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[This message edited by Flatlined at 4:45 AM, Sunday, July 5th]

Sisoon

How come you want to stay together? I ask because I think writing down your answer might help you.

I've been married to my H longer than I was unmarried (about 10 years more!). Our lives are so enmeshed. I mean I know I could live without him, but I guess I'm not entirely sure how.

I come from a long line of divorces. My parents divorced. My dad was a serial cheater (at least 2 outside children) and my mom a madhatter! My mom had three siblings and none of them stayed married-- there were like 8 failed marriages between them. Of all my siblings and cousins on mom's side, I'm the only one who hasn't divorced-- several have had multiple divorces.

Now I don't wear my marriage like a badge of honor. Nor do I think I'm *special* for staying. Besides the broken little boy junk I've had to experience with my H, I actually love him. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of him (after 36 years!) and my heart flutters. He's grown even more handsome than he was when we met nearly 4 decades ago. I love the sound of his voice, his peculiar gait and the way he holds my hand. We've weathered many storms (apart from the infidelity-- including the death of one of our teen sons) that made us stronger together and we have been a really good 2 man team.

A few months ago we went to brunch at one of our favorite spots. A young couple came in a little bit after us and was seated across from us. As we were enjoying our meal, the young man spoke to us. He said they'd just gotten engaged and then he asked, "What's the secret to a long, happy relationship?"

H talked about remembering your spouse is your best friend and always staying best friends. (He also talked about God being the glue.)

I said that the best marriage isn't built on chemistry or compatibility. The best marriage is built on commitment. First you choose your person, then you get up each day and choose them all over again. I told them to keep choosing one another.

So I guess I want to honor my commitment to keep choosing my H. The challenge is that his repeated infidelity feels like he's either a monster or mentally ill. Deep down I know he is a good person. But this latest situation reveals there is much internal work that yet remains to be done... work to mine the landscape of his soul.

He's not the most emotionally or even intellectually curious. He has *performed* for so long, trying to be all things for all people so that he can be liked & appreciated. He has lived much of his life like a caricature.

We are in the *third quarter* of our lives. Our nest is just about empty. I don't want to live the rest of my days fearing for my safety, waiting for another shoe to drop, wondering if he has really been able to beat this.

This is hard. I do love him, but I suppose I'm wishing for a guarantee that he can be truly well. That WE can be truly healed and well.

[This message edited by Flatlined at 4:44 AM, Sunday, July 5th]

This is hard. I do love him, but I suppose I'm wishing for a guarantee that he can be truly well. That WE can be truly healed and well.

There aren't any guarantees, but you can look for evidence for and against him being willing to change and grow. Because he didn't do it (or didn't do enough of it) the first two times he was unfaithful. Something has to be different this go around, otherwise there's a good possibility you're just signing yourself up for further pain down the line.

What the Good Wife said is true:

Always have an exit strategy if you reconcile after infidelity.

That’s a core part of putting your self first, the most important one when it comes to reclaiming your agency to protect yourself from any future abuse.

Even if a reconciliation is true (your wasn’t) it does not take away from your love towards the reformed wayward partner.

It only takes away from the power to abuse of a performer one

Just speculating, maybe the MC means you are willing to carry more than your share of the emotional load of the marriage, and that could be considered a boundary, I suppose. Right after my D-Day experiences, a crisis IC I met with listened to me and then held up her hands, one much higher than the other. She said "You are over-functioning (trying too hard to figure out why he cheated!) and HE is under-functioning" (not doing the work to dig into his issues). I'll never forget that. Then she talked about choice. We all have a choice in what we allow in a relationship.

The imbalance she recognized never changed over the years since then, and 12 years later, quite suddenly after what I thought was a solid improvement in some aspects of our life, I suffered a second, more devastating D-Day on my birthday, when he was arrested for soliciting! I took legal action against the marriage, drawing up a post nup/marital separation agreement that still operates today. I should have divorced a person who didn't want to do the work on his deeper problems yet could NOT see me as another person, worth protecting! Instead we co-exist in perennial limbo.

So if your WH got formally diagnosed NPD, unfortunately that is a problem: for you. Not for him so much. I got the impression from your post that his recent mental state seeming to be the best in a long while, may largely be the result of your "sharing" your mental health and love over the years, with him! He has taken and taken. This is what NPDs feel entitled to do. NPDs are considered poor prospects for therapeutic help, according to many psychologists. I can recommend a book I'm reading by Dr. Ramani Durvasula called "It's Not You." Hard and realistic reading, but the second part of the book does give a lot of good tips for either co-existing or detaching from the Narcissist. Hoping for them to someday "get it" about how they operate isn't a highly successful strategy, according to her.