# What more can I do?



## Coloradotransplant (Feb 28, 2016)

I'm not perfect. I've made more than my fair share of mistakes in the 7 years we've been married. Things came to a head 4 years ago and my wife gave me an ultimatum: porn or her. I chose her but had my slipups. 2 years ago, she caught one of those. Mourning my potential loss of marriage, I started talking to a local woman who was also having relationship problems. That turned into sexting and pictures but when she suggested meeting, I stopped everything and focused on repairing my marriage. Things were okay and she finally got pregnant.
However, in the past couple months, things have been deteriorating. On top of doing almost all of the cooking and cleaning, I've become the primary caregiver for our infant son, diaper changes, middle of the night wakeups, baths, and trying to find a babysitter for when I return to summer hours (60/week instead of 30). She barely interacts with him unless I am at my day job, and then guilty me if he her up.a
I've done every thing I can to support her when she got a promotion earlier this year, while she complains that I'm putting my freelance work ahead of her if I so much as mention it to her. Despite only working on it while my son naps and she is at her job, I'm trying to grow it to the point where I can be a stay at home father while still contributing to the finances, something we've talked about in the past as being a goal.
Now, she is claiming I'm not doing enough to show her that I love her and keeps throwing the affair in my face.
She wants presents, so the money that I should be putting towards paying down debt is going to jewelrey, flowers, and stuffed animals. She wants my full attention, so, aside from taking care of our son, I don't do anything that isn't giving her full attention when she is home. 
And still, she says that I'm not doing enough to show my love, that I'm just going through the motions.
It's getting to the point where I am. I'm worried that I'll reach a point where I just stop trying, where I'll respond to her weekly threats of divorce with acceptance. 
What more can I do? How can I stop this from reaching a point where I stop trying to prevent a divorce?


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## 225985 (Dec 29, 2015)

@Coloradotransplant We are glad that you came here. We are not glad that you needed to come here. 

Start by making sure you really are "showing her love". Take the 5 Love Languages Quiz: Home | The 5 Love Languages® | Improving Millions of Relationships? One Language at a Time. and have your wife do it too. Then discuss the results. You can get the all from the app store and do on a smartphone too. The quiz is from the book 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts. You will see this book often recommended here.

About the porn and affair you will get some pretty harsh comments here against you. Stick with it and keep and open mind. The best you can do here is keep posting and adding more details. The more you talk, the better the advice and more specific the advice to your exact situation. 

Some questions to get you started:
Have you given up the porn? Why did you do the porn? How was your sex life throughout the marriage. This is all relevant. Remember we do not know who you are and never will
How long did the affair last? Why did you do it? How did your wife find out? What did you do to reconcile?
Have you been to marriage counseling or individual counseling about the affair?

You have a really good resource here. Take advantage of it. Much of the advice will be about how to get YOU to change rather than getting your wife to change. You will be surprised how often a spouse changes once the other one does. 

Her need for attention may be the result of the affair in which you gave attention to someone else rather than your wife. I suspect that issue has not be properly addressed. She will ALWAYS remember it and throw it back into your face when you fight. You better learn to accept that. You will be getting comments from both betrayers and the betrayed so that you can understand both points of view.


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## Coloradotransplant (Feb 28, 2016)

Thanks for the warning. I'll be sure to bring my thick skin when I check in.

I've given it up to the best of my ability. Like any bad habit, it has been tough to get rid of entirely. The bitter irony is that I'm most likely to slip when I am emotionally vulnerable because we've been fighting and she's made one of her random, baseless accusations that I then make true. 99% of the time, I only get as far as doing a search and getting a thrill from reading the descriptions, not actually watching the porn itself. Porn is something I struggled with long before we ever met and something she knew about going into the relationship. It started as a fallback in loneliness. I'm not the most attractive guy, or the easiest to get to know, so I spent a lot of time single and married the first woman that I could keep interested in me for more than a couple dates.
Our sex life has been of varying quality. Very active at first and dried up once I found a job (I quit mine during the recession to move to be with her and it took the better part of a year to find work). She still worked nights then and I worked days and for a few months, we didn't see a whole lot of each other. Sometimes we've been very active, going 4-5 or more times per week, sometimes we've had dry spells and go an entire week without. I'm not very good at noticing the passage of time, so she's usually the one to notice that it's been a while (and then accuses me of getting it somewhere else, even before the affair).
The affair lasted around a month before I cut it off. It started when I thought my wife was going to leave me over the porn and I was just looking for commiseration. The other woman escalated things, and, with conflicted feelings about my marriage and about another woman being interested in me, I followed along like a little puppy. When I ended it, I hid it from my wife because we were just starting to patch things back up. Apparently, I didn't clean up my tracks well enough because, during one of her random inspections of my computer, she found pictures that had been automatically backed up to a cloud backup that I didn't even know I had set up.
Reconciliation consisted of a lot of groveling and talking about what happened, although I never felt like she quite accepted what I was saying. There hasn't been any attempt at marriage counseling and I don't even know where to start on that front.
I'm willing to change, if I can just figure out what I can change that will help.


