Needing advice..

Long time lurker, but a new participant.

My partner and I have been together for almost 3 years. We are 8 months post DDay, and trying to reconcile. Asking for advice at bottom of post.

Details for context purposes: The relationship had been struggling and distant for a long time prior to my infidelity.

I was drowning. From work, my relationship being strained and being mostly roommate interaction, past relationship struggles, and struggling with my mental health due to a lot of trauma from my childhood resurfacing. I had stopped going to IC for a long time, and couldn’t bring myself to go back, and just came to terms with my suicidal tendencies and started planning for it. And that’s when a person from my long ago trauma past reentered my life (AP) - who lives across the country. With my relationship on the rocks and being in this awful roommate situation, a horrid mental heath crisis, and just being so isolated, I broke up with my partner.

With having a complete mental spiral, I needed something, someone to essentially supervise me between now, and when I’d off myself would be because I quite literally did not trust myself to be alone for more than 30 minutes. I had discussed with the old friend that I needed someone to just be around constantly, and they offered, but it would come with conditions. Basically be in a convincing relationship with them. Talk about the future, marriage, kids, say I love you, sext, send photos. The works. And being in the crisis I was, I agreed. It was a quid pro quo situation. And so they became my AP.

This is a little strange. BP and I did break up prior to this “fake” relationship starting. But the boundaries, trust, and lies that occurred, absolutely are a betrayal to BP. And I am taking accountability as such as a “typical” infidelity - because we had every intention of getting back together if BP could consistently show up and do the work and plan for a future.

And my decision making during this was severely flawed. I had stopped seeing a future all together, because I wasn’t planning for anything past the next 3 months. I started severely distancing myself from my partner, forced them out of our shared room and into our makeshift office or the couch, essentially stopped talking to them, was short and snippy with them, and lied to their face on multiple occasions. I had (still have) so so much love for my partner, and I thought distancing myself and essentially forcing them to hate me because of my reactions would be the best way to protect them from my impending death. It was extremely messed up.. and all the while, I was playing spouse with my AP. And giving them all the time in the world, all the attention, all the affection, all the sweet words that were only meant to be spoken to my partner. And I hated it. I despised my AP. But I was willing to put up the act to survive.

The breaking point was when BO sat me down, and showed me all the proof they had, and that they were moving out in a couple days. It destroyed me. Deep down I knew that none of the proof was real to me. It was real as in it existed, but I did not love AP. I did not want marriage with my AP. And everything my partner saw was what it was meant to seem like - that I loved my AP, and was planning a future with them.

So I started the explanation - the supervision, the quid pro quo of it all. And while they were still devastated, they could kind of understand. My partner still moved forward with moving into their own place. I blocked AP on everything, and we started the reconciliation process.

We quickly got into MC, and both into IC. And have been doing it consistently since. We did a little bit of NC, and there have been many many nights early on not spent together. A lot of questions. A lot of answers. A lot of accountability. A lot of pain.

We have definitely healed more than how we were at the beginning. We still don’t live together, but we do sleep next to each other almost every night now. And we’re looking for a place to move into together again.

Obviously there’s a lot of details missing cause it’d be a really long post, and it’s been a long 8 months, so there’s probably more. But that’s where we are.

So the reason to the post and the advice needed: We’re 8 months post DDay, and while there has been a lot of progress, I am quickly becoming unhopeful. There’s a lot of distrust, resentment, bitterness, anger, and just overall pain because of my betrayal.

I’m finding that the progress has slowed dramatically, and some backwards motion. The past 3 ish weeks, arguments have ramped up, and my BP has stopped withholding their anger when we have discussions about the affair, and it has gone into disrespectful territory numerous times. And our MC has been very adamant that the good times need to outweigh the hard/bad times. And for the most part, they have been. As of recent though, it’s getting harder to hold the weight of the relationship alone.

I will never tell my BP to “get over it already” or anything of that nature. Knowing trauma so well myself, I could never put a timeline or pressure like that on my BP. However, it’s getting more blatant that their mindset has not shifted since the start of R. BP still interacts with posts on insta and social about infidelity like “just leave WP” “once a cheater always a cheater” etc. And overall has no willingness to forgive, or allow me to start forgiving myself. BP kind of demands that I remain in guilt/shame mode by consistently asking if I regret it, if I feel guilty and why I feel those things. Or showing me a post and says “do you understand why this is fucked up”. I understand my character is on the stand, and I will never ever let myself get that low again, I’m just struggling with the timeline and the “regression” that we’ve been having.

Our conversations have started leading into long discussions about how hurt BP is, how BP just doesn’t understand why I did what I did, and that BP doesn’t think they’ll ever forgive. And I have started feeling that doubt of - my BP is going to leave. And that it might be better for their mental health if they do. I’m not expecting this to be resolved within a year or even 3 years, I’m just starting to lose hope..

WP’s or BP’s:

How do I stay hopeful that reconciliation is possible when discussions about the affair are just now starting to become more hateful and disrespectful? Is it possible to reconcile with BP having no intention of forgiving me? Is it normal to have slowed/backwards progress?

Thank you all <3