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Back to day one really? What kind of psychopath is she???

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 Gemmy (original poster member #86765) posted at 5:05 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

I genuinely do not know how much more of this I can survive. This weekend brought another D-Day.

It wasn’t just another revelation; it was an absolute slaughter of my reality. A total mutilation of my own past. And the worst part isn’t even the new information, as devastating as it is it’s what this represents.

A whole year of me begging, pleading, and bleeding out on the floor in front of the person who holds the answers to my own life, only to find out she was still twisting the knife.
​
For fourteen years, my wife kept two long-term emotional and physical affairs a secret. The first one started before we were even married. For the last 365 days of this living hell, she looked me in the eye and swore that the sex with AP1 ended before our wedding day, only emotional support for six months after. I asked her specifically. Repeatedly. In every single way a broken man can ask a question. And she swore to it. It was the one fixed point I had left, the one tiny piece of ground I thought I could stand on.

​This weekend, she admitted it was a lie.

​She was sleeping with him after we said our vows. She says it carried into December, but that it ended before Christmas.

Another definitive statement.

Another line drawn in the sand.

Another arbitrary date I am apparently just supposed to swallow as gospel, right after the last one was exposed as a complete fabrication.
​
But there is something else about December. Something she didn’t even think was necessary to bring up until I pointed it out to her.
​
We were actively trying to conceive our first child during that time.
​
I cannot breathe when I put those two pieces of reality together. While I was looking forward to becoming a father, while I was living what I thought were the most beautiful, hopeful days of my entire life, dreaming of our family, my new wife was spreading her legs for someone else. I was completely oblivious to the grotesque reality playing out right behind my back.
​
When I pointed out that we were trying for a baby during this exact period, her response knocked the wind out of me completely.
​"That's why I didn't tell you. I knew you would think AP1 might be the father. He had a vasectomy, you know."

​Read that again. Are you fucking kidding me.
​
She knew. She knew exactly what was at stake. She knew we were trying to create a life, and she played God with mine. Instead of giving me the basic human dignity to know the circumstances under which we were making a family, she decided for me. I asked if she had actually seen his medical records. Because apparently, I am supposed to find peace in the secondhand word of the man who was fucking my wife.
​
Now, I am the one doing the math. I’ve been staring at the dates until I feel sick. The ultrasound established the due date as October 26, which puts conception around the beginning of February. I know that if the affair actually ended in December, the math doesn’t add up to him.
​But I no longer know when December actually ended.

​For a year, she told me it ended before the wedding. That was a lie. Now it’s Christmas. Why should I believe that? How do I know it didn’t bleed into January? Or February? How do I know this isn’t just another calculated crumb she tossed out to shut me up, answering the immediate question while burying whatever she is still too much of a coward to confess?
​
I am not saying AP1 is the father, I'mnot sure he's not. I have no proof of that, dna tests ordered for all. What I am saying is that I am now forced to examine it because her timeline is entirely bankrupt. I am sitting here calculating conception dates for my own children.

The psychological torment of that is sickening. It hollows you out.
​
For the past year, I have been trying to rebuild my sanity from fragments of truth handed to me by the very person who shattered it. Every new admission is a wrecking ball. Every contradiction poisons a memory I had already bled to process. Anniversaries, photos, smiles—all of it is infected by a ghost I never knew was in the room. And now, the very genesis of my family is rotting before my eyes.
​
What makes this unbearable is that these aren't just sins from fifteen years ago. She looked into my eyes yesterday, last week, last month, watched me sob, watched my entire world collapse nd she kept lying.
​I cannot reconcile that.
​
I need to explain the sheer, suffocating weight of what I have already swallowed, because I do not understand how we could possibly be here again. I survived discovering two long-term affairs. Emotional and physical betrayal spanning fourteen years. One rotting the roots of our marriage before it began, the other tearing through it after we had built a life and raised children. These weren’t momentary lapses. They were double lives. They required intense deception, manipulation, and the deliberate theft of my agency.
​
I survived knowing she brought another man into our marriage before it started, at it for fuck sakes. I survived finding out a "friend" was actually her lover. I survived the declarations of love, the absolute humiliation of knowing people around us knew the joke of my marriage while I was the clueless, trusting idiot fucking husband.
​
I have survived staggered disclosures, trickle-truth, shifting timelines, and admissions that only came when I forced her hand with evidence. I have questioned my sanity, my worth, and my grip on reality. This trauma has infected my sleep, my work, and my ability to feel even a single second of peace.
​
And through all of that, I still offered her the gift of reconciliation.
​
I don't think she has any concept of what that cost me. I offered her grace that I genuinely believe very few human beings would ever be capable of offering. Not because I’m morally superior. I completely understand anyone who walks away from a fraction of this.
​
But I stayed. I opened my chest to the person who had already shredded my heart. I offered to wade through the humiliation, the mind movies, the utter loss of myself, to build something from the ashes. I allowed myself to be vulnerable when every instinct I possessed was screaming at me to run for my life.
​
I offered to try the impossible. And I asked for exactly one thing in return.
​
The truth.
​
Not a guarantee I would stay. Not a promise of forgiveness. Just the ugly, naked truth. I begged her to stop protecting herself at the expense of my sanity.
​
And after everything I had already absorbed, she couldn't even give me that. She watched me drown, and she withheld the lifeboat.
​
What the fuck was the point of offering her the most agonizing grace a human being can offer if she was just going to keep doing the exact same thing that destroyed us in the first place? I wasn't asking for perfection. I wasn't asking her to magically erase the past. I was asking her to respect me enough to stop lying.
​
And now, I am left wondering if she ever understood the magnitude of my gift, or if she just mistook my willingness to stay as a sign that I would act as a sponge for whatever else she decided to slowly leak out over time.

