Am I being unreasonable?

LegacyUser

Sitting here in a bit of disbelief after a row with the wife, genuinely questioning who / what is right or reasonable, so would appreciate some consensus.

Background: wife had planned on staying at home with her folks tonight. I'd set out food for my own dinner, reckoned on being at home alone for the night. Around midday she texted to say she'd be home after all, I replied and said if she wanted she should leave something out and I'd cook for us both, she answered no, she'd had a big lunch, and besides she would probably be going to a class from 6 to 7.

Thought nothing more of it...worked a bit late, left at 1845 or so and was home at 1915 - going by the book I should leave at 5.30-5.45 and would typically be home at 18.15, so an hour late. Cue wife in bad form.

So apparently it was wrong of me not to tell her I would be late. I apologised and said that given she had told me she didnt want dinner and would (likely) be out, I believed that there were no consequences to me telling her I'd be late so no loss. Apparently however this is wrong, she had thought about surprising me and making me my dinner. She said that I shouldnt apologize because I didn't think I'd done anything wrong, and I agreed, I dont think I did.

Yep, in a perfect world it would have been beneficial to let her know I'd be late. But in her opinion it was wrong and inconsiderate of me not to, despite every shred of evidence through the day suggesting that it was of no consequence, and the reality of the situation proving that to be the case (I arrived home 5 mins after she returned from her class). But I am "wrong" and "inconsiderate" because she "thought about" making me a dinner. I pointed out that communication was 2-way and given that all indicators had been to her being out when I would normally arrive, if she'd decided to make me dinner the onus should have been on her to communicate to me that I needed to be at home on time.

Cue row and hysterics.

So am I wrong or inconsiderate in not letting her know I'd be late? Or is she being unrealistic and unreasonable in her expectation of me, especially given she seems to be throwing a strunt over a hypothetical situation?

In the interests of fairness - this has come off the back of a similar row(s) over the last few weeks and months, I've been working late quite a bit and have been under a lot of pressure at work. I didn't give a nightly "home by" estimate but I forewarned on a number of occasions that I was under pressure, would be doing long hours, and couldnt be expected to be home on time. To my mind, I had communicated I would be late. However this wasn't enough.

In the interests of complete fairness - I f*cked up last year, I breached her trust, we've been working at it since, we've been at counselling together and I had a few sessions myself and felt a lot better for it, and have been working on being a better husband since. However to my mind that means I'm continually on trial (which I can live with within reason) but also that when there's a row, she "must" be right given I messed up before. She seems to want to tie this into a wider trust issue, however I think she basically wants me on a lead.

So I would really appreciate some feedback, I'm not minded to roll over because I think I've acted quite reasonably and am inclined to hold my ground, unless the boards world think I'm being an ass and should just climb down. Honest no-holds-barred feedback appreciated.

whiskeyman

You're asking about a specific argument, but then you go an explain the whole reason behind it simmering? There's no point getting into the nitty gritty of such an incident knowing what's led up to it.

I think you need to read the second half of your post again.
The work issue would annoy anyone in a relationship.
Can you cut back on those hours? Maybe you need to think about switching job?
As for the breach of trust, that may be something she simply can never recover from.
You mention you've felt a lot better for the counselling, but how is your wife feeling now?

Sound Bite

I was completely on your side until I got to the part where you were messing about last year.
this puts your wife's actions into perspective, yes she's excessively unreasonable but cheating husbands do tend have the affect of making their wives paranoid and unreasonable. This is about your cheating not what time you were home.

K_P

Completely agree with the last poster. I couldn't understand your wife's actions at all until I get to the part about you breaching her trust which, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm going to assume was an affair or infidelity of some sort.

The fact you only mention that issue at the very end as though it's only tangentially connected to your wife's reaction makes me think you don't fully understand the impact of your past actions. We don't know the details of your affair but maybe she spent many many evenings wondering where you were, suspecting you weren't really working late. I can only imagine how it brought back every fear and suspicion she was going through when your previous transgression was happening.

In a normal relationship, yes her reaction would have been way over the top. In this case, it was very understandable and I'm amazed you can't see that. You need to talk about this in counselling.

