SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Thank you so much for sharing your story. I know how hard that must have been for you, you brave, strong, wonderful, beautiful soul. And I am so so so happy that you are coming home tomorrow (today!)

You’ve been through so much and yet you’ve still fought so hard. You didn’t give up. You kept working and fighting. For yourself, for your husband, for your DS, and for your angel baby who is so proud of her mommy for who she already is and also for who she’s becoming.

You are such an inspiration.

(((ASoCalledLife)))

I don’t even know if anything that I have to give - meaning what I have to say - is even of any value.

I believe that you are highly off with this assessment.

Thank you so much, everyone. Your words of encouragement made me smile. This the best day ever. It’s like having a new anniversary. A new chance. A new life.

I baked a cake last night for us to commemorate today. Too much? If it is, my brother will happily eat it, lol. I just feel so celebratory.

Woke up to my a text from my mother: “Sweetie, I woke up in tears of joy thinking about what today mean for you. But decided to text rather tha call you at 5 am. I couldn’t be happier for you. Anything that you two need, please just say the word. I am so proud of you.”

She is so wonderful. One thing that has come out of this horrible situation is that my mother and I have grown closer. Before, it was always my dad, my brother, and I. My mom never really had a place...not because she did anything wrong, but just because I was such a daddy’s girl. But now I am realizing how much I was missing out. We are learning one another, she and I, and developing a mother-daughter bond like we’ve never had. I appreciate her love and support so much.

Today. After church. I get to come HOME. For good. To my family.

Thank God. I just don’t know what to say. I know I don’t deserve this, but I am so grateful.

I know I don’t deserve this,

I disagree!!!

So so so happy for you!!!

I’ve been thinking about you all morning and had this silly smile on my face. My husband thought I was so weird. (I can’t believe I’m sharing this) He actually asked me “Did we have sex last night and I just don’t remember it? How was I? By the look on your face I must’ve been Superman!” So I told him why and now he’s jealous that you got me to have that smile. He said I owe you dinner, or at least a few drinks!

Welcome HOME.

ASCL - I cried reading your story of redemption. I cried because one of the most beautiful things in life to witness is personal transformation and triumph. It is beauty beyond words.

I know from my own experience and that of my WS that this is a scar you will carry forever but remember that scars are typically stronger than the original area they heal. We don't wish trauma on ourselves or welcome it but we can triumph because of how we chose to heal from it. That is our choice and we have this life to live so we should do what we can to make it great and wonderful despite the pain and sorrow of strife.

You are beautiful and you give us all hope. I admire you more than you know. Enjoy your family and welcome home!

Speaking of "home", my wife and I had a similar, celebratory feeling when we FINALLY got started on mutual, all in, REAL reconciliation & rug burning (rather than rugsweeping) efforts on Thanksgiving of 2015.

While I will readily admit that there have been CONSIDERABLE ups and downs in our journey since then, one of many things we both very much agreed on was the effect of the children's animated movie "Home" along with its songs and themes which we watched together as a family that day but with very new eyes and ears, minds, and hearts that took those themes in with a very different perspective than we had when we'd seen it previously.

It remains to this day our very favorite movie of all time for BOTH of us, I believe. Of course, it's not about infidelity per se...And the kids really have no idea why we cling to one another and get tears in our eyes throughout the thing.

But since you've been so..."different" and somewhat sheltered or more socially isolated than many others of your peers, and since you've changed in mind and heart and awareness and priority of certain values...and since you almost lost EVERYTHING, and had to die to yourself in the interest of trying to do the right thing and love others more than yourself...well...I HEARTILY recommend that you watch that movie, with or without your son at first.

Once you get past the gratuitous juvenile humour aspects, it's really got a LOT of depth and applicability to the consequences of good and bad choices, of selfishness vs. Selflessness and the effects of both on ourselves and those around us and in our lives.

It also deals with cultural and ideological alienation as well as

And the songs are soooooo relevant to US at least. Frankly, it's a wonder that I haven't put any of them out there on my little SI radio station before now.

Anyway, that's my official recommendation for y'all to see together, and the name kinda says it all, even if the little alien was a LOT more like my wayward wife in his cultural and FOO's conflict-avoidance and coping mechanisms than he is like you were or are at this point.

