AO,
This is what I feared and this is the situation that IMHO brings out the worst in SI. The portraying of your wife as the Whore of Babylon and portraying your situation as the absolute worst and most terrible scenario we have ever seen here on SI and that you have only got one path out. Usually followed by dubious advice and suggestions on how you control how she acts or what she does during the dissolution of the marriage. It’s like suggesting your house is on fire and your only option would be to blow it up with dynamite.
There is NOTHING special about you or your situation.
Only ONE thing that makes it unique. The unique factor is that it involves YOU. This is the first time we have read of infidelity involving a poster called AmbiavalentOne and his wife.
Other than that, the LTA, the words she used, the actions, the counselor… we have seen it all before in one or more combinations.
The beauty of understanding and accepting that this being your case is the ONLY factor that makes it unique is that it opens for the collective wisdom and experience of SI to lean on. After all – if your case was totally unique and the worst one we have seen – then how could we help?
AO – IMHO it’s imperative that the BS makes one key decision right in the beginning. That decision is simply to decide if the accept being where they are or if they want change. That change basically boils down to refusing to remain in infidelity and finding a path to reach that goal. Rule-of-thumb is that the path is either reconciling the marriage or divorce. I personally have never seen a successful third option.
Are you in infidelity? After all – your wife isn’t cheating as is. Well… we often compare infidelity to addictions like alcoholism. With an alcoholic, it’s not enough that he stops drinking, he must work on the reasons he has the addiction, the situation that puts him at risk and so on and so on. With AA 12 step work (probably the most successful treatment) he must face and make amends to those he wronged and live a life of total honesty. Plus, the addiction impacts the family and the family needs to deal with their issues too.
To me it really does sound like your wife did the work to get to why she cheated and – at least partially – dealt with her emotions during and after the affair. She might even have made amends in the last years. But she never asked forgiveness and the family never got to work through whatever direct or indirect affect her infidelity had on the family.
This gives you a certain advantage to those that come here with a spouse in active infidelity. It gives you the advantage of being able to research your destination, evaluate the paths out of infidelity and then set off when your vision is clear. It makes the route easier and minimizes the risk of you realizing you forgot something or that you need to switch paths.
I am going to encourage you strongly to use this advantage. Give yourself some time now to recover and better understand your situation. Evaluate what you have. Evaluate where you are leaving from. Evaluate where you are headed. Evaluate how you will get there. Evaluate what and whom you will take with you.
And then act.
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About you.
Stay away from booze.
Eat healthy if you can, but make sure you eat. Your body needs the energy because it’s all functioning at double-speed right now. If you don’t feel like eating then eat according to a time-schedule. Go to a sports-store and buy energy or protein shakes. Go to your local hamburger-joint and get a cheese burger and shake. Eat an apple or banana every 4 hours. Whatever. Just make sure you are placing calories into your body because YOU NEED THEM. Healthy is better, but any calorie will do.
Exercise. Doesn’t have to be running marathons. Even if it’s just leaving the house and walking for half an hour. But do it. Force yourself to make your body tired.
Be busy. Don’t mope around feeling sad. If you realize you are sitting in your pj’s unshaved eating yesterday’s pizza wondering about where your life went wrong then go wax your car, mow the lawn, clean the gutters…
Take care of grooming. Feeling clean and fresh does wonders for how you feel.
Build a support network. Interact with others. I think it’s better to be open about things. If you have friends that are close then it’s IMHO better to let them know what you are going through. You only need to share as much as you feel necessary. For some it’s just “we are going through a rough patch”, for others it might be all the details. Do what you need and what gives you the best support.
If nothing else works then talk to your doctor about a mild sedative or sleeping-aid.
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My thoughts on your wife and her actions.
Infidelity tends to be about fantasy rather than reality.
That’s why we always recommend exposure. It makes the affair reality.
Affairs tend to be about power and validation rather than the OP or the romance.
