SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Anyone else remember only the bad history of their marriage? It feels like all of the little annoying moments and questionable ones have bubbled up in my memories to join the bad ones. I don’t even remember feeling comfortable, happy, confident or proud of my marriage aside from my kids. While she trying to erase evil her and her trashy actions, I seem to be subconsciously erasing anything that could be seen positively.

IMO, Gottman and Silver mention this in 7 Principles for making M work. My understanding is that couples - partners? - who remember the bad times when under stress are less likely to stay together than couples who spontaneously remember good times under stress.

My reco is to take note of these memories - don't force them into or out of your consciousness. Take your memories as evidence of what you want to do. I was annoyed that my anger was always interrupted, eventually, by memories of very good times. They made it impossible for me to stay angry even though I wanted to stay angry and I chose R.

If D is right for you, welcome the memories of anger at your WS. Or now that you know your spontaneous memories are unhappy, if you think you want R, follow Gottman and Silver (as I read them) and remember the good times - although your tagline implies there aren't many of them.

IOW, accept your memories. Accept yourself.

If you resent your spouse more than enjoy them, I’d say it’s time to move on.

A 9 year affair is very difficult to get past IF your cheating spouse is not all in - meaning your healing and happiness is not her priority.

I look back and think we had one horrible year - the rest were very good. But at dday2 I was prepared to D him b/c for once, I put myself first and decided not to stay with a cheating spouse who had no remorse and continued to cheat.

Maybe you now need to give yourself "permission" to D b/c this marriage no longer works. You tried your best but it’s time to acknowledge that you aren’t happy and have not been happy for a long time.

You deserve better. Your kids deserve a happy parent - not one who is middle of the road. I’m sure you are a great parent — but you could be a happy great parent.

I hope this helps you.

[This message edited by The1stWife at 10:53 PM, Friday, October 11th]

Yes! I mentioned this to my therapist actually. I said I was having a really hard time remembering anything good from our entire relationship (17 years), all I could remember was the bad stuff.

She said that’s perfectly normal when you’ve been betrayed by someone, like your brain is trying to protect you from the person. I don’t know how true that is or how to ‘fix’ that. I don’t really know your story but I am finding that as a little more time passes and I’m watching him make changes recently, there are some happier memories starting to creep back in.

Remembering only the bad memories could be a trauma response OR it could be that the marriage doesn't have many good memories.

In addition, an affair rips the blinders off. So behavior that you ignored or let slide back then now takes on a different meaning. It could be saying "this is who she is and always was, therefore, who she will always be."

Your tagline says 2 years of good marriage. That's not much to draw on (emotionally speaking) after a 9 year affair with a serial cheater.

Well, to be fair, infidelity DOES tend to rewrite the past. I’m one who found out about infidelity many years after the fact (although I had suspicions in real-time time but was lied to). For me, it makes the bad worse (she treated me like an after thought and was CHEATING TOO) and "taints the good". I found out I was getting cheated on during both pregnancies with our kids, multiple birthdays, Holidays and Anniversaries. Even when we were buying and moving into our dream house. I’m planning out the final chapter of our life together (a reward for all our hard work), she’s busy screwing and blowing a coworker.

So, yes, the "good" isn’t all that great when you are unwittingly living in infidelity the whole time. And the "not so good" is WAY fucking worse!

Yes and no for me. The memories of perhaps the last year before the A weren’t great. We were both unhappy and did not communicate this to each other. For the most part however I have good memories of our 13 year relationship and I think that is some of the reason I chose to stay and try to R ( that and WH is doing the work and showing true remorse).

If your bad memories out weigh the good then maybe it is time to consider leaving that marriage. IMO, affairs are hard enough to work through but could imagine even harder if you can’t remember enough good times to make the marriage work.

One very good piece of advice I have been given on SI is that in the early days of healing the only reason you talk/think about the marriage is to decide if it’s even worth saving and putting yourself though the grief that comes with healing from infidelity. 💚

This has started happening to me recently.

After DD this was my WH, he did the typical A fog thing where he had painted me and our relationship as all bad in his mind and that's how he told himself it was somehow justified to have an A . Early on I on the other hand was still struggling with how he could have done something so horrendous to me, to us, after all our beautiful years together. All I could see was the good and I couldn't wrap my head around how he didn't see any of that anymore.

But now, almost 2 years after DD, I struggle with remembering any of the positives. It's like I can't remember our history clearly any more? Like it's all hazy and unclear to me now. I doubt all my emotional memories. Feels very odd. I miss looking back on the good, I was always very good at that and I think it's what carried me through many different seasons over 20+ years (as the Gottmans describe). But now it's like I've lost it. I can't connect to how I used to feel about him, or us as a couple and I can't remember who I was or we were before DD. So instead of the A over time becoming more like a temporary glitch in our long story together as I had hoped, it's like the darkness of the A has swallowed everything with it, like a black hole.

I am divorced now but have very few good memories. What are good memories I now see as him having put on a fake persona. After D-Day in 2012 and then False R in 2014 I slowly started putting the puzzle pieces of my M together. Found out about other A's earlier on and additional A's I had no idea about or had suspicions about. The conclusion I had come to was that my whole M was a lie. Who I thought my XWS was... a lie. The diagnosis I got from his therapist that he was NPD made total sense and I was able to see the patterns of his behaviors clearly.

I had to rewrite the past because the past I thought I knew wasn't real.

[This message edited by crazyblindsided at 7:33 PM, Thursday, October 10th]

I try to remember this whenever I start a new journey down the memory rathole…

What’s even more significant than any concept or internal chatter that might occur at any given time is the assumed "story context" that’s constantly in the background of your self-experience. Notice that even without acknowledging its presence, there is an assumed concept and image of a "life" within which you live, and a "reality" and circumstance that surround you. Both are framed up as the backdrop of your story, and you could live your whole life within this context and never notice that, as much as any dream, it’s a work of imagination.

I am sorry you are going through this. From your tagline I would imagine it is not what you signed up for when you married and provided for your family.

I tried to have a positive view or story of the marriage with exwh. It got to the point where his actions and lack of empathy and remorse spoke for themselves.

Everyone has a different path but as I began to choose myself I began to save and heal myself I realize a negative story line was more accurate.