5 Years Out - Thoughts and Reflections
I posted here somewhat frequently at the end of 2018, when my wife confessed to an affair she had much earlier in our life together. It was devastating for me and nearly ended our marriage. With the help of lots of therapy and many email exchanges with a couple members of this board, I made the decision to stay in my marriage and work on reconciliation.
For me, reconciliation has been a cycle of working through lots of "D" words - Disgust, Distrust, Doubt, and Depression, to name a few. Each month and each year that goes by, there is a longer and longer period of time where these thoughts stay "out of cycle" and I genuinely enjoy my life, love my wife, love our family, and feel happy.
However, if there is a point in which these feelings disappear for good, I have yet to find it.
I have accepted the fact that my life will not match the hopes or dreams that I have had for it. My dreams of a family life of course did not include an affair, nor did it include the many frustrating byproducts of surviving an affair; the never-ending triggers in TV and movies and music, the intrusive thoughts, the distrust and jealousy, and so on. My dreams of a family also did not include a divorce or shared custody, so there is no outcome here that aligns with my values.
I believe this is the gist of reconciliation - accept that your life will never be what you had hoped it would be, change your goals, lower the bar, soften your values, forgive the seemingly unforgivable.
Do the math. Pick the 'least worst option'. Remind yourself that every relationship is hard, life isn't a fairytale, cope however you need to cope to move on and try to live the best life that's available to you.
"Unfair" is such a simple, even stupid word, so often used by my children and other children to exaggerate any minor inconvenience, but I can't seem to find a better word to describe reconciling as the betrayed partner (just another injustice, I suppose).
You are the victim, and yet you are also the punished. You suffer the triggers, the intrusive thoughts, the disappointment and depression, and even more so, for your life and marriage to function and maintain some semblance of happiness, you also bear the burden of suffering those thoughts largely alone. It's so god damn unfair.
There is nothing left to be said about my wife's affair. We've said it all. We've discussed it ad nauseum. First by shouting, then in therapy, and finally now in melancholy talks during the rare times I feel the need to vent about what I'm feeling. There is no puzzle to be solved, no satisfying answer to tease out, and no amount of thinking or planning or strategy can change the past. It drives me almost mad.
My wife has done everything right. I have zero doubts that she fully regrets her affair, she hates who she was back then and what she was able to do and the various bad choices she made, and it pains her to know how much it has affected me and will always affect me. I love the women she is today, I love our family, I love spending time together and when I am not thinking about what she did 15+ years ago, I am well and truly happy.
But that's the rub - I can't stop thinking about what she did, and I know I never will be able to stop. It's not in my character to stop thinking about it. I have always been insecure, prone to jealousy, vulnerable. It is a wound so deep that it will never heal.
I am writing this (to no one's surprise, I am sure) after a rough week, and I am sure that in another week I might read this and cringe and think "life is good, you dope". I hope that's how I feel in a week. I can't stand how "stuck" I feel when I think about it, how the unfairness of it all seems to swarm every last neuron in my brain and I obsess over a desire to change the past that is so strong and yet so impossible, and I just want to explode in impotent rage.
If I could erase any memory or knowledge of her affair from my mind, I would absolutely do so, and I pray that I forget more and more about it each year. Not because I want to rug sweep the affair, but rather because despite the fact that I have accepted it and come to terms with it and have decided to move forward in our life together, I feel incapable of being truly happy for as long as the memory of the affair exists.
It's like a gremlin that lives in my mind and torments me - "remember when she said 'yes' to that guy, how she said 'yes' to doing the one thing you absolutely needed her to never do, the one thing you needed her to say 'no' and to think of you and protect you and love you? Remember what she did with him and how she did it and how much fun she probably had doing it? Remember this, and that, and other thing and how AWFUL those things make you feel? Remember? REMEMBER??"
Breathe. It was almost 20 years ago now. She's not that person anymore. She loves you. She lied to you BECAUSE she loves you and didn't want to lose you. She confessed to you voluntarily - why would she do that if she didn't love you? She's made every effort she can make to earn back your trust. She's read the books and done the work and listens when you vent and loves you with her whole heart.
There's only one thing she can't do - change the past. "Unfuck that guy", as one of the poets on this board put it.
Fuck.
[This message restored by Webmaster at 8:24 AM, Friday, May 3rd]
25 comments posted: Thursday, May 2nd, 2024
