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How long did it take you to not be repulsed by sex? Anything sexual in nature be it in books, movies, social media just repulses me.

How long did it take to stop constantly thinking about them having sex? Stop being so angry about it?

I just feel so stuck.

It took a very long time for me, five to seven years. It gradually got better during that time and the intense feelings would come and go.

Everybody is different and heals at their own pace.

It seems like the first three years are brutal with many ups and downs for most people. There really is no way around it. Time does heal. You will wake up one morning and realize that the A wasn't the first thing you thought about and that you can go hours without thinking about it.

Going on 14 years,and I still think about it,during sex,occasionally.

I still have twinges of anger,but not nearly the rage I once felt.

It took years not be angry. It took him a few years to fully get how much damage he had caused. It also took me a few years to realize how much it had damaged every aspect of my life. Once he "got it," and I mean REALLY got it, my anger started to ebb.

It took 6 months to be able to touch her. The mind movies have gotten better but I think the scars will always be there. I was her only sexual partner so I never had a thought of someone else with her. It gets easier but never goes away.

Dear Felix12306,

I don’t have an answer for you, but I want to thank you so much for asking the question I have been struggling with myself. As I think about the other things required for reconciliation, I feel more able to face them than this. It's just so overwhelming to think about resuming a sexual relationship when I feel so unable to separate any kind of sex (like you, even in a book or movie) from thoughts/images of my WS and the AP having sex.

While you are responding with anger, for me it is crushing sadness and nausea. I feel like I want to vomit. Different emotions, but the source is the same, and so is the effect. I feel stuck and am afraid this is the thing I can't get past.

My WS is putting in the work and is very serious about wanting to reconcile. Still, to commit to that reconciliation, I have to believe it is possible to reclaim this part of our relationship someday, right?

I have been able to move toward non-sexual touching, and I feel like that is helping. I ask for a hug after we have a deep dive into a conversation about recovery or how we got here. I am trying to explore feeling okay physically near him, holding a hand, etc. I am getting more comfortable with those sorts of simple gestures of affection or non-sexual intimacy first, and I have told him sex is off the table until I feel that I am ready and can feel something sexual without immediately hitting a wall of horrors.

So I guess I just want to say that I am right here with you, stuck in the same place, hoping that one day I am able to take a next step.

Thank you everyone for the input. It just seems like I will never get past that part.

What helped me was Mindfulness. That, and making sex about me and what I authentically wanted or didn't want. IOW, I lived in the moment during sex, took what I wanted and left the rest, much like what we tell people about SI advice.

So much of healing in R for me was about refocusing my energy onto myself. As you already know, it's so hard not to be laser-focused on the WS, the details of the affair, the AP, putting the puzzle pieces of the story together, etc. We don't realize it, but our own needs in terms of reestablishing our identity are coming in behind all this other stuff. The reality though is that becoming strong in ourselves is key to putting everything else in perspective.

Try to rediscover what YOU like about sex and what you want or don't want. When you're ready, redirect your mind when it wanders, back to the present and to your choices and your sensations. Don't worry just now about pleasing someone else. Your WS will either choose to join in a sexual experience of YOUR design or not. That's his choice.

Try to rediscover what YOU like about sex and what you want or don't want. When you're ready, redirect your mind when it wanders, back to the present and to your choices and your sensations. Don't worry just now about pleasing someone else. Your WS will either choose to join in a sexual experience of YOUR design or not. That's his choice.

Wow. That is a really helpful reframing of the issue. Thank you. I will work on thinking about it in those terms and see if that helps.

Thank you. I have a hard time controlling my mind when it comes that. It's still very raw for me for some reason. I thought I'd be further along by now.

You were in false R for a year and a half. Which completely reset your healing back to day one. False R is a very difficult thing to overcome. He saw the pain you were in,and continued to lie to you. That caused you an incredible amount of damage. Also,I skimmed your last thread,and he's been far from an ideal WS. It's not surprising at all that you aren't further along. Be kind to yourself.

