SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I am not done but I am starting to believe that what I am searching for doesn’t exist.

I had a 25 year relationship where we were intrinsically linked in every way. We made every decision together. We checked everything with each other. I was essentially half of something.

I’ve read and I now know this isn’t healthy but for more than half my life that is what I had. It’s very difficult to go into new relationships not expecting the same thing.

The other issue is that I appear to be looking for perfection. I feel aggrieved, wronged and in this regard I have this overwhelming belief that whatever comes next has to be better than what came before.

Coming out of a relationship that for almost 25 years was as close to perfection as I could imagine that makes selecting (committing) to future partners incredibly difficult. My red flag filter is on hyper alert and my perfection filter just as much so.

As I mentioned in my 3 years post Dday post I have dated 3 amazing women in the last 9 months. All of whom have been attractive, self sufficient, intelligent, emotionally mature yet I moved on.

I believe the issue is with me and I am working on this with my therapist.

TD - I hear you but you’re so close to the matter that I think you’re overlooking something extremely significant here.

You keep mentioning that you had a near perfect relationship with your WGF. However, when you look at her now through the prism of her need to rug sweep versus R with you, it shows her salient defect. She’s put herself over you snd your 25 years together. Narcissist behavior. And, she knows that your kids would be better off with the both of you under one roof. You say she’s a great mom, and I’m sure that’s true. However, she’s putting herself above your kid’s best interests as well.

To me, that’s the proper prism to look at your past relationship, and future ones. Statistically, the vast majority of these wonderful women you’ve since dated, snd subsequently rejected, will not cheat on you. These future partners are thus much better than what you left behind.

How do I know this? Because you know this. Otherwise, you would have R’d with this "wonderful" WGF already. As they say, "the body keeps the score."

@dude

Totally agree with what you’re saying. And although it may always sound like it I have no plans or feelings towards R 😂

What Im trying to say is this

Vs my experiencing of dating WXGF (albeit a long time ago) where I knew after only a few months this was the person I wanted to spend my life with I’m struggling with not having those same "emotions" within my post infidelity relationships.

You see contrary to the relationships many of the people I know have or the people I date have had. I was happy, exceedingly happy and content for a very long time. Never a single doubt in my mind or at least not one that lasted for more than a fleeting moment. And that is a huge benchmark for me to come into the world of dating having had. I’m struggling with finding the same level of "contentment" within relationships that many others would do.

The women I have dated however have all never been in such a relationship. arguably have never been treated with the courtesy, care and with the level of honesty they get from me. And hence from their perspective I’m some kind of enigma they never really thought existed. This in turn creates an imbalance which adds to the pressure of locating those feelings within me.

So am I broken (work in progress) or just not met the right person…..?

Hope that helps explain better.

TD - what I’m trying to say is that you never met the right one. Your WGF was never the right one. If she were the right one, she would have moved heaven and earth to R. You yourself said that the entire female side of her family cheated and the only reason R occurred is due to rug sweeping. Your WGF possessed a major defect from the get go.

Your WGF entered the relationship with you with a distorted view of fidelity. This was ingrained in her by her family experience. You were thus sitting on an infidelity ticking time bomb.

Her cheating wasn’t an opportunistic event, an exit A, a lost in the fog situation, she didn’t accidentally fall into it. Her calculus was that whether she would be caught or not really didn’t matter. Cheating was her right and you would fall right in line and move past it. Her A was inevitable snd pre ordained. She was that person 25 years ago and is that person today.

With this mindset 25 years was good times, shared moments, family, friends, kids, intertwined lives, good sex, That’s what you experienced. Her take was a bit different no doubt because her experience included all of these things plus an innate right to have an A. Thus, part of what you experienced was an illusion.

It’s absolutely inevitable that you will eventually find someone better. The most significant character flaw a partner can have in a relationship is the willingness to cheat. Your WGF is fairly unique in that her cheating was inevitable. You saw all of her cheating female family members and thought that your WGF was going to be different. Perhaps it was cognitive dissonance.

You will find the right one when you find most, if not all, of the qualities you liked about WGF plus the one most important attribute she lacked - a moral core. Isn’t a moral core the most important attribute for any human being? You can and will do better my friend, but not until you stop comparing your dates to a false benchmark, re your WGF.