Looking here at my lengthy post and sales-y way of going on about a children's movie like this seems really silly of me to my own way of critiquing this response to your " Welcome Home" reunion, but as always, I guess I'm just sharing from my heart with you and your husband, so as nutty and atypical as this reciprocation post may be, I guess I'm just gonna betting and batting the way I always do with y'all. After all, I guess my averages on doing that haven't been too bad thus far I reckon, at least where y'all are concerned anyhow!

To that end I'll send a movie trailer and a song:

(Spoiler alert and some sad remembrance aspects in this one, but...)

Feel the Light (Home)

https://youtu.be/LTnWxtSm0Ys

Alternatively, just doing an audio-listening only thing with that link will save you from most of the spoiler or the downer aspects I think.

Here's another song from that movie:

Red Balloon (Charli XCX) (number five of eight playlist)

https://youtu.be/AYikECBahio

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(Silly ME! I forgot to properly congratulate you! Although I guess I figured that my shedding tears of joy and kinda saying so was a way of saying such, but just to be perfectly, crystal clear...

Congratulations to you ALL, Mrs. LIFE! It is a GREAT pleasure to share in ya'll's joy at this time! Thank you so very much for letting us be a part of it and for letting us play some small part in helping ya'll get there together!

[This message edited by Cephastion at 3:25 PM, March 18th (Sunday)]

Oh ASCL,

My heart is gladdened by your update.

Going forward, please always remember that yes, you do matter.

ASoCalledLife,

OMG. Reading your words moved me more than I can tell you. My heart is beating fast and it seemed like the world stopped spinning for a few moments as I got lost in your story and in the pain, both for you and for all the lives of those around you.

Thank you for sharing your story with us. It can be hard for others to understand sometimes the way it feels to wake up every morning and know that everyone you love in the world is hurting, hurting to the point of violence and suicide, because we (WS's) got selfish, and then got stupid. That our brokeness spilled out onto the world at large and in doing so, threatened to destroy the lives of the people who deserved that pain the least.

Not a day goes by that I don't hear about infidelity. It seems as if every single TV show, movie, book, talk show and conversation at Starbucks is about who cheated on who, and everyone speaks about it so casually, as if it were little more than spilled milk. It is not spilled milk. It is spilled blood.

Still, I want you to know that I am so proud of you. I know we don't know each other, but I assure you, we know each other more than some may think. You cannot go through this process and not understand and recognize yourself when you see someone else fighting the same war within themselves as you fight every day. You are my unknown sister.

I am learning that even though I never in a million years thought I would do something like this, I am more than just a despicable act. I am my father’s daughter. I am my son’s mother. I am Mrs. Life - the proud wife of an amazing man who has chosen to forgive me.

This is the most important thing now. There is nothing you can do now that will go back and make what happened "not have happened". But what you can change is who you are. You can go back and fix the broken person you were, the person that made this mess of themselves and of everyone and everything else. Somehow, it seems like the best way to honor and respect those that have been hurt is to make it such that it was not all for naught.

You should be proud of yourself, for being strong enough to dig deep and to tell your truths, for being strong enough to share your truths with others, and for being strong enough to go on and become the person that you always really wanted to be, who you should have been. Someone honest, with integrity and respect and most of all, someone who loves themselves first, enough that they can eventually love others in the same way they loved you.

I am happy for you today. It is good that your husband and you are still together, at least for today, and proving that there is always hope, even in hopelessness.

Today, you are loved, you are accepted for who you are, who you were, and who you have yet to become. That is a precious, precious gift and you have paid the price to deserve it. Keep doing the work. We can no longer predict what happens from here, and we cannot control it. But we can make sure that we did the very best we could, and that we can stand tall as our true, authentic and genuiine selves.

Congrats. Now go be with your family.

I will continue to pray for you, your husband, and your son.

It’s good to hear your Mother has been teaching out to you and you are reciprocating. You need support from someone who loves you and WANTS your family to stay intact.

With your diagnosis, do you have many female friends?

It’s so good to here you are moving back home. I truly believe you know what a gift your husband is.

