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I knew that they used a hotel for 2 of their 3 trysts, but had never asked which one. It just never occurred to me to ask. A detail that wasn't really all that important, I thought. Well, the other day she told me a story about how her grandmother used to pronounce "The Holiday Inn and Suites" by saying "suits," and we had a chuckle over it.

That started a brain worm in my mind and got me thinking about hotels in general, and it occurred to me that I didn't know specifically where she and her AP hooked up because I never asked. I knew the general area, she gave me the street name, and there are a couple of them there. I let it bug me for a couple of days before I asked her yesterday, "which hotel did you go to?" It turns out it's a hotel that I drive by very often. I sometimes even go into the parking lot because it shares the same lot as a couple of other places I sometimes go to.

This hit me harder than I thought it would. It's been over 8 months since d day, and while we're not anywhere close to me being fully "over it" or fully reconciled, things are going about as well as a person could hope for in our situation. It's not something that dominates our daily discourse. I'm convinced she's genuinely remorseful. She has done everything, everything I've asked of her. Up to and including ending a few very long term friendships (co conspirators and cheerleaders, I called them). One of them she had been friends with since high school. She messaged her other friends, cleared up some untruths, and admitted that she had rewritten some of our marital history in service of justifying her actions. She's maintained NC, easily. In fact she hates him now. She started disparaging him about a month after d day and her dislike for him has only amplified over time.

I feel almost like I've been hit with trickle truth or a 2nd d day, which is certainly not the case. It's a detail that I thought was inconsequential, and I'm sure she did, too, given all the details and information she's given me about everything else. It's not like she intentionally obfuscated or hid this detail from me with intent to deceive me. I knew it was a local hotel. She's been very forthcoming in answering all of my questions. She's given me answers to questions that are far worse than "which hotel?" I could have asked her at any time. I just never thought to.

What bugs me is I will be driving by this hotel pretty frequently. It's located on a main surface street and there really isn't any getting around it. We were in that parking lot together a week and a half ago, before I knew it was that hotel... I had a little meltdown yesterday reliving d day and imagining them there together. "We were just there in that parking lot a little over a week ago, right??" We got through it... after I locked myself in the bathroom for about 15 minutes to take some space because she was freaking out and wouldn't give it to me. By "freaking out" I mean crying very hard and saying "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, I love you, I swear nothing like this will ever happen again! I swear it! I love you! I hope you can forgive me!" Just picture that on a loop for a minute or two until I got up just to get away and think by myself for a few.

I'm not really sure what the point of me posting this is aside from maybe just to vent. Typing this stuff out has helped me before. I feel like I might be being unreasonable, but at the same time, hell no, I'm not. I didn't ask for this. I certainly didn't want it. She has however, been a model of contrition and remorse. Very consistent in her actions and demonstrating radical honesty. Which is something she's needed to work on for a long time anyway. She's still in IC and working on her shit. Daily affirmations verbally, physically, and in text. Lots of intimacy and bending over backwards to make amends and rebuild. I've no doubts she loves me and I'm still her #1.

I just have days sometimes where I'm not sure yet what exactly I want. I mean, while I leave the option for D open in my mind, for the most part, 95% of the time, R is the goal and it's what I want, but I sometimes wonder if I'm cut out for it. I think I am, but man. Those hard days are hard, and it's especially hard when my imagination starts taking over like it did yesterday. I almost felt like I was back at day 1 again. Sitting here today, the next day, with her working a short shift, I'm thinking about how much I miss her and can't wait to see her. Im going to surprise her with plans I made for lunch, then a nice, long walk afterwards.

The collective wisdom here, as usual, is so right. R is hard, and not for the feint of heart. It's a lot of work, and if my wife wasn't as all in as she is, like some of the other stories I've seen here, and I still didn't love her as much as I do, I'd have hung it up by now. She's being a real trooper tho, and rolling with the punches. She tells me all the time that she isn't giving up, and will continue to fight for our marriage with everything she's got. I believe her. Her attitude and actions have gone a long way toward reparation.

