SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Does your WW comprehend what today represents?

If WW reaches out to you to try to help heal your pain today that means she’s starting to get it and on the correct path towards true remorse. If not, it says a lot about her.

It's one foot in front of another today, MrFlibble. Over time there's been advice to do something special for yourself on these days. That didn't work too well for me. Whatever I did seemed tainted.

Stay busy. The day will pass. Next year the effects will be less. I've gotten to the point that I actually get past the DDay1 anniversary before I remember. I don't remember the anniversaries of DDays 2, 3 or 4 at all. It's the ugly word, time, again. It takes time and work.

I saw your story before you came to this site and have followed all the way. I haven't said much since at times it seemed like the interest it generated resembled the following of a soap opera rather than the sad destruction of everything you held dear. My heart truly broke for you.
I learned so much from your story and many of the sound advisers who guided you. Your final dday about knocked me out of my chair. That, and the fact that Faithfulman predicted it so accurately showed me how well these here know the mind of a cheater. The sound, calm advice of Bigger and similar helped me see the power for good that this place can be.
On this anniversary of your dday I hope you are able to glean the painful positives that this year has wrought - and I think wrought is the proper word. Forged in fire.

Hopefully you will be able to proceed in strength and be able to help others. God bless you and your family.

Thank you.

She did acknowledge the importance of the day, and actually sent me a long email maybe 20 minutes after my post. I know she meant well and said all the right things, but it still hit me pretty hard. Like when someone confirms what you already know deep inside but pretend it's not there. Made it all even more real if that's possible. In her email she also disclosed something that kind of explains her behaviour in first months after Dday. I will get to it in here when I settle my thoughts, it's too fresh now but it changes a few things.

We sporadically texted through the day and I tried to keep myself busy, with pretty much anything, but I was useless that day. Just a walking dead. I seriously don't know why it weighted so hard on me that day, because I was doing alright before. Maybe after the divorce I kind of lost purpose, I don't know. The fact that I became seriously disillusioned with my new job didn't help either.

Anyway she later asked if I would like her to bring kids over. I told her that would be great, so she did. Even stayed for a while until girls went to sleep. Very little contact since. But I am doing better today.

MrFlibble,

You said

...but I was useless that day. Just a walking dead. I seriously don't know why it weighted so hard on me that day, because I was doing alright before. Maybe after the divorce I kind of lost purpose, I don't know.

Please don't be so hard on yourself. Infidelity and divorce is one of the most difficult life events to deal with and is extraordinarily traumatic. The question shouldn't be why the day in question weighed so hard on you. The question should be why you've held up so well so far. Think about it. Only a year ago you found out your wife (that you trusted implicitly) betrayed you and your family in the worst way. You spent a year offering her a chance at reconciliation that she wasted due to her continued lies. During this time, your XW's father died and you supported her and her family. Once that was over, you tried to reconcile but determined that in the end, the infidelity was a deal breaker. You then proceeded with divorce. Give yourself some time to grieve this loss and heal. It will take time and there will be ups and downs. The anniversary of D-Day is understandably difficult. Please don't beat yourself up. Make sure you are exercising, eating well, and getting enough sleep. Make sure you're performing all your job duties well and focus on your kids. You will get through this - it will just take some time.

She did acknowledge the importance of the day, and actually sent me a long email maybe 20 minutes after my post. I know she meant well and said all the right things, but it still hit me pretty hard. Like when someone confirms what you already know deep inside but pretend it's not there.

There's really nothing she could have done at this point that wouldn't hurt. Nothing can un-ring that bell. If she didn't respond you would have thought she didn't care about what that day meant to you and your family. Be kind to yourself and keep walking.

You are still in the healing process. It’s a barely closed wound right now. Take it easy on yourself. You are feeling things that are completely natural and normal.

Don’t know if what she disclosed twisted the knife more or actually was a bit of salve, but either way, new information is always unsettling even after D.

No matter if it’s with her someday or someone else, you need a lot of time just to be, and to learn what you need in order to find happiness in your life again.

I’m sorry this happened to you. You didn’t deserve it. But you’re not alone. Spend fine with friends family and the kids. You don’t need to rush anything.

Thank you all for your advice and well wishes.

I know my expectations that I will be over it a week after D are plain wrong and stupid. But I was doing alright and I let those fleeting emotions cloud over my judgement. Back to earth now.

Please don't beat yourself up. Make sure you are exercising, eating well, and getting enough sleep. Make sure you're performing all your job duties well and focus on your kids. You will get through this - it will just take some time.

