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It is soooo hard to stay grounded in reality when you have all those wonderful bonding chemicals floating around in your body that make you feel super attracted to someone! Keep doing what you are doing. Keep reminding yourself to honor the space he needs. If anything, he will respect you more for it and even feel more safe to be himself with you! Hopefully that is how it all turns out!
Heidi
Hi Sharlene!
It sounds like you found a pretty wonderful place to be in! Being okay whether it works out or not, is a hard place to come to terms with sometimes. You are learning, growing, gathering new info, opening yourself up to new experiences….what a great job you are doing!!! It is not always easy nor comfortable. I am so glad you shared your thoughts and your story on here so we can be a part of it.
Dating is a such an incredible way to get to know yourself on different levels. There is always a lot to learn!Keep us updated on what happens, any questions you have or even if you just want to vent!
Heidi
Hi Latisha!
I agree with you. It would be best NOT to ask that question. You already have asked that question in the past AND you asked about his thoughts on marriage and BOTH questions he dodged without giving you a real answer. So he knows what you want and if and when he is willing to give that to you, he sounds like the kind of guy that will do just that.
Does is matter anyways? If he is seeing someone else, will that change your attempt to get him back? Would it make you change your mind about chasing after him? I imagine it wouldn’t really deter you, so the answer to the question doesn’t really matter anyways. If it would change your mind and would cause you to let the idea of him go….well then maybe you do want to know the answer to that question. It all depends on the power the answer to that question has on you.
If you want to stay in the game, it’s smart to just continue keeping things light, easy and refreshing with him. Asking that question will instantly create a feeling of pressure on him and that is NOT what you want to do right now. Like Kanya said, you are doing a great job and he IS responding, so keep doing what IS working and don’t change anything just yet. Keep having patience and hopefully he will start to respond even more.
Keep running your thoughts by us! It’s a great way to get some objectivity!
Heidi
This is good news! Is he seeing a therapist that specializes in sexual addictions? Treating addictions is a very specific process. How long has he been seeing this person? Does your guy feel like it isn’t helping? Sometimes it can take a bit before the behavior actually changes. After seeing this therapist, he still does not know why he is addicted?
Maybe he needs a support group as well. Having accountability is so important for people trying to break unhealthy habits and that’s where a group may be able to help as well.
You can also look up emdr.com. Maybe you can find a therapist there. It’s a very powerful method for healing and works very quickly on healing if someone REALLY wants to work it. I LOVE this method as I’ve gotten an incredible amount of results from it.
Bottom line is….if this therapist isn’t helping to create any changes and your guy agrees with that, then you need to keep looking for someone or something that DOES help. There are treatment centers, there are groups, there are books, there are other therapists. You just gotta put your head down and keep looking until you find something that helps him. And if I were you, I would also be looking for support. You are going through an incredible amount of hurt as well. YOU need support through this!!! Someone needs to hear YOUR voice and your hurts and your feelings of rejection etc. and your guy is NOT the person for that right now. Is there anyone that you feel comfortable talking with that has the skillset to help you through this?
Heidi
Hi Tania,
wow….I am sooooo sorry! This is heartbreaking! To have such a wonderful connection and family unit feels so amazing, but then to have him dealing with this sex addiction is so hurtful and so sad. I am so sorry!
I am sorry to tell you that you cannot make anyone stop and addiction. Addictions need to be dealt with by the person themselves. He may not know the “why” behind what he is doing, but reality is, he is not doing anything to find out that answer. He is just letting it happen, despite the hurt he is causing you. It does not mean, on any level, that he doesn’t love you. It just means the addiction is stronger than his love for you. For now, he gets to have both, which is ideal for anyone who has an addiction. It means their addiction doesn’t really have any consequences, so why would he need to stop? Most of the time, people who have addictions finally do something about it when they are in enough pain or have experienced enough loss that they finally decide to get help.
Have you tried talking to him about getting help? It is a form of sexual addiction, so maybe there is a counselor nearby who could help him? Maybe any type of support group? Have you or him read any books on the topic? What attempts have been made to try to deal with this? How long has this been going on?
Heidi
There is nothing more shocking when your partner all of a sudden admits to not being happy when you thought everything was okay.
Were you happy? You said he was controlling and mean. Has this behavior shifted? Looking back, could you see that maybe he wasn’t happy and you just didn’t see it?
I have an incling to agree with you. Him pushing you to date or be intimate may be a projection. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were already intimate with someone else and is trying to feel better about it by asking you to do the same thing.
