Hi David

I appreciate that you want to change. Why do you want to change if you don’t mind me asking?

The thing about this type of change is that it is difficult and painful. It requires empathising with the people you hurt and acknowledging and apologising for the pain that you have caused.

It requires developing self-control so that when you have an impulse telling you that you want something, you choose to resist it because you value doing the right thing and caring about someone more than the pleasure that fulfilling the temptation would bring you in the short term.

It requires truly connecting with your self-hatred. And after you have done all the above, you have to figure out how to forgive yourself and find a way to live with the reality of the pain you caused (this is actually the hardest part).

Repeating your past abuse is easy. Saying that you want to change is easy and can make you feel like a better person (the thing is though if nothing actually changes, it’s just a lie). Actually committing to change is a difficult process that will mean putting yourself through suffering.

The way you phrase things puts distance between yourself and your responsibility in the situation.

“She calls me a liar.”

An open relationship means telling people when you plan on seeing someone else. You didn’t tell her when you were seeing someone on the side. You kept it a secret. This is a lie by omission.

The way I taught myself empathy when I was a child was to imagine how hurt I would feel if someone did the same thing to me. I feel like you have difficulty with this specific scenario.

So I would suggest imagining that someone you loved and trusted did something terrible that hurt you deeply. Something that made you feel betrayed, that you could no longer trust them, that made you feel worthless.

This is how a partner might feel when they learn that they’ve been cheated on.

Some people believe that what people don’t know doesn’t hurt them. But it does because you aren’t treating your partner with respect and are willing to risk damaging the relationship. Even if they don’t know about it, the truth exists and is often expressed in other ways.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Helcat.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Helcat.