SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’m not looking for sympathy. No pats on the back. No kind words. I don’t need 2x4s about consequences. I am well aware this is my own doing. I don’t need any explanations. I just need to vent. (And to those of you that did the things I am about to vent about, I mean no harm to any of you.) I just wish I could understand why some people can forgive so much more and others can forgive so much less.

I hate this. Completely hate this. And I need to stay out of this forum. It is so triggering. I didn’t make my BH wait while I decided if I wanted to be with him or AP. I didn’t continue to cheat. I come here and read about people that literally get caught and leave with AP. I ready about people that have affairs over and over again. I read about people that truly don’t care if their BS is hurt and destroyed. I see BS that are desperate to R with a WS that isn’t interested. I did so much wrong during the affair and after dday. Things that ruined hope of R. But then I come here and see that what I did wrong isn’t all that uncommon. (No minimization intended. It’s wrong, I don’t care if you do one thing wrong after dday or everything wrong.) Why wasn’t I able to earn R? I have spent such a long time being honest, and the lies have still come back to haunt me. (I also failed complete at being able to manage trauma and know how to respond to it.) Even years after I stopped talking to AP, he still had the power to ruin my life, hurt my children, completely destroy whatever was left of my BH. I gave him that power. Whatever I thought I “gained” by cheating was not worth the cost. I have a broken STBX, a broken family, a broken heart. My life is a joke. A joke I caused. (Again, I DON’T WANT SYMPATHY.)

It took me cheating to truly fall for my STBX. That’s fucking sick. And now it’s for nothing. He will move on. Once he does, I don’t want to be his friend. I don’t want to see him. He lost whatever was left of his heart when he saw shit from a relationship that was over for nearly 2 years. But I’m supposed to watch him move on and be ok seeing that for the rest of my life? Nope. I know I’m not that strong. Strong people don’t cheat. Strong people don’t do the things I did. I fucking hate this. I hate that I couldn’t be strong enough to fix this. I hate watching the kids suffer. I hate that there’s no normalcy and I have no clue when healing even begins. I hate that I’m fluctuating between sorrow, and remorse, and heartbreak, and anger. I need to be stable for the kids. But really, I want to run away and never look back. (Won’t do that.) I am sock to death when I watch the kids cry and suffer because of this. There is no win for them, no matter what the outcome of the M was.

If you’re thinking about cheating. Just don’t. If you did cheat and want R, just follow the damn books. Trying to fix this was a giant waste. Instead of being 2 years out from healing, it’s all fresh. Again.

It took me cheating to truly fall for my STBX

IAT,

That comment really struck a chord with me as I've also had that same exact thought. I've done a lot of reflection and evaluation of my choices during these past 4 years. Much of it very painful but also enlightening.

You're obviously deep in the pain part but also "see" things for how they really are. That's actually a good thing. It takes a lot of courage to be honest with yourself and admit that the things you did were pretty screwed up.

The hardest thing that I struggle with is one of acceptance. I still cannot believe I was capable of being so selfish to people I claim to love. IMO, you need to work towards that. Yes you did shitty things but you are learning from the. You're not the same person when you were in the midst of your A. Build on that.

Yes your marriage may be over, but you're not. You are worth soldiering on and getting to a better place.

Boy, 11-years-ago-me can sure relate to this post.

No advice, just empathy from someone who’s been there.

Iamtrash,

I realize that your post is primarily a vent but I think you should consider how illustrative these sentiments are to the overall problems with your thought processes and how those same thought processes helped contribute to your present situation.

I don’t know if you have any history with addiction but the tone of your post and a lot of the sentiments expressed have a strong similarity to people with addition issues. It’s funny that addiction is so often associated with a lack of self control but so often stems in large part from the addict’s frustration with their inability to control the other people, factors and events in their lives. Addicts are basically control freaks with self control problems. Fucking ironic.

You are angry and frustrated because you feel like you have done the work and followed the steps to achieve the outcome you want, but that outcome continues to fail to manifest itself. It’s like you are following the instructions and adhering to the rules of the game yet somehow you keep losing and that infuriates you because it seems unfair to you...

