SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

She meets fire with fire. We were both angry and said things.

She doesn't get it yet. She has no idea how this has inevitably effected you. How the world of your marriage has forever changed.

Neither do you, most likely. You are still clinging to the past as you thought it was, which makes sense. It was all you knew, until your world got blown up (but you suspected)

Team meetings likely won't work. Both of you will implicitly or explicitly use them to manipulate to an outcome. Better to suspend driving to an outcome, and focus on just learning the truth. Seeing things as they really were, and are now. Then you can move forward, together or apart.

Sending strength!

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 2:06 PM, October 26th (Monday)]

Brief threadjack (sorry!) Thumos, you wrote

Anger is a moral emotion. It is a primary emotion, not a cover for something else.

Google on the theory of constructed emotion for some bleeding edge experimentally supported thought on this topic.

I got angry last night. Triggered by something on tv, the force of her infidelity hit me and I started talking and it all escalated. She meets fire with fire. We were both angry and said things.

Your situation isn't like everyone else's. You're not dealing with a WS who's just been busted. You're not even dealing with the same person who committed the offense. Thirty years changes people. Your W has thirty years invested in this marriage, same as you. So, on one side of the scales, you have an early adultery but on the other, three decades of love and dedication. You begin to see how easy it might be to invalidate those many years of devotion.

What you might not understand is a woman's reaction to that kind of invalidation. What you're saying essentially is "I don't care about your thirty year investment. All I care about is this lie". And that's okay, if that's truly what you mean. If so, file for divorce and move on. But if those thirty years had value for you as well, you'll want to get into counseling together and avoid taking advice meant for newly betrayed BS's. In that advice, we come out strong without care to the survival of the marriage because if our WS doesn't change, the marriage doesn't matter anyway. Your WS has ALREADY changed. She needs to be handled differently if this marriage still matters to you.

What you're saying essentially is "I don't care about your thirty year investment. All I care about is this lie"

How, pray tell, is he saying this? He hasn't said anything of the kind. This seems like needlessly accusatory blarney directed at someone who is reeling from a stunning revelation.

He certainly doesn’t deserve being guilted when all he’s done is be a faithful man for more than three decades and she could barely do it for 18 months.

Unless she's a completely irrational being, possible I suppose, he's had a normal reaction and has actually been exceedingly patient with her. She should be able to see this. If she can’t then she’s not very good reconciliation material.

[This message edited by Thumos at 12:10 AM, October 27th (Tuesday)]

Your situation isn't like everyone else's. You're not dealing with a WS who's just been busted. You're not even dealing with the same person who committed the offense. Thirty years changes people. Your W has thirty years invested in this marriage, same as you. So, on one side of the scales, you have an early adultery but on the other, three decades of love and dedication. You begin to see how easy it might be to invalidate those many years of devotion.

MrPlsPls - above is a very interesting take on your dilemma - I guess if you want to adopt this point of view, well then, what are you bellyaching about? It was so long ago!

Of course, this assumes that somebody who cheated on you repeatedly and multiple times even with a hiatus in between, during what most would consider to be the "honeymoon stage" of your married life then subsequently deceived you for 33 years is being truthful about anything else.

But let us assume this "good time accrued" point of view is valid. What about you? You've got 30+ years faithful! Do you get to fuck somebody outside of your marriage now and say - "Well, just look at all the years I have been good! Don't get hung up on this little thing and ruin our investment."

By the way, that would be a wrong thing to do.

The other assumption is that the investment of someone who cheated so early on in the marriage, then subsequently lied about it, is equivalent to the investment of someone who has been true and faithful the entire relationship.

That cannot be true. The whole point of the lie is to obscure the lack of investment, and to deny you the agency to decide if you want to invest in a life with this person.

It ain't the same.

What you might not understand is a woman's reaction to that kind of invalidation. What you're saying essentially is "I don't care about your thirty year investment. All I care about is this lie". And that's okay, if that's truly what you mean. If so, file for divorce and move on. But if those thirty years had value for you as well, you'll want to get into counseling together and avoid taking advice meant for newly betrayed BS's. In that advice, we come out strong without care to the survival of the marriage because if our WS doesn't change, the marriage doesn't matter anyway. Your WS has ALREADY changed. She needs to be handled differently if this marriage still matters to you.

MrPlsPls - It is not your job to be understanding a cheater and liar's unhappiness to your consternation at their cheating and lying even if that person is a woman - and I am not sure why gender makes it any different by the way?

If your therapist or psychologist tries to sell you this line of reasoning, please move on to another one, quickly.

By the way, you are a newly betrayed spouse! What counts is when you learn of the cheating, not the moment when the cheating occurred. Lying for years then stating "It was so long ago, but now I am different, are you going to throw it all away?" is straight out of the cheater-speak playbook, and I am shocked to see it being utilized in the Surviving Infidelity Just Found Out forum.

It appears this entire argument quoted above puts all the onus on you! It assumes your wife's honesty and virtue for 30 years (Regardless of 30 years of deceit), it pressures you to "get over it" because it was so long ago and "she changed" which is entirely made up conjecture, and it encourages you to rugsweep because you are only focused on "The lie" (No mention of the extramarital sex).