​I don’t know the answer, but the question is breaking my heart.
​I have read every book. I know about shame, compartmentalization, self-preservation, and the fog. But how do you look at someone you claim to love, watch them disintegrate into ash because of your lies, and keep lying? How do you look into the eyes of a man begging for the truth and deny something you know is real?
​It is eating me alive.I am truly broken today.
​
I am not asking her to change what she did fifteen years ago. I am asking her to stop changing what she tells me today.
​
This weekend, my composure shattered. The anger was blinding, but underneath it was pure, primal grief. It was a profound, suffocating helplessness. I was thrown violently back to October 18, 2025, but this time I was carrying an entire year's worth of fresh trauma on my back.
​I told her she has two weeks to write out the entire timeline. Every affair. Every detail. Every ugly thing she thinks will destroy me. I can accept that a fifteen year old memory isn't perfect. But I will not survive another calculated lie presented as an absolute fact.

​But the terrifying reality is, how will I even know?
​How do I spot a lie from a master liar? How do I know what’s missing when the puzzle is completely blank? How many times can you be told "that's everything" before the words lose all meaning entirely?
​
I am angry beyond words, but I am also terrified. I am terrified of what I might still find. I am terrified of what I will never know.
​
I look at my kids, and my love for them is untouchable. They are my entire world. But having to look at them and even for a second wonder about the shadows surrounding their conception fuckit breaks me in a way I cannot put into words. Infidelity doesn't just nuke your present. It reaches backward in time and steals your past. You remember being so happy, so excited, so in love, only to find out you were entirely alone in that reality.
​
I am so bone tired. I am tired of discovering my life is a fiction. I am tired of having to interrogate my own wife just to get a grip on my own reality. I don't know what else is in the grave. I don't know if December is the truth.
​
What I do know is that I have never felt more lost in my own life.
​
The affairs happened years ago. But she chose to keep lying to me yesterday. And somehow, that is the blade that cuts the deepest.

Sorry for screaming into the void but how much can one man take really? I must have been a terrible person in my last life to have all of this shit reverberate over and over and over.

Betrayed but trying to stand for the family. ME: 45 M DDay Oct.18 2025- April 2026 Two LTA EA/PA first 2 years second 1 year - 14 years apart.

posts: 205   ·   registered: Nov. 21st, 2025   ·   location: Ontario Canada
id 8909170
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Itiswhatitis000 ( member #86274) posted at 5:35 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

It's heart breaking to witness your pain. I wish I could tell you that you somehow earned it in a previous life, because it would at least bring you some sense of control or justice and make it easier to accept what was done to you, but the only way you "earned" it was trusting a deeply fraudulent person. I assume that this is not something that you are interested in, but it's woth remembering that there is a whole world outside of this rabbit hole that you are currently trying to find the bottom of.

