Does the "why" matter to you?
Long post alert - sorry!
15 months post d-day. When I found out, I immediately kicked him out. We were traveling at the time, I came home without him and he never came back into the house. I told him I wanted a divorce and started meeting with a lawyer, got all the cars transfered into my name, etc.
I asked him why and he said he didn't know. He said he has these feelings of worthlessness, self-loathing and inadequacy that had started to build up over the last 7 years of our marriage and when they got really bad...he gave in and saw a prostitute.
We had been married for 15 years by that time but it was only the last 7 years. I asked what caused such intense, terrible feelings and why that particular thing was the temporary "fix" and he didn't know.
I told him if there was one thing he could do for me it would be to find out the "why". I needed to know. I know everyone says this but we had a strong marriage (crazy to say that, I know but outside of this one, terrible, horrible, unimaginable thing - we did).
So...he went to counseling. Actually, he immersed himself in counseling. Now, understand that he WAS NOT doing well - his two "worlds" had collided, and he imploded so the counseling wasn't just for me. He needed it too, but he threw himself into it. Started talk therapy with a CSAT who recommended EMDR, which he agreed to. He went to talk sessions once a week and EMDR once a week for several months and the he found out the "why".
He had buried sever sexual and physical abuse that happened to him from 3rd grade to 6th grade. It was a neighbor and it happed a lot - but, until EMDR, he didn't remember. I was skeptical about that for a long time but after meeting with a CSAT myself, I was assured that fully repressed memory is a thing and often surfaces during EMDR.
With help from his therapists, he figured out that his trigger was when his mom died in 2017. We went back to his childhood town for her funeral and during that trip, his aunt asked him if he was ever raped as a child. He said absolutely not and it was never brought up again but apparently, that started the crack in his vault and all of those terrible feelings started seeping out.
I am telling you all of this because I was 100% set on a divorce until I found out the why. It mattered to me. It doesn't excuse it at all, the man still made the choices, but it did explain it some. Once I found out the why, we started talking again, him and I. We talked via phone for a couple months and then at 11 months, I started weekly couples counseling with him. We have been going for 4 months now, and he just moved back in.
My family (especially my mom and brother) think I am crazy. They refuse to even come around and... maybe I am. Maybe the why shouldn't make a difference but it did to me.
There were other things as well - he never denied any of it, never allowed any "blame" to be placed on me by anyone, did a full disclosure (which was hard), sat down and talked to our grown children and told them everything and took everything that came his way from that with as much grace as possible, he never stopped counseling and... he has never made an excuse.
BUT he still did it. All of it. The cheating, the lying, the living a double life. He did it all...he could have made different choices...and still, the why matters to me. I can't help but wonder if the man would have made better choices if the boy hadn't been so severly hurt.
Does it matter to you or am I just being stupid?