Over 24 hours since I have been back home. ❤️ I slept more peacefully and soundly than I have in months. Well, when I finally went to sleep, that is, lol, as hubby had other plans for me!

Thank you all for your kind words!

Mrs. Walloped, your husband is so funny; your post made me laugh! And hmm...dinner WOULD potentially help me in my quest to put on weight, lol.

Cephastion! You are AMAZING! Thank you for your support; you have no idea how many times your words have helped me when I have been feeling low. And I thought I was the only adult who voluntarily watched child movies and then finds myself teary eyed. The love shared by the married couple in “Up” - oh my goodness. The end of “Meet the Robinsons.” And “Big Hero 6!”

I’ve actually seen “Home” but now I need to re-watch it from a new perspective.

ISurvivedSoFar and DaddyDom, thank you both. As a couple in R, and just as people who have sought to reclaim your lives, I admire the two of you so much and always love to read your insight on things. Thank you.

Iwantmyglasses: I definitely appreciate the prayers! And yes, having the opportunity to strengthen the bond with my mother is awesome. I don’t have any female friends at all, and I pretty much never have. I was always so different than most of my peers. I didn’t have a huge selection of people around, but there were some other girls in our homeschool co-ops and at church. I didn’t hit it off with anyone, unfortunately. The girls all thought I was weird. They were interested in boys and makeup and giggling while I wanted to re-enact battles at Hogwarts and make at-home science experiments and discuss Thoreau.

As an adult, I tried to join some Mommy and Me groups, but I always felt like I didn’t belong. Partially because of having Asperger’s, but also because I didn’t like how the other moms acted strangely around my son because he didn’t walk and talk the way their children did because of his disability. They weren’t openly mean, but they weren’t welcoming, and my protective mom instinct kicked in, leading me to leave the group. But even aside from that even if I had stayed, I had noticed from the time I was there that I just couldn’t seem to “break in” with them...I couldn’t figure out what to talk about and didn’t know how to act in front of them. I just didn’t fit in.

I did have some casual acquaintances at church and at work who were women. We at least had God to talk about, which helped! But it wasn’t like we went places together or communicated much, if at all, outside of those settings.

Sorry for the long answer...basically I’ve pretty much never had any female friends my whole life, unfortunately.

WilliamM, Greeneyesbluesy, and others whom I might have inadvertently left off due to rushing: On behalf of my family, I thank you so much and I thank you for caring about us.

ASoCalledLife --

I don’t have any female friends at all, and I pretty much never have. I was always so different than most of my peers. I didn’t have a huge selection of people around, but there were some other girls in our homeschool co-ops and at church. I didn’t hit it off with anyone, unfortunately. The girls all thought I was weird. They were interested in boys and makeup and giggling while I wanted to re-enact battles at Hogwarts and make at-home science experiments and discuss Thoreau.

It's actually completely possible to be into makeup + Harry Potter + boys + Transcendentalism at the same time. Turns out these aren't mutually exclusive by any stretch, and many women enjoy similar combinations of varied interests. Just like boys can be interested in sex and geekdom simultaneously, so can girls. ;-)

How do you know the girls all thought you were weird? What did the boys think? What did you think?

...basically I’ve pretty much never had any female friends my whole life, unfortunately.

That is a bit troubling and something of a red flag, especially in light of your boundary-crossing relationship with a lifelong male "best friend." There is a lot to unpack and examine here.

Rasputina, I would have LOVED to have met a girl (or some girls) like that! I don’t doubt they exist, but they just weren’t very prevalent in the conservative Christian homeschool community that made up the majority of my social interaction.

Unfortunately, the reason I know they thought I was weird was because they said so. They would whisper things like, “Weirdo,” and “Ass-burger Head,” and “Bone-quisha.” They had to include me in invitations to certain events because their parents made them, but it was clear that they would have preferred that I not be there. Don’t get me wrong - they didn’t pinch me and yank my hair like the kids when I (briefly) attended public school. They weren’t bullies. They just didn’t like me.

It was different with the boys. I have a twin brother and he and I have always been close (we’re still close), so I knew how to play with them. They were easier to understand than girls because there were less hidden meanings to things.