LegacyUser

hiding upstairs wrote: »

In the interests of complete fairness - I f*cked up last year, I breached her trust, we've been working at it since, we've been at counselling together and I had a few sessions myself and felt a lot better for it, and have been working on being a better husband since. However to my mind that means I'm continually on trial (which I can live with within reason) but also that when there's a row, she "must" be right given I messed up before. She seems to want to tie this into a wider trust issue, however I think she basically wants me on a lead.

I read the first half of your post knowing something like this was coming. While coming home slightly late may have been fine in any other situation, it's totally disingenuous of you to either imagine that's what your wife is reacting to or to try to pass it off here as that, it's not that and well you know it. Your wife is on a hair trigger because the trust is gone from your marriage. It's possible she even set it up as a test of sorts.
The two of you are a million miles away from re-establishing trust and you may never get it back, especially if you still see it as you "f*cked up", a way of describing it that lets you of the hook, suggests you regret getting caught, you regret a spur of the moment mistake that was a 50/50 decision, but doesn't suggest you have at all addressed the fact that the kind of breach of trust I think you're alluding to is of a nature that your tone here indicates you have the capability to commit again. I'm pretty sure that's how it looks to your wife too.

If you are going to stay together and get the trust back, you'll have to accept that things like this will keep happening for a while to come at least. For what it's worth, I suspect your wife's trust in you is gone and the chance of restoring it, based on her reaction to this, are slim at best. Whatever chance you have of achieving it, you have none at all if you pretend that this row was about you working late one evening and fail to acknowledge that your has perfectly reasonable grounds for her distrust.

pookie82

You've been conveniently vague in your "additional info" slot at the end there. Were you inappropriate with another woman? Was it financial/gambling related? Drinking? What was it?

All of the above are reasons why she may have suspected that your "working late" wasn't as innocent as it seemed.

You need to realise that when you betray someone's trust it's not a "one stop" action ... depending on how long she was being lied to she can't trust anything you say or do again for a long time. She looks back on that time and sees herself being lied to and made a fool of (and possibly being made to feel unreasonably paranoid for a time as well, which is just about the cruelest mental torture you can put someone through). That stuff takes a LONG time to get past and a long time to heal.

People who cheat/lie really seem to forget the long term psychological damage they can inflict on someone they're betraying, as well as the immediate emotional fallout of getting caught.

Any relationship psychologist will tell you though that in order to move past this she has to try to start trusting you again or it'll never work. To be honest I find it rather ironic that in situations where someone cheats or lies the other person has to take the onus of deciding to trust them again to make it work, but that's the way it seems to be unfortunately. There will be a period where she struggles a lot with that and you are supposed to help her, not fight her. I suggest you attend another joint counselling session asap and try to get to the bottom of whether she thinks she can ever get to that place again, or if you'll forever be on trial for the rest of your marriage, as the latter isn't healthy for either of you.

LegacyUser

Ok - thanks for the replies, does seem I entirely misjudged the situation, am willing to accept that.

The reason for the post was because I am genuinely having to go back to core beliefs to re-work out for myself what is right and wrong at times, or what it is reasonable to expect from me and/ or from my wife - I hope that this is an improvement in me (in terms of a willingness to accept another opinion) rather than being stubborn, which is probably what I would have done before all this.

Re putting the "context" at the bottom - I didn't intend that (consciously) to be read as belittling what I did, nor was describing it as a "f*ck up" - I used that because to describe what I did would triple the length of the post and tbh its something that embarrasses me and would (probably) have become the focus of replies. I wanted (wrongly) to focus on the nitty gritty of the evenings argument.

I'm working really hard to show my wife that I can be trusted with day to day actions, I know that she's working really hard and probably swallowing a lot of screams she'd like to let out. I suppose that it's increasingly difficult to always feel like I'm on trial and it's just at times like this when something fairly innocuous happens which (I appreciate under normal circumstances) I would normally be in the right in but I have to just swallow. Lesson learned. And I will be prioritising going back for another counselling session.