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## NoChoice (Feb 12, 2012)

OP,
Self perception is quite random. Some people think very highly of themselves and some do not. It is this perception that causes issues such as insecurity and the opinion that you are "lucky" to have landed a woman, any woman. In reality you are not as undesirable as you believe since, by your own admission, you are married to one woman and were involved, extramaritally, with another, two at one time as it were.

This feeling of low self esteem is most probably what drove you to always available women, porn. You must come to the realization that you are not as your mind perceives and build your confidence level so that you will no longer feel the need for always available women. In so doing, you may also find that your wife is not all that you envisioned her to be. Nonetheless your EA and your porn usage is disrespecting to your wife and also to you.

Your character is what defines you more so than your physical attributes. So if you are of the impression that you are not a highly prized prospect in regards to a mate then I ask you to consider how lowering your character by compromising your integrity and your honor will improve your status. You are less viable as a mate now than you were before because now you have sullied your word by breaking your solemn vow.

So, my advice would be to work diligently to reestablish your integrity by keeping your vow. If your wife desires R then it will fall to you to convince her that you are indeed a man of good character and that you are truly contrite and remorseful for your actions. However, this does not mean being her slave and if that is what she expects or demands then she is not genuinely desirous of being partnered with you but rather of having a servant to tend to her.You must then decide if that is acceptable to you.

Good fortune.


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## 225985 (Dec 29, 2015)

Coloradotransplant said:


> *she's made one of her random, baseless accusations* that I then make true. 99% of the time,
> 
> move to be with her and it took the better part of a year to find work).
> 
> ...


Do you see a common theme here, especially the items I bolded? You are blaming someone else for your actions or situation. Until you take responsibility, fully, you will never change and you will never get your wife back. 

Let me tell you. Your wife does NOT have to "quite accept" what you are saying. You cheated on her. She will never accept the situation. You seem to focus more on you, pity you, rather than the damage you did to her. 

I would expect that your confidence and self-esteem are very low, right? Not just now, but most of your life. When your marriage is going poorly you either run to porn or run to another woman? A confident man does not need to do that. 

Quiet here in US on Sunday afternoon. I will come back after some other posters have joined in.


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## Coloradotransplant (Feb 28, 2016)

blueinbr said:


> Do you see a common theme here, especially the items I bolded? You are blaming someone else for your actions or situation. Until you take responsibility, fully, you will never change and you will never get your wife back.


I own that each bad action is my own. The accusations are a trigger for me, but I'm getting better. I haven't looked or even tried to look at porn once in the past week of constant threats that I need to "show her I mean it" or leave. There was a time that I would have cracked and spent all of my free time glued to pornography. That's progress. I just hope it's enough.
I let the affair happen. I could have stopped it at the first sign that she wanted to be more than just a shoulder to cry on. I'll regret that decision to my dying day.
And I get that she doesn't have to accept what happened. I just get frustrated when she says that she does but then acts like she doesn't. I can understand struggling with what happened. I can understand not accepting it. I can understand being conflicted. I can't understand saying your past something and then every single action shows otherwise.
I know there are parallels right there with my affair, too. But I'm trying to own how my actions conflicted with my words.

And yes, to both you and @NoChoice Confidence plays a very big part, an issue that has plagued me my entire life. Believe it or not, things are actually a lot better now in that department then when I was a kid. Depression plagued me then. I still fight it, but there was a time when I didn't even fight, I just accepted myself as a worthless human being that nobody liked.


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## 225985 (Dec 29, 2015)

Well, good job on the progress. Have you considered installing porn blocking software? Make sure you are stopping this for you too, not just because of the threats. If the threats stop, we don't want you to backslide.

Have you sought out a support group for your addiction? A good friend of mine is in a 12-step program for sex addiction and she tells me there is a 12-step program for everything. You just need to find the right group.

Does your freelance work involve being on the computer? Right now you with computer is not something your wife has a good opinion of right now.

Let me give you the reality of " I can't understand saying your past something and then every single action shows otherwise." Your wife will never fully get over it. At times she might be ok and indicate she is ok. Other times the memory will come back, sometimes weak, sometimes strong, depending on the trigger. (You are familiar with triggers). Assuming you stay married, do not be surprised if during an argument 24.3 years from now that your wife does not bring this back up. I did not pick a random number for 24.3 years. I hope you understand what I just told you without me making it obvious. Once you are unfaithful and the betrayed let's you stay, that is the new reality. Do you understand now?


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## Coloradotransplant (Feb 28, 2016)

So, what you are saying is that there is no hope and I should give up?


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## 225985 (Dec 29, 2015)

Not at all. My event happened before I was even engaged and the woman (now wife) still married me. Honestly I had forgotten this occurred and I personally had not thought about it in years. Cannot even remember the girl's name. But the wife has not forgotten the event and certain stressors can bring this back up. I was pushing her really hard recently about the state of our marriage (I am on TAM for a reason too) telling her that she does not put in enough effort and she mentioned it. Came as shock to me since I had put it out of my mind. She said that her effort was to marry me and stay married. She has a point. This does not mean wife thinks about it every day and might go months or years without thinking about it. Quite frankly, I don't have the guts to ask her if she still thinks about it. I have not heard her mention it in 5-10 years. Only comes up in the major major fights. 

