SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Clearly changing oneself can go negative or positive but either way people typically revamp themselves after an affair comes to light. I don’t mean only the betrayed but also the betrayer as well. Because of the challenging counsel that I have received here, I find myself asking; shouldn’t the result of our transformations that exist now, in this moment, verses what was in the past determine how I view and act towards my wife and she me?

I’ll be frank, for far too long I have lived and related to my wife with one foot sternly placed in the past and the other firmly placed in the current. In doing so, though I didn’t understand or consciously mean to I had one leg moving backwards the other leg forwards leaving me painfully split, stuck, living, dying, loving and unloving my wife depending on the time zone I was operating.

In an odd way, we have traded places and am I now the "unsafe" partner?

The bottom line is, if I want to live in the past then the kind thing for me to do is to divorce my wife. If I want to fully move into the future with her, which I do, then I need to embrace her as she is now, not then, allowing the ongoing, reconciling process to move ever forward.

Asterisk

That’s wisdom, there.

But, maybe easier said than done. Requires making yourself vulnerable again, and that’s scary, no?

Formerpeopleperson,

That’s wisdom, there.

A wisdom that was giving to me not created by me that I am attempting to understand and incorporate.

But, maybe easier said than done. Requires making yourself vulnerable again, and that’s scary, no?

Saying it does seem easier than doing it, and yet, is it? I can only answer for me, and what I do know is not doing it has not been an easy path to recirculate within. You are accurate, it is scary as heck! But not as nearly scary, as it has been, insisting on living between two opposing worlds. My being uneasy of what a new reality might bring comes with hope that it will not be what it was. Conversely, being fearful and hardening myself for protection from what may never happen again, can deny my wife and me a warm and intimate future we both deserve. Yes?

Asterisk

We are who we were, and were who we are. It's all the same. Always makes me think of that Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime."

At some point, I hope you and Mrs Asterisk can really talk about all of this.

And let's be honest here. You're not getting a divorce.

[This message edited by Unhinged at 2:49 PM, Friday, November 14th]