He is saying some pretty strong things to let you know he is just not interested anymore. That hurts so badly to hear things like that. Who knows what is REALLY going on as he is not really communicating much to you other than he doesn’t want to be with you anymore. If it is ever going to change, it is really important for you to 2 things….give him space and not be as available and work on letting him go. When a man is being chased, he doesn’t really feel the need to put much effort in. When he the woman plays hard to get, so to speak, it activates his hunter instincts. I am not saying this will work with your guy. If he has another woman he is interested in, the odds are not working in your favor. But either way…I want to re-iterate what Kanya said earlier. It is sooooo important for you to know that you will be okay without him. If you do separate, your heart WILL heal and you will create a life separate than him and you CAN be happy….and most likely, you will be happier since your life will be much more peaceful. I suggest you really start to work on that aspect. Knowing that you can live life without him and knowing you are ARE worth loving, you ARE worth fighting for. When you know that, deep down (whether he chooses you or not) you will sense this and may end up really resopnding to your new confidence. He may end up respecting you more.
This is going to take a lot of time and there are no guarantees. All you can do is the best you know how and hope he responds. Since he admitted that he liked helping you, that may be a way to continue some type of connection. My guess is, over time, more truth will come out and you will start to gather more info as to what he is up to.
Be patient, really rely on your friends and family (maybe you can take a trip to see your family for a bit) and start to practice loving yourself more and more.
Have you read the Relationship Rewrite? There are some amazing tips in there that can help educate you as to how to be a better partner. Whether this works out or not, it’s wonderful information to learn and begin to practice and even teach your children as they get older.
How does all of this make you feel?
Heidi
Hi Natalee,
Anyone in your position would be going nuts! It is incredibly difficult what you are choosing to do.
I”m going to be a bit tough here and I hope this is okay. My intention is to only help you connect to truth because from that space, it is much easier to heal and manage something as difficult as what you are doing. The truth is….he is not the one putting you and your kids through hell. You are. This is YOUR choice. The moment you blame him for your pain, that’s the moment you lose site of your own power in this situation.
You essentially have a few paths you could take: I know none of these choices feel good, but reality is, your marriage is on rocky grounds, so all your choices are going to suck….but they are choices none the less.
1. YOU decide. YOU decide that you no longer want to endure this torture and you cannot continue to wait for him to choose. So YOU set a time limit as to when he needs to choose by
2. You could leave and decide that it’s just not worth it anymore.
3. You stay and continue to live with anxiety, tears and an incredible amount of hurt on a daily basis in hopes that one day he will finally choose….and hopefully it’s you.You are choosing option 3 because you feel like he is worth fighting for. That also means, you are going to be dealing with anxiety, hurt and rejection on a daily basis. He is being who he wants to be and will not budge until he is ready to budge. Who knows how long it will take. You are doing everything you possibly can, but the challenge here is….there is a deeper core problem going on here INSDIE OF HIM. You say you want him to realize he is putting you through hell. He has set his boundaries and doesn’t want to be pressured. So that means you now have to just sit and wait….because you are choosing to stay….it is just going to be hell and there is no way around it until he makes a decision one way or the other. You want him to care about how he is making you feel, but he just doesn’t for now. What he cares about more is his comfort level, not yours and that is a choice you are accepting of his since you want to stay in this design.
I know you want some type of something you can do or say to just help him so you don’t have to hurt anymore. It’s just not going to work that way. Something like this can take a lot of time….or maybe it will resolve sooner than later. Either way…it is just going to hurt in the process and there is no way around it. It would hurt anyone. Here is an analogy I like to use. You are walking along and all of a sudden fall into a snake pit. They bite and bite. There is a ladder there if you want to get out, but intsead, you want to stay. At the same time, you are wanting the snakes to care that they are biting you, but they are just being what they are. As long as you stay in that pit, it’s just going to hurt and they are going to keep biting. And that’s okay. Sometimes, that is just something we need to choose and not a single person can tell you when you are ready to leave that pit and create something different. So blaming him for hurting you is like you getting mad that those snakes are biting you, even though there is a ladder to get out and stop all of that. This is YOUR choice and it’s important for you to own that choice instead of looking to him to make you stop hurting. Embrace the full impact of what comes along with fighting for a man who just isn’t sure about you anymore. Embrace that it will hurt everyday. Embrace that you will feel anxiety every day. Embrace that you will feel rejection every day….embrace that it will just be like that until he chooses. And truth be told, even if he did end up choosing you, you really think your anxiety will go away? No way! It’s going to be there for awhile. It’s going to take time for him to build trust back up with you again. It’s going to take time for you to feel like he is committed to you vs. wanting to be with her. Even if he chooses you, he will still go to work everyday and be around her. You are going to have a very hard time with that and that is just part of the equation.
