SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

HesALiar, you about took the words out of my mouth. I was about to post something similar.

I'm so disgusted. I feel like me and H are just slipping away. He's the love of my life but I just can't get past the basic fact that he cheated and the images in my head. I don't see myself being able to come back from that. We've been married 15 years this month and three kids. Have we wasted all this time??

I feel crazy for not being able to get over a 7 year old affair but my heart and mind won't let me. I feel destroyed. Tonight, we argued for a couple of hours. I have too many resentments and keep learning more about how he feels and felt about me differently than I knew because he's always hidden his feelings from me. So I was never able to help fix anything! I feel robbed. I've loved him so so so much and this hurts like crazy.

Tomorrow is MC day and I'm nervous. It's only been 2 months since dday but my H thinks we're going to find out if we split or stay together. Like it's that simple. Grrrr

[This message edited by Lovehurts777 at 12:25 AM, December 8th (Saturday)]

Lovehurts777, HesALiar, all of us!

SI Rule 1. They say it takes from between 2-5 years to process your spouse's affairs.

It has taken me 4 years, since I found out about my spouse's multiple affairs from +30 years ago, that I can now finally think rationally without getting too worked up, angry etc.

It takes time.

Even with a remorseful spouse.

Don't be too hard on yourselves.

Go through the process at your own speed.

Take your time.

It's called grieving.

You're allowed to!!

It is one of those days when I wonder if I will ever be able to get over how well my best friend and husband got along with each other after they had their affair. They were capable of acting so normal around each other and me. That just because they decided to stop the sex, that everything could goback to how it was. Laughing and joking together etc. Etc. No shame, no remorse, no understanding of how disrespectful it was. It was like they both sh”” on my marriage and then decided to continuously rub my face in it. 40 years of disrespect. I have lost the story I had of my marriage. It all so tainted now.

My husband says that it was fear I would find out, but I never seen any fear or uncomfortableness when he was around her. I only seen how much he enjoyed her company.

This hurts me so deeply.

Hesaliar -

My discovery was about 25 years after the fact too. The difference is that my WS was remorseful and had not cheated during those 25 years (so he says but I believe him on that). He can't remember a lot of details but either, I still wonder how much he really doesn't know and how much he just doesn't want to tell me. I guess you never know the full truth.

Your WH seems to be a serial cheater. Many woman over many years. Perhaps just not marriage material.

Left-

one of those days when I wonder if I will ever be able to get over how well my best friend and husband got along with each other after they had their affair. They were capable of acting so normal around each other and me. That just because they decided to stop the sex, that everything could goback to how it was. Laughing and joking together etc. Etc. No shame, no remorse, no understanding of how disrespectful it was. It was like they both sh”” on my marriage and then decided to continuously rub my face in it. 40 years of disrespect. I have lost the story I had of my marriage. It all so tainted now.

I could have written this. Mine was a double betrayal too. WH says it was just sex so he compartmentalized it. Like that is a nice word???

I wonder if I will ever be able to get over how well my best friend and husband got along with each other after they had their affair.

This is, perhaps, the only indignity I was spared. My wife and my best friend did not get along after she stopped letting him fuck her. He finally pitched a fit and disappeared altogether.

Lefty - I'm so sorry you're going through this. My WH cheated with a mutual friend of ours also. And let me become closer friends with her after their A. Watching them together here at our house all those years after, it never set off any alarms and I felt so stupid after dday. My H also said he was able to compartmentalize it. He said he just wanted life to go back to normal. He thought so little of what he did with her that he was just able to go back to being only friends without it being weird around me. I kind of see that when I place myself in his shoes, because for guys... Sex is sex. They can easily detach themselves emotionally from it. I cannot. The AP was able to also. She didn't have any feeling for my H either. Just wanted to fool around when bored.

It didn't make it any less painful for me on dday... And it still hurts... But makes me wonder if in your situation, it's kind of like that. He was able to separate his feelings of friendship from the sexual stuff and he wasn't uncomfortable around you and her because he thought so little of the act itself with her, that it was meaningless.

