SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Next came one to San Francisco and a visit to Alcatraz. As I understand it, many years ago there was some movie about it and the lead actor was a hunk that she secretly swooned over.

Hotdog, in terms of XWW trying to insert herself back into my life I took the advice of Odonna and blocked her on everything of mine and now all communication about anything but especially the kids is through J the au pair. Working like a charm. NC = no new hurt. Now sometimes when J drops DS at her place J might stay for a cup of coffee and a chat. J says that she seems to be making some friends in the townhouse estate and on occasion there has been a friendly drop in. After the last time J fetched DS she mentioned to me that XWW had asked her if she thought that there would ever come a time that I would allow her to attend Friday night family suppers again. Apparently she misses a lot of things about what her life was, but she misses those more than anything. I am certainly not close to that point yet.

I'm assuming that your DD and XWW's relationship is still strained.

Hi Stevesn and Hotdog

No, there is absolutely no contact between DD and X. I worked hard at it and I had managed to get DD to agree to give it a try with helping with the unpacking on the day after X moved into the Townhouse but there were some ground rules to that. In typical style X buggered that up from the moment DD arrived and that has put paid to that for a very long time. DD had a long conversation with me about a week ago. As distance is giving us all a bit more perspective, I think that DD is liking what she now sees her mom to have been, less and less. It is quite personal so I am not going to share it here, but some of it almost borders on abuse that I passively allowed to take place. DD is still in IC. At first the 2 of them went together but IC then said lad was in a good place for now and he would like DD alone, so we have kept that up.

Thanks for the NYC tip. OBS did in fact ask me for advice. I spent 6 weeks in NYC some time back. From just before thanksgiving to just before Christmas. My opinion is that is probably when the city is at its best. I gave her my favorite spots in the city, and some tips on general stuff, BUT;

Growing up under the hot African sun, ice skating is not something I have ever learned, so on that front I was not able to give her anything. So thanks for the tip.

Will be passing it on.

[This message edited by ohforanewme at 12:36 PM, October 30th (Monday)]

Glad you and DD are doing well. That is great news to hear.

Ice skating in NYC...you must visit Rockerfeller Plaza under the tree. Bucket list kind of thing...

pass that one too, thanks 1Faith

Oh god oh for.

I just failed reading comprehension 101

Well, good for her!

Two amazing new beginnings out of such devastation and pain.

Karma is smiling today:)

Glad things are working out for you and for your friend "OBS".

You are correct, the best revenge is to live well. Keep it up.

Ice skating in NYC can't be beat.

Oh4,

Oh! I am so very glad you took my advice and turned off WW's access to you! I don't post much, but I could see all the pain that was causing even though you were careful never to respond. After her courtroom hallway antics on Divorce Day, my stomach turned every time I thought about her trying to continue to manipulate you. Even her statements to J about missing Friday family dinners so terribly was a calculated effort (even if true), as she knew the message would be reported to you. It was completely inappropriate to ask such a question of J whether her feelings were true or not.

Your life is in a good place now and you are helping others here and IRL. Very proud to have you as part of the SI community!

I have been having such an argument with myself about whether I should post this update or not.

When I read Odonna’s kind words in that last post, I thought that they would be the perfect ending to the thread that chronicles this part of my life journey. I saw her post as the ideal conclusion as this thread to drifts to the last of these 25 pages, then slips off into cyber space. For it to maybe just float in that void until someday, in a galaxy far away, it is intercepted by a little droid. Then being interpreted for some brave fighter of the resistance, who has just learned that his beloved princess has been cheating on him. The thread maybe giving him the courage to move forward with conviction and the knowledge that happiness can be found again and good is recognised in a man that sticks to his convictions. (I am a Star Wars fan. Saw the trailer for the new one last night, but then who isn’t).

But I just have to share this with you, and hopefully Odanna will come along again with some more of those nice words of hers for a new conclusion.