I wouldn’t necessarily have considered most of the boys we knew to be my close friends (with the exception of the former best friend I mentioned in previous posts). But they were acquaintances I was friendly with.

It changed once I hit puberty. To my horror, I developed curves - noticeable ones, namely a gigantic bosom, hips, and a big butt. Before I had been rail skinny and except for my long hair I blended in well with my brother and the other boys we knew. But once I became more visibly “female” things became uncomfortable. A couple of the boys even tried to ask me out, which I didn’t like, as it was clear they were treating me different now. So after a while I stopped hanging out with them and mainly just stuck with my brother and with my former best friend from then on.

ASCL, I think your being open about Asperger’s is a huge help for parents who read this. For those of you who have not been around people with this syndrome here is a quick overview. Black and white thinking is usually present. Since that is more a male trait women who have it are often more comfortable with men. Gossip, giggling, flirting are not easy to understand because so much of it is in the gray area of nuances of speech and facial expressions. Too much information coming in all at once gets too be too much too quickly. Scientists and other people who can concentrate on one subject for hours might have this syndrome. I am not speaking for you. I am hoping this helps anyone reading this to get past the idea we all have to be exactly alike. I have ADHD and I defy anyone who thinks I am weird. I like myself. I hope you like yourself. I rejoice in your new beginning.

ASoCalledLife --

It was different with the boys. I have a twin brother and he and I have always been close (we’re still close), so I knew how to play with them. They were easier to understand than girls because there were less hidden meanings to things.

Your "outsider" experience growing up is actually much more common than you realize, as are your reactions and responses. You aren't alone in that at all; you've just never opened up enough with other people in order to truly compare life experiences and stories. Do you ever notice how your story is so similar in many ways to that of pop culture characters like Eleven from Stranger Things and Beverly Marsh from It? There's a reason for that. There's a reason that trope exists.

That's the inherent danger in thinking that you are somehow very different from everyone else. You never see the similarities, both positive and negative. You also risk internalizing some pretty hinky stuff and normalizing it..like the friendship that is not a friendship...or the expectation of being judged and found lacking by your peers...

It wasn't that there were less hidden meanings with the boys, ASCL -- it was that the messages you thought you were picking up seemed easier to understand. Until they weren't.

I would challenge you to keep examining and exploring this further, starting with your assumptions about how other women perceive and relate to you.

ASCL, so happy to hear that you are returning home. I wish you all the best. Keep God first. Persevere through the ups and downs.

Rasputina,

I’m not familiar with either of those movies (shows? Books?), so I don’t really understand the reference. But I don’t have any illusions that there aren’t other people in the world who feel different from other people. I don’t think I’m some type of exclusive individual whose experiences are completely uncommon to all humanity (I’m stating that matter of factly, NOT sarcastically). I think everyone has moments, maybe even several, where they don’t feel like they are a part of things. But for me that hasn’t been a momentary thing.

Not fitting in has been a constant theme throughout my life. It isn’t something that makes me feel self-pity or sadness. It’s just the way it is. I don’t shed tears over it; it’s simply my reality. Would I like it to be different? Certainly. Do I think that’s likely? No.

People on the autism spectrum are estimated to be approximately 1-2% of the population. So I’m not imagining the fact that I am different in that regard. And growing up, it was viewed as an anomaly to be Aspie AND female (it’s less so now). My parents tried to go to support groups and tried to bring my brother and I to Aspie social skills groups, and I can count on one hand how many times there was ever another girl around. I was almost always the only one. And if there was ever another girl, which was extremely rate, I was ALWAYS the only girl who wasn’t white.

Just like in the homeschool groups. My brother and I were almost always the only brown faces in a sea of white. We were also almost always (if not always) the kids who had a homeschooling dad instead of a homeschooling mom. People thought it was strange that our mother worked outside the home. Maybe we would have been better accepted if our mom was the homeschooling parent because she’s white and also neurotypical and would have blended in better than my father, who was likely an Aspie himself, did.