Lovehurts ... this is exactly what my husband says about his brief affairs with our friend. That it was not hard to stop because there were no feelings for her.

My struggle is the disrespect to me by allowing her to stay in our lives. It tells me that she was in our lives because that is exactly where he wanted her to be. He should have felt huge shame in being around her. He did not. Like you, I sat back and watched them interact with each other and never once thought anything about it. If anything I felt blessed that my husband and friend got along so well.

Why was there no remorse being felt then?

This is still huge in my recovery process. I feel that once I get a handle on it, our recovery will be complete. But she was in our lives for over 40 years after the sex. I hope that it does not take me 40 years to get a handle on it.

Lefty - I'm trying to figure that out too about the remorse and if I come up with an answer that helps me sleep at night, I'll gladly share with you :). The only thing I can assume from the journey so far, and from what I know about my H, this man that I've known and loved for so long... is that he really minimized it to the point where he told himself it was just something they did as friends and he had the ability to push it down so deep when she was around. It hurts to know that he was able to do that though. I've always said he was the most loyal and honest person I knew.

But I'm learning we are all individual people with different feelings and capabilities that sometimes we ourselves don't even know we have.

I'm still processing, like you. I wish you much luck in recovering from this!! We will get through and rise above the ashes.

When I really think about it, I'm just so angry. I know that it's really hurt and anger. But when I THNK, I feel rage. My day to day life is so busy that I can get by without thinking about it much these days. But when I'm awake in the middle of the n night, or I'm waiting for the kids to get out of some class or something, I look upon my marriage, my husband, with anger. There is so much humiliation that has occurred in the years since his As that I can't quite get over. it I'm in IC and my problem isn't that I don't love my WH. It's that I don't think I can respect myself to be married to someone who would treat me with such disrespect. To choose to be with someone who would publicly humiliate me, lie to my face for years. That's my issue. How do people respect themselves staying with the person who treated them like trash?

That is what I struggle with the most. How in the world do I ever respect myself if I keep staying.

Shit SickofSurviving!

You are a few years out from my DD and I was hoping (kidding myself) that I would not be feeling like this at that point. Shit. I assumed that (somehow) I would wake up one day and either feel solid and have respect for myself, or that I found that I couldn't, and would D. Shit. You have thrown me. Which is probably a good thing. A good smack in the face that this is all very uncertain and I have timeline goals that are absurd and fictional.

My therapist sent me something to think about. I"ll share it.

My love for you is

unconditional

Your presence in my life,

however, is not

When you treat me

outside the bounds

Of my own self respect

I am content to love you

Unconditionally as a

Memory

I'm sorry to have thrown you. Maybe things will be different for you. I have a less than remorseful cheater.

I feel like I have given up so much of myself to stay. He looked at my face and lied to me for YEARS! All the while still being in touch with his cousin/ap. "Just as family".

I dont know if there will ever be a time I can look at myself with any self respect again. I mean really, how?

My situation is pretty unique - my wife got caught at the time but minimized and lied her way out of it, then lied to me my whole life and only recently told me the full truth.

I'm only 2 months out from this "real" d-day, but I am feeling pretty good about R lately and want to share some things that help me.

1 - My wife is incredibly remorseful. I think if your WS can hide it for years and then either confess or be found out and NOT be remorseful, you need to leave. To me, it would take a pretty amazingly selfish person (or someone completely out of love with you) to not have remorse about something so horrible from so long ago.

2 - The period in between almost feels like a "trial period" of what life can be like once reconciled. In reality, it is life after rug-sweeping (by WS, or in my case, really both of us, I believed what I wanted to believe). If the "trial period" has been really good, then why not work to reconcile and continue living it? If it has been less than stellar, than I think you would be right to second guess staying.

3 - The issue of respect is really hard for me as well. I have very strong desires to punish people who disrespect me, in all aspects of my life. Yet I have to accept this large level of disrespect if I choose to stay with my wife. I was recently told by a very wise poster on this board that "she was disrespecting herself, not you", and that has really struck a chord with me. I think (and hope) that if you can accept that what your WS did in the past was about their own issues, flaws and failures, then you are really only reconciling with someone who disrespected themselves, not you.

