SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This is a random post with a purpose.

Before my A, Dday had a different meaning. D Day for was donation Day. It was a positive expression that filled me with pride and reminded me of a time I was selfless & brave. Post donation, Dday is quite the opposite. It a reminder how weak and broken I am. How selfish I am.

I donated my kidney to a stranger through a multi paired person exchange a little over a year ago. I agreed to be a participant in a medical study of living donors for the first 5 years post donation, as most data stops about 2 years post donation.

I had already had 1 year medical follow up and I agreed to participate in in a psychological follow up. This was a recorded Q & A session.

The questions were pretty standard like:

Do you regret your decision to donate? (Not even once)

How does a living donor make you feel? (proud and selfless)

Has there been any family conflict post donation? (yes...) and I was asked to explain. I told her I had an A and cheated on BH. I just didn't tear, I bawled my eyes out. She gently tried to ask if I behaved differently after donation or experienced different psychological symptoms. I told her directly that donation had nothing to do with my decision to have the A. I have nothing to blame it on or even want to try associate it with anything other than myself. I did it, on my own.

Have you experienced any new or increased symptoms of depression or anxiety? (yes but not because of donation but because I had an affair and I am broken person trying to better herself.)

The session was longer than this with a lot more questions, but you get the idea. It was the first time I told a stranger other than my IC or MC about the affair. It was the first time I was recorded talking about how I feel about what I did and my shame. It was difficult but it was a release at the same time.

I never thought or would want to blame my actions on anything other than myself.

I have had 2 Ddays in my life with very different meanings. I am trying to get back to that person I was a 1+ years ago. I respect her. I am proud of her. That is the woman I want my daughters to see. I may have lost myself along the way but I will get back there...for myself, for my BH, and for my family.

Sorry for the random post. I am still crying.

(((GreenEyesDisastr)))

Thank you for posting this. You give me hope as a BS.

You sound like a very giving person.

Hope you can help your spouse see that giving person.

Thanks for sharing. Good luck to you and your family.

Thank you for sharing. I hope you find that person again, she sounds like an amazing woman. ((GreenEyedDisastr))

FWIW, I feel the same. A year and half ago I was someone different. Loving, compassionate, my family came first, I could not think of hurting another living soul, certainly not my loved ones.

Now, I am this mess of pieces. My wife says she doesn't even recognize who I am anymore sometimes. Nor do I. I miss who I was desperately and am clawing and scratching my way to be him again. I was proud of who I was and loved the person I was.

I know that person that I was is the same person that eventually had the affair. But I don't want to be that kind of person anymore, or ever again.

FWIW, I feel the same. A year and half ago I was someone different. Loving, compassionate, my family came first, I could not think of hurting another living soul, certainly not my loved ones.

Now, I am this mess of pieces. My wife says she doesn't even recognize who I am anymore sometimes. Nor do I. I miss who I was desperately and am clawing and scratching my way to be him again. I was proud of who I was and loved the person I was.

I know that person that I was is the same person that eventually had the affair. But I don't want to be that kind of person anymore, or ever again.

Speaking carefully here... in regards to the often said 'I'm not that person' line.

One of the issues I've seen come up again and again in discussions between betrayed spouses is about who our WS really is. Was all the courtship and pre-affair years a lie? And the regret (maybe fake remorse) also a lie? Maybe the who our WS REALLY is, is the person who cheated on us and destroyed our lives. And after Dday they are holding that personality down.

Tears and apologies and all the rest of it can be fake... obviously the pre-affair persona was not who our WS actually is. Maybe all the 'work' etc is just a ruse to keep the security of the marriage going? For our WS, do their desires run in two different directions - one being for a secure upstanding life with a spouse, 2.5 kids, house in the burbs, 9 to 5 job, and the other is for the wild life, with a bad boy/girl as a partner, where life is all about fun without responsibilities.

The ability of our WS to lie to us, sometimes for years, and keep that secret life while we thought everything was fine is pretty darned disturbing. Is that liar who our WS actually is? They are good liars, so how can we tell who it is that we really married?

So when we hear our WS say, I'm not that person anymore, how can we possibly know if that's the truth? We even have a saying about it - when someone shows you who they really are, pay attention - if a WS is not the person who had the affair, then who are they?

