SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hope you are doing well Tacit and have found a way out of her infidelity either with or without her.

Jesus, it's been almost eight months since my last update. I guess I should explain why I have been away for so long. Well, no offense to the people here, this site has been a tremendous resource and all, but it is really depressing to read through the stories posted here. You know the saying "An empty mind is the devil's workshop"? Well, it got to the point that reading other people's stories was doing more harm than good, so I took some time away to focus on my mental health. And in the meantime, some other things happened that took my focus away.

Last time I posted, my wife had moved back into the house but we were living only as roommates. My daughter was trying to rebuild her relationship with her while my son wanted nothing to do with her and was lashing out. Since then, I have decided try and reconcile with her. My wife is still going to therapy and we have started going to marriage counseling. Our counselor is also my IC who has been a great help since this whole ordeal started.

My daughter is still talking to her mom, but our son still doesn't want her in his life. At least he has stopped with the misogyny.

The AP tried to contact my WW through a letter, which she showed to me, still unopened. We threw it away and she unblocked him on her phone to tell him not to contact her before blocking him again.

I still have access to all of her electronic devices, though I haven't checked them in a couple of months.

Today was supposed to be our 23rd wedding anniversary and my wife wanted to celebrate. I'll admit that I got mad and said some hurtful things. After what she put me through, it doesn't feel right to celebrate. It also doesn't help that this was right around the time that she was having her affair. She apologized, but I could tell that she was hurt by the way she looked at me. She hasn't brought it up since we had that argument.

Sorry if this post is all over the place. I'm still somewhat triggered by the fact she wanted to celebrate.

She apologized, but I could tell that she was hurt by the way she looked at me. She hasn't brought it up since we had that argument.

Well, it's a little early in the R to act like things are normal. Maybe a tiny acknowledgement of the "yup , are still together day", but not a lot of fanfare... I assume that if you you are in R (I never made it to R) there will be a year of "firsts". the first post affair anniversary, your bday, her bday, major holidays can all trigger thoughts of the affair.

Good to hear from you and that things are moving forward.

She's got some work to do before things are normal again.

I assume that if you you are in R (I never made it to R) there will be a year of "firsts". the first post affair anniversary, your bday, her bday, major holidays can all trigger thoughts of the affair.

Ironically enough, we have had our first post affair bdays this year already and it wasn't as triggering an experience. But I agree that there's still a lot of work to be done before we can actually celebrate things again, though I doubt things will ever go back to "normal". My daughter and son's birthdays are coming up and we are planning on going out with our daughter like we used to. Our son doesn't want to celebrate his birthday with her, which I respect. WW is incredibly hurt that our son doesn't want her in his life anymore, but she hasn't been pushing for anything. I told her that if she's to ever reconcile with him, it needs to come from him.

Thanks for coming back to update. I wish you well in your recovery.

I am glad your wife is in therapy. Is it with an infidelity specialist?

It sounds like she is still not communicating well with you if she expected to celebrate the anniversary.

A truly remorseful wayward spouse would take the lead from their BS. She should be doing things to rebuild trust and make you feel safe. She should be working g hard to show you love and affection but only what you feel comfortable with.

Has she done reading and taken steps to help you recover. Therapy is good but being proactive in the healing process is just as important for her to be doing.

What went into your decision to try and reconcile. What she did was a brutal hit to your relationship. What made you choose this path. I’m hoping you are truly both working it and not rug sweeping. I’m all for R, but it has to be building something new and different, not just rehashing the old.

I wish you well on your path.

I am so sorry for what you are going through. You have come to the right place as SI folks have and continue to preserve my sanity. This forum will give you strength and we are always here.

I’m so glad that you have booked to see your therapist. It’s so important to be able to express your feelings at this time. I’m glad your family is supporting you too.

I know it’s so incredibly hard, words cannot describe the pain. But you will get through this, I know it’s hard to believe it but you will. You are in the raw of it right now.