4 - I am a bit of a "mad hatter" in that I had what I think of as a semi-affair, where I never had sex but allowed for inappropriate situations to come up and heavy flirting. These experiences have really helped me find understanding and empathy for my WS. I wish so badly that she was able to draw the line where I did, but she was very young & immature during her A and had a lot less to lose. But I can empathize with feelings of wanting attention, being selfish, and having it not be about my spouse in the slightest bit.

I hope that's helpful to someone, although again it comes with a big caveat that I am only two months out from my d-day and my roller coaster is still ongoing. I feel confident enough in where I am at now to provide at least this much advice and thoughts.

I can relate. She revealed four years of cheating, multiple partners, all different kinds ranging from one night stand to long term. To say that it is shocking and crushing is just to confirm the limits of language to convey the emotions that people feel. There are just no words for it. And the time lag makes it hard, because you cannot get satisfactory answers that have been lost in time. I've learned that experiences can be taken away.There are better days and worse days, but the pain is just part of me now

I was recently told by a very wise poster on this board that "she was disrespecting herself, not you", and that has really struck a chord with me. I think (and hope) that if you can accept that what your WS did in the past was about their own issues, flaws and failures, then you are really only reconciling with someone who disrespected themselves, not you.

I really want this to be the magic pill that can make me believe the A had nothing to do with me.

I just found this thread. I discovered that my WH was a serial cheater, and the first (as far as I know) affair was 10 years ago. One year as a PA and about 7+ years as a pretty intense EA, but their relationship was ending of its own weight as my WH grew to know her better and liked her less and less. The OW is a COW who has been in our life (and secretly in our marriage) but I never knew or suspected. He had several other affairs after that - but finally told me a year after the last one had ended, but his AP's husband had found out and was threatening to tell me, so he did first. I am angriest about the affair that was 10 years ago. I thought we were really happy then. The affair definitely affected his attitude towards the marriage and made the subsequent - less emotionally serious affairs more likely.

2 - The period in between almost feels like a "trial period" of what life can be like once reconciled. In reality, it is life after rug-sweeping (by WS, or in my case, really both of us, I believed what I wanted to believe). If the "trial period" has been really good, then why not work to reconcile and continue living it? If it has been less than stellar, than I think you would be right to second guess staying.

This brought to mind an interesting thought for my situation. I have been so stuck on the A that my H confessed to me two months ago (but happened 7 years ago), that it feels like it happened recently. I haven't given much thought to the fact that he's had 7 years to think about this and mull over our relationship. In some ways I guess that's helpful to know he's been so kind and treated me great since then (well except for letting her stay my friend afterwards for so long). That's a good question to bring up to my WH tonight though... what he has gone through, what has he thought about and what were his feelings over the last 7 years about our marriage? It might help me understand if he's actually remorseful. He's been difficult to talk to lately. I say "it's only been 2 months for me and it's still raw"... his outlook appears to be "wow, it's been 2 months already, when will your need to talk about this end?". So yeah.

I say "it's only been 2 months for me and it's still raw"... his outlook appears to be "wow, it's been 2 months already, when will your need to talk about this end?". So yeah.

Remind him.

He's had SEVEN years to digest his shame, guilt and poor choices. He kept the advantage of living in reality during that time.

You're catching up and trying to figure out WTF reality IS for you.

He owes you -- in addition to the pain caused, he owes you TIME and space (7-years worth maybe) to process it all.

Oldwounds - Thanks.

Yes, he just texted me "I want nothing more than to make you happy *immediately*." and then admits he says that because he's being impatient. He knows that's not ideal, but that's how he is.

I told him he's had 7 years to deal with any issues he might have had with his own infidelity. I'm playing tug of war between my heart and mind and it'll take time. I told him his impatience in all of this shows that he doesn't get what I'm dealing with, he doesn't empathize, or understand how this could give me so much pain. Even after witnessing what I've gone through... visually seeing my pain. It doesn't seem to affect him much. It's discouraging and disheartening.

I'm sure he'll just say "sorry" and expect me to get over that too.

How do you "teach" your WS how to give you what you need?