OK, I posted part of this a long time ago with a different signon (I had to change it because I later realized it was too revealing of my identity). I am reposting it because of later developments that somewhat change the spin on it. I am posting it because certain events recently brought it up again in my life.
Well, the underlying issue here is that my wife has had fairly severe psychiatric issue which I prefer not to get too deep into here. However, it has required her to be under ongoing psychiatric care and medication. It relates to severe childhood abuse (nonsexual, as far as we know) which has led to a lot of psychiatric pathology.
Anyway, the specific events are that about 4 1/2 years ago, she went to a high school reunion with her sister in another state over 1000 miles away. While there, she met an old male friend. She was doing a lot of drinking, and I suspect, some degree of flirting, although she denies this (however, she has flirted in other circumstances when I have seen her, while drinking). It was a long weekend event; the first night, he was taking her to his house to "meet his son", then suddenly stopped, said, "my wife might get angry", and left her in the middle of the street alone (according to my wife). She made her way back to the reunion which was at a bar. (I contend he was actually trying to get her to his house to bang her, then chickened out, but she denies this.)
The next night, they were talking all by themselves in an isolated area of the bar (in another room where no one else was), and she says he kissed her. She denies being an active participant. She says she stopped him at that.
Anyway, I never knew any of this. About 1 week later, we were shopping together at a large furniture store, and she kept turning her phone off. (We were separating to look for some items and I was to call her if I found them). Her reason for doing so was illogical and incomprehensible, so I called her on it. SHe got belligerent. We were out at dinner later that night, where she drank an excessive amount of wine, and I continued to ask her about her bizarre phone behavior that day. Then it came out--told me about the events of the reunion, and (according to her) he had been calling her all week despite her telling him to stop. I was pretty pissed about that event, but she started getting belligerent by the time we got home. She then tells me that she is in love with 2 men. Furthermore, she then says derogatory things about my manhood (I have a condition known as Peyronie's Disease--please look it up as I don't want to go into it--but it has left me with a slight curvature which she has previously always said she couldn't even notice).
Well, to make a long story short, after that horrible blow-up, I confronted the guy and told him exactly what kind of scum he was (and initially talked to his wife, because he wasn't home the first time I called). His wife must have reamed him out good, because he was a whipped dog when I got hold of him, and he offered no resistance. He did however, indicate that it was a mutual thing (contradicting my wife's version). I am confident was nothing more than kissing, and it was just the reunion weekend. He lives half a country away, and I am sure there has been NC. I will always believe that she was more willing than she contends, but either way, I view her hiding of events, the lying for a week, the deceit on DDay, and the subsequent hurtful comments to be indicative of emotional alignment with the OM, against me. So I still classify it as a kind of EA--could it be an emotional ONS?
Anyway, fast forward through some MC, but especially a lot of pyschiatric care. Her contention (and it may or may not be true, I can never really know) is that her comments about the other man and my manhood were lies she created just to hurt me, as a manifestation of her psychiatric disease. She has been hospitalized twice for it out of state, and twice locally, as they sought a diagnosis. Apparently, they settled on a form of dissociative identity disorder (which I know is a very, very controversial diagnosis) as a result of her severe childhood abuse.
She has never done anything more on the infidelity-type front, although she has had a lot of emotional psychiatric breaks (two of which involved some level of physical violence against me--kicking me in the chest so I fell over a coffee table once, hitting me on the head with a planter another time). I have had to call the police to our home 3 times, one of which ended with her hospitalization for suicide attempt, and two of which involved her either going to the ER that night or being seen by her pyschiatrist the first thing in the morning.
From a psych standpoint, she is doing better, after a while. I stuck with her, primarily because I hoped she would improve psychiatrically. She drinks much less than before, and we have an agreement she will not drink more than 1 drink without me. In July, I told her that her slate was clean from the prior event at her reunion. However, I can't completely forget it.