Thanks for the feedback folks, genuinely.

K_P

Good luck OP. Your openness and willingness to change is really admirable and something not often seen round these parts!

sbsquarepants

It boils down to a simple enough decision you have to make.
You fúcked up and now she doesn't trust you (with good reason it seems). Your decision is simply are you prepared to pay the price of your actions (the lack of trust and the over reactions to little things like working late) or are you not.
I've been in a kind of similar situation, without going into too many details it was quite bad, completely my fault, no other woman or anything like that but still completely unacceptable behaviour on my part. After months and months of "penance" eventually I had had enough and told her out straight - yes I was wrong, I accept that and I'm sorry, but that's it - I'm finished atoning. We either draw a line under it and move on or we call it a day, enough is enough.
The punishment has to fit the crime - I for one am simply not willing to spend my life atoning for a simple mistake or lapse in judgement - however bad that error was. If you can't get passed it as a couple (after a reasonable effort on your part of course, it is after all your fault!)- just draw a line under it and stop being a couple.
If it's a thing that the problem is not fixable, why waste your life trying to fix it anyway.

LegacyUser

hiding upstairs wrote: »

The reason for the post was because I am genuinely having to go back to core beliefs to re-work out for myself what is right and wrong at times, or what it is reasonable to expect from me and/ or from my wife - I hope that this is an improvement in me (in terms of a willingness to accept another opinion) rather than being stubborn, which is probably what I would have done before all this.

Re putting the "context" at the bottom - I didn't intend that (consciously) to be read as belittling what I did, nor was describing it as a "f*ck up" - I used that because to describe what I did would triple the length of the post and tbh its something that embarrasses me and would (probably) have become the focus of replies. I wanted (wrongly) to focus on the nitty gritty of the evenings argument.

You're entitled to your privacy of course, you can say what you want and don't have to say anything you don't want to say, but the content of this reply totally contradicts your statement that you're being open and honest and willing to have your actions examined. You're still avoiding bringing your actions into the light. It's dissembling, bordering on the Jesuitical. It reads more like "How do I win this argument with my wife? How do I get her to forget about the real reasons she distrusts me? How can I stop her scrutinising my actions without addressing the underlying cause in any meaningful way?". None of this reads to me like you have genuinely accepted the wrong of what you did or taken responsibility for your actions or their consequences. You don't have to convince me, or anyone here, we don't know you and we're not involved, but your wife is and knows you better and I'd be pretty certain your lack of genuine contrition is apparent to her.

LegacyUser

My husband "f**ked up" last year too. We were together long enough for the shift in his behaviour not to go unnoticed. He lied to my face. For months. Even when confronted with hard facts, actual physical evidence he still lied, minimised it, made me out to be the problem. Lied about stopping. Then turned it around on me that I needed to get over it... While it was still going on.

My husband is now 100% changed. He's a different man, unrecognisable from that man last year. But I'm on edge. I know, 100%, that he is being honest with me... But for how long? I cannot shake the feeling that it can happen again. I am a different person to the person I was a year ago. I have told him that I believe him now. But that I may never get over the betrayal. It still goes around my head every single day. Things that were said, done, lies etc. I hope to someday be able to box it away in a corner and not have it consume so much of my thoughts. But it's too soon, and the hurt was too deep.

In normal circumstances your wife would be unreasonable. Considering what you put her through, she might still be unreasonable, but it's understandable why. You can't be held to ransom forever, but you need to accept where her reaction is coming from. What would make all the difference to her is you acknowledging that you understand why she is reacting this way. You can reassure her of your reasons for not contacting her, but accept that it's dragging up memories that are still very much raw for her.

Trust me... She doesn't want to be feeling like this!

