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I agree Trish. There was a time I thought of my husband and his feelings before I made any decisions. He taught me not to do that. He taught me survival and self preservation. I learned the lesson really well. I don’t apply it to the world. I am a trusting person. I only apply it to him.
I would never have disposed of it just because a therapist tells me I should. I know what is best for me. She thinks it hurts me more to have it and look at it. She probably got this idea from my h. I’m sure he thinks that looking at the stuff is a trigger that takes me to a dark place but that isn’t the scenario at all. I’m triggered in some way and then I go and review it. Looking at the stuff doesn’t hurt me further all it does is validate my feelings, fears, regrets etc
I want to have an opportunity to tell the therapist why I need to keep this evidence. Maybe she can learn something from me.
I told my husband tonight that I’m not going to throw it out and why I need to keep it. It was all a bit of a non issue. He told me Heide said I should throw it out just after his last counselling session 2 weeks ago and then I think it went from his mind after that because we had not discussed it again until tonight. He had no idea of the significance of the suggestion.
Annie don’t worry about me looking over this stuff because I was thinking today I how far I have come. I haven’t gone to sit outside the brothel he went to for maybe a year. I don’t really even have the compulsion to do it. Now THAT is good.
I think the therapist is good for my h. He is quite anxious before each session and very quiet after but then an hour or so later he opens up and we look over his notes and he explains things to me. He is learning a lot about himself and reflected tonight that it is a shame it has taken 54 years to understand these things about himself. He asked Heide if he should discuss the bath business with his mother. I don’t see any point in doing that because she will just turn it around and be a victim and then make a fuss about it with the rest of the family.Oh, Catherine, of course you need to keep it! As Karen says, he is gaslighting you, and you have to keep that evidence as long as that is happening, for sure. Is he three years out and STILL gaslighting you? No wonder you have bad days, if that is the case. Dr. M calls that a systematic pattern of domestic abuse. Period. I was so happy that he told my husband that, my husband cares very much about his image. They probably all do?
I still have all the evidence, even bank statements from ten years ago. I no longer have to look at it to remind myself of the enormity of it all, but I did that for years, and I think it’s healthy. It’s our way of wrapping our heads around the facts of what was actually done. And, it helps us process it all. Unfortunately pain and grief is a part of if. SA’s bury their feelings, normal people do not.
Now I occasionally look up something when a random memory or something comes up that just does not fit with dates or circumstances. I look it up and then I am satisfied that I either remembered it wrong or I have to fit a ‘new reality’ into my memory.
I think any therapist that tells you that you should destroy it because it makes you feel bad is professionally misguided and guilty of negligence. She is encouraging you to bury your feelings and destroy the few pieces that connect you with reality.
Again, SA’s live in denial and bury or destroy anything that threatens their fantasy world. Healthy people do not.
Healthy people work through their emotions, no matter how long it takes and no matter how difficult it is. Then, when it’s complete, we walk into the sunshine. ~ JoAnn
Cat,
I too think you should keep it. You get to decide not some therapist who hardly knows you except through your h and boy would my h painted a distorted figure of me to his therapist. I’m not saying yours is. However, my h had his therapist convinced he was a battered h and I was an abuser. Then when I was invited to a session and was literally attacked by the woman I asked her if he told her hed seen seeing prostitutes since age 17 and never stopped was on numerous sex hook up sites and had work affairs one costing him his jobs. He’d been seeing her 6 mo and ‘failed’ to mention these important facts and she was about to send us off to a $10,000 one week marriage intensive in AZ. Things changed after that.Make copies and pack them up and ask trusted friends to hold your sealed package but NEVER destroy the evidence.
You just never know when you might need it or need to cross reference something that you catch him at again.
The only time to destroy any evidence is years after a divorce and never before.
I live in a no-fault divorce state, Texas. Texas doesn’t give two hoots about women in divorce. That said, I went to five attorneys before the one I settled on. Everyone of them was pretty confident I would get the $200,000 I could prove was wasted on prostitution and sexual acts in a divorce. It’s called a waste claim against community assets. Keep your evidence. Even if it amounts to $200, it’s worth presenting to the judge.
More importantly, what JoAnn said. “Healthy people work through their emotions, no matter how long it takes…”. You may need that evidence to look up a fact that suddenly becomes material to you and your healing. Keep your evidence. If you threw evidence away, credit card bills, phone bills, bank statements can easily be recreated for you.
