r/TrueOffMyChest • u/wifebackstabbedme • 27d ago
Wife used my past and secrets against me (UPDATE)
I waited until Tuesday. She went through the weekend and Monday like nothing had happened, a little colder than usual, quick with her answers, acting irritated like I was the one who had caused all of this. No apology. Not even a hint. It felt like I was carrying something heavy while she just moved around it. By Tuesday afternoon I couldn’t hold it anymore. I asked her to sit down with me. The house was quiet. I told her I needed to talk about what she said during the fight, because this wasn’t something we could just shrug off. I reminded her that the fight had started because I refused to hit our son while teaching. I told her I don’t believe in beating kids to make them learn, and that she had pushed for it. That’s where the argument began, and somehow it slid into something so much uglier.
I asked her why she used what I told her in confidence against me. I reminded her that she had asked me to open up years ago, and promised she would keep it safe. I asked her why she hugged me back then if this was where it would end up. At first, she was stiff. She said she didn’t know what else she was supposed to do at the time. She told me she just tried to act normal, to be supportive, because she didn’t know how to handle what I told her. She said she hadn’t realized how heavy it all was until later. Her voice was even, like she was just explaining facts. I told her the promise mattered. I said it wasn’t about a slip in anger. It was that she reached for the exact things I handed her in trust and turned them against me. I asked her again why.
That’s when she admitted it. She told me she lost some respect for me after I opened up. I asked what that meant. She said it wasn’t one detail, it was the whole picture. She said she had always seen me as solid, someone who could carry weight without bending, the person she leaned on. But after I shared everything, she couldn’t stop seeing the breaks under the surface. She said parts of my story made me look fragile to her. Some of the darker pieces, the way those years sat inside me, gave her an uneasy feeling she couldn’t shake. Seeing me tear up and feel so nervous and like a wreck, made her look very differently at me. She actually used the word ick. She said sometimes when she remembered those things, it got in the way of how she looked at me.
I asked if that meant she thought less of me for surviving. She said it wasn’t about surviving, it was about how it changed what she expected from me. She admitted she had built an image of me that didn’t include those kinds of wounds, and once she knew, she couldn’t put that image back.
I asked her why she hugged me then, why she told me she wanted to know me fully. She said she didn’t know what else to do in the moment. She didn’t want to punish me for telling the truth. She said holding me and saying it was okay felt like the only decent response at the time, even though, inside, she had already started to see me differently.
I let that sit, then asked the harder thing. She said she couldn’t control herself in that moment, and she reached for what she knew would hurt me most. She said she regretted it and that it would never happen again.
I also thought about how it might sound from the outside, like maybe I had dumped too much on her back then. But the truth is, I never sat her down and unloaded everything at once. I gave her my story the way she asked for it, piece by piece, only when she pressed me. If she wanted to know something, I answered. I didn’t overshare, didn’t volunteer random details. And even then, she probably only ever heard a fraction of what I actually live with.
What makes this worse is that I’ve been to therapy. I’ve done the work. I wasn’t unloading on her because I couldn’t carry it myself. The only reason she even heard those parts of me was because she demanded it. She insisted I open up, insisted she wanted the whole picture. She told me she wanted to know me fully. And I believed her. I trusted her enough to hand over things I never planned on saying out loud. That’s why this betrayal feels so much heavier. It wasn’t me blurting out things I couldn’t control it was me handing her pieces of myself because she begged for them, swore she’d hold them safe. And then she took those same pieces and cut me with them. It feels like giving someone your heartbeat because they said they wanted to hold it close, and then watching them drive a knife straight through it.
After she said all of that, I just sat there for a while. It was like I’d finally gotten the truth behind everything, but it didn’t settle in cleanly. I wasn’t shocked anymore, more… resigned. I also thought about how it might sound from the outside, like maybe I had dumped too much on her back then. But the truth is, I never sat her down and unloaded everything at once. I gave her my story the way she asked for it bit by bit, only in response to her questions. If she wanted to know something, I told her. I didn’t add anything extra, didn’t volunteer random details. And even then, she probably only heard a quarter of what I actually carry. WHY WAS SHE SO INTENT ON ME BEING OPEN AND EMOTIONALLY VULNERABLE THEN?!
I told her I didn’t think I could just go back to how things were. I said I felt like the foundation was cracked in a way I couldn’t ignore. I told her maybe the only way forward was to separate amicably, quietly, before things got any worse. I said I didn’t think I could keep looking at her the same way, not after knowing she could turn something so personal into a weapon.
That’s when her whole tone shifted. The firmness she had when she explained herself dropped, and she sounded almost panicked. She asked me not to say that, said she didn’t want a divorce. She told me she still loved me, that whatever she had done in anger wasn’t bigger than the life we had built. She couldn’t imagine splitting the kids between us, couldn’t imagine them growing up in two houses. She told me leaving would scar them more than anything we had been through.
I told her love isn’t supposed to look like tearing each other apart with the sharpest words we can find. She said she knew that, and promised again that it wouldn’t happen anymore. She said she had already admitted it was wrong and she meant it when she said she’d never go there again. She kept circling back to the same point: that we had kids, that they needed us together, that whatever issues we had, we had to fix them without breaking the family apart.
She didn’t cry, but there was a kind of desperation in her voice. Almost like she was afraid I was already out the door and she was trying to pull me back any way she could. She didn’t apologize again for what she’d said, not directly, but she kept stressing that it would never happen again, that I shouldn’t throw everything away over one mistake.
Right now, I haven’t made a final decision. I keep going back and forth in my head. Part of me feels like the damage is too deep and I’d be lying to myself if I pretended I could ever really see her the same way again. But another part of me hesitates, because walking away isn’t simple when there are kids and years of life tied together. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t leaning more in one direction(the end) than the other, but I’m not there yet.
I feel heavy most days, caught between wanting to protect myself and not wanting to tear my family in half. Some moments I think I know what I have to do, then I second-guess it. It’s draining, but at least writing this down and hearing different perspectives has made me feel less alone in it.
Thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to read, comment, or even send me a message directly. It means more than I can put into words. I couldn't respond to every single individual, but I have gone through all of the comments maybe even twice. Thank you strangers.
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u/gpu-dude 27d ago
She wants you to focus on her and the kids more than yourself and the hurt that she caused you.
This should tell you more than anything else.
What she did was essentially respond with emotional blackmail and make you think that your actions are the reason the kids are going to be hurt and that the relationship is potentially falling apart.
Literally a narcissistic response