Except here’s the thing: life isn’t a game and there are no rules that anyone else, or the universe itself for that matter, are obligated to adhere to. There is only you.

That is the ultimate level of acceptance. The realization that the only, the fucking only thing that you have even a modicum of control over is yourself. You keep behaving in ways that you expect to have specific outcomes when the reality of the situation is the outcomes are going to keep on coming out however they damn well please regardless of how sincerely you expect them to do otherwise.

You know what people in 12 step programs sometimes call expectations? We call them resentments under construction.

You desperately need to turn your head around and stop motivating your behavior around the outcomes that you hope to achieve and start motivating your behaviors around becoming the kind of person that you want to be, regardless of what the outcome ends up being.

That’s where healthy thinking lives iamtrash.

How did you end up in infidelity to begin with? Did you think it was a dangerous situation but as long as you played it right you could control the outcome? How’d that work out for you? What has been driving your journey post infidelity? Did you think if you got an A+ in reconciliation you would be able control how it turned out? That you’d get your happy ending? How’s that working out for you? What about all of this recent self flagellation here on the boards? Do you think that if you beat yourself up enough, if you exhibit sufficient self loathing, punish yourself enough, that the universe will ultimately decide that you have suffered enough and deserve a break? How’s that manifesting itself for you so far?

The universe doesn’t give two shits how badly you feel about things (or how good for that matter), it’s going to go on unfolding as it does regardless of what you do. Your BH doesn’t “owe” you a single thing regardless of how hard you try and how much you “want” it to be otherwise. You need to get your head around that simple fact.

You ever lived anywhere with rip currents? People who swim against the rip current fucking drown. People who go limp get pulled farther out to sea. The only solution is to swim parallel to the shore until you are out of the current. Think about that as your situation. What you are doing now is swimming against the current whilst simultaneously exhausting yourself even more by wasting your breath screaming out curses at the uncaring sea. Going limp would be falling back into your old self destructive behaviors.

Try swimming in a new direction for a while instead. Try being a better person just for the fucking sake of simply being a better person. It’s possible that the universe will go on serving you up shit sandwiches regardless, but at least you will have the consolation of knowing that you are finally controlling the one fucking thing that you actually can control. Your fucking self.

Do that for a while. Forget about outcomes. Forget about what you want to happen, and just focus on doing you. Being the best you that you can be. That doesn’t mean that you can’t care about the outcome. On the contrary, you can care desperately about the outcome.

You just can’t control it. So stop trying.

I’ll share another popular 12 step saying;

“Let go and let god”

Personally, as an atheist I’ve never really felt that one resonated with me. But then I heard another version of it that really hit home:

“Let go.. or get dragged”

Now that one? That one I can understand.

HT

beautiful post by Ht ^

Oh, no, no, no. I have been honest. I haven’t been continuing to lie. (A moot point in the aftermath of an affair.) I have not done all the right things. Not by a long shot. And I still don’t.

What was unfair is causing this trauma to someone else. Not the inability to control the outcome.

No. I don’t think that punishing myself will earn some sort of break. I think I just always anticipate a bad ending. Like I anticipated divorce long before it was even a reality. For no other reason than my personal sense of doom and the idea that nothing is forever. No one could love anyone forever, no one could really be happy with someone forever. Then someone showed up that did, and I self-sabotaged it.

I am in a place of mourning, despair, and anger. I am stuck and don’t know how to get out of it. That being said, your post is 100% right. And ultimately I know that’s what I need to do. There is nothing in what you said that isn’t true.

Maybe you can offer feedback to this though process. One thing you mentioned is a place I get stuck.

Focus on doing you.

Now, I know in the context in which you presented that, you mean focus on becoming healthy for yourself. That statement in itself is a spot where I find myself regressing. Focus on doing you.....wasn’t I doing that when I chose an affair, when I ruined my BH, when I broke my family? I spent a long time “doing me” in terms of being selfish. Now I feel somehow obligated to try and help my BH while at the same time knowing that I can’t and knowing I don’t do all the right things.