GED

I was a different person 30 years ago. I was immature and selfish. I too nearly took the most precious gift I had ever received and dirtied it by sleeping with another woman. We paid dearly for that. But she gave me another gift, reconciliation. Since then, we have made every effort to live up to the grace that we granted to each other, and we have done well. We have now been married nearly forty years, and are more in love today than we were back then. (Oh yes, if you work at it, you can be just as loving and passionate as those in their 20s)

Thank you for replying. I'd like to respond with a few thoughts (and hopefully I am not threadjacking here).

Speaking carefully here... in regards to the often said 'I'm not that person' line.

I hear you, and admit I've made the mistake of viewing myself that way along my journey towards understanding and healing. However if you look, neither GreenEyed nor myself said, "I'm not that person". We said, "I AM that person, and I don't want to be that kind of person anymore." There is a difference, and I feel it speaks to what you said. Obviously, who we were pre-affair was someone who had the potential, and was vulnerable to, having an affair. In that regard, you are correct, it could be accurate to say that we were always that person to begin with. All it took was the "perfect storm" to ignite the hidden character flaws that led us down the path of destruction.

But I don't feel that it is fair nor accurate to view this as a "ruse" to either simply have "the spouse, 2.5 kids, house in the burbs and a little extra on the side". For example, consider the child of alcoholic parents. Research shows that children of alcoholics have a much higher propensity to become alcoholics themselves. They are effectively alcoholics before they ever take their first drink. If such a person were to get married, raise a family, build a career, and then, when they reached middle age, encountered a traumatic event, which led them to have a drink, which then led them become an almost instant alcoholic... would you assume that their entire life up until that point was just a "ruse" in order to establish a life in which they could conveniently become a raging alcoholic? It makes no sense. Why would a person even do such a thing? If you ultimate goal was to drink, why not just drink from the get go?

I can't speak on behalf of all WS's, but I can tell you that for myself, and I think many WS's, have no idea that we are even capable of doing such a thing until that perfect storm hits. If the ultimate goal of the wayward was to have their cake and eat it too, it seems to me that there would be much easier and direct ways to go about that than to plan an elaborate 20 year ruse in which they pretend to be a decent, loving and responsible person, raise a family, love their spouse, buy a home, all with the end goal of finally getting to have a little piece of ass on the side. If that's what you wanted... is that how you'd go about it?

Please don't misunderstand me. If I was a BS I'd probably think the same darn thing, and I'll tell you why... it would be due to the lies. It is the lying that really destroys everything, because once a lie is told, it labels that person as untrustworthy and lacking credibility. And the thing is, as we are discussing here, that credibility is ruined not only going forward, but also going backward. Everything that was ever said or done is now in question. Which sucks, for both the BS and the WS, but it is how it is.

Unfortunately, lying is part and parcel of an affair. Just as you cannot have a car without tires, you cannot have an affair without lying. Otherwise, it would not be possible. No one says, "Hey honey, I'm going out tonight to cheat on you, so don't wait up!". (Unless you have an open marriage). So, lying and sneaking and excuses... all these things come into play by necessity.

So here is the part where I stand on shaky ground, where a little bit of faith and a little bit logic vs. emotion comes in. I submit to you that the lying, cheating, sneaking, all of it... did not necessarily exist prior to the affair. It could have, but it does not have to. In the example of the alcoholic (who also probably ended up lying about how much he was drinking, hiding bottles, minimizing how bad it was, hiding the DT's, etc) was not a liar or a hider or even a drinker prior to that perfect storm, you cannot assume that the WS was always a liar and a pig as well.

The challenge is to examine the "end game", the motives. What possible reason would a person have to go through all of the hard work, love, pain, joy, tears, sacrifice and vulnerability required to be married, raise kids and build a home... only to support their need to be a liar and get some ass on the side? Why not just do none of that, stay single, and screw whoever you want? "The glove doesn't fit" to coin a phrase.

