SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

His A just keeps haunting me and I find my love for him is waning. I do have ups and downs of emotions, but I mostly find myself feeling sad and mad about his A. I want to look at his phone. I want to yell at him. I want to scream and cry and uggg. It sucks.

Logistically it would be a nightmare, but I wonder about a trial separation to see how I feel. Heck, I even thought of 2 weeks in VRBO somewhere by myself (with my dog of course!) to see, but that is not really enough time. It would be like a nice vacation and who wouldn’t like that!

Just curious if anyone has tried a separation before deciding if R or D is what you want.

Thanks!

Two weeks in a "therapeutic separation" apart was enough for us to get clarity on R.

We expected to go longer.

Thank you for your reply. I am intrigued. Will you explain a little more how you acheived your therapeutic separation? Did you have any communication during it? Who left the home? I’m so glad it worked for you. I guess, I want to ask, how did you know R was going to be right for you during your separation? Loaded question! I get it might not be easy to answer.
Thanks, for any thoughts you have!

We did a 30 day trial separation, but I'm not sure it helped me gain any more clarity. What it did was remove the source of my pain for a little while and allow me to rest.

The biggest help for me was a solo road trip I took at about the 6ish month mark. I had chosen that as a reevaluation date. Being alone and away gave me the freedom to dive into my thoughts. I journaled, smoked cigars, enjoyed some great scotch and came to a conclusion.

Hope you find your way.

Thanks Justsomeguy, I appreciate your reply and sharing your experience. I’m glad your road trip helped you find your way. I am seriously considering something like this as well. It’s so damn hard. And all I do is blame him for putting me in this position!

Thanks again, and I hope I find me way as well. Glad you found yours.

We were 3 months post DDay, working on R but decided to spend some time apart so that we could try healing a bit on our own, without having our individual pain affect the other person so much. I was in so much pain over his affair, and he was also in pain over living with how much he hurt me and how much having the affair betrayed his own core values. Plus his mom had just died and he was grieving her as well so we were both emotional messes. We planned 3 weeks apart, one text per day just to say goodnight, meet-up once on weekends to have a "date" and talk. During that time we both did some work on ourselves and lots of journaling which we shared when we saw each other a week later. It lasted only the one week because on our first meet-up we realized we were both "all-in" with our marriage and ready to be together and rebuild our relationship. We both grew a lot in that week and we both feel it was really helpful to us. I know a week doesn’t sound long enough but somehow it was for us. That was almost a month ago and we are doing so much better now. So there is hope and sometimes it really can work out. We didn’t think of it as a trial separation, more of a "time apart" so we could both get our thinking a little clearer without being on top of each other all the time. So short-term might just be enough for you as well—you can always try and then extend if needed. Good luck with whatever you do—none of this is easy and it sucks that we are here. Take care.

I just wanted to add something. We had our lawyers draw up a contract for the TS so no party could claim abandonment.