More recently, some event came to light about her sexual activity before I ever met her. Now, I made it clear that she doesn't really "owe" me anything for things that occurred before I met her, but when our pasts had been discussed in the past (she had a physcially abusive first husband who has left some permanent damage to her, whom she cheated on which 2 ONS and 1 long-term affair), she assured me there was nothing else. However, I recently found out that there WAS more--she let her sister essentially pimp her out to a boss that was attracted to her in order for the sister to get promoted, and 2 occasions with threesome(2 girls/1 guy)/foursome (3 girls/1guy) which she had never told me about.
I got upset about the "surprise" revelations. I think I am sensitive to it because truth is so important given the past events. In the end, I can probably eventually deal with it since it was before me, but I am hurt by her not telling me before (we've been married 12 years). I am hypersensitive to secrets/dishonesty because of her prior behavior. She says she just forgot about it until now, because she blocks things out from her psych disease. She is upset that she thought she had a "clean slate" (by which I meant I thought our marriage relationship was back to the level it was before the reunion events), and I brought it up to say that I was hypersensitive because of it. I also had to dredge it up, because she tried to change the narrative ("he kissed me, I didn't do anything"), until I confronted her harshly about the lying/deceit/hurtfut comments that she conveniently forgot, which I maintain showed at minimum an emotional betrayal of me, and I really think is a sign of guilt that she was an active participant in the kissing.
Anyway, the sore spot now is that she feels that I was not truthful when I said I was going to move forward and forget about her guilt. I really think I have been--I haven't (until she denied) bludgeoned her over the head with it any more, and my emotions and love for her were back to what they were. I concede there may be some trust issues, but I don't think anyone can ever entirely forget something like this. I think humans can only forget so much, and that in fact, it's important to remember at least some of it so that it can never happen again.
So, I guess I'll put it out there; is it possible to ever COMPLETELY forget or act like anything hurtful never happened? I know that compared to some of the BS here whose spouses were having torrid sex with their AP, I may seem like a whiner, but I think a lot of mental and emotional hurt was done to me. Personally, i think the hateful comments she threw at me were what really made it the worst. And am I being oversensitive to let some new revelations of things that antedated me eat at me?
Thanks in advance for your comments.
Well, the underlying issue here is that my wife has had fairly severe psychiatric issue which I prefer not to get too deep into here. However, it has required her to be under ongoing psychiatric care and medication. It relates to severe childhood abuse (nonsexual, as far as we know) which has led to a lot of psychiatric pathology.
Anyway, the specific events are that about 4 1/2 years ago, she went to a high school reunion with her sister in another state over 1000 miles away. While there, she met an old male friend. She was doing a lot of drinking, and I suspect, some degree of flirting, although she denies this (however, she has flirted in other circumstances when I have seen her, while drinking). It was a long weekend event; the first night, he was taking her to his house to "meet his son", then suddenly stopped, said, "my wife might get angry", and left her in the middle of the street alone (according to my wife). She made her way back to the reunion which was at a bar. (I contend he was actually trying to get her to his house to bang her, then chickened out, but she denies this.)
The next night, they were talking all by themselves in an isolated area of the bar (in another room where no one else was), and she says he kissed her. She denies being an active participant. She says she stopped him at that.
Anyway, I never knew any of this. About 1 week later, we were shopping together at a large furniture store, and she kept turning her phone off. (We were separating to look for some items and I was to call her if I found them). Her reason for doing so was illogical and incomprehensible, so I called her on it. SHe got belligerent. We were out at dinner later that night, where she drank an excessive amount of wine, and I continued to ask her about her bizarre phone behavior that day. Then it came out--told me about the events of the reunion, and (according to her) he had been calling her all week despite her telling him to stop. I was pretty pissed about that event, but she started getting belligerent by the time we got home. She then tells me that she is in love with 2 men. Furthermore, she then says derogatory things about my manhood (I have a condition known as Peyronie's Disease--please look it up as I don't want to go into it--but it has left me with a slight curvature which she has previously always said she couldn't even notice).