[This message edited by Itiswhatitis000 at 5:37 PM, Monday, November 9th]

posts: 106   ·   registered: Jun. 18th, 2025
id 8909173
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mfrank421 ( new member #86507) posted at 5:50 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

I have followed your story closely, and I'm so sorry you are still actively in a TT situation. At this point, what could another offer of R really provide for you except prolonging this torture you are enduring. It's time to end this cycle for the sake of your health and that of your family. What is a written timeline going to provide you (and why would you possibly believe any of it?) It's time for space and healing my friend. Best of luck.

posts: 6   ·   registered: Aug. 29th, 2025   ·   location: Massachusetts
id 8909174
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DRSOOLERS ( member #85508) posted at 5:51 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

I can’t wait to see how the clandestine pro-R crowd spins this one. She was making such strides, after all. Pffft.

Firstly, I'm angry for you. I'm angry it's got to this point. I'm angry she's the person I've always thought she was from reading between your words. I'm angry I couldn't convince you to get out earlier on, I knew more pain was coming your way. For that I'm sorry. I'm deeply sorry and will kick myself on that point for a long while. I'm also angry at all the other users who chose to see themselves or their partners in your wayward and provided you false hope. I'm just angry.

Next ​I would recommend a DNA test for your sanity, and I believe it's your moral duty to ensure your kids are aware of who their biological father is.

​How did you even pry this information out of her? More importantly, how could you possibly believe a single word coming out of her mouth at this point? Fool me once...

​You’ve already lowered your standards to subterranean levels just to try and force a way forward with this woman. Given the scale of what she’d already done, rebuilding trust was always an impossible task—but now that she’s proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she is fundamentally incapable of telling the truth? I don't even know what else to say.

​If this latest revelation doesn't make your next steps crystal clear, nothing ever will.

​Get out. Please. You deserve so much better. That goes without saying... She's poison.

​

​I am angry beyond words, but I am also terrified. I am terrified of what I might still find. I am terrified of what I will never know.

​

​I'm so sorry for what you've been through, but you will only start to heal and live a happy life when she's firmly in the rearview mirror. Then all the shit she's done—and whatever is yet to come out—won't matter.

​If I found out my ex had cheated another two times previously, I'd just laugh to myself and thank God I moved on. You can have that too

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 6:10 PM, Monday, November 9th]

2017: Betrayed

2026: Happily married to a faithful partner in a relationship untouched by betrayal. Wishing you the same peace and happiness.

posts: 567   ·   registered: Nov. 27th, 2024   ·   location: Newcastle upon Tyne
id 8909175
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 Gemmy (original poster member #86765) posted at 6:02 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

I am so broken today.

Betrayed but trying to stand for the family. ME: 45 M DDay Oct.18 2025- April 2026 Two LTA EA/PA first 2 years second 1 year - 14 years apart.

posts: 205   ·   registered: Nov. 21st, 2025   ·   location: Ontario Canada
id 8909176
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gr8ful ( member #58180) posted at 6:03 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

Gemmy, is there no limit for what you will tolerate? I can’t help but think your "wife" thinks you’re going to stay no matter what. Perhaps her TT strategy is paying off? After all, you’re still with her. It’s what’s best for her. That it’s beyond torturous for you is immaterial.

Assuming R is your only path forward for you, for the love of man, have her sit for a polygraph to confirm what she writes out is the FULL and COMPLETE truth to the absolute best of her memory. Assuming you stay, I’d deeply advise ongoing polygraphs every 6 months or so for her.

posts: 836   ·   registered: Apr. 6th, 2017
id 8909177
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 Gemmy (original poster member #86765) posted at 6:06 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

I believe this was the proverbial straw to be honest.

Betrayed but trying to stand for the family. ME: 45 M DDay Oct.18 2025- April 2026 Two LTA EA/PA first 2 years second 1 year - 14 years apart.

posts: 205   ·   registered: Nov. 21st, 2025   ·   location: Ontario Canada
id 8909178
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DRSOOLERS ( member #85508) posted at 6:12 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

@Gwmmy

It certainly should be.

You are in my thoughts, I know you can claw your life back on track once you detach from her. You may not see it now but you have years of happiness ahead.

2017: Betrayed

2026: Happily married to a faithful partner in a relationship untouched by betrayal. Wishing you the same peace and happiness.

posts: 567   ·   registered: Nov. 27th, 2024   ·   location: Newcastle upon Tyne
id 8909179
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Itiswhatitis000 ( member #86274) posted at 6:21 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

I am so broken today.

