Hi! Freya here, the editor of Tough Love. Just a quick reminder that I’m hosting an Ask Me Anything here in The Free Press Forum at noon ET today. I’ll be there for an hour, so if you have questions about what happens behind the scenes of Tough Love, please come along and share them! —Freya Sanders
Dear Abigail,
Almost 20 years ago, when we were relatively newly married, my wife and I moved overseas, so I could go to graduate school. She was miserable there, and I was one cause of that misery; I worked too much, and I didn’t spend enough time with her. Ultimately, she decided she needed to go back to the States for her own happiness, to which I agreed. In her absence, I had an affair with a co-worker, which continued until I came back to the U.S. a year later. I didn’t tell my wife.
Since then, my wife and I have had three wonderful daughters. (They’re now 13, 11, and 6.) Until recently, we were both happy in our marriage. I felt guilt and shame about my misdeeds, but I tried to channel it into being a better husband. Then, 18 months ago, my wife asked me point-blank what had happened when I was in graduate school. I confessed everything to her and begged for her forgiveness. I also confessed to my priest and did penance. We have each been seeing a separate therapist ever since the disclosure, and have also been attending couples therapy.
I’m writing because all these months later—despite my earnest and often desperate commitment to both the advice we have been receiving and what my wife says she needs from me—she hasn’t been able to forgive me. She is frequently miserable around me, seems constantly plagued by obsessive thoughts about the affair, and suffers from insecurity because of what I did. She frequently rejects my sincere expressions of remorse, love, and commitment, leaving me in despair. Not infrequently, she lashes out loudly, often within earshot of our children. They don’t seem to have caught on, and they continue to be happy and well-adjusted, but I’m constantly worried they’ll hear my awful sins recounted in one of her outbursts.
I still love her deeply, and at times, I can still see glimpses of the happy couple we used to be. She has always said she believes she will eventually be able to forgive me. But we’ve been struggling for so long, and I honestly don’t know if we’re making any progress. She becomes angry whenever I beg her for forgiveness, because she feels judged for not having granted it yet. She says she is working through things with her therapist and that forgiveness is a “journey.” But I look at where we are now compared to a year ago, and it’s not clear that this journey is going anywhere good.
I am determined to be the husband she deserves, which I wasn’t before. But it seems clear that I make her miserable—and how can I love her if I make her miserable? I’m really in a bind here, and I don’t know what to do.
Sincerely,
Hopeless in the Midwest, 44
Hopeless,
What is the ideal romantic relationship? What sort of marriage do you want? I’ve now interviewed over a hundred young people on the subject, and they invariably recite some version of this: two people, each completely happy and fulfilled in their own pursuits, coming together to face hard times without ever sacrificing their independence.
They strive to avoid “codependency,” as uncountable TikTok influencers and Instagram therapists advise. They see dependence as pathological, signaling an unhealthy or even “toxic” relationship. They don’t realize they are importing a term from addiction recovery and misapplying it to all close, interdependent romantic relationships. They don’t know that organizing your life around each other is often a telltale sign that you are in love.
You and your wife did well when your lives were knit tightly in interdependence—when you rejoined her after grad school and built a family. You fell apart each time you behaved as our culture insists you should: like two totally independent people, each with private goals and needs, pursuing them sometimes together and sometimes apart. That’s the deepest problem here, Hopeless. Deeper even than the affair, because it created the conditions for it. At critical moments, the two of you behave like you aren’t married at all.