Cat – a couple of points – keep the evidence not for whether or not you can use it in a divorce but for your own sanity. I have stuff from 10 years ago but I did throw some things away and now wish I hadn’t. I periodically go through it to remind myself that this was real, it really did happen. I also look through it to find clues to what he might be doing currently but that’s probably my own little obession.
My second point is to echo what Karen & Courtney have said – he is gaslighting you, girl! You wrote “sometimes my husband will say the behaviour only happened for a couple of years and it only every few months. Iām sure he does this to protect himself not from a barrage of criticism from me but as a coping mechanism because he feels so lousy about what he has done he can make himself believe a new version of events BUT he needs to be truthful to me and to himself.” His forgetfulness is not a coping mechanism. Trust me, he knows exactly what he did and the timeframe for how long it went on. I realize you feel he is in recovery and maybe he is but you won’t be able to progress any further if he continues to minimize & deny. And when they minimize or deny, it’s a 100% indication that they will do those behaviors again. Read “In Sheeps Clothing” – you’ll understand exactly what I’m saying.
OK you’re going to hate this but I don’t think he is gaslighting me on this. He certainly is not well mentally and he feels rotten to his core. Remember he was hospitalised for 2 weeks because of this crap. I know he finds it really hard to go back there. It repulses him. He asked his therapist last night if that surprised her and she said it didn’t. It is definitely a coping mechanism.
His mental health issues are also a problem for me aside from the SA.Cat – I don’t hate you – I just was operating from my recently discovered point of view that I was being gaslighted and didn’t even realize it. I think the “Good Guy Gaslighter” is one of the hardest to identify. However, only you and your H live in your relationship so as long as you feel comfortable with how he responds to things, then that is what is most important. My H has some mental stuff going on too – at his doc’s recommendation, he recently tripled his anti-anxiety meds so that may be contributing to his new-found “understanding” and “cooperativeness” more than anything.
Honestly FC the stuff has very little meaning for him. It does have for me. The only reason he wanted me to get rid of it was because he thought it upset me.
I am really looking our for gaslighting and manipulation and deflection of blame. I have caught him out three times recently on this. One was that he thought I would object to him playing golf when he should have been at one of the businesses. He told me about the arrangement the day before. I told him that as it was organised over 2 weeks ago he was lying by omission. He got angry and said he was scared to tell me because I would have been angry about him playing. I was angry that he hadn’t told me not that he was playing but he kept telling me I was angry about the golf not the lying. I told him that was b’shit that he was feeling guilty about playing and keeping it from me and not to put it back on me. We spent a lot of time talking about it and he could see that that was exactly what he was doing.
Another stupid thing but it points to his personality. My daughter went up to the shops to get some stuff because we were having people over. My husband had looked after the meat the previous day so meat was not on her shopping list. When she came back he asked her if she bought sausages. I flipped my lid. Why would she buy sausages??? That wasn’t why she went to the shops. Its like if he suggests she was responsible for buying them then he won’t have stuffed up.
Another one.. I got home one day last week and he and asked me if I had fed the chickens. So the chickens are his responsibility. I had left home at 5.50am and got home at 6pm. How could I have fed the f’ing chickens???? Why would I feed the f’ing chickens when they are his responsibility.
This is all seems very petty but I’m not going to let him get away with this sort of thing.You shouldn’t let him so don’t. Hold him accountable for everything now. It’s part of recovery the way I see it.
Catherine,
I don’t think these examples are petty at all. All these issues seem to avoid responsibility for screwing up and all these issues are forms of lying. Lying is an absolute boundary for me with my husband. That’s why this whole SA thing was possible. If I so much as smell a lie, he’s out of my life. He knows that. He was not a liar before SA. Perhaps your husband has done this sort of thing all along?
I’m not sure Penny. Maybe I’m just more alert to it now. He has had conversations with his therapist about lying. I’m onto everything now. Deflection, blame, lying by omission. Seriously it is like having a child all over again.
I spoke with him about the Minwalla intensive this morning. Apparently Heide said it would be a waste of time. I’m so annoyed by this. I told my husband that she’s got another thing coming if she thinks she can counsel both of us. Just look at the whole evidence thing. ‘Tell her she should throw is away’. And when was I consulted about that? My h wants me to do the intensive if I think it will help. He thinks the therapist is trying to line her wallet.
Honestly I could scream. I just wish she would stick to counselling him.IMO SHE is a waste of time. She sounds a lot like Diane’s H’s therapist. She had all kinds of things to say about Diane, despite never having actually met her. Good Grief.