How does one learn to become healthy while at the same time feeling selfish for trying to be better? Now, do I believe BH and I can both be healthier apart? Absolutely. But there’s a part of me that fears, what if he gets better and I don’t? Or even worse, what if I get better and he doesn’t? I ruined him, and he will never be the same person again. I almost feel like I am trapped between two walls. One wall is feeling like I can’t feel better until he is. The other wall is my own despair, depression, pain, and desire to show I don’t want to quit. (During attempted R, he had told me I should never quit no matter how upset he was. No matter how much he wanted divorce. I know for a fact my mind won’t let go of that. I cannot just say ok and accept it while at the same time knowing I have to. And I know my BH said a lot of things depending on his feelings. That’s just the one that has really impacted my mind. It’s like my brain is saying “This isn’t healthy. Be better for yourself.” While my heart is saying, “You already quit on him and destroyed him. Why are you quitting again?”

Wow HoldingTogether. Your entire post smacked me right between the eyes. Amazing post. Especially this:

You know what people in 12 step programs sometimes call expectations? We call them resentments under construction

Holy shit is that accurate. Basically setting everyone up for failure in our eyes.

I think I just always anticipate a bad ending. Like I anticipated divorce long before it was even a reality. For no other reason than my personal sense of doom

I can relate to this a lot IAT. I've felt that way since I was a child. My negative beliefs would become my reality. Then it becomes a never ending cycle. I felt doom was inevitable, so I'd actually do things to cause said doom! Self sabotage is awful.

Can you think of things you may be currently doing that are fueling your negative beliefs?

Also I think most would agree it's perfectly acceptable to mourn the things you've lost. Take some time and grieve.

I think I just always anticipate a bad ending

This is just another form of trying to exercise control. Trying to mitigate the anticipated pain of a bad outcome by anticipating and expecting one in advance. Don’t get your hopes up and you can’t be hurt right? On the flip side though you never allow yourself to just be fucking happy.

and I self-sabotaged it.

Same. Fucking. Thing!

Avoid the hurt of someone rejecting or leaving you by rejecting and leaving them first. Trying to fucking control how shit ends! How’s about just enjoying being happy with someone in the moment and letting it last as long as it lasts?

How does one learn to become healthy while at the same time feeling selfish for trying to be better?

How in the world could trying to be a better person be selfish? You being a better person directly fucking benefits everyone who comes into contact with you. Can you not see how dysfunctional that thought is?

wasn’t I doing that when I chose an affair, when I ruined my BH, when I broke my family?

IAT, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that logically you understand that focusing on yourself to have an affair and focusing on yourself to heal aren't even on the same planet. It's like saying, "I was focusing on feeling better while I was an alcoholic binge eating burgers! How could I possibly feel better by eating healthy and doing yoga? What good will that do?" In a small way, there is a slight similarity. You pre-A still had all of the same problems and faults. You chose a damaging and unhealthy way to attempt and "fix" them. The you today still has some of those same problems and faults. But the you of today can choose to solve them in a healthy way. It won't be anywhere near as fun and exciting to work on yourself but it will be exponentially more rewarding and those gains will echo throughout the rest of your life to come. It will be the difference between whether you survive and eventually thrive and whether you crash and burn post D.

Like I said - I don't really believe that you think having an A and self focused healing have anything to do with each other but I can understand why you're asking the question. It's one of the little lies we tell ourselves much like justifications for the A. You KNOW you have to focus on yourself in order to heal and become a better person but that's hard. In doing so, you will have to let go of the outcome of your marriage. If you take too long focusing on yourself, you might be afraid of missing out on some chance of R by not trying to help your BH along or not being "tuned in" enough to his journey. So your brain starts to ruminate and draw conclusions that sort of make sense as a way to justify doing what you want to do vs doing what you should do. All the more reason to hit the self help books and throw yourself deeper into IC.

