Vent/How to repair after feelings of jealousy?
A bit of a rant. Maybe I just need to vent. But there’s a real question at the end. My wife and I got together in high school. We were each other’s first relationship. We’re in our 30s now. Married for a couple of years. Most of our relationship was essentially as close to blissful as it comes. We communicate well. We love to talk and discuss and analyze. We disagreed sometimes--we would get emotional, and tense, and conversation wouldn’t flow so easily as it does normally, but only because we wanted to be deliberate about what we said and how we said it, and so we got through most things without “fights.” And I love her. I wanted to give her everything.
About 5 years ago, she asked me about opening our relationship. It hadn’t been something I was interested in. I asked her how important it was to her. She said she couldn’t help but be discontent if we didn’t. I thought long and hard about it and decided I could handle it, that I’m at least curious about being with someone else before I died. So we were open, and she enjoyed herself, and I was happy for her. I, on the other hand, didn’t have much luck either meeting people or connecting with them in a casual sexual context. As expected, I would feel pangs of jealousy sometimes, but it gradually subsided in frequency and intensity from rageful fits to a light tickle, almost fun.
A year ago, I met someone I liked. For the purposes of this rant, call her Olivia. We dated weekly and gradually fell in love over the course of a few months. I was careful not to let the limerence affect my relationship with my wife; I still loved her just the same and showed her no less attention, but I could tell that it was bothering her. She was quicker to anger, prickly about boundaries. And her mental health started to decline. I told her we didn’t need to keep doing this. She insisted she was committed to this, that it would get better. Several times, after she had panic attacks, I was convinced I would have to break up with Olivia. I know how disrespectful that is to Olivia’s agency and devalues our relationship. She’s a whole person who loves me and who I supposedly love, and I was going to cancel her like a gym subscription. But I didn’t think I had any other options. Each of those times, my wife talked me out of it.
Finally, a couple of months ago, my wife started having weekly panic attacks. I had to take her to the emergency room. I could see where this was going. I decided to break it off with Olivia. But my wife still has this sea of repressed rage towards me. We try to have positive connections and fun dates, but she feels distant and subdued. In her sober and in control moments, she understands that this was a difficult situation for me, that I care for her and didn’t do anything dishonest or underhanded. But anything--if I’m too sad about how things have turned out, if she’s not doing well and I try to be cheerful, some casual disagreement--can set her off and start that rage bubbling over. Then, she might yell anything at me, that I didn’t care as much about her suffering as I did about my own enjoyment, demand an apology from me, that she can’t trust me anymore, followed by tears and panic and sleepless nights and days-long tension. We’ve been in couples counseling basically since I met Olivia, trying to make things work. Any conversation at all about our feelings, including our counseling sessions, leaves things in that state of unresolvable tension--so now we’ve cancelled our sessions. At this point, I’m finding myself emotionally shutting down around her, not able to express myself or have anything more than superficial interactions because I’m afraid of what might happen. I’ve started to experience total emotional numbness and anhedonia when she’s around. When she’s not in our home, I randomly start sobbing uncontrollably. And I’m increasingly finding myself angry as well--feelings which I know she simply cannot handle. I know she’s not choosing to feel this way. She’s not a spiteful or selfish person, the feelings just completely take her over. When I talk to friends, mutual or otherwise, I pretty much always hear the same thing; I’m in an impossible situation, they don’t know what I should do, and maybe we need some space.
In the end, I feel like she’s stuck with the feelings of having been cheated on. She’s angry I fell in love with , and any expression that I still love Olivia or miss her or don’t regret that relationship feels like disrespect. In her heart, she wants me to apologize, wants me to make up for it and earn her trust back. But in her head, she knows that I didn’t actually cheat on her, so none of that is something I can do authentically. So we’re stuck. How can we repair an affair that didn’t take place?
EDIT: Some common themes:
Yes she is in a lot of individual therapy, and has been.
No, it doesn't really make much sense that she's mad at me, and she knows that, but the fact that it doesn't make sense doesn't make it go away for her