We hear you man. I really wish, that it starts to go upwards for you.

posts: 106   ·   registered: Jun. 18th, 2025
id 8909180
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NukeZombie ( member #83543) posted at 8:19 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

If I recall correctly, the divorce papers should have been submitted to the court for signing on October 28, correct? I would advise contacting your attorney to request a delay until the paternity issues have been resolved. You may also need to learn if the paternity tests you've ordered will be deemed admissible in your divorce case... might as well use the correct testing facility from the beginning.

After a year of hell, she still can't give you the truth? Respectfully, Gemmy, your stbxWW is trash. Trash belongs on the streets not in your home. Sometimes, it really is just that simple.

posts: 205   ·   registered: Jun. 29th, 2023
id 8909183
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Letmebefrank ( member #86994) posted at 8:20 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

So many people have said "I could have forgiven the cheating, but it was all the lies and bullshit after DDay that I can’t get past."

I’m so sorry Gemmy. Getting reset to Day 1 at this stage is such a cruelty.

posts: 435   ·   registered: Jan. 31st, 2026
id 8909184
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justsendit ( new member #84666) posted at 11:27 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

You are in an abusive relationship Gemmy. I'm so sorry.

posts: 47   ·   registered: Mar. 29th, 2024
id 8909192
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The1stWife ( Guide #58832) posted at 11:37 PM on Monday, November 9th, 2026

She’s never been the person she pretended to be. And I understand your pain and feeling like you’ve been stabbed in the back over and over. By the person you trusted the most.

Once you get past the pain and devastation you need to put yourself first and figure out where you go from here.

I would ignore the snarky comment from Soolers about the pro-Reconciliation people here at SI. There are differing opinions here about Reconciliation. And sometimes R just won’t work and other times it can surprise you that it actually works out with people who don’t have a good track record.

I hope you have a good support network and professional counseling. Focus on your own healing. Put yourself first for now.

Don’t make any decisions until you are ready. You should know you may decide to R but decide a year or two from now that the relationship no longer works for a whole host of reasons. It is OK to change your mind and decide to D. You are not obligated to remain in an unhealthy or unhappy relationship.

Please keep posting here. We understand your pain and devastation.

Survived two affairs and brink of Divorce. Happily reconciled. 12 years out from Dday. Reconciliation takes two committed people to be successful.

posts: 15879   ·   registered: May. 19th, 2017
id 8909195
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torso1500 ( member #83345) posted at 12:41 AM on Tuesday, November 10th, 2026

I can’t wait to see how the clandestine pro-R crowd spins this one. She was making such strides, after all. Pffft.

Seriously, too soon. This is a very raw update from a person who is HURTING, and you open by making a challenge to everybody else you continuously debate with here. Also, it can come across like you're leveraging whether Gemmy could feel they are perceived as closer to your outgroup or whatever in your debate. If you are on board with helping real people here, you would not have said that in that way on this post. This quote is a pretty succinct demonstration of why people keep making insinuations about your motives here.

***

Gemmy, it is OK to be done. You are validated, your pain is validated!

posts: 105   ·   registered: May. 16th, 2023
id 8909197
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torso1500 ( member #83345) posted at 12:43 AM on Tuesday, November 10th, 2026

I can’t wait to see how the clandestine pro-R crowd spins this one. She was making such strides, after all. Pffft.

Seriously, too soon. This is a very raw update from a person who is HURTING, and you open by making a challenge to everybody else you continuously debate with here. Also, it can come across like you're leveraging whether Gemmy could feel they are perceived as closer to your outgroup or whatever in your debate. If you are on board with helping real people here, you would not have said that in that way on this post. This quote is a pretty succinct demonstration of why people keep making insinuations about your motives here.

***

Gemmy, it is OK to be done. You are validated, your pain is validated!

posts: 105   ·   registered: May. 16th, 2023
id 8909198
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InkHulk ( member #80400) posted at 3:35 AM on Tuesday, November 10th, 2026

You can get to a point, and it seems you are there and past it, that it doesn’t matter any more what they say because they have absolutely no credibility. The only thing you can trust are the absolutely horrible admissions, because who would make those up? But anything good, anything that might bring you peace, it’s all weightless, empty words.

For me, I know my ex’s A was at least 3 1/2 years, but I really have no faith that it wasn’t significantly longer. I have had some nagging doubts about my children’s paternity, but frankly they all look just like each other and a ton like me. Still, the thought of doing a DNA test sickens me, it’s such a perverse possibility.

I’m so sorry, Gemmy. You don’t have to be the strongest of all time, you can just be human, that is enough. Maybe go listen to "Hero", by Family of the Year.

