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I want to share a trigger I had recently. I was cleaning out a drawer and found an anniversary card from March 2018. It said how blessed she was to have me and that I was an amazing H and Father. She looks forward to growing old with me. Three months later she was in a long distance EA and started a scorched earth infidelity spree.

I got that tight chest feeling and set the card aside and kept going through stuff. She came in and saw the card and said "what is that?" I said "it’s a trigger I’m working through". She asked if she could see the card and I said "sure but it’s full of bullshit" and I stomped off, really just needed some space to process.

She told me those words are true and she meant them, but those are also the same words she says today. It’s hard to differentiate. She either didn’t mean those words or those words are only good at that moment.

The trigger has passed and I’m fine, but it taught me some things.

I will always believe her actions over her words. Love and ILY’s will not prevent infidelity.

I will always have to stay vigilant in my M because it can turn very quickly. Although I don’t expect anything to happen today, I will never believe it won’t happen again.

In a trigger I will ask for some space. They can hit out of nowhere and very unexpectedly.

I won’t let triggers cripple me, I will pay attention to what they might be teaching me.

I’m entering A season and this trigger was a wake up call.

Tanner,

You wrote, It said how blessed she was to have me and that I was an amazing H and Father.

She may have been honest, it did not say you were a great lover, by that point she may have converted you into a family member but no longer had a real attraction or sense of romance for You.

I have to agree with you to learn from your triggers, they are there for a reason.

When my W calls me Dad I dislike it, but I also think it evidences how she really views me. I would rather not supress this window into how she sees things by correcting her.

she may have converted you into a family member but no longer had a real attraction or sense of romance for You.

This is very possible, her A’s were exit A’s she desperately wanted out of the M.

I really hear you Tanner.
2 weeks before my wife's affair went physical, it Was Valentines Day.
In the card my wife wrote how much she loved me and how she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me, she's the luckiest woman in the world, ....
One of my love languages is words of affirmation. Also, I am a man of my word.
I agree with you on its all just words to them and how can we tell if they mean them.
My wife has said she meant Tham when she wrote them. I still can't figure out how she could say something one day and go have sex with someone later.
It boggles the mind.

My WH had sex with his bi*** on our anniversary two years ago. I found out when she threw it in his face in an email. She said, "You should have acknowledged me on Valentine's Day and not your wife. After all, how much do these things really mean in your marriage when you spent your last anniversary having sex with me?" That happened in 2020. In 2021 (I still didn't know about the A), he texted me during the day and said he was planning to take me on a walk through a little downtown area, and that we could look at menus as we walked and choose a restaurant for dinner. I was thrilled and thought it was his attempt to connect with me. Then on D-Day this past March, I looked at the cell phone bill and realized he had talked to her before and after our "date." So much for that day being all about us.

This year, I was very feeling triggered all day on our anniversary. It didn't help that we were both sick with Covid. I was actually kind of relieved that we had an excuse not to celebrate it. The date on the calendar no longer means anything to me. It just makes me sad to think it was the beginning of the marriage that he decided to throw away.

I totally understand triggers. It hasn't even been 3 months since D-Day, but I've already had my share. They aren't fun.

I agree with you on its all just words to them and how can we tell if they mean them.

78, Yes her words don’t mean the same as they once did. Her actions are what I’m watching. I will say when my dad went on hospice 11 months from Dday, she was there for my parents more than me or the siblings. She cooked, cleaned, gave meds and comforted my parents. That meant more to me than any words and took our R to a new level, right at the one year mark.

Also she is really good at the Song title game, 50% of my answers come from her 😀

Tanner,

You wrote, Yes her words don’t mean the same as they once did. Her actions are what I’m watching.

And even more so for me the difference in her actions in how she treats other people in contrast to how she treats me or the kids.

I know what you mean. I used to read the messages my wh sent while my daughter and I were on an overseas trip while I was trying to pull together the extent of his cheating against my own timeline. Full of love, missing me and what a simple life he was leading, doing stuff with my other daughters. What he was also doing was, having sex with sex workers, signed up on dating sites like ashley madison and met someone on line and then IRL. In fact the afternoon he met her for the first time - they went to the movies, he had messaged me a lovely message about his teacher only day and how it had gone. Not that after this day, he had gone to the movies with his new AP. So "I love yous" became just words to me and would trigger me when I read them in the early days. He also said he meant all the messages, but there is no way you can genuinely love someone yet at the same time be so dishonest, disrespectful and have such a disregard for your significant other and the relationship itself.
I also agree that our WS's need to respect that words are only meaningful if they are congruent with their actions. I.e. Don't say that you meant those words when you were cheating, lying, deceiving and making a mockery of who we were /are and what we believe and value.

he texted me during the day and said he was planning to take me on a walk through a little downtown area, and that we could look at menus as we walked and choose a restaurant for dinner. I was thrilled and thought it was his attempt to connect with me. Then on D-Day this past March, I looked at the cell phone bill and realized he had talked to her before and after our "date." So much for that day being all about us.

@FireandWater, Wow this hits very close to me. While she was fully involved in a PA our 30th anniversary of our first date came up. I knew our M felt dead and really wanted to get it back on track. We went on a date in a downtown area, viewed the menus got on a waiting list and had wine on a patio waiting for a table. We talked and laughed about the 30 years, we talked about spending more quality time together. After dinner we found a place with live music and really had a memorable night. I gave her a piggy back ride to the car while she kissed on my neck.