To play devil’s advocate, how do we KNOW what the therapist really said? I never understand how we can repeat stuff our husbands say and believe it. …
Maybe she did say it and maybe she didn’t. I don’t really give a flip whether she did or not. I do know that all of these men can benefit from Minwalla. Not like a miraculous change but benefit nonetheless. Why would it be a waste of time? has your H called and spoken to Minwalla? Have you spoken to Minwalla about your H? One thing, doc M will tell you whether he can help ( or thinks he can) or not.
Therapist sounds nutty to me….Maybe she didn’t say any of those things though, so I will reserve judgement š
Catherine, I wonder if he’s deflecting his feelings about things, the evidence and going to Minwalla for example, on Heidi as the “authority figure”. Letting her take the heat for how he feels or what he wants. Like children do when they are trying to persuade you to do something. “So and so SAID it should be done this way.” I would be very leery of believing any of this from your H without verifying it with Heidi directly. Regardless of whether it is true that she said this or not, it is a BAD idea for the two of you to share a therapist. You need someone who is there for you and only for you. IMO it is a conflict of interest for her to act as therapist to both of you. A therapy relationship should be one of trust and a higher obligation of care toward the patient. How can she be that to both of you when he is the one that damaged you?
I agree with Daisy – it seems a conflict of interest that she would be both of your therapists. That being said, if you felt it was necessary, couldn’t you schedule a session with her individually to find out from the source what she is telling your H? In the best scenarios, it’s like playing a game of telephone where the message gets changed/watered down being passed from one person to the next. You throw a known SA/liar into the mix and it’s ripe for problems.
Also, I’m discovering that the lying is the hardest addiction to break. We’ve gone around and around with conversations about him not telling me something b/c he thinks it would make me mad. I’m like – we’re 8 months into this and we’re still having this conversation? If you think it would make me mad than just don’t do it for fucks sake! Also, he admitted last week that he doesn’t have a problem with the truth and nothing but the truth but he has a problem with “the whole truth”. I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Perhaps I misunderstood but I thought Cat was saying it would be a waste of time for HER to do the intensive with Minwalla….not her husband? Have I got it wrong? Either way i do NOT agree with this therapist.
I think that’s right Karen. I think perhaps Catherine’s H is the one who really doesn’t want her to go and this is his way of having an authoritative person “say so”. He seems very dependent on her.
Cat – for what it’s worth, go to Minwalla. He is pretty terrific and I highly recommend him. I am saving the partner intensive for when I finally decide to stay or leave. A gift to myself either way. I would also venture to say to any of you – if you can figure out a way to afford seeing Minwalla, you owe it to yourself to go. The guy “gets it”. In a very uncomplicated, common sense way. The validation alone is worth the cost, but I really believe he can help all of us – partners and addicts alike. I pray he is the next wave in the SA treatment world.
Well, Trish – he had better be a tsunami then because we are currently dealing with a large assortment of first class idiots.
No my h has always been really enthusiastic about me going and anything that will help me, The only reservation he has is me going to another country on my own but I’ve done that before many time. I’m a big girl and that’s OK.
Unfortunately while she knows her stuff and is good for my husband she is clearly also motivated by money. I have seen her before and she was very good but I also felt the appointment dragged out a bit (went for about 4 hours, lots of repetition). More $$. She said during that appointment that she could help me but I was not comfortable with that. I honestly think that she would prefer I spend the $6000 with her.
He is totally realistic about her. She is the only therapist in Sydney that specialises in SA. so I think she is good for him but I will not allow her to counsel both of us and I am going to email her and set boundaries about what can be discussed about me. For example Minwalla (going/not going) and evidence should be discussed with me and no conclusions drawn about what should happen in my path to recovery.Thanks for all this. The stuff I found I have kept on flash drive. I don’t look at it. Never told SA I have it. This only goes back about a year. I don’t look at it, but it helps me to know it’s there. It is concrete evidence just in case I ever begin to doubt myself again. Even though I live in a no fault state, any leverage I may need is ok for me. Recently, he’s talking about disclosure. I will know certain questions to ask, and will know if disclosure is entirely truthful. I appreciate how much just having actual evidence validates against the “crazy” stuff. If I had been encouraged to do this years ago instead of the standard, “now that he’s in treatment it would be unfortunate for you to leave…blah blah blah.” The opportunity for true repair would/could have begun before I got so crazy, sick and old. He (possibly) wouldn’t now be dealing with much worse acting out behavior. And you’re all right, it is who he is, don’t forget that.
I’m thinking I want Minwalla to do the disclosure. He has my back.
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