On Friday, I had a call form OBS again. To pass on Christmas and New Year’s wishes. Both of us hoping that 2018 will be somewhat better than 2017.

She also shared with me a bit about her and widow friend’s NYC trip. They managed to fit in 5 ice rinks. She mentioned their names but I did not recognise all of them. I know that they did Rockefeller centre and the Library one and at least one in Central park. I don’t think that they were all open air but I never actually asked if they were. She did not get to see anything at the particular venue that she wanted to, but was not too upset about that. Said that it was a good excuse to do it all again someday. She did get to see some show on Broadway.

BUT the best part of all for me was that it was not only widow friend and her on the trip. They were accompanied by “that more mature dentist” at the practice that she had been to dinner with a few times. But I was not to read too much into this. He is an utter gentleman, always showing concern and genuinely interested in her as a person, but I must know that there is not relationship chemistry at all.

She even got a little angry at me for the outburst of laughter that I just could not contain. She only calmed a little after I read to her an extract of my post on page 21 of my thread;

And for all of you who’s “rebound relationship” alarms are going off right now, I think that there is fair certainty that there is no relationship chemistry here. For now, I think it is just jolly good, warm friendship.

And then pointed out that Bujinkhal had quoted it back to me, then followed that up with his observation;

I thought much the same, I'm now married to her. She was an amazing support during my dark days (never posted about it, just read and learned)

My advice on that is, if it feels right don't let proprieties stand in the way. If I had, I wouldn't find myself in the amazing relationship I'm in now

And then shared with her again the story of my Freedom Day Celebration, and gave her an update on where MMS and I are. I could practically hear the mild blush in her voice as she admitted that “That might be nice but I don’t want to assume anything too soon”.

My response, “I am through worrying about too soon. I only have so many years of life left and am not going to waist them worrying about too soon. If this does not work out at least we will have had the joy that we are experiencing now and I will just go on to finding the next spark of joy”. And then added, “but I truly hope this is the final chapter”.

I could hear the blush again and she said, “do you think, maybe?”.

I am through giving dating advice, but can’t wait for her update call in spring of next year.

Ohfor, thank you for your gracious acknowledgment of my post - which presented equally in tones of encouragement for you and outrage with your X on your behalf.

I am very happy that your life is on a continuous upturn, and that you weathered the sad moments perforating the holidays by indulging in the triumph of new traditions. Your 2PP are shining in life, as they should, and while it may take DD quite some time to have a new relationship with your X, at some point she will figure it out. Adolescence is a confusing time for mothers and daughters in the best of times, but it does end.

And, as you know, the raw pain of infidelity subsides over time. Even the primal urge to visit judgment and reciprocal hurt on our beloved betrayer subsides. So I want to leave you with a pointer to another story that unfolded on this site over the summer and fall of 2014, when I was a new lurker here.

Swat70 was in law enforcement. His wife (now X), SoSorry17, had an affair with one of his best friends, who then went off the deep end stalking her and harassing Swat. Swat, like you and many others on SI, tried to forgive her but just could never see her the same way. No matter how he tried - and she made great strides to heal the inner defects that led to her betrayal - he just could not get past it. Their divorce was final on his birthday in October of 2014, and at the proceeding he gave SoSorry17 a sealed letter. She never disclosed its contents, but she read it alone that night and posted about its effect on her, which was bitter sweet. From how she described her feelings it was pretty clear that it was a letter about how they met, and began, and their hopes and dreams when the marriage and the babies were new. And, having read all the posts of both of them, I will bet that Swat said that, while he could not go forward in their marriage, he pledged that he would never forget what they had and how valuable it had been until everything fell apart. I know he pledged to honor her as his children's mother and to go forward to co-parent them with grace and respect.

I wish I could find the link in the archives for this story, but maybe you can find it. I think it would be good for you to read on both sides of their story. Your X has not made the changes that SoSorry17 did, but maybe she will in time. Something to hope for.