I drank wine in the evenings to take the edge off the pain, but it only made me feel worse. When I stopped I felt slightly better. I know it’s hard to eat, but even though we don’t want to do it we have to do the things we don’t want to do, eat and care for ourselves. Smoothies and protein shakes help. Vitamins. Walking. You will get there. I neglected my health but then I told myself ‘ he took my heart, I won’t let him take my health too’. It’s became my mantra. It still is.

You don’t have to make any big decisions right now. Just focus on you and self care.

Sending you prayers and healing. You are not alone.

Eight months seems like a long time, Tacit, but really, the healing can take anywhere between two and five years. This kind of wounding ties into our innate fear of abandonment. One of the most helpful books I read after my own dday was The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson. In it, she not only does a great job of explaining how this injury is processed in both brain and body, but also reminds us that we've carried this reflex with us since birth. It's the reason, as infants, we cry for our mothers when we can't see them. Then, we grow up and somehow manage to transfer this reflex to our primary relationship. Of course, after we're betrayed it seems like every other abandonment we've ever suffered and resolved is broken back open and refocused onto this new source of pain.

Long and short, it's a lot to deal with. Whether one decides to R or D, we still have to go through the healing process. Meanwhile, don't take any guff off of your son. He might be experiencing some misogynist messaging in his peer environment, but you have more power than you know. You ARE his primary role model, and even if it doesn't always show, he's watching and learning from you.

I am glad your wife is in therapy. Is it with an infidelity specialist?

It is.

Has she done reading and taken steps to help you recover. Therapy is good but being proactive in the healing process is just as important for her to be doing.

She has. She has read Not Just Friends at her therapist's suggestion and How To Help Your Spouse Heal from your Affair at my request. She has also read some content from the Healing Library that I printed out and gave to her. I haven't told her about SI.

She has given me space when I become triggered and hasn't made any excuses for her affair since the first few weeks following DDay. She also answered every question that I had about the affair no matter how many times I asked them. Other than that, she has been affectionate with me, but not in a love-bombing, overwhelming kind of way which is nice.

Eight months seems like a long time, Tacit, but really, the healing can take anywhere between two and five years.

Oh, I know. I was referencing how long it was since I last posted here. I am under no illusion that I am fully healed, or that the marriage will ever be the same as it once was. I'm just taking one step at a time.

Meanwhile, don't take any guff off of your son. He might be experiencing some misogynist messaging in his peer environment, but you have more power than you know. You ARE his primary role model, and even if it doesn't always show, he's watching and learning from you.

I've been keeping an eye out for that. I don't know how things are in his social circles, but at least hasn't openly said anything misogynistic in front of me in months, or posted anything on social media. I hope that his lashing out against women is a thing of the past.

your wife was with a 23 year old man and must have controlled and guided ap throughout the relationship.

Even if you say your wife empathizes, she doesn't seem to realize that you're trying to leave behind a relationship that she wouldn't have a problem with if she didn't get caught by her family. If she had persuaded her family without you hearing it, she would probably have continued.

Bring your wife's wedding anniversary proposal to the agenda in therapy. She expects you to forget this destruction in a few months and become a happy family.

My advice to you is to say from time to time that you want her to go through the polygraph. Make sure to enter it at least once a year. (Is there any contact with ap without your knowledge, you didn't ask in the test, but does she like ap? does she love you?)

You said you had an argument when you told your WW that you did not want to celebrate your anniversary. What was her response?

You said that a few weeks after Dday your WW stopped blaming you. What did she blame you for?

On the surface of things it appears that she’s headed in the right direction but wants the A talk to be over and done with and for you to both move happily into the sunset. Does she truly understand the devastation the A caused you? Is she remorseful, in that she’s focusing on helping to heal you versus feeling regretful that she simply can’t have her old life back and move on?

Today was supposed to be our 23rd wedding anniversary and my wife wanted to celebrate. I'll admit that I got mad and said some hurtful things. After what she put me through, it doesn't feel right to celebrate. It also doesn't help that this was right around the time that she was having her affair. She apologized, but I could tell that she was hurt by the way she looked at me. She hasn't brought it up since we had that argument.