I'm sorry, I know I am passionate and sensitive about this, and as someone who has lied, I know it is hard to not hear my words and say, "Yeah, but what if you are lying?" My personal opinion is that believing your entire marriage was a ruse is probably the worst thing anyone can conceive of, and it destroys all hope that anything ever mattered or had any meaning at all. Before you let yourself go down that road, make sure that it makes sense. If it doesn't, then maybe it requires digging deeper, and letting go of enough fear to allow reason to have a chance. If they were always a liar, and this was all a giant scam, then there is little hope for them or the marriage. If they were a decent and loving person by nature however, and the affair exposed a fatal flaw, then there is tons of hope, because that flaw can be addressed and corrected, and the person and the marriage may be saved.

Thank you for posting this. It helps not just a BS but anyone with a heart. You still have heart. Dont quit fighting to live beyond yourself and the mistakes you have made. Again TY.

DaddyDom, I get what you are saying but this part does not fit.

The challenge is to examine the "end game", the motives. What possible reason would a person have to go through all of the hard work, love, pain, joy, tears, sacrifice and vulnerability required to be married, raise kids and build a home... only to support their need to be a liar and get some ass on the side? Why not just do none of that, stay single, and screw whoever you want? "The glove doesn't fit" to coin a phrase.

You kind of answer it above when you wrote:

If the ultimate goal of the wayward was to have their cake and eat it too, it seems to me that there would be much easier and direct ways to go about that...

I am not sure it was the "ultimate goal" for my WW or any other wayward. But the question remains, were they always open to it? Was it the "perfect storm", or was it the "perfect opportunity" to indulge their alter ego, just like the son of an alcoholic. The question is: were they always a "cake eater" but this was the first time they had the opportunity, real opportunity to eat that cake. Or worse yet, what else did they do prior to this betrayal that we did not know about as BS? Like you said the lies go backwards in time too.

So why, in a BS's view would a person build a marriage and invest in that family only to blow it all up in an A? Because they wanted to eat cake. They wanted the security of the marriage and the "fun" of the A. If that was not the case, why not just divorce the BS prior to the A and then screw the OM or OW without the encumbrance of marriage?

I think what GED is saying is the she indulged that alter ego, and did not like what she saw of that part of herself. So she is working to discard that alter ego. I think the question remains for all of us (BS and WS) was that part always there? Why? How does the WS discard it?

(not sure if alter ego is the right term)

I donated my kidney to a stranger through a multi paired person exchange a little over a year ago. I agreed to be a participant in a medical study of living donors for the first 5 years post donation, as most data stops about 2 years post donation.

You can be rightfully proud of this. At the core you are a GOOD Person. Never forget this.

[This message edited by Spiraltaenzerin at 11:00 AM, June 29th (Thursday)]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply DaddyDom.

This is the mess we're in. As a BS I live with uncertainty, which in retrospect is how I should have lived my entire life - I've always been too trusting, and that trust allowed my WW's affair to go on for years.

After Dday, like most BS's, I questioned everything about my marriage, my perception of history, and my evaluation of my WW's personality. What's real, and what isn't? I thought my WW was genuine both before and during her affair, but I was deceived. Who she really was, was someone that could cheat on me when the opportunity presented itself.

I'm unsure how pertinent this observation is, but my father was a long time smoker (cigarettes). He frequently quit, but always went back to it. Once he quit for 5 years. Was it a weakness within him that made him susceptible to that addiction? If so, something he said once may be relevant, he said, "no one ever quits [smoking], they just stop for a long time".

So I wonder from my BS perspective, has my wife only quit in the way my father described? Also, if that weakness for addiction was there in my father before he started smoking, then wouldn't that weakness be part of who he is? In my WW's case, that weakness was and remains part of who she is, because I believe we cannot change who we are at a base level, we can only change habits.

This is what I intended to indicate via my 'ruse' comment. How does a BS know? My WW had that weakness but it lay hidden for the most part. Looking back at her actions before we met and while dating, some of her views and actions should have rang alarm bells for me. Again though, I'm too trusting. So that was who she was, and it was revealed in a LTA. She's changed her habits and behavior now, but I still believe that weakness still resides within her.

Please don't take my POV as one of disparaging or hopelessness. A recognized weakness can be controlled. Behavior really is all that matters. My WW and I are coming up on 16 years post Dday next month, we're still together and quite happy. We survived, so others can too.

[This message edited by nightmare01 at 11:48 AM, June 29th (Thursday)]