Speaking of IC - you've been in it for a while, right? This is where you can learn the places to focus on. What is your IC floating as stuff you can work on? Codependency? Struggling with controlling others? Issues with anger? Don't be afraid to ask your IC for book and podcast recommendations. If your IC said to journal, start journaling even if you're bad at it and it feels unnatural. It gets easier. Find a new hobby. Hit up the gym more. Go to a yoga class if you want to. Do something FOR yourself that isn't BH or kid related and is low risk for drama. This is a marathon, not a sprint, so stick with it and give it time before you determine it's not working.

Now, I know in the context in which you presented that, you mean focus on becoming healthy for yourself. That statement in itself is a spot where I find myself regressing. Focus on doing you.....wasn’t I doing that when I chose an affair, when I ruined my BH, when I broke my family? I spent a long time “doing me” in terms of being selfish. Now I feel somehow obligated to try and help my BH while at the same time knowing that I can’t and knowing I don’t do all the right things.

Focusing on doing you doesn’t necessarily mean focusing solely on your own wants and desires. That’s not “doing you”. That’s gratifying your base lizard brain.

“Doing you” is about focusing on the work in progress that is you . It’s about focusing on being the kind of person that you want to be. So, unless the kind of person that you want to be is a person that hurts other people you weren’t focused on “Doing you” during your affair. There is no aspect of betraying another human being that adds to or improves anything about you as a person. If anything it does the exact opposite.

And again, you don’t need to stop caring about the outcome. You don’t need to stop working toward the outcome that you want.

You just need to let go of the idea that you can control the fucking outcome!

All of this wailing and gnashing of teeth is evidence that you are unable (so far at least) to let go of the idea that you can control the outcome.

People that understand that they cannot control the outcome still work toward goals, they still strive, they still reach for the things that they want in life....

What they don’t do though, is waste all of their precious time and energy bemoaning their fate and castigating themselves for failing.

Rather, they accept that their past behavior is something that they cannot change. and try to have the courage to change the thing that they can change: their future behavior.

You screwed the pooch. Nothing you say, nothing you do, no matter how badly you feel about it, no matter how you want to “fix” it; you can’t unfuck that pooch.

You can however, try to stop screwing any pooches going forward.

If you can manage to do that? Maybe things will get better, maybe they will get worse. There are no guarantees in life. But at least you can be somewhat at peace with the knowledge that, while you might have been at real fucking shitheal in the past, at the very least you are getting better going forward.

The fact that you continue to struggle so much is all the demonstration needed that you are not at fucking peace.

Because, to put it simply, you are unable to accept the things that you cannot change, and you lack the courage to change the things you can.

So maybe start with that, try changing that for a start.

The fact that you continue to struggle so much is all the demonstration needed that you are not at fucking peace.

Because, to put it simply, you are unable to accept the things that you cannot change, and you lack the courage to change the things you can.

100% agree

You KNOW you have to focus on yourself in order to heal and become a better person but that's hard. In doing so, you will have to let go of the outcome of your marriage. If you take too long focusing on yourself, you might be afraid of missing out on some chance of R by not trying to help your BH along or not being "tuned in" enough to his journey. So your brain starts to ruminate and draw conclusions that sort of make sense as a way to justify doing what you want to do vs doing what you should do. All the more reason to hit the self help books and throw yourself deeper into IC.

There’s that letting go of the outcome again. I keep telling myself I am. I know I’m not. I need to get control of my pain if I’m every going to learn to do this. Pain fuels my anger in every aspect of my life.

Speaking of IC - you've been in it for a while, right? This is where you can learn the places to focus on. What is your IC floating as stuff you can work on? Codependency? Struggling with controlling others? Issues with anger?

--Acceptance of what I did. Learning forgiveness and self forgiveness. Open communication. Setting boundaries for myself and others. (Boundaries would have stopped the affair before it started.) Tons of codependency and anger. Learning to say no. More anger. Who am I kidding? All the anger.

If your IC said to journal, start journaling even if you're bad at it and it feels unnatural. It gets easier.

-I finally started doing this. I’ve noticed I am much better at not discussing my feelings with BH when I do this. When I don’t journal for a day or two, I get that text word vomit which in neither productive or helpful.