Another possibility is to just take yourself out of the equation. What if you asked him to move out for a month? Or maybe you moved out for a month. And then you can re-evalutate at the end of that time. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. How will he know how much he misses you if you are always there chasing him and available. There is quite a sense of solidarity and security when someone is chasing you. The moment the chase stops, the person being chased all of a sudden doesn’t feel so secure anymore and many times will want that person back. If you take your energy away and disconnect for a short period of time, he may really realize how much you ARE a part of his life and he may really miss you. You are not saying that you are leaving….you are just saying you need to take care of yourself a little more. You are not doing it out of anger or frustration….you are doing it out of self love.
You can say something like: “I understand you don’t want pressure however, I don’t know that I can give you that space when I see you go off to work everyday where she is. Reality is, this is killing me inside and I can’t keep watching this or feeling like this every single day. So….how about you move out for a month. If you want to see me, you can initiate that. If you don’t, then you don’t. I am not going to put pressure on you anymore or try to convince you of what you are missing with me. I know I am worth fighting for. I know I am worth loving. I fully believe that you and I have something worth fighting for. If you don’t feel that way at the end of the month, then so be it. I did everything I knew how and I can walk away feeling good about that. If you do, then let’s make our relationship the best it’s ever been and fall madly in love all over again. I want to fight for you, but living in the same space, wondering if you are with her all the time….it’s hurting me beyond what you even know. So it’s time for me to protect myself a little bit. So if we are in separate spaces, I don’t have to wonder. And I think maybe you will have more space to breathe so you can figure out what you want.”
I know this is a long shot as I imagine you don’t even want to entertain this idea, but I thought I would throw it out there anyways.
So as you are choosing to stay, I still stand by what we both are saying to you. Take the focus off of her and start to find gratitude and appreciation for WHAT IS THERE. He has shown some response and improvement over time, so this is a sign that maybe he is softening towards you more. It may take a few more months or it may take a few more weeks to see more of this. Who knows…this is a super sticky and complicated situation. So….you are going to get hurt and feel that anxiety every single day. In the midst of that, you are also going to have to find our patience and continue to do what you are doing…keep giving him compliments, keep appreciating him, keep giving him space, keep getting help behind the scenes, don’t talk about the other woman and hope for the best.
I’m leary about talking about the future with him. He will percieve that as pressure and it sounds like that pressure makes him put walls up against you. You can try it once and see what happens though. You have nothing to really lose at this point. You could maybe say, “I really imagine that someday, all of this will be behind us. I believe we can be happy and madly in love! I want that for us.”
Please keep us updated and keep talking to us here. Maybe something we say helps you through this extremely difficult time. We really appreciate your vulnerability and desire to become a much better partner for your man. He is very lucky to have someone like you fighting for him!
Heidi
Latisha! This is wonderful news! It is wonderful to hear that he initiated for the first time. What did you say in return?
There are many, many situations where these methods work really well. And there are situations where they don’t. So it’s really hard to know how a situation will turn out. Each couple is sooooo different. So it’s always best to help a person learn to be okay no matter how something turns out. If it works, that is wonderful! If it doesn’t work, there is heartache AND being reminded that everything will still be okay. So that’s why sometimes we don’t come across as super encouraging sometimes. We just never know how the techniques will work, so as we guide people through a situation, it’s important that we guide towards success but also teach to be okay with failure as well…..as that is just the nature of love and relationships….you just never know.
I hope there is continued success for you! He initiated and said something pretty wonderful to you, so that is a good sign! Keep us updated.
Heidi
Hi Purnima!
Well done! I think it is so wonderful that you went back to what DID work. Instead of pushing for more, you found peace in that you both were already happy with how things were. Many people can get caught up in wanting more and more and start to control the situation…and that’s where it can really go downhill. I like that you said if it is meant to happen, it will. Good job! Thank you for sharing. I wish you both the best!
Heidi
Hi Monica,
I am soooo happy to hear this! What are you learning that has worked? How have things changed? I always love hearing someone’s experience and how they applied the information being offered.
Heidi
Hi Latisha,
I agree with Kanya’s guidance. I understand how entirely hard it is to not initiate contact. Women in general have a much higher need to connect compared to men. What Kanya said about RESPECTING and honoring that difference is so important. So many times it isn’t even personal. The guy is just in a different world and thinks very differently.
SO yes….stay away and give him some space to initiate with you. The part where you have to be careful with compliments is you have to make sure they are appropriate and most of all organic and authentic. The more you calculate how much to say, when and how often…that’s when compliments turn into a calculation vs. just happening naturally. If every time he responds to you, you respond back with a compliment….it can get old REAL fast. He will instantly feel like you are just saying nice things to him so you can get his attention back….and I know that is not what you want.
If he doesn’t initiate back, what will you do? Who knows if he will respond, but reality is….it’s so important for you to find out what really is there. If the relationship only exists because YOU initiate and keep it going, maybe it’s time for you to really accept that. I think it’s time for you to really find out the truth about the situation. Are you willing to do that?
