SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It might be there somewhere in the above posts, but I can’t find it...
What prompted your partner to share about the affair 11 years ago?

I don’t think I have the full truth of it even now so I’ll say it as objectively as I can and what I’ve summarised afterwards.

She met with her best friend (intended maid of honour) for a catch up. They’ve been friends for years and while they live relatively close (20–30miles apart.) they see each other very rarely. It’s been their own in-joke that they have an annual catch up. They say it’s because they’re always busy but who knows not important I suppose.

During this catch up the best friend talked about how they discovered their partner had cheated on them and then at some point in this conversation my WPs infidelity was referenced. It’s important to know that this friend has known about this for years (all the way back since it happened) and never said anything or held her friend (WP) accountable.

According to the WP this spurred her to tell me because "I needed to know, she’s been terrified to tell me all these years and I needed to hear it from her and not anyone else."

Now with that said, I’ve challenged her numerous times about this part - not because it doesn’t really change what happened but because it gave me at least some understanding of why now and not then. Or at least that was my attempt.

Option 1 - she saw what her friend was going through, realised what she was doing to me and finally decided to tell me.

Option 2 - her friend told her to tell me because she’d experienced it herself now and gave her the "if you don’t I will" (I know this is 100% not the case as I reached out to the friend after I was told and she’s done nothing but smoke screen me and pretend like it’s all been one big ‘fever dream’.

Option 3 - her friend has used the WP and mine situation or at least a warped version of events to work it through with her own partner. This would mean that the friends partner was also made aware as part of it and now the risk is "would he reach out to me to talk about it." - this one while I think is the most true also relies on my WP having pretended like she told me and why it would also work as an example for her friend and their partner to say "they worked it out so we could too." - it’s already been proven how much my WP will lie and twist so it’s very likely. I’ve not reached out to him because while I could learn more - I don’t think it’s going to change anything, including how much this best friend smokescreened me, I have no idea what her partner would do.

The WP’s specific phrasing is that if she’s been claiming to love me as she has all these years then I should be told and that it’s just taken her all this time and emotional/internal work to be strong enough to finally tell me - made worse because she knew how badly I would take it because of how clear I was with my previous trauma and boundary setting. A snowball situation as has been referenced previously.

Again all of this is about the specific 3 time event she had with someone she worked with 11 years ago and not all the other things she’s done. It’s been a truth trickle since then and required me reaching out to numerous people in a systematic and objective way. (I realise how odd that might sound but basically, and kinda ironically - part of my job is running integrity investigations in a corporate setting. When I was finally able to put my ape brain to work in a productive way and disconnect from my emotions, I quite vetted my way through those who I thought would know, who was in the right places, avoid any emotional plea and ask outright black and white questions to build a clearer picture of what’s happened over the last 11 years.)

Horrifically, that investigation bore a lot of fruit and why I was able to gain so much information about everything else that my WP was either hiding, warping and in most cases pretending like it never happened.

I realise it’s only been a week but I’ve spent every night crying. It’s feels all so horrifically cliche like a bad film.

I’ve had friends reach out, I’m in the right groups for therapy, I’ve got medical support, my family are there and just no one knows what to do with me.

My mum has called me every day because she’s obviously worried but I just don’t know what to tell her.

I feel like I’m watching myself drown and my WP is alongside me watching me/who I was drown and she’s saying you can swim while she keeps kicking my fingers from the side as I try and pull myself out.

I had the realisation that staying still and watching myself drown is me not taking action and I have only two actions. Let him drown in the sea of whatever she wants and I’m nothing or the me that’s watching reaches down and chokes him, forces the one in the water to drown. Metaphorically mercy killing myself because what she’s done has me surviving between half second breaths before the water pulls me under for minutes at a time. But everytime I take a step forward and think about doing it, i feel her holding me back saying I’m the one killing him when she did this. She put him in that water. He can’t breathe because of what she did. I can’t save him. There’s nothing I can do to make him better, to fix him to make him safe. All I can do is kill him faster so he doesn’t have to be in pain anymore.

God it’s all so fucking melodramatic. I told my medical support group a version of the above and all I got was hmm i see, that’s a lot. Like fuck, I know no one else can do anything - it’s just so fucked.

Only plus side thing today. I was actually able to eat more than handful of food. As I’ve barely eaten anything at all all week it made me sick. Don’t worry I had something after so it wasn’t lost effort but just that I was actually able to eat is a victory.

I don’t know if the above is an over share. Just that this community has helped me the most so far so. I don’t know. I’ll stop here I guess.

I was shocked at how intense and long lasting the pain was. Nothing in popular culture had prepared me for how hard and deep betrayal trauma would hit. It’s one of the worst pains life has to offer. I’m sorry that you are experiencing it. I recommend that you find safe ways to express it as fully and authentically as possible. Brené Brown says that having a good vocabulary for our emotions improves our experience of them and is better for our emotional/mental health.

You aren’t being melodramatic. You are simply being human.

Betrayal trauma is like a bomb getting dropped on your house and you survive the initial blast. Everything you thought you knew is blown to pieces, you don't know what day it is, what time it is, what you were supposed to be doing at work, what goals you were working toward... it all just becomes noise. I used to say it felt like everything in my little house of cards collapsed and I spent the better part of three years trying to decide which cards to pick back up and which cards to leave behind.

It does get better in time, just take care of yourself for now. You're going to be very vulnerable for a while. Find things that bring you joy and embrace them. A new person can be born out of the ashes of the life you knew before.