I don't want to hang it up. I still love her. I know she loves me, and we're very, very compatible. Both temperamentally and physically. I'm still very attracted to her, as she is to me. We've always had that going for us. We did go through a lengthy dry spell, but sex never got old, repetitive, or boring when we were busy with it, and it's come roaring back since d day and I weaned off of the SSRI that was killing my libido and my... you know. We've been at it daily for several months now. She calls it "making up for lost time," and I'm discovering I have a tiger on my hands. She went the opposite direction from most women after menopause. Of which I have no complaints. My sex drive is as healthy now as it was 25 years ago. I'm up for the challenge. I'll never get back on anything like Sertraline again.

For those who don't know, if you are, or plan to start an antidepressant, SSRIs are infamous for killing a person's sex drive, and can cause ED and anorgasmia. Simply stopping taking them doesn't always work to fix it either. There's a condition called PSSD, Post SSRI Sexual Dysfunction, and it can linger for years in some cases after stopping use. So if that's a concern, make sure you ask your prescriber questions about it. I didn't, and had no clue. I was on massive daily doses for a long time and it took me a while to wean off. It killed my sex life, and I had no clue how much that bothered my wife. She went through menopause at around the same time and I just assumed she'd lost interest as many women do.

Boy, was I wrong, and boy, did she never say a damned word about it to me. Some great communication we had, huh? That's another issue we've worked very hard on, successfully. There won't be anything like that to ever sneak up on me (or her) ever again, that's for sure. We talk about it a lot now, along with pretty everything else. Even the small stuff. Were both constantly checking the temperature with each other, and we're communicating about everything so much better now.

Okay, I started with hotels and finished with PSSD, lol. I think I've rambled on enough for now. Thanks for hearing me out. Happy holidays and merry Christmas everyone.

[This message edited by Pogre at 4:13 PM, Saturday, December 27th]

WW and I had occasion to drive by the office building where she and AP worked.

I got nauseous looking around, wondering which hotels they had gone to, which parking lots.

I told her some time ago that I would not continue to live in the area. She says she won’t live anywhere else.

Oh well.

We have a summer house several hundred miles away that I mostly stay at. She joins me there a lot. I think she wants a companion for restaurants, movies, etc. and I’m the best she’s got.

She talks about selling the summer house, and my moving back to our main house.

Not going to happen.

Thanks for hearing me out.

You’re welcome. 😉

Those little epiphanies will always be there waiting for you. For me at least, you can feel the emotion directly in the body. That raw, pure emotion.I’m betting the same for you.

You can train yourself when that happens (and it will) to put your awareness on that feeling and really feel it, rather than letting it drag your mind to the past. Just feel it in your body, where is it? Is it moving? What is it doing? And in feeling it, you become really present to the current moment. That powerful sense of "being present" is a good thing that comes out of a bad thing.

The affair hotels used to feel dangerous, haunted. I still note them everytime I drive past, but the ocean of emotion is drained.

I understand it’s a gut punch, but I agree with you that it isn’t trickle truth or another d-day. You asked, she told you. I’m sorry you are in pain.

Pogre, you have been heard.

What you are talking about is an emotional rollercoaster.

You're just 8 months out so it's completely normal.

One day at a time.

Some days better than others.

Wishing you the best.

Have you considered compartmentalizing? I'm thinking in terms like ...

This feels like TT, even though it isn't. So have the feelings. Let them flow. Then start again to deal with the hotel issue.

It might have been great if you had asked 'Which hotel?' earlier, but you didn't think of it. As soon as you asked, you got the answer. That really is a win for both of you - you got the info you wanted, and your W got to show her honesty yet again. But that does little - possibly nothing - to assuage the sense of TT.

So much of life isn't 'either-or'. It's 'both', even though that allows for lots of internal contradiction.

BTW, even as late as a few years ago, new questions came up for me from time to time. The only difference between 12 years out and 8 months out were: 1) I had no sense of TT - I assumed my W would answer if I asked; 2) sometimes the Qs were so trivial I had no trouble accepting 'I don't remember;' and 3) usually my W answered, and we moved on with great ease. Believe me, at 8 months out, we did nothing with much ease.

By all means, deal with issues when they come up, and have a lot of confidence in your ability to deal with those issues, because nothing you report here is unusual for a couple navigating life together after d-day.