Just making the point about your wife getting "past" this. 

Don't give up. After all that has happened your wife STILL has not given you up, but you need to show change and stick to it or her seemingly endless patience will end. She loves you. She just needs to know that you will be there for her without being there for someone else too. 

Again, Don't give up. 

Get a copy of Married Man's Sex Life Primer by Athol Kay. Normally it is read to increase the sex in a marriage. You are actually doing pretty well in that area by TAM standards. I suggest you read it for purposes of increasing your confidence. Read it for that reason. As long as you do not use the improved confidence to cheat, read the book.


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## Coloradotransplant (Feb 28, 2016)

I'll take a look at it.
I get what you are saying about she's going to have a harder time with it than me. Hasn't happened in a while, but she used to ask me questions about the other woman and I honestly couldn't answer them because I'd already forgotten the details about her.


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## DanielleBennett (Oct 9, 2015)

Have you talked about the affair with her or gone to counseling for it? I think it is really important if this happens first. Secondly, she needs to know that you are doing everything you can to rebuild her trust and if she cannot forgive and give you another chance she is going to wallow. A victim of betrayal tries to move past the incident and either work on the relationship or walk away. A "victim" sees the one incident to define the relationship and will constantly bring it up. She is making herself a victim and wants you to repair it with material things versus talking, counseling and actually moving forward. She will never move on if she feels like throwing it in your face will make you feel guilty enough to give her the attention she needs. There is much needed counseling that needs to be done here. If you do not think she will ever get over it, then maybe walking away from the relationship after you've tried everything to repair it may be necessary. How long have you waited for her to start rebuilding trust? Right after the incident you do need to be patient with her but after a while, if no progress has been made, consider professional help.


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## *Deidre* (Feb 7, 2016)

Porn addiction is a very serious thing, and I imagine if you were addicted to alcohol, drugs, etc...she might be more tolerant and forgiving. But, porn causes her to feel in competition with other women, even women she knows you'll never meet in person. She competes with fantasies of other women. But, I wanted to comment more on what is troubling you, that drives you to escape through porn. I believe that ALL addictions are escapes from something that is troubling us, whether from our past or present...an internal battle of sorts, that leads us away from the here and now...into a fantasy world. There have been studies done that show men's brains are similar to those who are high on drugs, when they are viewing porn. It takes you to another place, and you admit that you go there, when vulnerable. My thought is, once you figure out why you run to porn instead of your wife for comfort (or why you need it all for comfort)...then, you will be able to overcome your addiction. And then...your wife will see you as not just 'going through the motions.' 

You're in my prayers that you overcome this. It's not about just your wife/marriage...it's about becoming the best you can be, and being addicted to porn isn't your best.


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## BetrayedDad (Aug 8, 2013)

*Deidre* said:


> You're in my prayers that you overcome this. It's not about just your wife/marriage...it's about becoming the best you can be, and being addicted to porn isn't your best.


Just to expand on this. You certainly are not the best you can be at the moment. Your insecurity about your looks, your tolerance of your wife's emotional abuse and your affairs reveal a cowardly man. Cowardice caused by lack of self esteem and confidence. 

WORK ON YOURSELF OP. The root of the problem is you need to address why you think so poorly of yourself. Diet, hit the gym, dress better, make some guy friends, take up a sport or hobby. Get some self respect. If you wife refuses marriage counseling nothing is stopping you from seeking individual counseling.


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## Vinnydee (Jan 4, 2016)

Perhaps you can tell the guy who posted that it is much better to tell your spouse than to keep it from her, how knowing affects your marriage. You can forgive but never forget. My wife brought up my affair last night. It occurred 43 year ago. This is why I tell people not to tell and suck it up and live with the guilt rather than be selfish, like I was, by dumping it all on my wife and turnhing her life topsy turvy.

It worked out well for me though. My wife suggested we have sex with others as a couple like in wife swapping but she discovered that she did not enjoy sex with other men all that much. She is bi and did not know it at the time. So she started inviting her girlfriends into our bed, using me as bait since they all seemed to think I was hot for some reason. All but one of her friends joined us and we ended up in a poly triad with her best friend. She shared me with her friend for most of our 40+ marriage. I do not think it works out this well for most though. 

My point is that my telling my wife altered our lives and marriage. Luckily it was for the best for us but usually does not work out well for others. My wife also still thinks about what happened 43 years ago. I can imagine how she felt every time I went away on business. She said that she never got jealous because she knew that I would never leave her and she was right.


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## Hope1964 (Sep 26, 2011)

What you've done has some similarities to what my husband did - you can read about it here

http://talkaboutmarriage.com/reconciliation/32264-hello.html#post434954


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