Ouch, that demonstrates that she just does NOT get it yet.

That shows she still has a long ways to go.

For her to even think of celebrating your anniversary, let alone actually verbalizing that to you shows she has very little understanding and empathy towards you for what SHE did to you.

I understand your being upset. I'd also be so very sad.

I don't get how she could think this and say this after reading the info she has and the work she's done. It doesn't add up.

To her, it's like "Goody, it's our anniversary, let's celebrate us like none of the unbelievably cruel things I've done have happened."

She didn't just break your foundation, she obliterated it. It's gone, it can't be used again or repaired. An entirely NEW foundation needs to be put in place. To her, that isn't what needs to be done. She's fine still using the old foundation she obliterated.

This NEEDS to be brought up and discussed in counseling together.

I just wanted to let you know something that really helped me when I started towards R. I was out of the JFO stage but still trying to make sense of things and process it. My WW had TT so much that I didn’t believe her on anything.

I discovered the "I Can Relate" forum and the ability to ask the former WS. Ran some her answers by them and started to make sense of some of it. They are a valuable resource here. I give the WS here just as much credit for my progress in healing as I do the BS that helped me out of the crisis.

Best Wishes to you and your W.

So, I may have expressed myself poorly and didn go into too many deatials when I first wrote out the update. I blame it on being triggered at the time, English not being my native tongue and on the fact that I just suck at writing.

When I said that my wife wanted to celebrate our anniversary, her exact words were "Our wedding anniversary is coming up. Do you want to do anything?" To which I replied "The anniversary of the wedding that you tainted by hopping the fence? Sure, babe."

She immediately backtracked, apologized and acknowledged that it was a stupid thing to say. I'm going to bring it up during our counselling sessions. Time will tell if it was an honest slipup, or if she really wants to rugsweep everything.

What did she blame you for?

She blamed me for not initiating sex during the months prior to her A and during it. She has acknowledged now that it was a blulshit excuse to make herself feel better about what she was doing.

I discovered the "I Can Relate" forum and the ability to ask the former WS. Ran some her answers by them and started to make sense of some of it. They are a valuable resource here. I give the WS here just as much credit for my progress in healing as I do the BS that helped me out of the crisis.

That sounds like something I should consider doing as well.

Tacit have you thought to yourself if you think you can learn to live with what she did? I’m sure you still can’t accept it and enjoy life with the knowledge right now, but have you determined that she is worth trying to get there? What makes her worth it? It cannot be for the kids as they are older and one even wants you to D. So what makes her worth it?

For the time of the affair, her AP held the loving part of her in his hand. You got the mundane. Does she see that? How does she feel about that? Can she express how she cares how that hurt you?

One small thing that always get me about infidelity is that after the affair, the AP now has added to their list of lovers. If she had 5 before you, plus you, she always could say before the affair that he had 6 in her lifetime. Now that number is 7. The piece of shit counts the same as the person she married when revealing that number.

It’s a small thing, mostly meaningless compared to all the other pain the infidelity caused. But it always strikes a raw nerve when I think about it. Just gives me a raw feeling in the pit of my stomach.

[This message edited by Stevesn at 9:25 PM, Friday, April 15th]

I second what Tanner said. So helpful.

Meanwhile, don't take any guff off of your son. He might be experiencing some misogynist messaging in his peer environment, but you have more power than you know. You ARE his primary role model, and even if it doesn't always show, he's watching and learning from you.

Tacit,

The flipside of you being the primary male role model for your son is that his mother is the primary role model for him of how women behave, and her actions - and their impact on you, the father he loves - clearly hit him very hard. She is teaching him what women are like. To interpret the venting of his mental anguish as misogyny would be a gross, simplistic misunderstanding of his real feelings. Invalidating the expression of the pain of a young man struggling with the betrayal of his father by his mother as 'guff' is not going to help anyone, particularly not a young man who is barely finding his feet in the adult world.

