How to get what we need post disclosure

Last week I received an email from a gal in Texas that had a couple of questions for me.  Her email touched me and I want to share a portion of it here:"...my husband only seems to work on us during those sessions. When we get home it's back to the everyday of the everyday. He acts as though nothing has happened. We never talk about the affairs. We never talk about anything. I know we have kids and he has work and we have things going on but I feel like I am forced to just shove all my pain inside and hide it. I still have hundreds of unanswered questions about the affairs. I don't feel like I can heal without talking about these things. I fake it everyday for the kids and for him and on the inside I'm hurting so much. Some days I just want to throw in the towel and walk away. I've expressed my need to still talk about it and he will sort of talk about it for a day but then goes right back to acting like all is well and nothing ever happened. ...What do I do when I have all these questions for him regarding his affairs but I feel too scared to ask him because I know he won't want to talk about it and then we will end up in a big fight because I need it and he won't give it which bothers me sooooooo much."Jason and I sat down this weekend and did a kitchen convo about this topic.  It's worth showing and hopefully it will be ready later this week.  But after Jason and I chatted about it, we realized that we didn't necessarily give this wife many practical suggestions for how to approach this situation.  So that's what I'd like to do here. For starters, the reality is:  this situation is one of the big reasons this process is so darn difficult for husbands and wives.  In my opinion, the wife wants and needs empathy from her husband.  She wants to make sense of all the secrets she is finally privy to.  And yet, her husband isn't emotionally mature enough to give her the empathy she needs.  Sure, a couple of years from now, with a lot of hard work, he will be able to do it.  But early on, it's almost impossible.  So what is a wife to do?The other piece of this puzzle that is so difficult is that typically us wives don't even know how to ask for what we need.  A lot of times, a wife in this situation has lost her voice.  So although we may know that we need to process the ugly truth, we don't even know how to go about getting it.  And if we do know how, what if we are rejected?  We have already suffered from the most severe rejection possible when we found out the truth about our husband's betrayal.  So laying it all out there and asking for what we need...it feels almost impossible.It's because of these two things (the husband's inability to empathize and the wife's inability to ask for what she needs) that from the get go, this process is terribly difficult.So here are a couple of suggestions for wives:1)  Start by asking yourself:  What do I need?  Anything goes here.  Journal through what this looks like.  Don't think of your husband's response or anyone else's.  Just decide for yourself what you need.2)  Ask yourself:  What do I feel?  Try to start tapping into your heart.  Oftentimes, wives don't even know how they feel because somewhere along the way, we stopped thinking about ourselves and started thinking more of the people around us.  The feelings wheel (above) can help you hone in on what you are feeling.As you start this week, keep these two questions close to your heart.  If this is difficult for you or if you have any questions, please will you leave a comment and we can discuss this together?  I know it takes courage to leave a comment or to email me and I also know there are a lot of you out there reading this.  It only takes one to step up and start the conversation!(I will be back later this week with more suggestions, but for now, let's just try to focus on what we need and what we feel.)xo-Shelley