Let me go
I don’t want to be your hero
I don’t want to be a big man
I just want to fight with everyone else

Your masquerade
I don’t want to be a part of your parade
Everyone deserve a chance to
Walk with everyone else


I can’t wait to see how the clandestine pro-R crowd spins this one. She was making such strides, after all. Pffft.

You are an insufferable ass.

People are more important than the relationships they are in.

posts: 2981   ·   registered: Jun. 28th, 2022
id 8909199
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WoodThrush2 ( member #85057) posted at 4:59 AM on Tuesday, November 10th, 2026

My Hurting Friend,

I again ask you to consider co-dependence as a root of why you are endeavoring to overlook a shattering of your relational reality.

Please consider this had never happened to you and your dear son one day found himself in a marriage with one who did exactly what your wife did to him. Think carefully ..what would you advise him.

One more point...I want you to realize something...although the reality of your marriage was not as you thought, you are absolutely free to hold onto the reality of your character and what you believed about love and marriage. You can hold onto that. And in fact, that can all be contained and given to someone who will appreciate it. 🙏

posts: 513   ·   registered: Jul. 29th, 2024   ·   location: New York
id 8909201
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NoThanksForTheMemories ( member #83278) posted at 5:55 AM on Tuesday, November 10th, 2026

How many times can you be told "that's everything" before the words lose all meaning entirely?

In my case it was 5 times. The fifth time I heard (about 10 months after dday1), I laughed in his face, and he had the gall to look *hurt*. Guess what? A few days later, another confession, another, "I swear this is everything."

Gemmy, I feel your pain. Been there, done that, though being female, I don't have the paternity question, and I can only imagine how awful that is. I did have to confront the possibility that AP was pregnant for a couple months.

I stayed for another 1.5 years after the last thing WX confessed, but I became a hollowed out shell of myself. I think you're more than halfway there already. It's okay to say enough is enough. It's okay to stay married and not be trying to reconcile. It's okay to laugh in her face the next time she asks you to believe a single word that falls from her lips. Tell her to re-read the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, because that's the situation she has created with her trickle truths.

I wouldn't bother with a polygraph. I wouldn't bother asking her to write stuff down. My WX wrote lies into his written statement, which he admitted to months later. People who are desperate to save themselves at any cost, who have demonstrated their capacity to deceive, and who have done so repeatedly, are not going to suddenly turn over a new leaf. Even if she confesses all the "big things", you will find out smaller things later on. 15 years is a long time with a lot of little choices along the way, and those "small" things will each be another nail in the coffin of the life you thought you had.

I'm not saying you have to walk away. I've been feeling the pain of shared custody lately, and I do have some regrets about that, but at least stop trying to save that spark for her that you've been nurturing. It's okay to let go. You're going to hurt no matter what, but once you've worked on detaching, you'll heal faster.

DDay1 Nov 2022: WX admitted to a 3yr LTA with AP1.
DDay4 Sep 2023: WX confessed an EA from 2014 with AP2.
Married 25 years on DDay1.

Tried R for 2.5 years. Divorced Aug 2026.

posts: 767   ·   registered: May. 1st, 2023
id 8909202
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NoThanksForTheMemories ( member #83278) posted at 5:55 AM on Tuesday, November 10th, 2026

How many times can you be told "that's everything" before the words lose all meaning entirely?

In my case it was 5 times. The fifth time I heard (about 10 months after dday1), I laughed in his face, and he had the gall to look *hurt*. Guess what? A few days later, another confession, another, "I swear this is everything."

Gemmy, I feel your pain. Been there, done that, though being female, I don't have the paternity question, and I can only imagine how awful that is. I did have to confront the possibility that AP was pregnant for a couple months.

I stayed for another 1.5 years after the last thing WX confessed, but I became a hollowed out shell of myself. I think you're more than halfway there already. It's okay to say enough is enough. It's okay to stay married and not be trying to reconcile. It's okay to laugh in her face the next time she asks you to believe a single word that falls from her lips. Tell her to re-read the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, because that's the situation she has created with her trickle truths.

I wouldn't bother with a polygraph. I wouldn't bother asking her to write stuff down. My WX wrote lies into his written statement, which he admitted to months later. People who are desperate to save themselves at any cost, who have demonstrated their capacity to deceive, and who have done so repeatedly, are not going to suddenly turn over a new leaf. Even if she confesses all the "big things", you will find out smaller things later on. 15 years is a long time with a lot of little choices along the way, and those "small" things will each be another nail in the coffin of the life you thought you had.