Excercise is a great stress and anger relief, that's for sure. I lost maybe 15 pounds already and I am in a decent shape. Not that I was overweight, but being an IT guy while locked in your own house does you no good. Sleeping is hit and miss, depending on whether I have girls for a night or not. Last time they slept in my bed I had a good 9 hours for the firt time in months. And my job? I have always been very driven, results, results, results if you know what I mean. Nowadays I am pretty much meh about it. I do it for money, nothing more. Even think about a change of career but have no idea what I would do. Maybe I am a little burned out, but I believe it's connected to everything that has happened this and last year and not just my job. But thank you

grubs, you are 100% right. I was actually thinking about that day and made up 3 different scenarios in my head (bad-neutral-good). And while she ended up doing the good one, it still hurt. I really don't think there was anything she could have done to make it easy (not easier) on me. But she tried.

Stevesn, her revelation was something that I suspected because she hinted at it few times in the past.

About two weeks after Dday she reached out to a public forum like this one asking for help. I wasn't talking to her, her friends weren't talking to her, basically everyone disowned her out of pure shock and due to her selfish and overall destructive behaviour at the time. She had no one she could ask for help. So she opened a thread telling a summarized version of events, which was surprising considering she had troubles telling anything to her sister of all people, and asked for advice on how to keep her marriage alive. Keep her marriage alive, not help her BS, repent or whatever, but keep her marriage alive. To stay married. Unfortunatelly, that forum is apparently a toxic dump, so the advice she got was to deny anything and everything I can't prove. To keep lying over and over again, until I give up probing. I was the one who was responsible for her A, I was to fight for her (if I REALLY loved her), If she told me everything I would divorce her right away (and you don't want that, huh?), you get the gist.

Unfortunatelly for both of us, it was all in line with her thoughts at the time. It validated her thoughts and feelings, she heard what she wanted to hear. There was noone at the time who could push her in the right direction. My expectations of her being honest were utterly stupid. I was a fool. It took her more than 3 months to get out of there and to come to a place where she should have been from the beginning if our marriage should have a fighting chance. But it explains a lot, another piece of the puzzle if you will. And another hit. I am not angry at her. Not really. Just sad and disappointed

She offered to send me a link so I could read it but I don't see the point. What does it matter what she wrote about me or our marriage almost a year ago. We are both very different people now. That time is gone and I need to accept it

Mr Fibble, so sorry you got this last piece of news today. It only makes it harder knowing how badly she managed to sabotage her own responses to you again and again... I hope you can find peace. And I hope she can learn enough about her own need to deceive herself that she can stop deceiving others in the future. In the meantime you have young children who need you and who also need to see the two of you co-parentlng in a healthy way. Good luck and please keep posting.

So many waywards receive wrong information about what to do and how to act after Dday. Many waywards and BS say they wish they had found SI earlier, to avoid the mistakes and pitfalls from their actions.

It appears that this new information would put your WW in a better light, except for the fact that you considered her actions in line with her self centered personality for as long as you’ve known her.

However, on the plus side, she did it right on the D day anniversary. She’s saying all of the right things and it appears that her actions are in line with remorse and empathy.

I think you need to dig deep in IC to determine what your goal is at the end of the day. You just achieved your goal of divorce, to get you out of infidelity.

I recommend that you start to think about your next goal(s). The most obvious is to establish a good co parenting relationship, and by all measures you’ve achieved that. What’s next, if anything? Deep down, do you want to shut down any future potential to R? Or, are you open the the possibility of R?

Yes, of course you can live in the moment snd take it day by day. I mean you literally just got divorced. Or, you can start to determine next steps/future goals.

Perhaps this new bit of information can give you some measure of assurance that she wasn't some evil genius, she was just trying to cover her a$$ by denying and hiding everything. Yes, as you said it was keeping with her character at the time and she may have listened to voices that resonated with what her selfish-most self wanted to hear, but she seems to realize the folly of that advice now, albeit a bit late. She appears to have broken out of the hide-from/avoid-all mindset that contributed to the destruction of the marriage after dday. Sadly she sees it only after the chance to take constructive steps has vanished. But maybe it will help in the co-parenting remembering she was just stupidly selfish and receiving similar advice rather than being Machiavellian. All the best to you.

ETA: I just read CaptainRoger's thread on "Detain and Torture Option" in this forum. Sadly it seems to fit this story to a tee.

[This message edited by CuriousObserver at 1:09 AM, Tuesday, October 12th]

And my job? I have always been very driven, results, results, results if you know what I mean. Nowadays I am pretty much meh about it. I do it for money, nothing more. Even think about a change of career but have no idea what I would do. Maybe I am a little burned out, but I believe it's connected to everything that has happened this and last year and not just my job.

Life altering trauma has a way of putting life in perspective. I suspect you overprioritized your job before this.

So she opened a thread telling a summarized version of events, which was surprising considering she had troubles telling anything to her sister of all people, and asked for advice on how to keep her marriage alive. Keep her marriage alive, not help her BS, repent or whatever, but keep her marriage alive. To stay married.