And I think that in time you might be able to give the gift of a similar letter - not just to your X but to your children and, not least, to yourself (while 2PP should not see it, it will nonetheless be a gift to them). I know your 25th wedding anniversary is coming up soon, and it may be too early then to do so, but maybe a xmas present next year, or at some time when you feel ready and really can find a smile or two inside you when thinking about how you forged and protected your family with every breath and strength that you had, and how she at least started with that same vision, before she succumbed to complacency and hubris.

It may not be something that she deserves (as yet anyway), but you and 2PP certainly do. When you are ready.

[This message edited by Odonna at 1:43 PM, January 13th (Saturday)]

After the last time J fetched DS she mentioned to me that XWW had asked her if she thought that there would ever come a time that I would allow her to attend Friday night family suppers again. Apparently she misses a lot of things about what her life was, but she misses those more than anything.

Ohforanewme

Of course she misses it but there is an additional reason she wants to come and be friends. Being allowed to come publicly demonstrates forgiveness.

I know of a couple where the wife had an affair, got a divorce and then married her OM. She had a son that played football. She was mad because her ex-husband refused to sit with her and her current husband in the stands.

Her ex was showing everyone how bad she was by not sitting with her. If he sat with them then it would show everyone that what she did must not have been so bad after all.

As the major injured party her husband has power even after divorce. If he’s friendly and forgives his ex then how could anyone else not forgive her? i.e. “Your dad forgave me why can’t you?”

He’s like the lone priest that can give her absolution

Oh for, I know that you are trying to let this thread fade into the sunset. But I noticed a past of yours on another posters thread that indicated there were some recent developments in your story which peaked my interest.

So I came to ask first what has happened of late?

how are things in the land of Oh for? and finally what was the decision regarding the friday night dinners? I guess the real question there is, have you found a comfortable place to communicate to the XW from? how is the co parenting going?

Hi leftbroken

Thanks for checking in and showing interest.

Even after being on SI for some time now, I am still touched by the fact that you folk are interested in, care for, and support this insignificant, anonymous fellow, 10 000 miles away

You ask, “what happened of late”. I suppose I can say that I am in a relatively good place. In fact, I should say that I am in a good place. Life in the Ohfor household seems to be settling into some sort of routine. There has been very little effect on our lifestyle. 2PP are back at school after our summer holidays and while it is still early days, all this stuff does not seem to have impacted their school work.

I have more actual friends, from a greater diversity of life than I have ever have had. They care about me and show interest in even the mundane of my life. We get together often, share interests and learn more on those points where we didn’t have shared interests. We laugh a lot.

There is this rather lovely lady and her 6 year old energetic sunbeam of boundless energy and giggles, that are brightening up every corner of our lives.

BUT, there always seems to have to be an obligatory BUT doesn’t there?

Even with all this, I still get ambushed by days of desperate sad. Today is one of them. There are no triggers that I can recognise. I am not longing for, or missing XWW at all. I think that I am experiencing love and a level of connection that I never knew existed. I am scared witless that it too, might just be a façade or an illusion, and that one day I will wake up to another awful reality. I know that I now have true friends, where before, all I had was acquaintances. So where does this desperate sad come from?

I hate this 2 to 5 years that seems to be the anthem of SI. I really thought that I would be different. One of the posters to one of the other threads said they felt the same. They had done everything right and were desperately hoping for some time off for good behaviour, instead, it was beginning to seem as if there might even be time added to the end of the sentence.

So unfair. Our WS’s commit the crime but some heartless, invisible judge, imposes this most cruel and unusual sentence on us, the innocents in all of this.

I go to gym 3 times a week. One of those is Friday mornings. I usually have company at my gym sessions. This morning I was alone. She had to work so I did what I always used to do. I kept to myself, took my car magazine with. Buried my nose in it to make sure I made eye contact with no one. Chose a stair-climber strategically so that there would be no one on any of the equipment next to me, had only my thoughts, and drifted into a very sad hole. Did that trigger the sadness because it reminded me how my life used to be? Did it trigger me because it forced me to recognise just how shallow a façade, what I thought was a happy life, was? Was it just sad because I was not with a certain wonderful woman?