Never. But it gets less intense. Let me try to explain. If I think about it I get angry. I dislike my wife and she’s the last person I’d sleep with. She’s never going to be fully trusted, those days are gone. So the naivety I had is gone too. You have to grieve that part of your life and let it go because it isn’t coming back no fault to you. Over time the mind movies get less intense but if I allow myself down the rabbit hole they can come back. That’s 9 years later. So on the rare days I feel shitty towards her because of it I let her know. She keeps her distance and will ask me if there’s anything she can do. This to shall pass. There is no rushing the process. Time is your friend and enemy. The longer away from D day the better you will feel. But it also gives you time to reflect on what you want. Remember if your reconciling you are left with the prize of the affair. A spouse you can no longer trust, might find disgusting and most likely broken from whatever issues they never learned to deal with. That’s the prize. You cannot fix them. They need to fix themselves. You need to find out if you can live with it. That process is extremely unique for everyone. It’s a hodge podge of your values, first family experiences, life experiences, religious beliefs and the line you have built inside that says enough is enough. Throw in kids and a common past and add very expensive assets. A decision that is uniquely personal and most likely one of the most confusing and emotionally filled you will ever make. But it will come down to one very simple question. Can you live with it? Because if you cannot. Cut your losses and leave. If you can. Be prepared. Your life is no longer the way it was nor will it ever again be the way it was. Both are shitty choices. The consequences of people making bad decisions.

my situation is a little different, but my husband’s affair definitely impacted our sex life and my experience of sex within the marriage. It’s still a struggle and a source of sadness for me.

At first we had crazy hysterical bonding with frequent, intensely emotional and connective sex for months. I didn’t struggle much with mind movies in that period, though the few times I did were truly awful.

Then as the initial trauma subsided, the sexual betrayal piece really sank in, and I lost much of the sexual comfort level I had reached with my husband over our 20+ year relationship. I started struggling a LOT with picturing him with his AP when we had sex. Oral sex had been a staple of our sex life, but it became all but impossible for me because of the inevitable mind movies that came along with it. Even separate from the mind movies, I sometimes found myself turned off during sex, which had not been normal for me at all. It has been incredibly disheartening to experience this, even as our relationship has improved and things have overall gotten much better. I really don’t like how vanilla our sex life has become. The pre-affair frequency is there, but a lot of the adventure/fun/explorative side is gone, taking with it much of the heat. I just don’t feel vulnerable enough to have that kind of uninhibited sex.

I actually feel kind of bad for my husband, because I know some of this is related to things about me that have nothing to do with him. I was pretty severely sexually abused as a young kid, and that impacted my sexual development in adolescence and young adulthood as well as our sexual relationship at the beginning of our marriage. It took us a while to build the really good and satisfying sex life we eventually developed. By the time of his affair, I hadn’t had more than a passing thought of the abuse in years, and I loved our sex life, even though we had the normal periods of being tired and stressed and not always having as much sex as we’d like.

but with the affair, all the abuse mess came roaring back. Mind movies of that get mixed in with mind movies of him and his AP, and it’s been a hot mess. And super discouraging and sad to me.

To come back to your original question, though, I do think it’s possible to get back to something satisfying and good, even in somewhat complicated situations like mine, where different traumas are all mixed up together. I’m not there yet, and the process is depressingly slow, but I feel us gradually turning little corners in this area. I can instinctively feel the soundness of CT’s advice about mindfulness, and I’m slowly getting to a place of vulnerability where I am trying it in baby steps.

Recovery is not for the faint of heart, though, and I don’t think I’d still be in it if it weren’t for the fact that my husband is a really solid person outside of the affair, and we’ve always had a really good and strong partnership in a lot of ways.

Sorry, this is more of a tome than I intended. Apologies for the length and self absorption.

[This message edited by Grieving at 1:31 PM, Sunday, March 19th]

No worries at all, and I'm so sorry for the trauma you went through as a child. Thank you for your insight.