SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi all,

I wanted to give an update and get some advice on how to handle a particular situation.

It's nearly a year since D-day, and I think we are doing well considering everything. Certainly better than before and making consistent progress. Most days range from okay to pretty good. I am still beset by triggers, doubts, fears, and low trust, but it is slowly getting better. My WW is making efforts and I see her changing for the better, even if it's glacially slow. I am finally able to believe in the sincerity of her intentions to repair our relationship.

So my question:

The way my wife addresses arguments/conflict since D-day has been bothering me for a while but I didn't have the words to describe it well until I noticed the post by CantBeMeEither talking about DARVO.

I had to look it up of course, and for those of you who don't know it stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender.

When I read that description I felt like that is exactly how my WW has handled most arguments we have had. I bring up something that is bothering me, or something I'm upset by, or something I want to change, and her first step seems to be to get defensive and deny or gaslight me, mostly deny. If I push through that, her next step is to attack back bringing up my faults or being critical of something, anything she can. If I bring it back on topic, or successively defend myself from her attacks, then she switches the tables and plays the victim saying she is a bad person, or she is overwhelmed, or feels bad about herself, etc.

It's very frustrating because something that could be a simple conversation turns into a full blown argument because of this behavior. Half way through the "discussion" that I am hoping to get something addressed or resolved, I find myself defending against her attacks instead of talking about the subject at hand.

From what I understand this is common behavior with waywards, and is to be expected to some extent as part of the healing process. To be fair she doesn't do this 100% of the time. She does have times she just listens to me, and takes it all in. But any topic she feels guilty about or threatened by she responds this way, which in the last year has been a high percentage of the topics.

I'll give a fictitious example conversation below that is similar to one we had this week:

Me: Hey I wanted to talk about x.y.z.
Her: Okay
Me: I didn't like how you did this or that with x.y.z thing.
Her: I didn't do that.(Deny)
Me: Yes you did, here is the proof.
Her: Oh. Well it's not a big deal because of a.b.c. (Minimize)
Me: Yes it is a big deal.
Her: You are overreacting. (Minimize)
Me: No I'm not. This is a really big deal.
Her: It's not a big deal because of this or that. (Minimize)
Me: I am very concerned about this.
Her: You never listen and always think you are right. (Attack)
Me: No I don't. I listen all the time, and I only talk about things I believe are true. Why would I be arguing something I didn't believe in? (Now I'm defending myself instead of talking about the original topic)
Her: You are always being critical. I feel like I can't do anything right.
Me: I'm not trying to be critical I'm just trying to get this resolved.
Her: I need you to communicate the positive things I do as well. (Reverse victim & offender)
Me: Okay I can do that. Do you need me to do that before I bring up a topic like this?
Her: You are just so critical and don't seem to care what I'm feeling, and you always think you are right.
Me: Everyone thinks they are right when they are arguing something. You do it, and so do I.
Her: (silence)
Me: It's perfectly fine for someone to think they are right, it's also fine to try to convince them of the other side. If I'm convinced I will change.
Her: (silence)
Me: Have you withdrawn from this conversation?
Her: I just wanted you to be able to say what you wanted to say.

Of course thats just an example, and probably paints me in a better light than her because of my bias, and doesn't convey the intensity of the emotions involved. And to be extra fair I'm sure she does feel many of the emotions she describes feeling. However it's still an issue. I want to be able to have productive conversations with her, but this behavior makes it very difficult.

Should I just be patient and allow her time to change? Should I make this the next topic I bring up? Is this something that is best done in couples therapy, or with a marriage coach? Something else?

I would like to hear from waywards who also did this with their BS's, and how you addressed it, as well as BS's who are reconciled and how you handled this behavior from your wayward.

I would bring it up.

As a ws I think what I had to finally embrace is that the process of improvement meant that I needed to be self aware of things that I was doing that is counterproductive towards my goal.

The way we defend ourselves can be abusive to the ws. But it also is a learned behavior. We probably witnessed it growing up, and in absence of knowing what to say, I could be pretty dismissive. What helped me was to have some things on hand to say until my emotions could calm. I would just say things like "I am sorry, I wasn’t aware of that." Or "can you give me some Examples" or even "how do you think we could resolve this?"

Then I would kind of breathe and try and remember he is my best friend and he is telling me things that will improve our relationship. That helped me move from "I am not enough" to becoming part of the problem solving team.

I don’t think most ws even know what Darvo is or have an awareness of it. I think some ws do have tactics they purposefully use. But the results are the same, right? It still doesn’t resolve it.

I think when you present this to her, I would do it at a calm time and say "I have noticed a pattern on our communication I would like for us to work on together. I would like when I bring up an issue or you bring up an issue that we only discuss that issue rather than trying to bring up other ones at that time. I also want us to try and adopt the attitude that it’s you and I against the problem, not you and I against each other." I would outline that maybe she panics or has high emotions about the topic and ask her what you can do to help with that?

Perhaps too maybe listen to an audiobook or take turns reading a chapter at a time that can help you explore your communication issues. "Fight right:how successful couples turn conflict into connection" by dr. John Gottman.

And I think you should decide some things about your own boundaries. Such as, ending the conversation. In the one above I would say "maybe this is a tender topic for you. I was hoping we could talk this through and come up with some solutions that might work for both of us. Maybe you need some time to think about it from that angle. Can you let me know when you are ready to sit down and sort this out with me?"

I wouldn’t stand there and just let her argue like a child. My guess based on the context you have given is this could be just a skill she needs to build so she can let that other way of approaching it fall away.

I will say this does come from shame. Another book that might help her see how she is gravitating towards that rather than vulnerability- and this one I always recommend because it helped me immensely- "rising strong" by brene brown. I read it once by myself and the other time we read it together because I think it was beneficial for us both to get the concepts she talked about in that book.

[This message edited by hikingout at 9:14 PM, Thursday, April 17th]

I give you credit for having the patience to withstand this type of behavior.

I don’t know if you can actually change this behavior but I hope for your sanity you find something that works.

I give you credit for hanging in there lol. 😆

My husband did this.

If I brought up something negative about him or his behaviour, or if I wanted to discuss something that had upset me he would tell me about something I had done (often this would be something from 10 years ago that hadn’t been discussed at the time).

In the early days I would defend. Then I got bored of it. So I would say we are talking about x. I brought up y. I am happy to talk about x another time, when you bring it up, in your own time outside of another discussion. I brought up y and you are trying to avoid using x.

I used this for a year or two. Initially he would deny. But it became very obvious quickly as I used the same phrasing.

It helped the conversation. But it didn’t help the way I perceive him.

[This message edited by Abcd89 at 7:20 AM, Friday, April 18th]

Maybe try to use the fair fighting rules. Consider a designated time for hard conversations or issue resolution.

No name-calling
No interrupting
No blaming / accusation (use I statements to address the problem not the person)
No swearing
No yelling
No sarcasm
No defensiveness
No generalizing ("you always/never")
No intimidation/threats
No walking out or stonewalling (unless you need a break and set a time to follow up)