The past 2 months have been particularly difficult for me. We always did Christmas in a big way. Traditions handed down through 4 generations, and rigidly held fast to. The changed state of the family meant that we could not do most of those. It was the kid’s summer break. There was the lodge week that X and I had been going to for 20 years. My birthday and what would have been a 25th anniversary are all in these 2 months. Also, I was very close to MIL and for me, this felt like the first holiday season without her. I was so medicated over this period the previous year that I didn’t know any of it, so this year felt like a fist without her for me.

I knew that this season would be difficult for us all, so I spoke openly with 2PP. We agreed up front what activities and traditions we wanted to keep and which we wanted to change.

DD still wants nothing to do with her mom and seems to be moving on quite well with her life. I have made sure that she is still in weekly IC and have a promise from her IC that he will let me know immediately when there is anything to worry about.

DS still loves his mom, and I think he sort of sees himself now, as the man in her life and her protector. He asked if he could spend Christmas with her from Christmas eve to Boxing day morning. I was quite happy with that but it did mean that we had to change much of how it would have been. We moved our “Christmas lunch”, to early Christmas eve so that he could be with us. We did the presents then as well and he then left to be with his mom. Meant that instead of me being woken by over eager little bodies at 5 am on Christmas, we all slept in. Instead of a big lunch it was light and not terribly special. Throughout December, we were allowed to tag along with Wonderful lady (on a thread in D/S we agreed on calling her MMS) and her little one on many of what are their traditions. Man, I tell you, they were so much fun. Better than ours, but each time we did theirs to replace ours, it sort of reinforced that that life of mine is dead. And death in any form, causes grief.

My kids are proving to be my greatest strength in all of this. Two weeks ago, it would have been our 25th wedding anniversary. The weekend before I was in a bit of a slump. I was expecting it to hit me hard on the day, so I organised an extra-long and extra heavy gym session. When I got home in the evening MMS was waiting for me and took me for a long walk. When we got home, what a surprise. 2PP had set up fairy lights on our upstairs balcony. Scattered rose petals on the table. Had a bottle of non-alcoholic wine and glasses and had arranged for a young teenage friend, any of you that saw my thread in D/S about the little girl that I was privileged to be able to help get into university will know of her, I call her DDF (for dear daughter’s friend), well, her mom bakes and caters for a living and DDF has learnt from her mom. We were served the most delicious food by the cutest serves. At the end of it all, DS sat on my lap, DD on my friends lap and told me that they can understand why I might be sad on the day, and that from now on out, I can have the morning to be as sad as I like, but, they are not going to let me be sad for all of it. You see, if it was not for what happened on that day 25 years ago, they would not have gotten to know me or MMS, and they are rather glad that they did, so, by logical deduction, they are going to make bloody sure, that they celebrate it with all they can muster, and only if I am not glad that I got to know them, would I be allowed any sad from midday on.

Last week was my birthday. All the folk in my life rallied there again, and by the way, the Jazz now has the most amazing sound system. Just one of my presents from a certain lady. Now all that remains to be done, is to bolt on a super charger. I am loving everything about the car. Drove it to work every day this week.

Odana, I thought long and hard about what you wrote and think it is a beautiful thought. I have not yet read any of SoSorry’s thread. I have been a little fragile over these past 2 months. I am just not in a place where I can open up to any more sad or hurt. I so want to pay it forward. I did post quite a bit of support in JFO for a while but have found that right now I hurt too much when reading of the deep pain suffered by the folk here, so I have been trying to support in D/S for now. When less fragile I will be back to support.