***

Let me give you some good solid advice that works for newly betrayed as well as long-betrayed spouses: GET THE TRUTH FIRST! Then you can start processing that information and making your decisions.

Good luck to you.

I stand by what I said. The OP has already expressed a desire to reconcile the marriage. IMHO, he's better off working with a qualified marriage counselor than taking advice from people who are divorced/divorcing and have never experienced a meaningful reconciliation.

I am so late to this thread, but I was almost you.

My husband had an affair that I had zero clue about. It was pure luck I found out about it 3 years later.

Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I hadn’t discovered it when I did. I suppose it would have reared its ugly head at some point.

I wish you luck on your journey.

The OP has already expressed a desire to reconcile the marriage.

And no one has tried to dissuade him from that. We have merely recommended he focus on living in truth first and foremost - no more lies.

We’ve already recommended counseling repeatedly.

Third we’re certainly not going to guilt him for feeling normal and healthy anger and try to read the tea leaves about secret messages we believe he’s sending to his delicate flower of a wife with his normal and healthy feelings.

[This message edited by Thumos at 12:12 AM, October 27th (Tuesday)]

Being a loving and supportive spouse isn't an acceptable proxy for taking ownership of the betrayals and being transparent with your BS. The former does nothing to heal infidelity trauma on its own, the latter is the essential ingredient towards healing infidelity trauma.

I agree that MC is a good candidate here, but I also see need for his fWW to be in IC. The last thing he needs is an MC telling him, it's been 30 years, time to get over it, without her first focusing on her why and, is she safe now, and was her journey from there to here a trusted path. Those are the first issues. When he is satisfied that she meets his definition of safe and shows remorse and empathy in the way he needs to see it, then MC would seem a good idea.

None of this precludes him from telling her that she has been a good wife, mother, all these years. That could all be true and he can share that with her so that she knows her efforts have been validated. Then, she has to get past the notion that her years of being a good wife and mother has any relationship to her responsibility to honor the pain that her years of deception and lies are causing him and she must commit to owning it and showing remorse through the healing process.

Whether she is a delicate flower or otherwise your gut lining and the arterioles of your brain and heart and kidney are infact very delicate and need defending .

Anger is not healthy for your body at all so please dont encourage yourself or her to ramp up

Non of this means she gets a free pass , she needs to acknowledge apologize appreciate your forgiveness and try to make amends

You need to be rational firm and fair ( not angry ) to achieve your goals and insist that you will not accept less than that.

Its a long road my friend 3-5 years , you wont get there overnight. You wont get there at all if you get trapped in an anger competition with her .

Everyone means well here but the “i got divorced” crowd ( self included) may not have the right perspective for your situation

Don’t allow anger to become rage. There’s a difference. Don’t stew in anger. Don’t try to push anger down. People tend to confuse and conflate things. There’s a difference between feeling anger and actions that are unhealthy or harmful.

SUPPRESSED anger leads to the bad health outcomes siracha listed. It can lead to severe depression.

This is very important to know because you are going to feel anger over this.

Anger must be felt appropriately if it is to be dealt with.

As Julia Cameron wrote, “We are meant to use anger as fuel to take the actions we need to move where our anger points us.”

Anger is indeed recognized as a normal human emotion. Contrary to popular myth making it is not a negative emotion. Where would we be if people like MLK Jr had not felt anger or believed it was “unhealthy”?

When it is dealt with inappropriately that is unhealthy.

As for divorce or reconciliation, we can’t decide that for you. You should seek as many perspectives as you yourself find helpful.

I will say again marital/couples counseling is unlikely to be helpful after a shocking disclosure of betrayal - because so often you will be asked to rugsweep, blameshifting will be pushed onto you and you will be tempted to swallow your feelings.

Contrary to what was said above, the perspectives of those of us who are divorcing can be quite useful in helping you avoid pitfalls that can lead to failed reconciliation - just as the perspectives of those who feel they’ve successfully reconciled can be helpful.

One is not more valid than the other, and it would be a disservice to claim otherwise.

We just learned recently that one of the most active wayward spouses who posts regularly and tends to favor reconciliation is now herself reeling because her betrayed husband decided to have an affair of his own. Who knows what will happen in that situation now? Does this invalidate her perspective? Would it make her advice less useful?

To the contrary.

For example, if you read someone like me who is on the path to divorce warning that your WW seems to be tiptoeing up to DARVO, that’s because we’ve experienced it and know what it looks like and know that a WS doing that is caught up in a guilt-regret feedback loop that hampers reconciliation.

Don’t try to hide from your normal moral emotions — and insist on the truth. And don’t let anyone tell you what sort of perspectives are helpful or not. You get to decide that.

[This message edited by Thumos at 8:47 AM, October 27th (Tuesday)]

faithfulman

The whole point of the lie is to obscure the lack of investment, and to deny you the agency to decide if you want to invest in a life with this person.

