Cheri,
There are many facets of our spouses infidelity that we must come to terms with. This is one of them.
Yes, your H like mine and many others here, portrayed you in an unfavorable light. It hurts deeply to be talked about in such a way by someone we love. To know that each day he came home thinking these things, while living in the same house with us and sleeping in the same bed with us, hurts deeply. But it is part of the insidious world of infidelity.
In order to maintain the affair fantasy, for many, the spouse must be vilified. It justifies, in their guilty conscience, doing something as horrible as sharing themselves with another.
The OW for her part will often grab onto any information about the BS and make it worse because it better her positions with in the affair relationship. Some though will just passively listen with sympathy, which feeds the WS’s ego and encourages negative thoughts about the BS.
Your H had an affair. This is part of that affair. You and he need to talk about how it makes you feel. He needs to understand that just because it is in the past doesn’t mean it no longer holds the power to hurt and offend you.
In order to justify my H’s action he came up with a plausible scenario where in his head I had cheated. In his mind, since I was first what he was doing was perfectly acceptable. The only people he told this concocted story to, were people he knew would believe it. This way it fed his need to make me worse them him. I was furious that he told people such a horrible lie about me, with out a shred of proof. His best friend, who would have argued in favor of more proof, was never told anything about the affair or his fable of me cheating. I agonized so much over my suspicions and told know one of them. Even when I was told by friends that his actions were that of a cheater, I defended him. The idea that she thought I cheated, at times, was more than I could bare.
To help me deal with what he had told others, my H went to those people and set them straight to the truth. The whole truth. This helped me immensely. As far as the OW, I just had to come to terms with her thinking I was worse than her. She wanted to play the victim, nothing anyone could say was going to change that. In time I learned not to care what such a person thought of me.
Thanks, Ami...I printed this out, and am re-reading it...it makes so much sense...as always, you are a guiding light...
I get so angry when I think of how he portrayed me, and very, very hurt. I think, then, "How can he sit here now and tell me he loves me, when he hated me so much then???".
His OW was the "soft spoken, gentle one, who offered to listen and give sympathy"....Of course, I was told that I wasn't/didn't.
And, in this small town, sometimes it is a bit difficult to keep my head up, knowing how many people were poisoned against me. Even his own family and his best friend. I think it's the holidays, and spending time around family and friends that has me thinking about this, and being upset.
I know this is one of those deep, deep pains, that just hurts to the bone. How could some one love you and say such vicious things? Like Ami said, they need to make you out to be the villan. If they didnt how would they get sympathy from the OP and how would they live with themsleves if they didnt. It is just all part of the deceit, the betrayal, and lies. And of course the OP has to believe it all or how could they sleep with some one elses spouse. It just part of the ugliness of an A and the fallout a BS faces...another hurdle we have to pass.
I asked my H a few days after d-day if he talked about me to OW and said that I was some mean ogar or something and he said no. He said he did talk about me but only good things, like when I made the website for the pizzeria. Somehow I dont believe him. One night during the A, he came home totally wasted and I was wearing my nightie, and I asked him where he's been. He got all pissed off and said things like I never have dinner ready for him and the house is a mess, blah, blah, blah. Guess what? I waited up for him until 2am, the house was immaculate and his dinner was sitting on the table, not to mention that I looked pretty hot in my nightie, lol
I like what Ami's H did, he went and told the others the truth. I doubt if many FWS would do that, or anyone for that matter. It would be pretty hard for anyone to go back and tell people they were lying about anything! But setting the record straight is the right thing to do. It's like taking responsibilty for your actions, and being accountable by admiting you did something wrong and trying to right it.
I hope your H is doing more for you by being remorseful and supportive. And I hope he sees the beauty he has in you. You have such a loving soul.
Carol said: " like what Ami's H did, he went and told the others the truth. I doubt if many FWS would do that, or anyone for that matter. It would be pretty hard for anyone to go back and tell people they were lying about anything! But setting the record straight is the right thing to do. It's like taking responsibilty for your actions, and being accountable by admiting you did something wrong and trying to right it."
You know, Carol, what's funny (NOT) is that my H DID call his family and his best friend, shortly after d day....he told them the same thing...almost by rote...I lied, I was wrong, but he didn't say WHAT he lied about, he didn't say HOW he was wrong, nor WHY...he just told them all the same thing...but, I found out later, that he was STILL seeing the OW, and STILL getting sympathy from her...
He even wrote HER a letter, for my "approval", calling her a "whore" and he was "glad he didn't stick his you know what in her"....he didn't figure I'd actually send it to her friend, and tell her H.....ha ha
Anyway...for what it's worth, he didn't really DO anything, except try to APPEASE ME...