The things your son said may sound like 'red pill' anti-woman thinking, but in his eyes your wife's infidelity to you was also his mother's infidelity to him, her son, and what he may have felt was her duty to be true to you, his father. You and your son are dealing with different aspects of the same infidelity.

Your son is a young man, at an impressionable age, whose ideas and value framework about women has been shattered by your wife's actions, and he is bound to be hurt and confused by that. Is it any wonder that when he expresses his emotions after a blow like that, the things he says are a mess? They are a reflection of the mess that his emotions are in. To tell him he is wrong may cause him to stop talking, and that would be really bad, because he may bottle everything up, and create a new framework of expectations about women based on an expectation of betrayal.

If he needs to vent, let him vent. Encourage him to talk, and do not tell him that his feelings are not valid. If you can get him to talk, and you are prepared to give him time, you can break the idea that women are all bad. However, you can only do that if you let him pour out whatever poison may be in his thinking. And that requires letting him speak without judgment, so he can get the poison and pain out of his system. It is important to get it out, because if he keeps it inside him, it may change the way he feels about women forever.

Your son is not a bad guy; he is a boy in pain, trying to deal with his mother hurting his father badly, and how he is supposed to feel about her as a result of that. The bad things he has said about women are a reflection of the anger he feels about what was done to you, and the pain and confusion he feels about who his mother really is. He is not a misogynist; he is a teenager trying to figure out why his mother drove a bus over him and his Dad. He is as much a casualty of your wife's cheating as you are, just in a different way. Please do not let him drift away to think his thoughts on his own. If he is treated as an outsider, he may become one.

If he is a mess, let him be a mess. Let him throw all his pain and bad feelings into a big heap, and then help him sort through it, so he picks out the useful things and leaves the crap behind. Of course he has negative feelings about women after what your wife did. What he needs is for someone to build on those feelings, and help him to understand them, and to show him where he may not be 100% right.

Stevesn, that is a good question that I have asked myself many times before deciding on reconciling. To be honest, I don't really care about the number of partners that mine has had in her lifetime, even if one of them happened to be while I was supposed to be the only one that she had. I may hate her AP with every fiber of my being, but I refuse myself to allow him to occupy my thoughts any longer.

As to what makes her worth R, even if she has made the occasional slipup here and there, I have seen that she is putting in the work to try and show me that she can be trusted again. She gives me space when I am triggered and asks me if there's anything I want her to do during those times, she has taken initiative and come straight to me when her AP tried to contact her after she went NC. Those are just a few examples, and I know that they might not be enough for some, but being here and monitoring her during the past few months tells me that she is being honest.

I would appreciate it if people stopped trying to justify my son's actions. Yes, he is hurt just as much as I am and I have never said that he is not allowed to be angry at his mother for what she did. I even support his decision to cut his mother out of his life, if he feels that is the best way for him to heal. But shaming me for how I choose to live my life, or blaming his sister who is just as much a victim as he is for their mother's A, or even going out of his way to call all women derogatory names is not okay. I don't believe that being a BS or the child of a BS is a blank check to turn into an abuser or a misogynist. Yes, it is misogyny to call all women sluts for what one has done and to outright blame feminism for her actions.

I’m Sorry people are being so judgmental.

At 18 I thought I would D my H if he cheated. But as I shed it became a more complex situation and it isn’t so black and white.

I hope your reconciliation continues and you are able to fully heal from this.

I’m Sorry people are being so judgmental.

Most people here are great. It's just that whenever the topic of my son comes up some people feel the need to defend him.

My recommendation is for you to not bring up on this forum your children’s relationship to your WW at this point in time. If you bring it up people will respond, snd I simply think it’s not healthy to discuss this right now.

What is relevant is how you feel about your WW, your process of healing, and whether R is on track or not.

If you end up with true R with your WW, this will most likely take a few years at a minimum. At that point, I would recommend plowing headlong into the issues your children may have with your WW. After all, if you end up divorcing, it’s more on your WW to heal her relationship with your kids than it is on you.

However, if you R, you most likely will want go work with your WW as a team to tackle this issue.