Your WW affair ended in a rather unique way (but then – we have had cases where the AP died or the affair was discovered after the WS died). But it does seem that your wife got a relatively competent IC that IMHO did A LOT of good.
For one the IC seems to have made your WW realize the true reasons behind the affair.
I am a former cop. Early in my career an old-timer pulled me aside and pointed out that no matter what the crime, the guilty person would always justify the actions. This was so true… The rapist would insist the victim led him on. The mugger would insist that this was the only way to feed his drug-habit. The drunk driver insists he wasn’t really that drunk but had flu. The speeder insist that his errand was so important.
I see the same all the time with infidelity.
Your WW and OM had a long-term affair. They professed love for each other. Yet neither separated. Neither pulled the plug on their marriages. There was no effort on their part during the whole time to seriously create a new permanent relationship from what they had.
That’s because the declarations of love and the descriptions of their spouses were simply excuses to justify why they had to have the affair.
It’s a lot easier to say; “I am cheating because OM is the love of my life” than to admit “I am cheating because it gives me a thrill and validates that I am sexually attractive to someone despite having had 2 kids”. It’s a method to say “OK so I met AO really early and have never been certain if I had what it takes to make other men desire me. Let’s go and see if OM still wants me”.
To me it seems the IC got the message across to her that her emotions were justifications. We often say look at actions not words… Well… her actions during the affair were to stay in this marriage. Her actions after the affair were to work on the marriage. Does this make it any easier for you? Does this mean you have to reconcile? No on both counts, but it is what it is.
Should she have told you? Yes. If the IC suggested she did not… well… that would be wrong. But it could have been a question of timing. MAYBE the IC (btw – INDUVIDUAL C) focused on HER. MAYBE if she had been there a year longer the IC would have pressed this issue. Maybe this fresh from her discoveries she wasn’t strong enough to confess.
I wonder why the IC had her write it down and store the letter…
Two things come to mind (and you can evaluate this from the letter):
It’s a memento to her Big Love. It’s taken out and read silently with a broken heart on their special days or whatever.
It’s the basis for the inevitable confrontation and confession. Something the IC knew would come one day.
Ask yourself: Why did she have it? Why risk having this smoking gun in the house? Why not burn it some years ago, or even store it at sister’s house?
Heck… If you can I would try to see if the IC is still working in your area and see if you can get a session.
Finally, on your wife: What she did was so terribly wrong. I have dealt with hundreds if not thousands of people that do or did wrong. But relatively few that are sociopaths. I guess your WW knows what she did was wrong and knew it all the time. Just like the drunk driver… But like the drunk driver she used some lame excuse to justify her actions.
Her IC seems to have gotten through those justifications and hopefully led her on the right path. But she has carried this albatross round her neck since and will carry it for the rest of her life. It does not make her an eternally immoral person, a repeat adulteress or require she be branded and preferably burned at the stake. From now until the end of time she will be a woman that is/was your wife and the mother to your children. No matter how your marriage ends from this these two things will be facts and you will have to learn how to live in peace with those facts.
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I don’t know what you should do AO… I honestly don’t.
You are totally free to end this marriage and it won’t be anyone’s business to argue against that or for that. It’s your call. I personally walked out of a long-term relationship just weeks before our planned marriage when I discovered she was cheating. But that was me… That was 5 years of my life and no kids, assets, pensions or trust-funds. For ME that was totally the correct decision.
But you are also possibly capable of reconciling with what happened and work on seeking acceptance. You don’t have to. Nobody will blame you if you chose D, but then – nobody should blame you if you chose this path. Lots of people have reconciled, including the couple that founded this site. I guess that’s why I find it so insulting when we have these posters that insist R is a sign of weakness or not possible. To me that’s like inviting oneself to a party and then trashing the room.
All I want to leave you with is that you have several advantages to the average BS. You have time, you have inactive infidelity and you have us giving you support.
Bigger