I thought of the letter to XWW, I like the idea and believe that I will do something like that sometime in the future. Right now, I thought of what I might say and there was quite a bit of positive in what I would write but, each time I could not stop myself form then throwing; in, “and just realise that your naked selfishness and absolute stupidity, has murdered all of what we had”. I will wait until I can write the letter without that ending. I chatted to some trusted advisors about sending a card or gift and they wisely pointed out that I needed to be cautious to not lead the XWW to possibly think that there might be a door to R. In the end, I just arranged for card that I wrote to be delivered to her. In it I said that I knew that, like I was, she would be reflecting on the day, and our years together. I said that I needed to be honest with her, that the way that my life has developed, there is now no chance of a future where we would be together again, but we will always share a past, and that I am now able to see that much of that past, had happiness in it. I thanked her for that. Most of all, I thanked her for the greatest gift that had ever been given to me and that is the gift of my 2PP and that it was her that gave them to me. I have not had anything back from her. DS told me that there was card standing on the dresser in her room. She said nothing to him about it.

As I suppose most of you, who have put some distance between yourselves and your DDays, I have begun to do quite a bit of reflection. As I do this, I begin to become confused. One of the discussions that seem to pop up regularly, and where there are even sometimes threads, is the time machine one. On reading those, I always wanted one of those, and the scenario that always played out in my head was, that, when XWW told me that she was starting that job, that I would have made her find a different one, ( I realise now, that the first A, would still have been there, but the discovery of that came so late in our journey that I have still not accepted it as a reality), In any case, given where I am now, I don’t think I would have changed anything. Yes, these last 2 years have been hell, but, when I weigh up my life experience now, even with the pile of hurt caused by the A, the balance of my life is still tipped to the happy side and that is beginning to pile up high again.

I hope that there is some help in this for someone here in JFO

I hope that there is some help in this for someone here in JFO

People like you are what's right with this world!

I love the way you've shown so much support on this site.

Even your story is uplifting.

I pray for nothing but the best for you and your children!

Ohfor,

You are indeed helping people, both IRL and here. Your anniversary card to XWW sounded just the right note, and your sharing here your "desperate sad" is - believe it or not - a helpful message for those here who still go through inexplicable sadness from time to time. "What if" scenarios are inescapable, but in the end they all come back to "what if he/she at the core had been a trustworthy person." That is the scenario we all believed we had, but did not. And wishing never makes it so.

Ohfor,

As I've said on numerous occasions, you are my hero. Your journey exemplifies the resiliency of the human spirit. And, your wise counsel and goodness are conveyed in every post.

That thoughtfulness is a balm to many tortured souls.

You're a genuinely good guy.

Those fleeting periods of sadness will one day disappear altogether.

The universe has big plans for you.

The lion roars.

[This message edited by MidnightRun at 2:10 PM, February 2nd (Friday)]

Thanks for the update OhFor

Was the card on her dresser the one you sent or one she had bought to send you? I wasn’t sure by the way you wrote it.

I am sure your note was not what she wanted to hear but it was honest and sensitive and so hopefully she can appreciate that.

As for the time machine, changing her circumstances would not have change whom she was or is. So she proabably would have found a way to the A lifestyle no matter where she worked or whom she surrounded herself with.

Please accept my best wishes for your continued healing.

Hi Stevesn

Thanks for always caring and showing this by the way that you, so consistently check in on so many of us. I see you do this so regularly and think to myself. "what a great guy he must be".

I don't know if the card was mine or not. To be honest I was trying to do some spy work by telling DS after J brought him home from his last weekend stay, that I had sent her a card and had she mentioned it at all? He said she had said nothing about anything like that but that he had seen a card displayed, upright on her dresser.

I still think that I did the right thing with the card, however, afterwards I wondered for a little while if I had. I know that I wanted nothing from her and would have been furious if she had tried to do anything. I now feel a little better. I recognise how different our roles in all of this has been and so we would see things as anniversaries from very different angles.

MidnightRun and Wool I would also like to say thanks to you for so constantly helping to rebuild my self-image, one compliment at a time. Means a lot!

And then Odonna you always so caring, gentle and wise.

Bump! A must read