SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

If you could do it all over again, knowing what you know now...would you have walked on DDay and said "the hell with this I'm out!" And never looked back ?

Good question. I sometimes wonder about that to this day. I hope that I would not have, given that I love the place that we are in right now. However, I would have been even more hardass about many things that I let slide, which led me into a lot of very painful TT and lie discovery.

I wish I had walked out. Even if later I let him come back, I wish in that moment I had walked out and figured out my head without him around.

No. I had every opportunity to leave - and the support of friends and family had I chosen to do so. But, I remember the night of dday crystal clear (unlike the following 6 months or so). I fought with myself. My pride and sense of righteousness wanted to leave. But, the only peace I found at all was in the decision to stay. Thinking about leaving made me anxious and sick and sad - not at all proud of myself like I so badly wanted it to feel. As soon as I gave consideration to the idea of staying, I was overwhelmed with a sense of peace. I remember thinking 'This is crazy' and trying to talk myself out of it, but I just couldn't.

I agree with Lost

I wish I had walked out. Even if later I let him come back, I wish in that moment I had walked out and figured out my head without him around

I wish I had left. I spent so much energy asking him if he still wanted me I forgot to ask myself if I still wanted him. Now 3.5 years later I am just beginning to realize what I need to commit to R.

I wish I would have. As another poster said even if we ended up together. I regret it. I do think about it sometimes and man....I just want to kick myself in the behind.

I'm 10+ years out from her previous EA, and no I would not have left, though I would have definitely handled it differently.

If it had been handled right, I would not have had to endure another EA and following DDay this last year.

I am not sorry I stayed, but I would have handled a lot of things differently. And I wish I had found SI sooner. My sanity would have been positively affected.

Every day since DDay2 i have wished i left on DDay1. I wish hindisght wasn't the only thing i could see 20/20.

No. As others have said, I would have done things differently but I don’t regret staying. My two small children deserve a loving stable family and, with much sacrifice and hard work from both my fWW and I, that is what they have.

Truth be told, I never stopped loving my fWW during all this time. I hated what she did and lost some respect for her, but I’ve come to understand and accept that she is not perfect and is capable of making a BIG mistake. Of course it has helped tremendously that she is very remorseful and has been very supportive of me and our marriage throughout the recover.

I'm happy about how I acted and what I did on d-day. I stayed and have no regrets.

But 1) I had a pretty good sense that my W was out of her A and committed to fixing herself when she revealed her A that same day, and 2) I had a strong sense of self and high self-esteem then.

[This message edited by sisoon at 10:28 AM, January 18th (Wednesday)]

Every fiber in my body was screaming to GTFO but I let the tears and pleading overcome my instincts. Big mistake. It took me 5 years but I finally separated. It's like I finally took care of unfinished business. I could have saved 5 years of my life if I left when I should have

No, I would have insisted that he leave, or I would have left.

I wish I would have walked on d-day. I sure as hell would if I had a do-over.

I stayed for various reasons, but I underestimated how profoundly damaged our marriage would be after the A. I also did not realize that this would be something that would never completely go away, even many years later, no matter how much work was put into it. It's something I think about on every wedding anniversary and certain other key dates that happened during my WW's A. There are always little reminders. I don't think they are truly triggers, they don't really impact me anymore, it's just a general feeling of malaise. Reminiscing about our lives together is an emotional minefield.

I do not have the same feelings for my WW either. I do care about her, but the damaged trust and loss of respect keep me from loving her. Intimacy has been damaged. I also have to deal with personally feel about staying - self respect, dignity, and humiliation\shame\embarrassment. There's also the lingering anger issues.

I would have been so much better off pouring energy into creating a new life for myself versus trying to fix a post infidelity M. I have no doubt about this now. I suppose I mostly got caught up in a fucked up sunk cost fallacy. I am still considering divorce.

Oh God, I would NEVER want to go through that experience again even for the ability to change anything. It was so difficult and so painful and so life-altering. I do feel like I'm (finally) on the other side, and, honestly, I wouldn't do anything differently. There's no point looking back; the only way out of this mess is through.

If I had known then, what was to come after DDay, I would've walked. WH TT'ed me for 20 months after DDay. There was no further contact with MOW after DDay, but he lied about and omitted so many things.. The lies just created so much more unnecessary damage. There are some things some of us just can't recover from. Be it the A itself, or what comes after.

If I could do it all over again, I would do the following differently:

* Be dispassionate (easier said than done)

* Have my spouse move out for a while

* Have conditions for her re-entry in the family home, including how I felt about progress

* Have drawn up a post-nup as one of those conditions

These things, while harsh, would have saved me a lot of pain, financial hardship and probably would have given my marriage the best possible chance in the wake of her destructive decisions. Instead, I held on, did the whole hysterical bonding thing and waited until her anger and resentment at me put her in a furious and adversarial state which she has conveyed to our daughter, who is struggling mightily.

No, I would not have stayed. Of course, that has a lot to do with my very recent discovery that my WH continued his A with my sister for the first full year after D-day. That feeling may change as I work to process that and heal, but that is how I feel right now.

I would still choose to stay, but I'd don my bitch boots immediately and plant them firmly on his arse. A polygraph in the first few weeks would have saved me months of TT.

As everyone else has mostly stated, yes I would have stayed, having done several things differently. Would have loved to have found SI sooner...