Mr++,
Here are some additional thoughts that might be helpful.
First, as faithfulman points out, no one is doing you any favors by framing some sort of requirement that we must be positive about this situation.
We don't have to be unduly negative either, but most of us here are far more interested in living in truth in our own daily lives after being betrayed, and in speaking and writing truth at all times given our finite frailty.
The truth can be painful. It can be "negative" insofar as it is not sugarcoated.
I'm not interested in adding to your pain, but I don't think I'd be helping by encouraging some sort of happy-clappy response to a woman lying to for three decades about her inability to remain faithful to you.
This idea that your WW's transgressions are simply in the past is not useful to you in my opinion. The idea that those of us who are following Orwell's dictum to engage in the "constant struggle to see what is front of one's nose" are being judgemental about your wife seems to fly in the face of common sense.
And to not understand and grapple with your present pain and confusion goes directly against the truth that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
If it were merely in the past you would not be here on SI in pain, seeking advice and perspective. It is not in the past. It is very much in the present.
Adultery is abuse. The reason you are feeling what you are feeling is because your primary, essential, healthy, normal moral emotions are asserting themselves, and causing cognitive dissonance in your cortex.
These normal emotions have now been documented by scientific research and they help form the basis of all human objective morality. They include things like revulsion, anger (healthy anger), grief, suspicion and of course the trauma you are now enduring.
To push these aside is a grave error. They will have their say. You must feel them and acknowledge them and listen to what they might be telling you. They are feelings that demand action of one kind or another. Burying them only insures they will come raging back to you later.
All of this must be reckoned with and it must be rooted out like a cancer or it will continue to metastasize.
It is not condemnatory to say these things. It is simply living in truth.
There's a famous essay by the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn called "Live Not By Lies" - in it, he lays out a plan for dissidents to simply stop cooperating with the culture of pervasive lies that suffused all of daily life in nearly every single moment under communist totalitarian rule.
By doing this simple act of refusing to participate in the nearly all encompassing culture of lying, he felt this would break the back of the Soviet Union.
He was right.
Among the dissident actions he encouraged:
*Will not henceforth write, sign, or print in any way a single phrase which in his opinion distorts the truth.
*Will not utter such a phrase neither in private conversation not in the presence of many people, neither on his own behalf not at the prompting of someone else, either in the role of agitator, teacher, educator, not in a theatrical role.
*Will not depict, foster or broadcast a single idea which he can only see is false or a distortion of the truth whether it be in painting, sculpture, photography, technical science, or music.
I believe the "live not by lies" philosophy he outlines very much applies to the personal nature of adultery as much as it does to the macro level of societal affairs.
On the world stage, interestingly, another model applies to discussions of adultery and betrayal.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Truth and Reconciliation model from South Africa is the healthiest and most straightforward model for achieving authentic reconciliation.
Here's what Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who promulgated the idea, wrote about it:
"True reconciliation is based on forgiveness, and forgiveness is based on true confession, and confession is based on penitence, on contrition, on sorrow for what you have done."
NOTE: Pay attention here. TRUE contrition. TRUE penitence. In other words "metanoia" which is a wholesale and all encompassing changing of the heart and mind, through and through. Without this, reconciliation is well nigh impossible.
"How could anyone really think that true reconciliation could avoid a proper confrontation? After a husband and wife or two friends have quarreled, if they merely seek to gloss over their differences or metaphorically paper over the cracks, they must not be surprised when they are soon at it again, perhaps more violently than before, because they have tried to heal their ailment lightly."
"How can you forgive if you do not know what or whom to forgive? In our commission hearings, we required full disclosure for us to grant amnesty. Only then, we thought, would the process of requesting and receiving forgiveness be healing and transformative for all involved. "
"We must be radical. We must go to the root, remove that which is festering, cleanse and cauterize, and then a new beginning is possible."
"True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the pain, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes make things worse. It is a risky undertaking, but in the end it is worthwhile, because in the end only an honest confrontation with reality can bring real healing. Superficial reconciliation can bring only superficial healing."
Do you notice the theme running through these things?
LIVE NOT BY LIES. Healing a transgression requires radical honesty and rooting out of the lies that have lasted decades. It will be painful, but worth it in the end no matter what you decide to do.
I point this out because its clear from what you've told us that you've unfortunately participated in a culture of lies in your marriage. Your wife has confirmed it based on what you've reported to us in subsequent posts. Not only rugsweeping, but deliberately ignoring what was in front of you.
It is difficult to find credulous the idea that a wife telling a husband she loved another man and was prepared to leave would be brushed off as a harmless crush with no implications. It is difficult to comprehend that this never entered your thoughts over the years. It is difficult to countenance that the knowledge of her transgressions did not directly impact your wife's ability to be intimate with you in all ways -- and that had no impact on the richness of the marriage.
I understand the compulsion to rugsweep. I was very tempted to do it myself. And in fact I did do it myself for a short time. I found it tortuous so I can only imagine doing it for a third of a century.
I don't condemn you for this, but the healthiest thing you can do is to stop doing it henceforth and insist on radical honesty from your wife.
The first start was for you to stop covering for her by calling it a mistake. Other steps might include acknowledging that this has in all likelihood damaged the intimacy you could have had with your WW. Additional steps might include walking through some of that to-do list I posted in the first part of this thread.
If your wife is unable or unwilling to bring herself to do these things, you probably need to acknowledge that's a bad sign and indicative of a mindset that is still not willing to embrace honesty and authenticity with you.
Perhaps with radical honesty you can have the intimacy I sense you have always desired with her. But without, I do not hold much hope.
I'm hoping for the best for you.
[This message edited by Thumos at 2:03 PM, October 24th (Saturday)]