I'm not saying you have to walk away. I've been feeling the pain of shared custody lately, and I do have some regrets about that, but at least stop trying to save that spark for her that you've been nurturing. It's okay to let go. You're going to hurt no matter what, but once you've worked on detaching, you'll heal faster.

DDay1 Nov 2022: WX admitted to a 3yr LTA with AP1.
DDay4 Sep 2023: WX confessed an EA from 2014 with AP2.
Married 25 years on DDay1.

Tried R for 2.5 years. Divorced Aug 2026.

posts: 767   ·   registered: May. 1st, 2023
id 8909203
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BackfromtheStorm ( member #86900) posted at 6:15 AM on Tuesday, November 10th, 2026

I know it sucks.

Even though it can be true she didn’t act and indulged in adultery and is "behaving", this is what I mean when I say that you can betray your partner being unfaithful in thoughts. It’s not adultery in action, but is still cheating, I know it hurts.

Someone mentioned her lack of empathy when she joked about your explaining her your feelings of being sexually abused by her unfaithfulness, others minimized it by showing support for her reaction.

I don’t think she completely lacks empathy brother, but it feels like she’s heavily shame driven, that trumps empathy and guilt by drowning those healthy feelings into the swirling sea of toxic shame.

She’s not a psychopath, but she is like a broken child who is taking the wheel of the adult to hide her wrongdoing and dodge consequences she fears.

And her "support group" is the established narrative that minimizes infidelity as a minor mischief, an exciting "fantasy vacation " claiming that it is Okay for a partner to feel sexual attraction to others as long as she refrain from not acting upon the impulses and indulge in adultery, that is good enough, is not infidelity.

Your support group is "just you" hearing your sexual and emotional abuse feelings invalidated by the same crowd, so your pain is minimized while the abuser is "validated" and the shame feeds on this and the ego who allowed it becomes stronger, while the human part of her that sees your pain and knows how evil and wrong those choices were, is pushed back in the fight against the "cheater ego" instead of raising up and taking that fucker down.

She is not a psycho, but she is broken, she has those character flaws that makes her craving constant validation to justify her existence. If that broken side gets fed constantly and has only you to reflect back the horrors of her choices, she is fighting an uphill battle against both her shame and the mainstream validation farming.

It’s easier for her to drop your pain rather than carrying that burden up to give help your wounded self to see some light and show she cares no matter what she did, and she regrets it.

That was her comfort zone for her entire life and it is difficult to leave for the unknown when you are afraid and you doubt your worth.

And you do love this woman, it’s obvious that you do, so you keep suffering.

You were into a better place, you were offering her a hand, to lift her up and having the option to stand on her own feet, by your side.

But she grabbed the hand and at the first confrontation of her darkness she takes refugee on the validation baseline, thus pulling you down and back into the abyss instead of raising. You drown back in hell while she takes comfort in the "safe space" of familiarity and shame soothing.

You knew the road is two step forward and one step backwards until she wins the shame, but you were set into climbing back to light, and you still hoped you could drag the woman you love out of the personal hell of her own making.

But until the shame drives it will be one forward and two backwards with your own hopes jerking you down when she pulls back towards validation and minimizing, and it’s quite a few times when this jerking doesn’t just stop your raise, but makes you roll downhill into the abyss you just crawled out from.

I feel you and you have been heard.

You need to accept it and put yourself first understand that the hand you offer is for her to take, but you won’t be pulling her up, she has to walk with you or watch you climb while she stagnates into the minimization and validation outposts.

You don’t have to refuse her catching up on the path of healing, you can’t change your love for her by will power. But you can’t lover her out her bubble of abuse apology where her shame finds soothing.

Only she can step out. And to walk that door she needs to accept the abuser her ego was, she needs to reject the shame and embrace her self worth, the only guard who can kick both those toxic traits that only fear consequences and strive to dodge them, to the grave.

Then and only then she can reach out and climb up to reach you, with the weight of guilt, but not the deadweight of shame and apology.

That’s what detachment from you and integration for her may look like.

I am not scolding you brother, I fucked up almost in the same way many times, our women are similar in their flaws. So I learned the hard way, and completely alone.

I feel you and besides the advice, just telling you have been heard.

You are welcome to send me a PM if you think I can help you. I respond when I can.

posts: 1229   ·   registered: Jan. 7th, 2026   ·   location: Poland
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