Find a new hobby. Hit up the gym more. Go to a yoga class if you want to. Do something FOR yourself that isn't BH or kid related and is low risk for drama. This is a marathon, not a sprint, so stick with it and give it time before you determine it's not working.

-My IC asks me every week what I did for myself. And usually it’s nothing. Even when the opportunity comes up, I don’t. Stubborn. My own fault. I’ve been trying to take up some new hobbies and rediscover some old ones. It’ll get easier once we have a set routine with custody. Things are kind of all over sharing time with the kids. It’ll get easier once we are more established as separated and have our own spaces and time with them. I don’t know how to enjoy life without my kids very well. (Again, done to myself.) First time I left while he had the kids, I got my first haircut in years. The same day, I felt great. On cloud 9. The next day I felt the exact opposite. I don’t know how you get ahold of these conflicting feelings and attitudes.

I don’t know how you get ahold of these conflicting feelings and attitudes.

Time and practice. Like I said, don't expect to really see any results for a few months but 6 months in, 1 year in, and you'll see lots of progress towards peace and acceptance. Perhaps even some happiness sprinkled in.

You're right. It will start once you're more established in separation.

Or even worse, what if I get better and he doesn’t? I ruined him, and he will never be the same person again.

I'm a BS. Yeah that shit happened. And I had zero say in that. For better or worse that is part of my story now. As a BS, I can either choose to stay here and stay stuck in a poor-me-ws-hurt-me-so-bad mindset OR I can choose to accept that this is part of my history now and I can learn from it and change my own course.

Point being, your BH is responsible for his own healing. If he chooses not to do so that sucks and it's sad, but you can't do anything about that now. And it isn't fair at all but no one ever said life was.

You focus on you. You focus on making choices for you that move you closer to who you want to be. You cheated and that's a bad page to have in your book, but it is only A page in A book in the whole library that is your life. You don't have to let it define everything in your existence, and really imho you shouldn't let it. Everyone is a collection of good and bad, so you're not unique in that regard. Let that be your rock bottom so you have no way to go but up.

I’m going to second the the great posts from HT. He goes right to the core issues with great insight.

I also wanted to add that I see a lot of my EX wife in you. She would read here about WS who did nothing to facilitate reconciliation, yet their BS was doing everything they could to keep the marriage together. She couldn’t understand how she could be wanting it so much, yet I didn’t.

I think it has to be frustrating when a WS sees a clear path to getting their marriage and love back, but they fail to recognize that the path the BS sees isn’t a nice paved one, but a thicket of weeds with snakes and alligators ready to kill them.

Bottom line, like in my case, infidelity can just be a dealbreaker. I believe our marriage was pre destined to end the day she slept with him the second time as I think I could have gotten over a one time thing. But it’s like a movie, sometimes it just has to play out. For us it took 5 years but the ending was written way back that second day.

As HT said, let go of the outcome. Become the best person you can, and live a good life. I know it’s hard doing that carrying around the guilt. My EX to this day has been stuck and her life is a train wreck. Still, she deserves happiness, even if it’s not with me.

Who knows, maybe the more peaceful IAT will start to become appealing to him again.

Everyone wants the fairy tale ending which is all is forgiven and you go into the sunset holding hands. But you can still have a different fairy tale ending with a happier and more content IAT

@Iamtrash HT puts it out there excellently.

You're in the same spot as my wife.

She had a mental breakdown during a horribly emotional trauma.

She described her affair as using sex to cut herself, as a child sexual abuse survivor.

This was also an act of self-sabotage, I know her longer and I tell her she "goes dark a lot".

Where everything is just waiting to implode and she gets on a path to find the darkness.

I tell her not to be so controlling and she gets stuck in rhetoric meaning instead of getting what I'm saying, she goes "ohh I'm not controlling it anymore, I'm ready for any outcome".

(She's not) she's staring in the barrel of a shotgun and dramatically getting on her knees. It's just the final step of the same behaviour.

To an extent I think that even if like my wife, you find yourself being able to be vulnerable with just one person your husband.

You will be stuck in that shadow part of yourself, screaming in the back of your head, waiting to be dumped, discarded like trash.

Get to a place you are good enough, period.

