# How we fixed our issue...



## james5588 (Mar 22, 2017)

https://talkaboutmarriage.com/sex-marriage/372786-wife-reveals-truth-after-17-years-5.html

A while ago, I posted here looking for insights into why my wife’s harmless and silly revelation regarding her past had such a profound effect on me. My handling of it was weak and not how I normally conduct myself. Worse yet, I couldn’t figure out why; what was behind all this. Everyone here was incredibly supportive and provided ideas that were vital to my growth and ultimately restoring my marriage. I thought I’d circle back and share the rest of the story.

While my wife and I were out running some errands, she confessed to me that she had downplayed her past and had slept with a former boyfriend a few months after she originally told me was the last time they were together. Even though we were not officially a couple at the time, according to her revised timeline we had already started dating each other. To add insult, she had shared details of our time together with him. He subsequently mocked me and advised her to stop seeing me. Soon after, they cut ties with one another. None of it really should have mattered. It was all in the past. Yet, I was completely devastated and couldn’t wrap my head around why. She had been mentioning and commenting more and more about her past in the months proceeding. This one had taken the cake.

This story in particular re-opened several old wounds that I was certain I had long ago resolved. Specifically, I was severely and repeatedly abused sexually as a young child by several caregivers. One in particular threatened to hurt me and my family if I ever told my parents or anyone else for that matter. Learning to keep this secret was a tremendous burden and took a toll on my development. To cope, I now realize that I learned to view the world through two narratives. The first narrative is a wholesome one; the one within which my family and school life existed. The world as depicted in 'The Brady Bunch' or 'The Cosby Show'. This is a world in which parents work hard to provide and children work hard to make their parents proud in the hopes of one day being good and doting parents themselves; a very black and white world.

The second narrative is a bit darker, relativistic and nuanced, amoral. To keep my secret and ostensibly keep my family safe, I had to conceal not just my abuse but anything related to my knowledge about sex and experiences from some while revealing some of it to others. That meant that in some circumstances whenever I noticed a cue or a double entendre or something suggestive that I had to feign total ignorance. But along the way and far too early, I realized sex was powerful and ubiquitous. It was on TV, the radio, in art, in our schools, alluded to in church, even something that adults openly discussed thinking we didn’t understand the true meaning behind their words. But I understood a great deal more than I let on. I distinctly remember thinking that the better I hid it, the more I was privy to. I am ashamed to say that hiding and misusing it became a game in of itself; a game which I later believed was necessary to live a successful life in this world well into adulthood.

The abuse went on sporadically for several years. To deny my pain, I convinced myself that I enjoyed it. In order to provide myself with a sense of agency, I convinced myself that it was something I wanted. I also realized that other kids out there were like me. As I grew older, I understood that I knew things and it gave me a tremendous amount of confidence with others, particularly with the opposite sex. All I had to do was make sure that I didn’t take things too far with the wrong person. To my corrupted mind, those people seemed boring to me anyhow. I ran wild for many years.

Eventually, my hedonistic worldview caught up to me. Though I realized that I had to change, cognitive dissonance wrote off these life lessons as normal growing pains. Yet, I saw how sex ultimately could destroy people, lives, and even entire families. I came to believe that it wasn’t worth the trouble. Sex was no longer sexy and lust simply lost its luster. I subsequently vowed to take control of myself. I spent several years proving to myself that I could be a chaste person living within the first narrative with no ties to the second. It was at this point in my life that I met my wife.

I didn’t conceal these things from her so much as I had quietly moved on from it all. But when she shared her events from her past and began alluding that there was more, I found myself assessing events through that ‘2nd narrative’ frame of mind. I questioned my ‘currently adopted world view’: had I gone too far in trying to be a ‘good person’ and ended up failing her as a man? It seemed I hadn’t taken her to the places they (the bf in her story) could and maybe even had. Worse still, in failing her, I validated the repressed and Puritanical beliefs her parents indoctrinated in her as a child; the belief that sex was evil and automatically meant a person was perverted and hell bound. Even thought she rebelled against this as a teen and young woman, I liked to think that I was the one who helped her disregard that way of thinking. Instead it seems I not only contributed to it, but solidified it completely.

In a sense, I had fallen off the wagon. I remembered what it felt like to see everything relative. Boundaries - I had always struggled with them. Instead of resolving these feelings I instinctively erred on the conservative side of things; well conservative for me and relative to the warped standard I cobbled together as best as I could. Subsequently, I based my evolved moral standard largely upon my perception of her needs, her boundaries, wants, and desires. And then it hit me: what if I guessed wrong? What if I underestimated that side of her and failed to give to her what she needed from me, from a man? The 44th post in the original thread perfectly encapsulated this view (thank you SunCMars).

But then what if I were wrong about being wrong? Truth be told, her story was not a surprise to that side of me either. It were as if after all this time the repressed side of me that came from that warped 2nd narrative were resurrected and vindicated. I would be lying if I failed to disclose that a part of me relished in the pure unadulterated arousal over her revelation; a chance I could indulge and once again be what I was all over again. Except this time with her...

Perish the thought. The consequences to our marriage would have been disastrous if I re-opened that pandora’s box. ‘Good husbands’ don’t go there with a loving wife, let alone take them to such places. We’re supposed to protect them from that! Aren’t there things husbands and wives refrain from sharing with each other; that they keep from one another for the good of their marriage and family? Going down that road had almost destroyed me once before and it could destroy the entire life that she and I built together. All I have accomplished by this is rationalize the unthinkable.

I proverbially broke the glass, pulled the emergency stop lever, and completely shut down. I was paralyzed. I felt weak. I didn’t trust my own thoughts or instincts. I fundamentally believed that admitting this to her let alone taking a step in either direction could potentially bring our lives crashing down. I was obsessing and yet somehow dissociating in a manner akin to what I used to do when originally abused. It was sudden and severe. That was when I posted here on TAM.

In the weeks that followed, I began therapy and started a regimen of the antidepressant sertraline and then later wellbutrin. Both helped considerably. Ultimately logically parsing through what I could barely articulate provide the answers I needed. But our struggles didn’t begin nor end with me either. My wife revealed that she was also struggling as well. Prior to this, my physicians determined that I had an odd and rare deficiency. One easily treated and with dramatic effects to my entire health profile. I just was glad to be feeling better; however, she felt the changes disrupted a certain unspoken balance in our marriage. She felt that sharing these feelings with me would only exacerbate our problems, not solve them. It was as if she was trying to remind me of a time in our lives when she felt irresistible and the same vitality she was seeing in me; while also fearful that trying to recreate those feelings in the present would ultimately lead to rejection and exacerbate that growing imbalance in our relationship. Ultimately, she did not feel valued and I was too wrapped up in myself to notice her needs and do the things necessary for her to know and more importantly to feel how important she is to me. I think that on a certain level I felt this without knowing this and I responded by internalizing my own feelings of inadequacy and exacerbation as a well.

Finally, so often things that appear to be about one thing are really about another. The unresolved feelings from my past amplified and warped the emotions I was experiencing in the then present. For brevity’s sake, what I wrote here represents the ‘cliff’s notes’. Of course, all of this took a considerable amount of time to disentangle and re-understand. Thank you to everyone who took the time to help me sense of everything. Hopefully others can benefit from my experience.


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## MaiChi (Jun 20, 2018)

Thank you for this. 

Where I used to volunteer 6 hours per week, I had a lot of people with similar issues. The advice was always that they should seek professional help. You have already done that and I hope you are going in the right direction. 

Thank you again.


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## Deejo (May 20, 2008)

We are always glad when someone comes back and indicates that they have found their way, with the help of the site, or in spite of it


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