The closest I have ever come to having female friends have been as an adult in my former church and workplace. Because there were structured activities such as praying with a partner and workbook activities to complete (women’s small groups) or a common interest i.e. clients to care for (work). But those connections never went beyond the walls of work or church. It is hard to know what to say, what to do. Small talk literally makes me break out in a sweat and nervously flap my hands, even now. It is scary and uncomfortable.

I have “special interests” that many people don’t seem to share. I would very much like for someone to find me interesting and not weird; that seems easiest when people are kept at a distance. If this the same thing for others, they must be really good at masking it - and maybe they are.

Maybe if I had been able to finish college I would have found “my people” and developed some friends. But I only attended for one year, and I spent most of that year pregnant and sick, so I seldom interacted with anyone on campus outside of my then-boyfriend, now husband.

My former friend was the sole person who was not related to or married to me that listened to me when I spoke; found me intelligent and funny; seemed to enjoy my company. We enjoyed debates, movies, meals, museum outings, all kinds of stuff. Just enjoying one another’s company. And my family trusted and liked him; he was always around. I was fine not having other friends because he was worth dozens of fickle friends. Unfortunately, he also turned out to not be a real friend too. Which makes me question everything about him and all of the years I knew him. I’ll never know if he WAS truly a friend and then got corrupted or if he was always suspect and I just never knew. I choose not to devote any more time to having him on my mind for the sake of my family, though.

I’m not unwilling to explore whatever it might be about me that repulses people. Or how to better engage with people. I am opento changing, to understanding, to growing. It seems almost like a lost cause sometimes as someone with a perpetual case of foot-in-mouth disease. But I am willing. However, I cannot pretend that my reality hasn’t been what it has been. That would be dishonest and wouldn’t make any sense.

Cooley2Here and northeasternarea, thank you both so much!

Rasputina, I reread your post and it did spark one thought.

My mother and I have never been close (we are getting closer now though). She was a great mom. Loving, sweet, honest, kind. But I was a daddy’s girl. My dad, my brother, and I were actually nicknamed the “Three Musketeers.” Everywhere my dad was, I was. I literally followed him around. My mom was just kind of like this person who lived with us.

And because I was so close to my dad, I came to like a lot of the things he liked and do a lot of the things he did. I didn’t do much with my mom. So maybe part of the reason girls were turned off by me is my own fault. Because I didn’t really learn whatever it is you’re supposed to learn as a girl from your mother in terms of womanhood, socializing, communication, etc, so maybe I didn’t give a good first impression to people.

Even here on SI when I first started posting I turned a lot of the women off. I’m not very tactful.

The female clients at my old job always liked me, though. And seemed to respect me too. But maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe it was just because I was an authority figure. But it seemed real.

On a more positive note, though, Day 2 back home!!!!!

Mrs. Life, my wife was raised by her dad and she had her (3 years' older) brother there as well.

Her mom abandoned the family when my wife was 13 and my father in law is a real man's man. He hunted and fished EVERY SINGLE weekend essentially and fixed his own vehicles and ran his own contracting business.

She was a serious daddy's girl, too, and her mom was largely not really there even when she was still at home from what I understand, because she's still evasive and unengaging and controlling and moody and impatient and all of that even NOW.

I on the other hand had much the OPPOSITE reality. My wife was raised by and connected with MEN and I was raised by, surrounded with, and connected with WOMEN--my grandpa and my mom. My grandpa was there with us, but he was very disengaged and sedentary partly because of doctor's orders with the two major heart attacks and surgeries he'd had and also because he was in his late seventies and into his eighties when I was a teenageer!

My wife doesn't mix well with other women either, and of course I tend to avoid getting too close and personal with women, largely because they often get the wrong idea when a guy does that.

I want to strongly encourage you to baby step into that seeming cesspool of what was there with you and your AP. I VERY MUCH understand the reasons for you not doing it right NOW. My wife and I did VERY MUCH the same thing with HER adulteries and stuff, though. She and I put that thing so far below the surface of the earth, that we went for almost twenty years without hardly even thinking or feeling a THING with regards to her AP's or the adulteries themselves.

But then 2015 happened. And it almost killed us both. I'm not talking about any further adulteries or abandonments or lies, either, btw. She has been crystal clear and golden with regards to her "reaction" and boundaries ever since 1996 and the very real repentance and reconciliation that happened between us after that second round of nine month long adultery(s)/desertion/lies binging on her part.

