JD's wife started having affairs after her father died in 2018, cycling between begging him to stay and threatening divorce. The host says her trauma triggered a coping pattern of seeking attention outside the marriage, and tells JD to separate, go to therapy, and examine why he chose a partner not wired for monogamy.
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Hello everyone. We have another Dear DSO entry on the website and you can submit your own story or question at dadstartingover.com/dear-dso and I will answer here in video format. Today's message comes from JD and the subject line is trauma catalyst avoidance. JD says, my wife, 12 years this last November, Father— her father passed unexpectedly in December of 2018. Since then, she has suffered greatly to enjoy our marriage. 2020, was married with her having multiple emotional affairs. 2021, it turned physical, although she maintains it never went all the way. 2022, more making out with randoms and emotional online affairs. All while, quote, snapping out of it and claiming how much she loves me. It's gone from, quote, not being attracted to me to she's avoidant and she has intimacy issues. I've backed off plenty as far as expectations or initiating. Now we are locked in this weird zone where I know she rarely wants sex with me, but definitely all the same affection as I've always given. Butt slapping, kisses, cuddles, boobie squeezes, holding at night, all of it. When things are okay, she's invested in the marriage, we are usually 1 to 2 times a week. But then she explodes after a few months, telling me she can't stand having sex with me and wants a divorce. As soon as I pave the way for her exodus out of this life, she caves and she begs me to take her back. The hot and cold is very confusing. Any thoughts? Yes, JD, I have thoughts, and they're not very positive ones. Um, all right, at the risk of sounding very insensitive and very simplistic, uh, JD, your wife is what we call a broken human being. Uh, that is not judgmental on my part. I am not belittling for being a quote broken human being. But let's be honest here, and I think any psychologist or therapist would tell you the same thing. Your wife is exhibiting, uh, an inability to cope. Life just handed her a not-so-good thing. Her father passed away. So how do you cope with that? How do you grieve? How do you soothe yourself? Well, her method of soothing was to go out and get attention from others and to form romantic relationships with others while being married to you. And you obviously are not okay with that, as most people would not be. So it's Exhibit A for oops, you married somebody that's not wired for this long-term monogamy thing, and she has some baggage which has bubbled to the surface, uh, via this trauma that she experienced. This is really, really common when I talk to guys that go through, uh, their experience infidelity on the part of their wife. Usually there's some kind of major negative life event that serves as the trigger to cause all this shit that she has lurking under the surface to, like I say, bubble to the surface and cause all kinds of chaos. I've heard, you know, something as simple as lose a job, even like lose a pet. You know, I know of someone where their brother was arrested and went to prison. And then suddenly the wife started acting really chaotic and crazy, and the husband sits back and like, why is she acting this way? Ever since brother went to prison, she's just losing her marbles and, you know, screwing around and all kinds of stuff. It happens. It's not unusual. So we could sit here and try to play armchair psychologist and try to understand what's going on with her and try to diagnose her and try to sympathize and empathize with her plight as a damaged human being. Or we can say, you know what, uh, JD, you made a big oopsie. Uh, welcome to the club. You, uh, connected with and formed a bond with and a family with, presumably, um, somebody who, uh, ain't wired for this game, my man. It's one thing to say we need to let her go, but we have a whole other set of issues here that we're— we haven't talked about yet, which is you, JD. What is it about you that causes you to stay attached to such a person? Because if I tell your story to, dare I say, the majority of people out there that I run into, I just, you know, randomly go up to 100 people on the street and say, listen to my friend JD's story, I'm willing to bet probably 99 out of 100 would go, what's he doing hanging around with her? I don't get it. So, JD, What's up? We don't get it. I think if you went to a therapist, you could probably uncover some not so good stuff, some baggage that you personally have that causes you to be attracted to and stay attached to this type of person. You need to figure that shit out. Number one, you need to separate yourself from this person. As tough as that is, I know you're probably, you know, quasi-addicted to the woman. Welcome to being a human being in a relationship, but you need to separate yourself, eliminate contact as much as humanly possible, and then you can begin the process of healing. And the process of healing for you involves, what is it about me that caused me to be attracted to and attached to somebody like this? Because although you have framed it as father passed in 2018, and since then all hell broke loose, I bet you, I bet you anything that if we looked at your history together as a couple, we would look back and go, red flag, red flag, red flag, red flag, probably from day one. I just spoke to a gentleman here right before recording this in a one-on-one coaching session, and you can book time with me at dadstartingover.com or any of our DSO team members. And he was telling me very early stages of the relationship when dating, he discovered that his then girlfriend was sleeping around with all kinds of men from the workplace. And his reaction was, well, we're not married yet, and we can work through this. I need to work harder to win her affection. Pretty big red flag. Pretty big red flag that was ignored. Not good. I bet you have something somewhat similar that you can look back on. Maybe therapy will help uncover that. And you'll, you'll say, yeah, I should have seen this coming. So JD, get away from her and work on what's going on up in the old noodle. Try and figure that out, my man, because if you don't do the heavy work of working on what's going on upstairs with you, believe it or not, you're going to do this all over again just the way it is. You're going to meet another gal just like her, and you're going to 5, 6, 10 years down the line go, ah, shit, I did it again. Don't do that, dude. Best of luck to you.