Look at the most horrible betrayals in your own life, or neglect, and see what you are trying to protect yourself from.

My wife went into reptile brain mode in a period of trauma, while she cheated on me, she kept telling me she was afraid I would be very controlling over her several times, while I wasn't even close.

She was playing out her worst trauma of her life so far (groomed), during the newer worst trauma of her life (loss of a close relative).

My wife spent most of her life trying to control people by pleasing them, proving her worthiness so to speak.

Instead of being a relaxed person. Whenever things were great between us she would carry her dark other around and get snippy, this I always described to her as "you have no chill".

She's always waiting for the axe to land on her neck, and the longer it doesn't happen it's like a ramping up anxiety.

Because at some point there isn't anything to please, she needed conflict and stress to have reconciliation, a fix to see I was staying.

She got that easily because her ego is incredibly fragile and everything has a direct route to validating she's not enough, not good enough, a piece of shit.

Seeing how much you can push someones buttons to know how much they will take from you is/was a part of that.

From cheating, to the aftermath, there are many many ways to validate that fix of "he/she" loves me enough.

Instead of being truly vulnerable, and letting go of outcomes, which isn't neglect or lack of caring, it's not one or the other you see.

You caring about yourself can go along with loving your ex in a healthy capacity where you don't monitor his perception of you like a doctor with a patient chart.

P.S. (If) You're constantly managing and dampening perceived betrayal and incoming pain.

As a BS I can tell you, this negativity and lack of trust is exhausting.

That alone and seeing that spiral in your WS as a BS, while not being able to label it ourselves until much later can be enough to make us walk.

It's painful to be dealing with someone that loves you while they try to control you and don't trust you.

So the whole approach to trying to make things better can become toxic, and felt as much by a BS without getting it.

He may have been like me, and looking for those wonderful moments you let your guard down, and then you feed him those moments like a reward after that becomes an established pattern.

In that sense, trauma bonding right after the affair is the ultimate reward for a WS and the ultimate high of confirmation and dopamine response sometimes referred to as "ego kibbles".

The point is, these validation cycles go so deep, it's often unconscious, it's super toxic, and it adapts like a damn bacteria.

I'm glad my wife understands it's happening but she's at the start of figuring it out, and I hope you got a little bit out of showing you how it works for us.

In the end you get a BS that feels that everything that happened to them/is being done to them stays within a circle, a coral, of a manipulative behaviour WS themselves don't understand.

As long as you're stuck in a validation cycle, it's felt as an extension of the initial abuse, because it is, and neither of you may get that.

BS don't see it, but they feel they're being controlled even when the WS is trying so damn hard it's the way they do it the approach, in my marriage I called this "everything is always about you in the end" (and she has yet to get that fully).

In the attempt to never be abused again, WS end up abusing constantly, controlling is just that, it's just a lot more subtle and while it may not come from conscious aggression, it still comes from the darker emotions.

Another P.S. This may be recognisable. If I ask my wife an emotion based question, like "how did you feel about this chapter in your life". The times she just answers it in a natural flowing manner are so rare it's unreal.

When they do happen, they're often rehearsed things she told herself that upon investigation are total bullshit.

It's usually met with "ehhhhhh, I don't know it was a long time ago" otherwise.

There's so much that goes into managing outcomes, and it includes gaslighting yourself and others to the point WS don't know who the hell they are just to not look at themselves.

Self ownership is laughably lacking in WS in general in the gallows humor sense. Turning into a rant, anyway, peace

[This message edited by Derpmeister at 9:20 AM, April 18th (Sunday)]

I was a BH and read your post and I really feel bad for you. I usually do not feel sorry for a WS but I have to admit it is sad when a marriage and family are destroyed. So know that you have been heard.

My XW had a short Affair with her boss. Guy was very wealthy but not an attractive person at all. We had a good marriage and all of a sudden this guy talked her into a few rolls in nice resorts. I consider myself to be a very forgiving person but not about a person screwing my wife. That is a bridge too far that I will not cross. So when I found out I stopped talking to her and filed for divorce and sold out house.

