Dear JournoGirl:

I read your last post and then I re-read all your posts on this thread, paying attention. This is my input:

There is a very serious mental health problem with your husband, one that you cannot fix. This was so from before you met him. It doesn’t matter who you are and what you did in the marriage, he was broken before you met him and the marriage was never right. The marriage didn’t break- it was never whole to begin with. You were in an impossible situation from the very moment you got together with him.

If you were as perfect a wife as anyone could be, he would still be broken and the marriage would never be solid. The marriage started broken; it didn’t break.

There is nothing now that you can do to fix him or the marriage, and there never was. You wrote in one of your posts here that you want to get together with the other man if the marriage is broken; that you don’t want to leave your husband for another guy. Well, the marriage is broken, always has been. So you can keep your own word and indeed get together with the other guy.

There are two patterns of behavior playing out during the duration of this broken-from-the-start marriage:

One pattern is his: pretending, not seeing what is happening inside him, inside you and in between the two of you. He has been pretending. Once in a while he wants out but then he comes back. He has lots of anger in him that he usually manages to hide from you and from himself by pretending. His anger though is still there and that is why he doesn’t seek closeness with you, emotional or physical: he is angry. It is too much for him to be sexual with you- too much pretending to do.

During the meltdown episodes of his pattern he expresses this anger with his threats: “I am leaving you!” And “This is how you annoy me!”

And this is where your pattern comes in: following his threat to leave you, you beg him to stay. He stays, you get anxious about the next meltdown.

Since you have a great fear of abandonment, when he threatens to leave, or leaves, your get triggered big time. Your fear becomes most intense and you beg. You beg automatically. This is a habit by now.

In your anxious living situation you started an affair with the other man. But you are still greatly attached, emotionally to your husband, fearing abandonment. The affair makes you calmer in between the fear of abandonment by your husband.

My summary: make the separation from your husband final. Endure your impulse to beg him for more of the same. If he initiates another stretch of this broken marriage, don’t comply. Get closer to your lover at this time, for support. Let him comfort you as you make this separation from your husband final.

* If I read only your last post, I could jump to the conclusion that you are an abusive wife who should leave your poor, suffering husband alone to recover from your mistreatment of him. And although I do think this separation should be final, by reading all your posts, I see the bigger picture. This is not about an … evil cheating wife, it is about an impossible situation, a marriage broken from the very start with no reasonable possibility or repair.

Do post anytime.

anita