But the underlying issues were still largely unaddressed and unresolved within each of us. I'm not talking about marriage problems there, but rather the wiring in her heart and mind that got her (and consequently US) into that kettle of fish in the FIRST place.

And after we got to really looking into that can of worms, my own son manifested a lot of that thinking HIMSELF, albeit in a very different way. Instead of turning man-whore, he turned bad Pharisee instead. Leaving home at whatever hour of the night and being gone constantly...even taking off on trips to other states for days on end and relatively unannounced to get his fixes and affirmation and ego kibble-kudos from anyone, anywhere but US.

He stopped attending church with us and got baptized by out-of-state strangers under protest form me and his mother. He moved out under protest while we were all (otherwise happily) packing for a July Fourth weekend family campout together. He never sees us anymore. And that's the way I guess I WANT it for now since he's so WAYWARD in his heart. He taught my other two sons to steal unauthorized/forbidden treats and eats and to lie and to hide such activities. He was opposing and manipulating the others to see us as evil and unloving and controlling...

Of COURSE we're "controlling"!! We're their PARENTS for crying out LOUD!! But he was poisoning their little hearts and minds much like my wife and mother-in-law poisoned their OWN minds against ME when I was fighting like HELL to keep my grandpa alive and respected and in his own home and keep my marriage intact and to keep my wife from throwing four years of friendship and two of long distance courtship and our marriage all away for a fly-by-night POS mental case school chum who didn't care about faith or values or integrity or even MONOGAMY!

Anyway, here we are in our 25th year of marriage and yet it's only 2.5 into our really pulling back the rug and getting our hands all dirty with the details and the why's and wherefore's that are still plauging us in the form of my mother-in-law and my oldest son in 2017-2018 twenty two years after the adultery died cold.

I'm not trying to portend future horrors for you in saying all of this, but rather to say that those things should be faced head-on, albeit maybe a baby-step at a time instead of full-on like you an Mrs. Walloped (and maybe me too, in a BS kind of way) seem to have a penchant for.

There's a verse which says:

Exodus 20:5 You are not to bow down to them or serve them; for I, Adonai your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

Exodus 34:7 showing grace to the thousandth generation, forgiving offenses, crimes and sins; yet not exonerating the guilty, but causing the negative effects of the parents’ offenses to be experienced by their children and grandchildren, and even by the third and fourth generations.”

Numbers 14:18 ‘Adonai is slow to anger, rich in grace, forgiving offenses and crimes; yet not exonerating the guilty, but causing the negative effects of the parents’ offenses to be experienced by their children and even by the third and fourth generations.’

Deuteronomy 5:9 you are not to bow down to them or serve them; for I, Adonai your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the parents, also the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

Now I realize that neither you nor your husband currently "hate" the Lord. However, the principle of consequences felt in the verse that says:

Galatians 6: 7 Don’t delude yourselves: no one makes a fool of God! A person reaps what he sows. 8 Those who keep sowing in the field of their old nature, in order to meet its demands, will eventually reap ruin; but those who keep sowing in the field of the Spirit will reap from the Spirit everlasting life. 9 So let us not grow weary of doing what is good; for if we don’t give up, we will in due time reap the harvest.

I left out (or rather my search engine left out) the part that follows those earlier verses which says

6 but displaying grace to the thousandth generation of those who love me and obey my mitzvot (commands).

after the first part I quoted earlier.

My point here is that David truly repented but not only were there consequences for what he did in his own life, his kids had a lot to deal with as well. In fact, I would say that Solomon had more sex drive than most men ever dreamed of having. And he lost himself and his faith in indulging that drive as well in that he married foreign "strange faith" women, or so it says in the bible at least.

If you don't know what to look for, it can bite you or stab you in the back without any warning. But if you really and truly uproot that thing...then my belief is that you can give your family the sword they need to fend and fight off the enemy within and without.

This is largely why I have cut off all contact between my children and their grandmother who is their only local relative outside our immediate family within a thousand U.S. miles. She is STILL a wayward in her heart and mind, and she has no interest in changing it seems.