The next day I was telling a good friend of mine that I think we are going to make it, we had made a connection that had been missing for quite a while.

Then Dday happened 3 weeks later, and I found out they were texting before, during and after the date. Making plans for an overnight trip together. She also met up with him the next day. This was an awful blow, such a fraud of a date.

I still hate those places in the downtown area. We haven’t been back, but I plan to, I need to reclaim those places. She ruined the memory, so we have to go make new ones.

The anniversary stuff is really hard. Our 20th anniversary happened in the middle of my husband’s affair. He was in another city caring for an ill family member, but I texted and called him right at midnight, put together a photo album of pictures from over the years, and planned a picnic and hike for when he returned (it was right at the beginning of Covid when everything shut down, so there weren’t other options).

He said all the right things. I reflected on and was grateful for the fact that we were partners in all seasons of life, including being with loved ones through terminal illness, dealing with an unanticipated pandemic, etc. he apologized for not having time to plan more for our 20th, but I literally thought nothing of it. It was a pandemic, and a close family member was dying.

He was texting his affair partner the whole time we were communicating all this. He talked to her on the phone right before and right after me. The same when he returned a couple days later and we had our picnic and hike. Looking at the phone records later, I could see that all our interactions were sandwiched in between texts and calls to her.

We’re actually in a pretty decent place right now. We enjoy each other’s company and have special times together. But I’m afraid our anniversary might be ruined forever.

@grieving, yes regardless of how great R is going, there are some things that have been ruined by infidelity. It’s very frustrating realizing what they were willing to sacrifice to get their jollies. I work hard to handle and own the triggers, but it’s still hard to accept that this was done to us.

Wow, Tanner, some tough things. It shows the depth of depravity betrayers are. Hang in there.

I could almost have written this.

Our 8th anniversary of our wedding day is less than two weeks away. I expected our first anniversary to be special, only to learn later that it was — to her AP/ex-gf. She got to spend the day before and the day after being wined and dined. In fact, our whole wedding month was the busiest time of their affair. Maybe that’s why this whole month feels like one big trigger.

Hugs.

You've been married 31 years. How much of it was good? How much was bad?

We're around the same age, and about the same length of marriage. I'm just a further out from infidelity. But the one thing that I have definitely accepted is that everyone, BSs and WSs alike, are a sum of our parts. It's part of our tapestry.

I always said that I had a great gf/fiancee for 5 years, a great wife and mother for close to 15 years, a shitty/horrible wife for a few years, a good wife for a few years, and a very good wife for the last several years. That is just how it is. Her great 15 years doesn't get tossed away for her shitty years, nor are her shitty years punishable for life. And to be fair, her prior good behavior gives NO leniency for her transgressions. There is NO DOUBT that there is a different way that I look at life post-infidelity, and that fairy tale beliefs have been permanently put to rest, but that was my oblivion to reality.

It's a long way of saying that more likely than not, those words by her were truly meant. Just because an affair starts 3 months or three years afterwards, it didn't change what she felt then. How she felt about you during the affair? When you were most likely resented? Well, those were true feelings of hers also...even if she tries to deny this. What we felt was what we felt, and you can't change that. Just because she tells you that she loves you, and you are cynical about it, doesn't mean that it isn't true in her eyes. You stated that is the actions over words. If you remove the affair, what do her actions tell you?

Aww Coozann Tan ...that must have been a hard trigger (((HUGS))). It seems that you handled it very well ...GOOD for you !!! It's really not how many times we get knocked down from something like this ...it's how many times we GET BACK UP. Judging from this ...YOU WIN !!!

Thank you for sharing this Cuz . I can FEEL that tightness you wrote about . I am HAPPY to see that you worked through it and are doing alright despite it .

Just because she tells you that she loves you, and you are cynical about it, doesn't mean that it isn't true in her eyes. You stated that is the actions over words. If you remove the affair, what do her actions tell you?

My W has been a great Mother and W most of our M. I was always proud of how well I married. All of our friends and family have always admired our relationship, which I believe was true and genuine for many years.

"Cynical" about her words, yes, I was told "you can believe me now" several times during the TT phase and up to Dday2.

She has also been a better W and mother the past 2.5 years. She has been solid in R.

Hey Tanner,

I definitely understand this:

I will always believe her actions over her words.

And it took nearly three full years of consistent actions for me to feel better about whatever words my wife used.

I lost count of how many times in the first two years, when my wife tried to tell me how she was feeling, my response was about as dismissive as I got along the way, "They’re just words, they’ve lost their meaning."

Six years plus now, I’ve seen enough actions to believe most of what I’m being told. I am comfortable sans blind trust, I like holding on to some sense of protective cynicism.

As to the speed of how fast feelings can change or a relationship can change — yeah — speed of light. For any of us really.

The difference for me is knowing what that change LOOKS like, what is SOUNDS like.

The old Star Wars movie line, "I sense you pulling away from me."

That line has a whole new meaning for me. I can sense distance and when my wife is NOT telling me something. It’s a skill gained when someone has so manipulated us in the past, I can tie those memories into the now in an instant.

Glad you are tackling your triggers head on. Only way I got through them was ask myself why one trigger hits harder than another.

Ultimately, I have found what my wife wrote me in the past, was true in the moment. I accept those moments. I also know the moments when I didn’t exist to her. Both are a part of the deal, with today being more important than old vibes, good and bad.