Hi Friend, so sorry for this horror.
One question which I have heard people doing and I have done to an extent....

Ever consider "Reclaiming" that hotel so it does not hold the same power?

Ever consider "Reclaiming" that hotel so it does not hold the same power?

I DID! That crossed my mind! If not that one, maybe a different one, but if we do something like that, why not the same hotel? I even thought about requesting the same room. At the same time I could see that possibly triggering her, if not both of us. She's really disgusted with herself about the whole thing. I know she'd do it if I want to, tho. Maybe a little triggering in that way could be therapeutic? I dunno. That's funny, tho. That thought absolutely crossed my mind. It's not outside the realm of possibilities.

[This message edited by Pogre at 9:28 PM, Saturday, December 27th]

I get it Bud. The thing is, you would EXPECT the trigger....and you know what ..you give the trigger, and the dark,wicked, evil affair a big "F" you.

You make love in the most passionate, connected, sacred way with God's blessing. And I would even recommend praying that God take the power of it away, and bless your marriage like never before.

I second the reclaiming idea. Sounds like a great way to make new memories. In fact, if there's something you haven't done yet--sexually, that is--make it a point to try it on for size there.
Take control of the opportunity to improve things for you both.

I know what you're going through.
My fWW worked at a restaurant supply store on the route to my work. They used one of the unused offices for their encounters. It's where the assistant manager caught them, in the act.
I used to have to go past that place every day for work.
I finally decided that it was just another building and not worth my time.

I had spent the first year successfully avoiding the bar where my wife had made out with the other guy. It was triggering to me, and I swore I would never go there again. And then a mutual friend (who actually knew the truth) had a birthday dinner a few doors down from this bar, and they wanted to go to the bar after dinner. I protested. I dragged my feet. I made sure they knew how unhappy I was about this suggestion. They insisted that facing my fear would be good for me, though they weren't overly pushy. I agreed to go, partly to try to reclaim it.

Then of course at the entrance I end up face to face with a guy who made 9th grade hell for me and got some of my oldest friendships to betray me. Maybe it was where I was and the amount of pain I was already facing, but I had the balls to say "you weren't very kind to me back then" and that I didn't really want to be friendly. To his credit, he did apologize. But I was still fairly miserable the entire time I was there.

I haven't had to go back since, thankfully.

My youngest is a freshman at the high school where my wife works and where her Affair took place so every damn time I have to go to that place for an event I am reminded the entire time I was there and I hate it. I used to love going there to volunteer for different things but I just can't bring myself to do that anymore. The day he graduates I will look at my wife and say thank God I never have to come back to this goddamn place again

This will happen about 5 years after D-Day and I'm not sure how my wife is going to react and honestly I don't care

My mantra from the beginning was that I was going to OWN the A!! There would be NOTHING that they did that would keep ME from enjoying MY LIFE. They took enough from me and I was going to be damned if they took anything else!!

Because my H had his A overseas...I was not able to OWN any places. But there was a sweet BW on here who decided she was going to reclaim the hotel where her H had his A. She described in detail how they went to the bar in the hotel...that she sat at the same table and in the same seat as the adultery co-conspirator...looking around the place at everything the adultery co-conspirator would have looked at...while she was drinking her drink. She said that experience was very cathartic for her...and I was jealous that I wasn't able to do the same thing!!

Another BW had her WH bring her to EVERY place where he brought the adultery co-conspirator. He was cheap and never brought her to a hotel...opting instead to go to parking lots which were out of the way from the buildings. The BW started noticing that where her WH parked the car...it was almost always near a dumpster. She started equating their trysts with "dumpster diving"...which made it humorous for her .

It does HURT when these little facts get known...but in the long run it will be a healing experience . You seem to be on a pretty good path toward R and that will help you when the down days come. And they will come. The GOOD thing though is that they get less and less frequent as your "lizard brain" puts everything together and calms down .

So, my affair was far from home and so we driven none of it. However, what I honed in on is the idea of asking new questions and getting information that alters you, sets you back, even if it’s not really trickle truth or a dday.

My husband really didn’t want sexual details until month 9. When I told him, he told me that he didn’t want the details because he knows what happens when people have sex. I later learned he spent a long time deciding if he wanted to know or how it would help him. It was about a month later after the questions were asked that he wanted the divorce.

