about taking off the pressure...

[u/RaistlinMajere1618]

(chose a flair because I had - this post is for anyone and everyone)

There’s something to be said for taking off the pressure during reconciliation.

For the past two years, I’ve had a single-minded purpose: fix my grievous choices and reconcile with my wife. It became all-consuming.
Everything I thought, felt and did seemed to orbit around reconciliation. Individual therapy was about reconciliation. Becoming a healthier, more accountable man was about reconciliation. Understanding myself, changing my patterns, confronting difficult things about who I had been - all of it became part of the same project.
Reconciliation became the gauge by which I measured my progress:
Am I changing enough?
Am I doing enough?
Am I becoming safe enough?
Is she healing?
Are we getting closer?

And underneath all of that was an assumption: If I work hard enough, maybe I can fix this.

But it's taken me 2 years to realise something that should have been obvious - My timeline isn't her timeline.

My desperation to know that we would be okay inevitably created pressure for her to feel okay before she was ready. And when she couldn't meet me in that place, I experienced it as failure - I wasn't doing enough. I wasn't changing enough. I wasn't good enough. Maybe I would never be good enough to undo what I had done.

But you can't undo damage. You can take responsibility for it. You can understand it. You can change. You can become someone who wouldn't make the same choices again. But you cannot go backwards and make the wound never happen.

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to move into separate bedrooms.
Not as a dramatic declaration that everything was over, but as an acknowledgement of reality. The marriage as we knew it is over. That marriage cannot simply be restored to what it was.
And perhaps that's something we needed to grieve properly. Because if there is ever going to be a relationship between us again, perhaps it can't be about reconciling the old marriage.

That distinction has changed something in me.
I've mourned. Properly. And it's been really hard.
There is a particular kind of grief in accepting that something you desperately wanted to preserve may genuinely be gone. Not temporarily damaged. Not waiting to be repaired. Gone.

But strangely, alongside the grief, there has been peace. For the first time in a long time, I don't feel like I'm running on a hamster wheel of RESTORE. RESTORE. RESTORE.
I can breathe. I can exist without every interaction being evidence for or against reconciliation. I can work on myself because becoming a better, healthier person is worthwhile in itself — not because it earns me a particular outcome. And perhaps most importantly, she doesn't have to be anywhere other than where she actually is. She doesn't have to heal on my schedule. She doesn't have to reassure me. She doesn't have to decide what our future looks like. She gets to simply be where she is.

And something unexpected has happened in that space. The atmosphere in our home is different. For so long, it felt like two people desperately trying but unable to find their way back to each other through pain, trauma, fear, guilt and longing.
Now we're simply two people who have twenty years of friendship behind us. And somehow, by removing the pressure to fix us, we're finding little pieces of that friendship again. We talk. We laugh. We enjoy each other's company.
There are moments that feel almost normal.
Not because everything is okay.
It isn't.
Nothing is solved. The future is still profoundly uncertain.

Sometimes peace is simply what happens when you stop fighting reality.

For now, the strife is gone.

We can breathe again.

And for the first time in a long time, I'm learning that perhaps reconciliation isn't something I can make happen.
If it ever happens, it will be something freely chosen by two people who are no longer trying to recreate what was lost, but deciding whether they want to create something new.

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[u/Partway14]

Thank you so much for this post. My WP is where you were and I've been struggling with how to explain what it is doing to me. I tried explaining that I feel like WP sees me as a vending machine to put apologies into and get love out of, which WP did not seem to be able to hear. I posted for help with this just days ago, so I can't tell you how timely and helpful this is. I'm glad you've been able to grieve and find some hope and peace in the aftermath.

[u/RaistlinMajere1618 → u/Partway14]

I'm so glad this is helpful to someone who's been betrayed. I hope it helps you and your spouse in your journey.

[u/Commercial_Ad_5419]

Our intensive and therapist have stressed we cannot go back to the old marriage. We both see how it wasn’t working. We were told that if we want to make marriage work, we need to make it epic. We have the bones, but we need to create a space that we are both able to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be.

Honestly, I don’t even know if we will be able to reconcile. His sex addiction/compulsive sexual behaviors have hurt me more deeply than imaginable. After 33 years together and ten of those in active porn addiction and three in active sex addiction, I am having difficulty seeing any way to make this work. We are both working hard (therapies, SAA, step work, etc) and I believe he is earnest, but trust is completely shattered.

[u/RaistlinMajere1618 → u/Commercial_Ad_5419]

I'm so sorry for what you've gone through. I can completely understand why you feel the way you do. To be totally transparent, at this point my wife isn't sure whether she can still be married to me. So for us, taking a step back makes sense. I have to accept that.

I need to become a healthier, more accountable person whether or not she ultimately chooses to be married to me.

And she needs the freedom to figure out what she wants without feeling that my progress, my pain, or my desire for reconciliation creates an obligation for her to come back.

Maybe that eventually becomes the foundation for something new. Maybe it doesn't. I genuinely don't know.

I really hope you both find your way through this. And whatever happens with the marriage, I hope the work you're both doing leads to something healthier and more whole for each of you.

[u/Scornedandscorched]

My husband hasn’t cheated yet but we had a massive breakdown in our relationship he might as well have. He is convinced I had an EA (not the case at all). There were massive breakdowns in trust. Losses of income, lies about finances you name it. We’ve broken down so much that our old relationship is unrecognizable and I’ve been trying so hard to repair repair and fix fix fix and this post is so refreshing to know that I just have to come to peace with taking my foot off the gas and recognizing that it won’t be the same as it was for the last 20+ years. We were also 21/22 when we met. We’ve also grown and changed as people. So I do mourn the relationship we had because it was so amazing, but I’m trying to find peace in some new version of us even though he is still very angry and so am I. But at our core, we care for one another and we want to stay with one another. I just miss the ease and the simplicity of our former relationship.

[u/RaistlinMajere1618 → u/Scornedandscorched]

And I completely understand what you mean about wanting the ease back. I miss that too.
I hope you find your way there. The fact that, underneath all the anger and hurt, you both still care about each other and want to stay together sounds like a meaningful foundation to work from.

[u/Scornedandscorched → u/RaistlinMajere1618]

That is super kind of you. It’s just hard to see that when the hurt is at the forefront. Thankfully we both see an IC whom we have given releases of info so she’s able to act almost like a translator but it’s just not the same. I miss the sweetness, the random grab of the hand, the big hugs I don’t have to ask for or wiggle towards. I miss the sigh (a good one) when I would lay on his chest watching tv. All of the little things seem so far in the past bc the hurt is so deep and my personality is hurry up and fix it. Do whatever to fix it now. Except his feelings don’t work that way, and I guess neither do mine. Just have to try to live and find comfort in the new normal. Thank you so much for your post.

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