This to me was her greatest crime. She essentially took away his choice and stole 30 years of his agency. He never got to choose the direction of his life after she cheated. He should have been allowed that at least.

I will ask it again what was she angry about?

Please elaborate if you could.

health.harvard.edu , anger heartbreaking at any age

Thumos Its not just suppressed anger , expressed anger is also a cardiac risk factor as per multiple studies and harvard universities website link above .

My point regarding advice to be put in context Wasnt made to invalidate anyones opinion ofcourse everyones insight into their own life can be exceedingly valuable to another person

However if i want to be a ballerina there is only so much a salsa instructor can help me .

Mrplspls : You seem pretty certain about the path you want to take , it is quite intuitive to me that people who have walked your path would have more directly actionable advice for you . The great thing is that if you are undecided or contemplating an alternative approach you always have the choice to lean into a different strategy or explore the case against it

Cant post url but you can google the first sentence to find the link

The Harvard article says “normal anger is one thing, excessive hostility quite another.”

Same thing I just said.

And then the article goes on to make the distinction that it is excessive anger that is unhealthy acted out in unhealthy ways. The article points out that it is “high hostility” men with bad health outcomes.

And then says “Try to identify the things that bother you most and do your best to change them.”

Same point. It must be processed and dealt with appropriately. It must be acted on in a healthy way.

That begins with acknowledging it and understanding why it is happening.

Which goes to Haidt’s research on moral emotions as primary emotions.

Mrplspls -

I understand your early decision. It does help to KNOW what you want.

People here are not trying to talk you out of your choice. I made the same one.

This place, the island of hurt people on the Internet, these strangers are taking time out of their days to make sure you take ALL the steps you need to take to heal.

I saw some points others made about this infidelity being so many years ago. I don’t agree with most of those points.

Here is what does NOT happen:

The infidelity is NOT better because it happened years ago.

Keeping it a secret for YEARS does NOT make the infidelity BETTER or EASIER to recover from.

Your wife may have made SOME changes, but she may not have made the changes you NEED for your marriage to rebuild and thrive.

There are NO shortcuts. None. Ever.

We ALL need to take the same steps to recover from infidelity.

You’re going to a counselor, because you’re seeking help and clarity on what you went through.

We’ve all been through this.

My wife kept her A a secret for 18-years. She was going to take that secret to the grave. She too wanted to be seen as her pre-A, perfect self. She was certain her A had destroyed us. That’s what infidelity does.

My wife was able to make SOME changes too. But keeping it a secret is sort of like breaking a bone and hoping it sets and heals without ANY help from a doctor. It doesn’t heal PROPERLY.

What is intimacy to you?

To me, it’s not just sex. It is trust. It is understanding. It is being honest and vulnerable with someone.

If your wife is getting defensive, she is NOT being understanding of your pain. MORE changes need to made.

Once again, 4.5 years later, my life is going well. But it only got there because I did the work I needed, like every betrayed person here. And my wife did the additional work she needed to do to be a better, safer partner. Which is the ONLY way that R can happen. R isn’t just staying together in my book, it’s finding a way back to intimacy, real intimacy.

Everyone here wants you to recover. That’s why they are responding to your thread.

I dont think its a TJ but to be safe i wont address this here again

Thumos

1. So first its not just suppressed anger thats dangerous expressed anger is dangerous too

2. When they talk about high hostlity men / the angriest men its judged by the minesota scale . If you read the scale its not about validity of anger ( appropriate va inappropriate ) its about the incidence of anger . Your response does not have to be huge to count as a risk

“ It makes me angry when people hurry me “ is enough to register as a risk

3. They also explain that you have to take steps BEFORE you reach boiling point when you can actually feel the physical effects of anger

[This message edited by siracha at 9:45 AM, October 27th (Tuesday)]

I didn't get to read the last pages yet but anyway ill say this.....

I'm glad you know now. Yes its painful and now you have to think about what you want to do. I think it's better to live with the person you really have, not the one you thought you had. Yes I misunderstood my WS and thought he was one thing when he was something else. I had some doubts and he omitted,lied, and gaslighted to confuse me.

Better to have the truth. It makes more sense now looking back. Everybody wants to know the reality of their life.

I hope it brings more peace of mind to you. It's better for her too to face it and grow to be a better person. We can all improve.

It hurts badly now but will get better. Let the feelings come up and don't hide them. Honesty in all things, words and actions. All the love from years past was real between you and no reason to cast that in a dark light unless you want to create more pain.

Resolve to create a better life whether that's a new life or make the one you have even more satisfying. Keep it as a goal while you work through the hurt. Above all, be kind and do not fear. I want you to have a great life that brings you joy however you want to accomplish it.

[This message edited by pureheartkit at 9:58 AM, October 27th (Tuesday)]

dont think its a TJ but to be safe i wont address this here again

I don’t think so either bc we are both interested in helping Mrplspls — and this discussion on processing anger is hopefully useful for him, especially as he moves forward.

I understand what you saying better siracha and also will leave it aside. Have a good Tuesday, everyone.