So I just want to say it doesn’t have to be intentional trickle truth or another DDay to have validity of time to grieve it. I am not even sure the delineation is helpful other than maybe it doesn’t disqualify her as reconciliation material. She can be reconciliation material and you can still feel or decide what you want.

But more importantly, it may serve you to really go through a thorough disclosure, a written out timeline of all the events. Not because I think you should torture yourself, but because it might be best to rip off the band-aid rather than have more things that slowly drag this gut wrenching stuff out with these little bombs. And give those things their due time to process without feeling like you have to focus on any certain outcome. The best reconciliations tend to come from becoming more comfortable with uncertainty in that direction. Eventually when you have had more time to process you will be more aligned with your decision to stay if you have an equal chance to not staying- because when you face the fears of the other option and feel comfortable you can heal in either scenario then you will feel the freedom to follow what your heart and instincts are telling you.

It personally sounds like to me things are going well, ai am just saying that by leaning into uncertainty and being open to that will allow you to resonate even further with which way you need to go. 9 months in you are barely out of the shock and bargaining stages of grief.

PS - don’t ask her to do it in the same room. That could be potentially very damaging for both of you

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:29 AM, Wednesday, December 31st]

PS - don’t ask her to do it in the same room. That could be potentially very damaging for both of you

Fully agree with this. Walk the lobby and halls if you want to "reclaim it".

A different approach in 2 areas:

1) I didn't reclaim everything. I reclaimed what I wanted to reclaim. One of my favorite grad school experiences was working as a cashier at Meijer's Thrifty Acres, a Walmart-type store. I git paid twice the minimum wage! It it was great!

W & ow spent a lot of time at a Meijer's, but it's 20-30 minutes away from home. I still don't like to drive by it, but that happens once every 2-3 years, so I haven't and won't put any work into taming the trigger. I'll go into other Meijer's without triggering at all, but I dodge the one they used.

They also hung out at a shopping center close to home. My dentist is in the professional building in the middle of the shopping center, as are Nordstrom's and Macy's and a shoe store that works for me. And Barnes & Noble. I reclaimed that shopping center as quickly as I could. I didn't want to switch dentists.

If that Meijers was a place I had to pass frequently, I'd have reclaimed it quickly, too. Staying the night at a hotel ... that I might dodge. There are lots of hotels at every level. If they used a Marriott, I think I'd avoid Marriotts if I possibly could. YMMV.

2) I'm anti-TT, but I believe it's easy to forget things in a data dump. Worse, I found that some things that were important to me were trivial to my W (and vice versa), and not mentioning something trivial is not intentional TT, IMO. Further, some questions didn't occur to me until I had time to chew over earlier answers, even though my W was fully willing to answer the new question and would have answered earlier if the question had occurred to either of us.

IOW, I see Q & A as a layering process, not totally unlike peeling an onion. So what I wanted from my W was answering my questions whenever I asked them. A data dump would have overwhelmed me.

Further, my W & I organize our sense of reality very differently. I'm good with what/who/where/when; she's ... well, I don't understand how she organizes her memories. So reading a long memo describing thoughts and feelings in my W's terms would have left me more puzzled than enlightened.

My reco is to figure out how you want info from your WS and ask for that.

My WH AP worked 3,000 miles across the country. She met him at his hotel when he was there on business.

Although my WH pretty much stopped traveling after his A, he did have an important meeting scheduled close to her site about 6 months after D-Day, same hotel OW met him at. Since a bunch of wives were going on this trip, I decided to go.

The first night/day was a living hell. I triggered so badly, I couldn't get out of bed.

The second night we met all the couples for dinner, was much easier.

I did have a meltdown another time during that five-day stay, but it was probably over in about an hour.

All in all, I enjoyed myself with the wives during the day, BUT the thoughts about my WH and AP hung over me like a dark cloud.

The BEST thing about that trip was many photos were taken, I was looking my absolute best, and I know those photos got back to OW.

Shortly after that trip, WH found a new job, actually a much better job.

If you do decide to take the plunge and take that location back, be prepared for the worst OR the best depending on your emotional that day.