Anonymity is a powerful thing for most. It's much easier to share your deepest darkest secrets, if your listeners don't really know who you are. Two weeks out expecting a wayward to jump right to thinking of the BS first is a tall order for most waywards. You have to think of how contorted you have to be thinking to give yourself the permission to betray your spouse. That doesn't unwind quickly. If you listen to repentant waywards here, I think your waywards starting to really get what she did to you was in the typical time range of about six months out. She made the choice to follow the bad advice. That's still on her. You had several here campaigning for you to consider R. You still followed your path. Did this sound like her excusing her choice or just explaining what she considers faulty reasoning now?

She offered to send me a link so I could read it but I don't see the point.

What she wrote unfiltered, how she looked at the situation, how much of her behavior was her own, how much was influenced by others, did she do things she did not want because of the suggestions of others although she thought differently, etc. It would be interesting to see these.

But it wouldn't be right to ask her for the link, she should have sent it directly.

You don't want to read it, just like you deleted the phone records. I think the more you know about a subject that bothers you, the better it is.

I don't know the actual reason why she told me about it now, and not a few months back. She says she was ashamed. I believe if she planned to use it as a some kind of leverage or whatever she would tell me back then. Play the victim card even harded. I think she's just trying to put things in perspective as much as I am because some things start to make sense or show it's importance only from afar. So I take it as a genuine effort and not as some kind of manipulation or blame-shifting. She took full ownership of her actions pre and after Dday, that's not an issue now.

Co-parenting is working well, albeit it's heavily skewed in my favour regarding schedule. My hours are jumping all over the place right now, but my XW is very understanding and goes out of her way to make things easy on me. But I won't lie, it does create some friction.

guvensiz, I do not plan on reading her thread, no.

I can understand this approach. I have to admit, I couldn't. It bothers me not to put the pieces together in my head, even if it is no longer important to me.

If you change your mind, though, I suggest you check if her posts have been edited recently.

My recommendation is to read her thread. More information is better than less information. I would be curious what others here recommend about reading it.

I personally don’t see what reading it would change and reading her justifying some of the most traumatising parts of this whole thing seems all pain, no benefit.

She sought out whatever forum it was post D-Day. Anything there only informs her behaviour after that point.

Discovering precisely what the little adulterous devils on her shoulder told her that encouraged a portion of her selfish behaviour doesn’t explain all the behaviour before d-day and that was some of the worst.

The forum won’t explain why she did what she did, why she was (or still is) so selfish. It will at best explain why her selfish behaviour manifested exactly the way it did post d-day and I personally don’t see any value in that. It’s pure speculation but I’d wager even without that forum she still would have hid the affair. Even before d-day she had contingencies in place such as the messages on her main phone painting a specific story whilst using the burner phone. I think that forum just reinforced behaviour she was gonna do anyways so it’s a footnote in this at best and looking at it post divorce is just pain shopping.

I don't think the thread post matters much at all. Not knowing which forum it is but having done those initial Google searches myself, she passed over some good advice for some bad advice. She wasn't in the right head space to even listen to good advice if she got it. Even the WSes we've gotten here have struggled to be fully honest and transparent right after DDay. I don't think getting the right advice would have changed much and she probably would have gone with the bad advice because it's what she wanted to hear. Good advice is readily abundant in articles, forums, and books even if you're not an expert at searching for it. She just didn't want to implement it.

IMHO, she may be able to logically articulate that the choice to follow that advice is hers and it is her responsibility alone for this outcome but deep down she is having a hard time accepting that. Otherwise, why would it matter whether she posted on that thread or not? I think that deep down she still wants to point to something other than herself that is the real culprit for the D. Sure, she may have cheated and made those bad choices but in her mind, she wouldn't be getting a D right now if she came to SI instead of whatever forum that was. She can't fully accept that really her behavior during that time reflected her own selfishness more than it did being misguided by others. I'm not sure why she would feel the need to give you this information for any reason other than to hope you too see her as less responsible because of it. The therapeutic mantra comes to mind: "What outcome was she hoping to achieve by offering this to you?" Otherwise, she would have given it to an IC instead and discussed in detail why she chose this forum and not one of the many other better sources of information she would have come across finding this forum. She wouldn't have any reason to bring it up unless she thought something would be achieved by giving it to you.

As I said, what is done is done. At this point it would be just more pain shopping. No point in opening "old" wounds.

First day with absolutely no contact today. No text, no WhatsApp photo and no call. Strange. I felt an urge to reach out but I went for a run instead. Learning to shift my thought elsewhere, to something productive.

The topic of Christmas came up yesterday. Officialy we are doing every other year, but my parents invited her over for Christmas eve dinner so I guess their relationship is getting back on tracks. She wants me there, too, but I don't know if I should go. I bet we all know what would happen.

And I am drinking again. I was doing grocery shopping last time before kids arrived for their days with me, and while putting it away I pulled out two bottles of rum. If it's in the house I will drink it, so I need to prevent it from getting inside. Already told my friends no liquor for gifts