Augme

You need to sit down with your wife and ask her if she wants to continue staying together. If she says yes then you need to tell her that she needs to change her attitude. If she can't do that then it's better to part ways. There's no point taking someone back and not trusting them or throwing their cheating back at them every time there is a row, the relationship just won't work if that's what it's going to be like.

timmy880

I f*cked up last year, I breached her trust, we've been working at it since

I think it would have been more relevant to open with this... Her anger sounds like nothing to do with the specific situation you've gone to great efforts to describe but rather a much bigger issue. Whatever it is (and others have already speculated) it doesn't seem like counselling is working and you even said it yourself that the sessions you went to yourself made you feel better..... You breached her trust and counselling has made YOU feel better? It doesn't sound like she feels better at all. I think ye need a serious discussion about what ye both really want otherwise petty arguments will just escalate every day and it'll be the end of it for both of ye unfortunately. Good luck.

Rekop dog

You should be wary of becoming too meek or under the thumb as an overreaction to your fu*k up last year. These are weak qualities and she'll eventually resent you for that too, as I'm guessing that's not the person she was attracted to in the first place.
By all means keep making efforts to build trust again but never tolerate unreasonable behavior regardless of past mistakes.

Mr. Incognito

Sounds like your wife told you she would be out, giving you scope to make alternative arrangments.

Then she said she would be home but in a Lazaire Fare sort of way- "Oh I might be going to a class".

Then she sat back to see whether you would be home and what time. The dinner thing is a red herring- she just wanted to see if you'd go home or be late and probably off meeting someone else.

It's irrational. But people that are paranoid are irrational.

You can't be forced to deal with irrational paranoid people no matter what the circumstances.

Your wife needs to learn to trust you.

Otherwise you are going to be in for a rough patch.

I think you need to start with simple communication and make it a habit. Volunteer your movements for a bit by text.

Working late, will be home around 7. Leaving the office now- home in a bit - will I pick you up something.

Whilst you might not be over your indescretion your missus clearly is not and needs reassurance. That will take the form of communicating your movements daily until the trust is back.

Suck it up.

PressRun

timmy880 wrote: »

I think it would have been more relevant to open with this... Her anger sounds like nothing to do with the specific situation you've gone to great efforts to describe but rather a much bigger issue. Whatever it is (and others have already speculated) it doesn't seem like counselling is working and you even said it yourself that the sessions you went to yourself made you feel better..... You breached her trust and counselling has made YOU feel better? It doesn't sound like she feels better at all. I think ye need a serious discussion about what ye both really want otherwise petty arguments will just escalate every day and it'll be the end of it for both of ye unfortunately. Good luck.

Basically this.

The time you came home at is not the issue, even though that is what you've put at the centre of this. She is having trouble trusting you again after whatever you did last year and there seems to be little to no communication on this. You should both go back to counselling and get to the bottom of this. You might feel like you've turned a corner, but I'd be willing to bet that she isn't there yet and there are still issues that need to be talked through. Rather than getting into a row and trying to 'prove' that you're in the right, you might want to try and be a bit more understanding about how difficult this might be for her. It can take time for a relationship to recover from a 'breach of trust', if it recovers at all.

eviltwin

Rereg wrote: »

banned re-reg

Easier said than done. Trust takes time to rebuild, a long time. It's little things like this that can have a massive impact when trust is gone.

I don't think she behaved badly in context of what happened, if it was a normal situation it would be different.

What I find interesting is how the OP spun a web there making his wife out to be a complete headcase and then just threw the bit about the betrayal in at the end like its barely relevant. It's the crux of the entire issue. OP seems to be trying to paint himself as the put upon victim when he should be completely owning his actions and these consequences.

1moo345

In any relationship going through issues of trust/infidelity, the smallest details that would never usually matter, become huge.

If this was a relationship minus the trust issue, it would be a completely different matter. But, speaking from experience, I know as soon as something like this happens to you, you are constantly on guard a little bit and wondering if something is up?

It won't always be that way, and trust can definitely be rebuilt, but it takes a lot of time and effort from both parties.

In a normal circumstance, is she being completely unreasonable, yes? But in the case where you have been lied to before, even when you get over it, then you can question yourself. 'He's probably just working, nothing is going on. We are past that' A logical thought like that an very quickly turn into 'But maybe, I am fooling myself and making excuses. There's no signs of anything, but maybe I'm just in denial' etc.

Emotional trauma is the worst kind. You can't treat it as easily as others.

I hope that you can work through the hard time.