Well, to make a long story short, after that horrible blow-up, I confronted the guy and told him exactly what kind of scum he was (and initially talked to his wife, because he wasn't home the first time I called). His wife must have reamed him out good, because he was a whipped dog when I got hold of him, and he offered no resistance. He did however, indicate that it was a mutual thing (contradicting my wife's version). I am confident was nothing more than kissing, and it was just the reunion weekend. He lives half a country away, and I am sure there has been NC. I will always believe that she was more willing than she contends, but either way, I view her hiding of events, the lying for a week, the deceit on DDay, and the subsequent hurtful comments to be indicative of emotional alignment with the OM, against me. So I still classify it as a kind of EA--could it be an emotional ONS?
Anyway, fast forward through some MC, but especially a lot of pyschiatric care. Her contention (and it may or may not be true, I can never really know) is that her comments about the other man and my manhood were lies she created just to hurt me, as a manifestation of her psychiatric disease. She has been hospitalized twice for it out of state, and twice locally, as they sought a diagnosis. Apparently, they settled on a form of dissociative identity disorder (which I know is a very, very controversial diagnosis) as a result of her severe childhood abuse.
She has never done anything more on the infidelity-type front, although she has had a lot of emotional psychiatric breaks (two of which involved some level of physical violence against me--kicking me in the chest so I fell over a coffee table once, hitting me on the head with a planter another time). I have had to call the police to our home 3 times, one of which ended with her hospitalization for suicide attempt, and two of which involved her either going to the ER that night or being seen by her pyschiatrist the first thing in the morning.
From a psych standpoint, she is doing better, after a while. I stuck with her, primarily because I hoped she would improve psychiatrically. She drinks much less than before, and we have an agreement she will not drink more than 1 drink without me. In July, I told her that her slate was clean from the prior event at her reunion. However, I can't completely forget it.
More recently, some event came to light about her sexual activity before I ever met her. Now, I made it clear that she doesn't really "owe" me anything for things that occurred before I met her, but when our pasts had been discussed in the past (she had a physcially abusive first husband who has left some permanent damage to her, whom she cheated on which 2 ONS and 1 long-term affair), she assured me there was nothing else. However, I recently found out that there WAS more--she let her sister essentially pimp her out to a boss that was attracted to her in order for the sister to get promoted, and 2 occasions with threesome(2 girls/1 guy)/foursome (3 girls/1guy) which she had never told me about.
I got upset about the "surprise" revelations. I think I am sensitive to it because truth is so important given the past events. In the end, I can probably eventually deal with it since it was before me, but I am hurt by her not telling me before (we've been married 12 years). I am hypersensitive to secrets/dishonesty because of her prior behavior. She says she just forgot about it until now, because she blocks things out from her psych disease. She is upset that she thought she had a "clean slate" (by which I meant I thought our marriage relationship was back to the level it was before the reunion events), and I brought it up to say that I was hypersensitive because of it. I also had to dredge it up, because she tried to change the narrative ("he kissed me, I didn't do anything"), until I confronted her harshly about the lying/deceit/hurtfut comments that she conveniently forgot, which I maintain showed at minimum an emotional betrayal of me, and I really think is a sign of guilt that she was an active participant in the kissing.
Anyway, the sore spot now is that she feels that I was not truthful when I said I was going to move forward and forget about her guilt. I really think I have been--I haven't (until she denied) bludgeoned her over the head with it any more, and my emotions and love for her were back to what they were. I concede there may be some trust issues, but I don't think anyone can ever entirely forget something like this. I think humans can only forget so much, and that in fact, it's important to remember at least some of it so that it can never happen again.
So, I guess I'll put it out there; is it possible to ever COMPLETELY forget or act like anything hurtful never happened? I know that compared to some of the BS here whose spouses were having torrid sex with their AP, I may seem like a whiner, but I think a lot of mental and emotional hurt was done to me. Personally, i think the hateful comments she threw at me were what really made it the worst. And am I being oversensitive to let some new revelations of things that antedated me eat at me?
Thanks in advance for your comments.
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