I don't wish such a deferred adjudication or reckoning of you to yourself or your FOO. Those things really DO pop up like weeds that merely have the tops chopped off of them when the ROOTS aren't themselves destroyed.

And your act of physical adultery was only a one-time thing. But the roots in your heart and mind that got you into such a predicament...those roots are likely STILL there, even though you've got serious boundaries and a trained eye and an "armed guard" watching for intruders now. My wife has NEVER come even CLOSE to straying since 1996. But we were still so distant in hard times...our connection was so disjointed and her ways of coping and controlling and avoiding conflict...those things are only JUST NOW getting fixed!

THOSE are the things that helped drive her so quickly into the arms of another seemingly non-conflicted man. Those are the FOO issues and heart strings that affixed themselves to her own sense of control as a coping thing to the point that she didn't even CARE about ANYTHING but being her own boss and doing whatever she felt like.

I'm not saying that that's who YOU are. But those things have been robbing both me AND her of friends and family and church and even between US of connection and healing for two DECADES.

And I really wish and hope for better things for you and Mr. Life your awesome husband who I admire and envy in so many ways (for getting to beat the shit out of your AP and also for drawing such a hard line with you among other things).

Rugsweeping the past might have it's place for now. I DO mean that to a limited degree. ICU and ER and rest and retreats exist for a reason. But don't just leave it at that. Your AP must be faced, even if it's just in your own heart and mind.

I think you need to do a thing inside yourself much like your husband did with him in person. Not just hate him (AP) but FACE him...and yourself--which you most definitely HAVE been doing with regards to yourself, I will most readily admit.

But face that wretched Philistine TOGETHER. And SLAY the hold that he (perhaps unwittingly) had on you. I doubt that you'd EVER, EVER go back to adultery again, but there is a freedom in actually killing your enemy (figuratively speaking here, of course) instead of being corralled and limited by him/those issues.

Hi ASCL

It makes pleasant reading... i mean your story. From not knowing what true love was or meant you have obviously undergone a huge transformation. Would I be incorrect if i said that your spirituality perhaps made the biggest difference for you?

I do think that true love in modern times have been poisoned by lust. I know your affair was not driven by lust but it gave birth to the perceived idea of love that you (back then) questioned. If I could piggy back on Cephastions posts from scripture... modern love (lust) has always lead to a downfall Biblically. an example would be David's lust for a woman he saw from afar. and off course the first man's lust for the fruit that we should have never tasted. Perhaps its God's way of telling to choose with wisdom ... The alternative always ends in tragedy.

Perhaps true love is more of a decision at first and then followed by the devotion and comfort offered to the other person. I am so glad that you now "desire" (i did not say lust) your husband. Its proof that love (true) does conquer ...

You are fortunate that your husband has also chosen this path with you. Surely it wont be easy and he will have many triggers and tantrums... but I get the impression that you are prepared to endure....don't speak favourably for anyone who cheats, but really think that one day he will feel just as fortunate to have you devoted to your family and him.

My little advice... if you are not already doing it.. is to make a concerted effort to Put God first above everything and everyone (including family) and all else fall in place. I pray that it becomes instinctive to react that way on each detail of your life going fwd.

My thought process is similar to another poster. Actually, it was my exact train of thought and the reason I asked. Lack of female friendships and crossing sexually with lifelong best friend.

There are adult women who are mean. And there are nice adult women. Women who like to talk about cooking, books, and so forth. Not all women want to sit around and gossip.

I have friends from all social circles. I don’t like gossiping about my friends. There are other women like me. We go to lunch. Talk about kids, exercise, clothes, school stuff.

Frankly, people want to talk about themselves. :)

It’s unfair to group adult women together based on your childhood experiences. Or lack of experience.

Now that your son is older. Those types of things don’t come up in friendships. It is very different with young children and young mothers who are trying to navigate “best” parenting practices. My kids are 14, 11, 9. None of my friends come from their friendships or play dates now. It’s women I connect with. Example. Painting class, exercise class. I NEVER ask bibe study groups. Too much gossiping.

Women can sense confidence. Insecurity does attract “bad” or “unfulfilling” friendships.