If not, that is okay too. You can keep initiating and trying to keep things going. At some point, something will shift in either direction anyways. So you have to go down the path that you feel you are ready for.
Does this make sense?
Heidi
Hi Natalee,
There is NOTHING easy about what you are going through. My heart goes out to you.
I still am wondering what you are doing for yourself? I am wondering….do you really believe things will be different if he did choose to come back to you? It sounds like you are taking a lot of the blame for his choices. From what you are saying, it sounds like YOU are doing all the work…you are learning how to communicate better, you are learning how to appreciate him more, you are learning how to accept him for who he is….but he really isn’t doing anything on his end. What he is doing is filling up his time with work and having intimate relationships with 2 different women who are fighting over him. YOU are terrified of losing him, but he is not terrified of losing you. I know you don’t want to lose your best friend or your family unit, but reality is, you have already lost some of that. You are fighting for a man who isn’t really fighting for you or his family.
So again…I am asking you….where do you exist in all of this? Your fear is sooooo big about losing him to her, that you are losing yourself in the process. If you do get him back, and you have made all of these wonderful changes and he has not….you are then left feeling very alone and not getting your needs met AGAIN. You are fighting for a man who does not fight for himself. You are the type that grows, learns, makes active changes and he is the type to busy himself, take things personally and not make changes. I would hate to see you work soooo hard to get him back only to end up right back here….you asking him for changes to improve the marriage, him blaming you for not feeling accepted for who he is….and another affair or an ending of some sorts.
Here is the analogy of what is happening for you…. You are in the desert and soooooooo thirsty. You haven’t had water for an incredible amount of time and all you can think about is getting something wet on your tongue. Then you come across a body of water. You run up and you immediately start drinking the water, without looking at what is in the water! All you care about is getting that water in your mouth to quench your undying thirst. You just can’t think of anything else except that water. Problem is, there is poison in the water. You are so focused on just getting a drink that you don’t pay attention to the sign that says the water is toxic and can kill you. And it will kill you. Getting your husband back is all you can think about that you are ignoring all of the warning signs about what that means. He kissed your neck, he hugs you for a long time, he said I love you (you are soo thirsty for his connection and he gives you some and it feels soooo amazing and you think everything might be getting better) AND he wants to go on this trip with the other woman. He says he doesn’t want to hurt HER feelings….what about your feelings? (this is where the water is full of poison. He says he loves you and then wants to go on a trip with the woman he is having an affair with? hmmmmm…..)
I’m not saying you shouldn’t fight for him. I’m saying that it’s pretty crucial that he fights for himself as well. It’s pretty crucial that he decides to no longer ignore or bury all of his feelings and find a different and healthier way to deal with the challenges of marriage. Maybe if he agreed to see a therapist or coach WITH you to work through things….that would give me some hope for you guys. That way….BOTH of you are taking steps to healing and growing, not just you. What about YOU hiring a therapist or coach to walk you through all of this? This is a pretty intense situation and it would be WONDERFUL for you to have someone who will listen to you, validate you, challenge you, help you develop some new skills for yourself etc. Is this possible?
I know that despite the warning signs and red flags, you want your husband back and you want your family back together. Please understand that even if he did come back, nothing will be the same. Everything has changed. He not only has cheated on you, he cheated on his family unit. Your kids are going to have anger to deal with, he will have their anger to deal with. Your family unit has changed because of his choices and your choices….so there will be A LOT to work through….it will be a tough hill to climb not only with his kids but with you as well. My guess is, he knows that and that is maybe why this other woman is still in the running….she has a clean slate. He can escape to her and have good feelings…no anger, no judgment, no kids to deal with….it’s just easy compared to what he would have to face if he were to choose coming back home.
What are your thoughts about all of this?
Heidi
Hi Purnima!
What an interesting situation. I am curious…what all of a sudden happen that caused you to shift? The way you explained everything didn’t sound very one sided. It sounded like he was responding to you. What happened?
Heidi
Hi Monica,
It sounds like neither of you are in a really good place right now. I think your approach is best for right now. If you keep things light, focus on what IS working and on the positive aspects that do exist and just relax. Let things develop very slowly as you figure out your life and he figures out his. The more time you guys take by just dating and slowly getting to know each other while you still have separate lives….it just may be the healthiest thing to do if you are going to ever make it long term. The more you try to define the “relationship” the more he will want to resist.
Maybe read “What Men Secretly Want” and “Secret Obsession Compliments.” You can begin to implement a lot of that advice, just to practice and see what happens.
Out of curiosity….when you didn’t talk to him for 2 weeks and you pulled your energy back, what did he respond like? Did he show that he missed you or wanted to connect at all? or was it just radio silence for 2 weeks until you contacted him again?
Heidi
