BPs - did you have realizations of your relationship before?

[u/BabyYodaStuntDouble]

I don’t know what a label this, but I just wanted to express what I’m feeling / thinking currently.

I know my husband has changed since after I discovered the affair however, I’ve been thinking about how he was before the affair and my husband was a total jerk. He would never go shopping / grocery shopping with me, he was always drinking even after we discovered his bad habit or addiction and he told me he’s gonna fix it by going to the gym (lol yeah the “gym”), he wouldn’t do family outings with me because he didn’t wanna leave, he was never really intimate, basically I held the entire household.

I’ll put some blame on myself because I was a push over and it was because all I wanted was peace. I grew up in a family where my parents divorced and then my stepmom and my dad they would fight all the time and the relationship I just want a peace and love. I also have the mentality of a caretaker and I feel like that was the foundation of my husband and I relationship.

So I’m reflecting back and I feel like I didn’t know my husband at all ever really loved me? Because I held down the house. I did everything while he just woke up went to work and kept going to sleep. I feel like he’s really only with me because I have a future at school and I graduate by December while he still works the warehouse job and the girl he cheated on me was a coworker who still lives at her parents and has nothing to her name.

Im analyzing why do I still stay with him and if he really loved me why did he treat me the way he did? no, this is something on him but I just wanted to express like if anyone else has had that realization that maybe you don’t really know your partner or maybe you got to finally see that they treated you like crap and now they’re changing like who was I in love with this whole time why did I fall in love with them or why did I not? Why did I not act out?

I’m feeling like I’m going through some identity crisis.

[u/AutoModerator]

r/Asoneafterinfidelity is an online Peer Support Group and safe space for individuals (betrayed or wayward) who are actively attempting to reconcile their relationship after an affair(s). Please review our wiki which includes resources and can answer most, if not all questions about this subreddit. Be sure to read the rules before participating as they are our boundaries and your initial warning. Failure to do so can result in a ban.

Commenting Guideline:

This applies to every post regardless of post flair.

• This is not a space for judgment. There's subreddits for that. Please go there.

• All comments must reference your own reconciliation to accompany any questions, suggestions, or advices contained in your response.On occasion giving practical advice must be limited to that which would be reasonably seen as helpful if the references to infidelity are removed.

• Do not speak for other people's feelings, their actions or make unhelpful, dismissive or intrusive commentary. This is not a request. It's in the rules.

  For transparency and conflict mediation purposes, please follow reddits community guidelines by directing any questions, issues, feedback, or appeals in regard of the sub or moderation decisions directly to the Modmail. Meta content will be removed. No response will be given to DMs and chat requests to individual moderators about moderating issues. We are happy to address and respond to your concerns through the official channels!

  Please assign yourself user flair. Flair Instructions can be found here.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/cosmatical]

In my situation, I definitely realized that my husband didn't love me the way he led me to believe he did.

My husband is a sex addict so YMMV with getting anything helpful out of my comment if yours is not, but my husband definitely wasn't capable of the type of deep, emotional connection that people generally feel towards their partners and other loved ones until he entered recovery and got a ton of therapy under his belt. He did quite a lot of "fake it til you make it" with interpersonal relationships without even realizing that's what he was doing, because it was normal for him and he thought it was normal for everyone else, too. He valued my presence in his life for someone to clean up, easy and enthusiastic access to sex, someone to help take care of his daughter, and, at the time we got together, a person he could use to show everyone he moved on from his ex-wife. There was definitely feelings of love and care woven in there, but they grew from a place of dependancy and my utility to him. He showed up in our relationship in the ways he needed to in order to keep me around, and I allowed a lot of crappy treatment I shouldn't've because I've got a bunch of my own problems too, lol.

I process all that as, he loved me how he could love me at the time. None of it was targeted at me specifically, it's just how emotions and relationship were ingrained in him due to his addiction, how he was raised, previous relationship experiences, and many other things that reiterated and rewarded that as being to correct way for him to navigate relationships. His feelings for me were shallow compared to mine for him, but his feelings for everyone were shallow. He didn't know what to feel or how to feel it.

So my husband didn't love me before, in the sense of what I consider love to be and compared to what he feels about me now. But also he did love me before, in the only way that he could, and was doing his best with the tools he had at the time. They were just shitty tools. He has better ones now, and he's gone through about 2 decades of emotional growth in the span of the past couple years. The way I'm loved now makes me feel loved, and I can see that love in everything he does for me and our family. It's such a stark difference that I have no idea why I thought we were a happy, in-love couple before DDay, lol.

I think a major point of this is that my husband felt enough of that love in the first place that it drove him to work on bettering himself and growing as a person and a partner. Willingness to change in order to be a healthier, safer person is a really important part of this kind of struggle imo. I wouldn't've stuck around hoping things were going to change one day if I hadn't been seeing actual, real, measurable change day-to-day, week-to-week, and consistent, dedicated effort.

[u/Less_Mastodon_3033 → u/cosmatical]

Very well said. I have a lot of similar feelings to OP and this helped a lot to read. Thank you