podcast 112 "He Said He Didn't Love Me Anymore"

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Counselor Tim Tedder interviews Robin, whose husband announced one day that he wanted a divorce. As she tells her story, we discuss finding out about an affair, Trickle Truth, snooping, forgiving, trusting, and change.
Transcript Excerpts:

...Robin: Our relationship went back-and-forth again. I had a feeling that something was still going on. I saw that he had created an email account that I didn’t know about and I confronted him with that. He told me that he didn’t know what I was talking about. He then deleted the email account but I was able to recover it and recover actual emails that had been deleted. 

I saw some of the messages that were written and knew that he was talking to her again. At that point I said we were done. He had moved out and moved back in so I told him that he needed to move out again.
Tim: There’s a term used to describe the reluctant confessions of an unfaithful partner; we call it “Trickle Truth.” Instead of letting honesty flow with “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” the facts are only offered in little drips because the guilty person only wants to offer what they think they HAVE to admit.

Trickle Truth becomes a kind of game in which one person claims “I’ve told you everything” until the next significant detail is uncovered. Their insistence that “Now, I’ve told you everything” is emphatic until something new is revealed. This leaves the betrayed spouse in a predicament: if their only source of information is coming from the person who has been completely untrustworthy, how are they suppose to know what’s really going on?

Clients in this predicament often say to me “I know I’m not suppose to snoop,” but I don’t always agree. Snooping can become destructive and obsessive, I know, but when there is strong suspicion of an affair and the suspected partner only offers defensive denials, a bit of investigation is sometimes necessary in order to find out what’s really going on. That’s what Robin decided to do when she checked the text and email records.

About three months passed between her husband’s proclamation of lost love and his moving out of the house again. Robin explains what happened next…
Robin: At this point he had moved back out. I called him the next morning so I could have my final say. I was going to explain how love was a choice and other things. I had stayed home from work. (This was the same morning I had been able to recover the emails.) 

He eventually wrote me an email and came clean about everything. Not only was this a sexual affair, but he had a one night stand four to five years previous to that as well. He just laid it all out on the line. He said, “I know you can’t forgive me but I feel like you deserve the truth.”

Tim: Do you know what prompted him to be that honest with you at that point?

Robin: He thought it was over and he didn’t want me blaming myself.

Tim: So there was some consideration for you.

Robin: That was the only consideration I felt at that time. 

Tim: That is interesting. A lot of betrayed spouses don’t even get that. The affair is left in mystery and everything is blamed on them. It remains a secret. For him to be at the place where he assumed his marriage was done, but not wanting you to carry any sense of responsibility or guilt, that was something at least.

Robin: He knew I blamed myself for a large portion of it...