For me I couldn’t forgive the sex. Men and women are so different and the sex thing is very difficult for men to overcome. I didn’t want to always be wondering if she was fondly thinking about the OM. Wondering if he was better in bed than me. Wondering if he had a bigger manhood if she enjoyed it more. Those were all things that went through my head and I just can’t forgive that. Not all of us can just go back like nothing happened. Her loyalty meant everything to me and so there was no going back. The sad part is he was not better in bed and he didn’t have a big dick. My wife and his wife confirmed that to me but it didn’t help me at all.

My XW almost ended her life at one point and that changed my ability to forgive her. I had to forgive her and now we are good with each other although we divorced. The sad thing in all of this is the old saying “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.” There is just no way that I could have stayed knowing what she did. Some of us are just like that even though we are actually forgiving people.

I hear your pain in your posts and I hope things get better for you. Nothing I will say will ease your pain but the first thing you will need to do is try and forgive yourself. And start to put your life together at some point for your family. The part that hurts the most is you falling for your Husband after your affair.

Best of luck in your search for happiness.

I completely understand everything you are saying. I was jealous of every couple on here who are/were working on R. I was even jealous of you. I too had to stay off of this forum for a bit because it would do nothing but enrage me and make me so depressed that I wasn't in R but someone who had multiple affairs or someone who left the BS for the OP still had a spouse who wanted to reconcile and they worked on it. I mentioned this a lot to my therapist, and she would always say "you have no idea what's going on behind their closed door." And being jealous isn't something I want to feel. I wanted to feel happy for all of you, but my own selfishness was stopping that.

. But I’m supposed to watch him move on and be ok seeing that for the rest of my life? Nope. I know I’m not that strong. Strong people don’t cheat.

You'll find a way for your kids. You want your kids to have a dad who is happy, even if that means he's happy with someone else. It will absolutely suck and hurt in a horrible way. Learning that he is going on dates and being with other woman, or even seeing it with your own eyes or hearing your child talk about it, will feel like someone is slowly ripping your heart out of your chest. And I know it's hypocritical to feel that way since we are the reason, but it will still fucking hurt. All the work you're doing on yourself will help you find a way to be strong when that day comes.

HT is right, the universe doesn't give two shits how badly or how good you feel about things. It doesn't revolve around us. We are not the center of the universe. We are just tiny specs living in it. You can do absolutely every single thing right, but that doesn't mean someone else has to agree with you. Somehow we have to find a way to be ok with not always getting it right in someone else's eyes or not being everyone's favorite cup of tea. This past year, I've gotten better with that, but I can absolutely still use work.

Trying to mitigate the anticipated pain of a bad outcome by anticipating and expecting one in advance. Don’t get your hopes up and you can’t be hurt right? On the flip side though you never allow yourself to just be fucking happy.

Avoid the hurt of someone rejecting or leaving you by rejecting and leaving them first. Trying to fucking control how shit ends! How’s about just enjoying being happy with someone in the moment and letting it last as long as it lasts?

Again, HT has said it perfectly. I too felt that I was self-sabotaging everytime I would bring up a topic after N and I had a good moment. I would even picture it in my head as I was typing, and yet my finger would still hit send. So I stopped hitting send. That didn't work out either because then it left me being quiet and not sharing/being vulnerable/authentic. I was damned if I do (in my own head) and damned if I don't. Lately, I have gotten better with that as well. Even though I still picture the self-sabotage coming, I still hit send. If it blows up in my face, so be it. At least I shared and opened up.

As for the last sentence in the quote above, I fully agree with HT. I know I can only speak from a wayward point of view so it's easier for me, but don't stop yourself from enjoying the small moments. Whatever small moments they may be, don't allow yourself to sabotage those. Find a way to push through and enjoy them.

I'm new to this forum but have been on the Reddit forums for quite awhile.

Full disclosure I was a BH, now divorced.

I've been following your story and I feel your pain through your posts. I'm not going to give my opinion here because you have been receiving mostly good advice and you seem to know what is good and what isn't.

Your story is truly heartbreaking and I hope you and your BH can find peace eventually.