cannot grasp how difficult and painful this has been for me. He still feels on some level his affair was justified
My hub also cheated on me (several times as it turns out) and once even while I was in the hospital having surgery. He has since stopped cheating and has apologized for his behavior, but for a long time, he initially blamed
me. Each time he cheated, he said it was bc I hadn't been sleeping with him often enough (we've never gone more than week w/o sex). Of course the reason I wasn't sleeping with him at those times was bc he was raging at me. Who wants to be intimate with someone who's yelling at you?
I'm supposed to validate his feelings on this when I still feel like he's not completely remorseful for cheating on me mere months ago?
It's moments like these where I don't want to validate or be empathetic to him because the desire to just punch his face (not really, but you know what I mean) is so much more appealing.
But I can't really lash out because then he gets fixates on saying he's a bad and unworthy person instead of just either apologizing or making amends.
I hear you. I've heard several apologies, but never get a sense of true remorse. I think with BPD, the shame is too much to handle, which sends them into the black/white thinking of "all good or all bad." For them it becomes "I'm a bad person" instead of "I'm a good person who did a bad thing."
And yes, it's incredibly difficult to validate/be empathetic to someone who has hurt you so deeply.
I feel like in a way, his diagnosis has robbed me from being able to express how angry and hurt I am, because now everything has become about understanding his behavior.
Diagnosis or not, it was always about him & his feelings. The only difference now is that it has a label.
But I do grow sad sometimes realizing that I don't ever think it will be like it used to be.
I used to struggle with this feeling a lot & sometimes still do. It's grief - plain & simple. Grieving for the husband you "lost," the marriage you thought you'd have. What has helped me is talking about this grieving process in therapy. When I tell my therapist that "he's not the man I married," she reminds me that "He is that man, but now you've discovered that he is this man
too." As far as being on that pedestal: Yes, that was a joyous place to be, but also a dangerous place. Nobody stays on the pedestal for long - we all get knocked off or fall - and it's a long way down. Sometimes when I long to be back on the pedestal, I try to remember how unhealthy that place was - it made us "uneven" - putting us on different levels. Now I try to focus on the goal that we should be eye-to-eye & occupying the same level space as partners in our relationship.
Glad to hear that you are practicing self-care & doing nice things for yourself! Keep it up!