He even wrote me an email the DAY he meet her in the woods to you know what her.....for the fourth time...ahem.....he told me "I LOVE YOU...beyond words, till the sun doesn't shine, and the mountains crumble into the sea"...why did he do that? He said later it was to "throw me off the track"....ouch
But, even if he HAD done it for REAL...it still doesn't absolve the reality that he tore me down, chewed me up, made a fool out of me, and spit me out....
OUCH..........that hurts.....that someone you love so much you would marry them....would do such an absolutely VILE thing as to talk so bad about the one they proclaim to love so much...yeah, right...he was telling HER he loved her so much he was going to divorce ME, and marry HER......
AAAAGGGHHH..that doesn't set well with me...
HUGS...Carol, thank you...what you say helps me........Cheri
edited to add more of the story..ha ha
This message has been edited by ceile33 on Dec 6, 2005 8:05 PM This message has been edited by ceile33 on Dec 6, 2005 8:01 PM
Everything you have written could have been written by me. h told OW lies about me and our life together throughout the physical affair then continued the emotional affair by e-mail and phone (and yes, he also prided himself on being computer phobic and technologically hopeless - that's why I found his e-mails haha) with a whole set of stories about how I was coping with the disclosure, how he needed a drink to get through the evening with me, how I was getting in the way of his communication with his (male) best friend. He also told the best friend the worst things about me, and this is someone I have to interact with professionally every day.
I have asked many times how he could tell me he loved me at 7.30 and write her an e-mail telling her how unhappy he was and how he just wanted to have a little "OW comfort" and how he needed her in his life. He first said he was helping OW let go of him. Then it was that he always wanted her friendship and felt uncomfortable with being ehr lover, so once I knew it became safe again. Then that he saw it as a way of him letting go. Then that sometimes he did feel that way about me, and he was using OW and BF as a kind of sounding board to test his ideas out on. Whatever! The fact is he made me the scapegoat for his own weakness.
Early on, I posted that I didn't hate OW. I honestly tried to see her point of view and I did feel sorry for her. I also felt that everything she had done my H had done too and if I could still love him, why should I hate her. But now, since the true NC (or almost), I have come to realise that she hates me. And it's because of the portrayal he gave her. That's why she could lie to me about ongoing contact. That's why she could treat me with contempt. Because he gave her the idea that I am worth nothing. I have asked him to do what Amy's husband did: to write to her telling her of all the lies he told, especially after D-day#1 and especially about me. But he just says that she knows they were lies and that he did "give her the impression" that I wasn't as bad as he was saying. It's Team-H-and-OW again, don't you worry I've done the right thing even if you have no evidence. But the evidence that he hasn't is in her attitude to me.
So now I have just come to terms with the reality that she does hate me. H's dream was always that we would all be friends. He's come to understand that that will never happen and it's because of what he said to her which has made her hate me. So his little fantasy of us as two couples coudl never have been real, because of his selfish, stupid, manipulatory, exploitative, delusional behaviour.
Sorry - this issue gets me really riled. Grant me the patience to accept it with the serenity that Ami does.
Finding out how your spouse has portrayed you is a double slap in the face, rubbing further salt in the wound created by the A. D-Day devastated me. But I always believed that my W would not badmouth me or fail to stand up for me. I asked her if she ever said anything uncomplimentary about me to her online chat buddies, and she vehemently denied that she ever did, and said she always set people straight if they derided me.
Imagine my shock when I found her chat client open after she had gone to bed, and read the conversations she was having at the time. The OW asked where I was (I had gone out to sort out a friend's PC) and said it was good I was out of my wife's hair. My wife agreed that I was "in her hair", and she wished I would just go out and "find someone to shag, because it would make me feel better". I was "emo'ing" (getting emotional) and it was wearing her down, and she couldn't take it. In another chat her buddy told her at length how I she had a r right to be happy with the OW, and I was just upset because I wasn't controlling her anymore. Now my W was with the OW, I couldn't bear to see her happy - AND SHE AGREED! I was shocked, and horrified.
When I confronted her with it, she told me how she NEVER did that, and just this once she needed to "vent" becasue I was wearing her down with my crying and depression and appeals to her love and commitment.
I have realised that this is a part of the betrayal process. On some level, you have to be the bad guy, to have driven the WS to the A. The people they disclose this to are the people who support and cocoon them in their behaviour. (She has never had conversations like this with any of our REAL, old friends. They tend to tell her things like, she doesn't know what she has, and that we need each other.)
People will believe what they want to believe. Those people who are objective, or really know you, will see through it. As for the rest? f*** 'em!
That doesn't make it any more palatable, or any less hurtful. It's like a double betrayal.
