SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So in an affair the ws often rewrites marital history . Mine certainly did.

Gottman counselling goes back to the early days and gets you to reminisce as part of the process. We did this very successfully (pre d day). My history was lovely, photos, memory boxes etc. We spent time on this while I had no idea he was a liar. Then d day. Then a year of trickle truth. I think he’s pathetic.

In the last year I have slowly but surely revised our history. My wedding ring is stashed away. I am now back at the beginning and have no positive history left. I’ve successfully rewritten history. I’ve watched it happen and not fought to stop it. I told him what was happening. All photos are in the attic. I don’t look at my phone pictures. If I do see pictures I think of the negative about them. Oh that’s when loser was doing x. I see all his traits as ones that were leading to be a cheat.

The history is a bit of an issue for me. Adopted - and happy about it. I’m good at forgiving. I’m okay without a past (i know nothing at all about my adoption etc. no names, birth history, care home details etc). But I’m not sure I’m okay with no positive adult past. And I now have a small period - approx 6 months of happy adulthood - I return to this time (in my mind) too often.

What I’m not sure about us if this is normal. I’m a bit stuck to be honest.

One of his previous complaints was ‘feeling unloved’ I think this may be common. My actions apparently didn’t demonstrate to him how much I loved him. This came up for months post d day. You never showed me how much you loved me.

I guess honesty, building a life with him, sharing financially, pulling my weight, daily life, saving for our future, faithfulness etc etc wasn’t love. But heart emojis and memes are

Now he talks about what he is ruminating on and it still shows how he gets things wrong. But this time it’s the other way round! He thinks things I have said or done are showing how much I care. That I am okay. That there is positivity and hope for the future.

This is remarkable really - as once again he is so far from the truth. The intent isn’t the same as pre d day.

I think this demonstrates the lies we feed ourselves. And how love may be about what WE are doing daily.

It may answer my issue above

Has anyone had this?

Abcd89

I can relate to the themes in both the above posts. I am a BH. My WW started cheating less than a year into our marriage and had multiple affairs for the next 20 years. I had suspicions at the time and caught her in an EA. She lied of course. She stopped cheating in 2005 and our D-Days were in the summer of 2022.

Like you have said, I now look at everything during those times as "tainted". Due to the time that has passed and my wife "not remembering" some timelines are murky. Some are not. Without going into everything, some of my most treasured memories are tainted with cheating. She cheated while pregnant with both kids, my son’s first birthday, his first Christmas, etc. wedding rings off, pictures put away. Any time I see a picture and I know it’s from a time in an active affair, she is smiling like "Chester Cheetah" and it makes me sick to my stomach. I feel like my whole adult life was a lie and basically wasted.

As for your second post, that came into play in real time. Our marriage was rocky early on. On D-Day my wife told me she felt unloved and I only showed her attention when I wanted sex. So her "solution" was to cut me off from sex and then go trade sex to other men for attention. In her earlier affairs there was a "tell". She would tell me she didn’t think she loved me anymore. But this was ALWAYS after she had cheated or started an inappropriate relationship. Her IC told her she was "projecting" onto me and giving herself "excuses" to cheat after the fact. Cheating is wrong and bad. She isn’t bad, she is unloved, she deserves to be happy, cheating makes her happy. Her IC told her she was actively sabotaging the marriage the relationship with me so she could justify her cheating in her own mind. "The bad marriage didn’t make you cheat. Your cheating made the marriage bad."

My wife is the most selfish person I have ever met in my life. She twists herself in knots making everything about her. An initial stab at showing "empathy" was saying to me "I did terrible things and got caught". There is ZERO in that statement about me and my feelings.

Your statements about how your husband views your actions as feeding his needs and expectations around what "feeling loved" looks like to him is very similar to the things my wife does and says. It’s like there is some screwed up movie playing in their heads that has nothing to do with reality. It just "feeds their preferred narrative" of things that lets them be comfortable with the the things they do and say. JMO but things learned over the past 40+ years living with a very screwed up person.