From Merciful via the feedback form
Thank-you for your helpful resource, wisdom and willingness to help others! Background: 32 yr happy marriage now in MLC for 4.5 yrs. First 2 yrs spouse lived at home; last 2.5 yrs spouse lives 100 miles away. Won’t divorce, but dangles it as an option. Affair(s); appears to be with same OW long term though not living with her. Non-communicative, secrecy, dishonesty, totally different person. Supportive to me financially, desires to be “best friends”, wants to visit regularly for activities, events, recreation and known comfort zone with me. I am not sexually intimate with him under these conditions. After a few days he retreats back to secret life. No end in sight to all of this childishness. While I have been caring, kind, supportive and thoughtful through this nonsense, my emotional attachment is waning under the circumstances. The love is there. I need to grow, progress and find joy outside of this situation and don’t find the present dynamics to be beneficial for either of us. How helpful is disengaging, no further visits or time spent together, and limited communication from this point forward until he comes to some clarity as he “finds himself”. I’m all for helping the man I love through a tough time in his life, but this lifestyle is simply not contributing to the progress of either one of us! Your helpful insight as to how to tread lightly yet distance from the chaos is very appreciated.
Dear Merciful,
I’m very glad that you find my website helpful to you. 🙂 First of all, there is nothing you can “do” to help him. He must learn to help himself-he’s the only one who can. It doesn’t surprise me this man is dangling divorce as an option. I suspect that he’s using it to try and emotionally blackmail you every time you don’t do what he wants you to do. My advice is to call him on it, and keep the decision for filing on his shoulders. What he’s trying to do is control his circumstances, environment, and the situation as a whole. Apparently, he thinks divorce is something that you are afraid of. Is it? Mid-life spouses will often threaten the left-behind spouses, as a controlling aspect, with what they’re most afraid of, whether it be leaving,(actually abandonment), or divorce.
There are many people who are afraid of both, so because of fear, they’ll cave to the demands, when they really shouldn’t cave at all. Considering that fact that one has no control over what the mid-life spouse does or doesn’t do, those kinds of bluffs should always be called without negotiation, and without showing any emotional upset. In this area, a firm boundary should always be set, making sure to put that kind of decision BACK on the shoulders of the threatening party. If a person gets upset, and doesn’t learn to simply draw the emotional line, the mid-life spouse’s threats, and emotional terrorism in these areas will escalate. So, don’t engage him, when he dangles this option in front of you, firmly, and matter of factly tell him if he wants a divorce he would be the one to file, but stop threatening you with it. When you do this, be firm, but matter of fact.
While I always advise being friendly but distant, I don’t suggest agreeing to be “best friends” with your mid-life spouse. With friends like him, you sure don’t need any enemies, and mid-life spouses are the worst for wanting to be “friends” while they’re otherwise engaged in an affair-if you agree to be his friend, it would mean (in his mind), that you were condoning his affair, when you really don’t.
He’s apparently cycling back and forth between you and the other woman, as he is trying to figure out what he wants-but I suspect that this kind of cycling must be settling into some kind of predictive pattern that you’re able to see clearly. Since he finds no real change in your behavior toward him, (you’re being loving, thoughtful, etc, but at a high emotional cost to yourself), each time he cycles back, he gets restless and leaves again, retreating back into his former behaviors.
You’re treating him well, but also, treating him in such a way that he keeps thinking that what he’s doing is OK, when it’s not. Not your fault, you come across as a pretty patient lady, but patience is one thing, his trying to keep you dangling while he makes up his mind is quite another.
We can set loving boundaries without getting mean or nasty on our part-yet, any person who is the subject of boundaries that hasn’t learned to accept limits in their lives will protest very loudly, get nasty, and angry, because they don’t want to grow up.
There is always the chance, either way, that he could decide to just walk away-but that’s the chance you take when you choose to reclaim your self-respect through setting behavioral boundaries.
You need to grow, like you say, but it’s not HIM that’s holding you back, it’s YOU that’s holding you back. He can’t do anything to you that you don’t allow him to do.
So, something different must needs to be done, and I would suggest you first begin removing the comfort zone you’re saying that he finds with you, and back off enough to see what happens. He may bluster, threaten, get angry, say you don’t care, amongst other things, but it’s apparent the situation is cycling, and not in a good way. He could do this forever, but I’m aware that you don’t want to, and I don’t blame you.
You don’t have to mean to him, just be firm with him, set your boundary on time spent with you. Tell him that you cannot be his friend, see him, associate with him, while he’s seeing another woman-this is NOT a boundary, this would be you bowing out of the situation, giving him a choice to make. This would force the other woman into the position of meeting the needs you’re currently meeting. It seems to me like he’s letting her meet some needs while you’re meeting others, and he could go on for quite some time, and he will do it for as long as you let him.
The thing is, she doesn’t know him like you do, and so, we would hope the other woman would be set up for a major fail in this area. It seems to me that he’s also trying to have both worlds without having to choose one of them. Now, you know you can’t set a direct boundary on his affair, because that will backfire on you, depending how deep his current infatuation for the other woman is. You don’t have control over whom he sees, associates with, and if you try controlling that part of his life, he will only see the OW as being more attractive, so don’t set any boundaries there.
My thoughts are that I don’t think he wants to lose you-I really think he needs some boundaries set. You might want to go read up on them, and then sit down and figure out exactly how you would want to go about setting these. He’s most likely going to get angry either way you go, but again, in my humble opinion, if you don’t make a stand for your self-respect, he might decide to walk away completely anyway, but that’s a chance you’ll need to take, either way this goes.
When you set a boundary, you’re giving someone a choice to either honor the boundary, or not honor it. This could go either way, so be prepared before you make this choice. However, before you become afraid, bear in mind, that he’s already lost to you, and you’ve nothing further to lose by choosing to take this action to see if things will turn around within this area. I know one thing, it’s apparent that what you’ve been doing hasn’t worked, and/or the cycling he’s done has gotten worse, hence your reaching out to me for advice.
I hope this helps.
BIG HUGS!!
HB