SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My wife had an affair almost 6 years ago. She has done everything right since then, but I am falling out of love with her. I don't know what to do anymore. I mean, she had an affair with a younger, more attractive man and larger man (down there), but a total loser in every other way. He was jobless, with no prospects, using older women to support his lifestyle. He literally had no job, no prospects, dropped out of college, but my wife went for him because he was young and attractive and fed her ego. Now she totally rejects what she was, but I just don't care anymore. I loved her, found her beautiful, but after the affair, my feelings slowly ebbed. It's like the more effort she put in, the worse my feelings got. I just hate to ruin 25 years of marriage, but I have so many options. I work out at the gym all the time. So many attractive women in the wings. I know that sounds horrible, but what am I supposed to feel? Maybe it is time to divorce and move on. I need some perspective.

Your are not supposed to feel anything.

The fact is when you decide to stay you might do so hoping in an outcome, reconciling what was broken by infidelity with the decision to stay and keep sharing a life together.

The only thing that matters in this process is the healing of your trauma and pain, so you can recover from it and return to your centered function as before the betrayal at the very least, if not even in a better place where you can reach peace and integration.

Do you feel like you reached that stage yet?

About your wife, what she seems to be doing is to work on her then unresolved flaws that allowed her to cheat.

From what you said it seems she made good progress in her healing journey and that she reached some level of integration where her past choices now feel disgusting and repulsive to her in a genuine way, not a performative one.

Does this reflect your observation or she is still in an earlier stage of recovery?

Do you talk about what you feel for each other, does she show up for you consistently and bring up of her own initiative her feelings about now and what used to be?

Was she owning the infidelity and coming clean with no reservations or she tries to keep it compartmentalized and hidden from your daily life, only confronting it if she is forced by you?

Do you actually feel you miss something from her that she is not willingly giving you unless asked?

Do you need it or you just don’t want it, don’t care anymore?

I understand you tried to reconcile, how you think it went/ is going?

The Affair Partner comparison is crushing in the beginning, but he is a worthless person in your life with no power over you, your relationship or your life, beside that temporary moment when she gave him free pass to burn all to the ground, he can’t touch you, he doesn’t even rank on the scale, there’s no point to compare him to you as he is not a contender, he was just a thief snuck in your life from the service door.

I think these are some points that may help you to get clarity where you stand emotionally right now. If this is an integrated conclusion and you finally realized that you don’t want her anymore, or if this isn’t perhaps just another down in the rollercoaster of infidelity recovery.

A question, did you find out 6 years ago and began reconciling or the dday is more recent?

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 11:10 AM, Saturday, July 18th]

affair with a younger, more attractive man

What do you think her affair said about you?

ruin 25 years of marriage

Is it possible to ruin the past, in the present? How does that work? What is really getting ruined in your statement?

So many attractive women in the wings

if you latched up with one of them, what would that say about you?

Humans are nothing if not storytellers. Every now and then it’s worth pondering on if you are, explicitly or implicitly, trying to tell a story with your life, and if so, how much does adherence to the narrative drive your actions.

Would you be happier not married, but you don’t want to tell the story of the guy who ruined the previous 25 years of marriage (I.e., messed up the story)with an action today?

Are you using the OM, and your wife’s actions, as a yardstick to measure yourself with in your story?

These sorts of things, the desire to be able to say something about our self at some future point in time, the desire to have a good story of who we are, can be incredibly influential.

FoW,

I just hate to ruin 25 years of marriage

You didn’t ruin the marriage. She did - with adultery. Often adultery is a deal-breaker. It is for you, and there’s no shame in that. You gave it 6 years to see if you could reconcile. It’s not working out. This is 100% on her. Tell her you did your best, but her adultery dropped a nuke on the marriage, and it’s dead.

You might want to read up on a poster here named WaitedWayTooLong, who tried for 5+ years to reconcile with his adulterous wife, but also realized her betrayal was a deal-breaker. Let her go.

Don't be here at 7...... years asking the same question.

FoW,

I’m a UW, so I know my perspective comes from the other side of this. Something I’ve thought about while reading your post is that, if my spouse and I were in your situation, I would want to know he truly wanted to be with me. I wouldn’t want him staying because of our history, the years together, or because I had done the work to try to make things right.

At the same time, if he reached a point where he honestly knew he didn’t want the marriage anymore, I would want him to be honest with me. As painful as that would be, I think both people deserve to be in a relationship where they are fully chosen.

Something I’m curious about, and this isn’t meant as a judgment, is this: if there were no other women waiting, no possibility of a new relationship, and you knew you would simply be on your own, would you still feel like you wanted to leave?

I ask because I wonder if that answer might help separate two things: the pain of what happened and the loss of what your marriage used to be, versus the hope and possibility of something new.

Your wife’s work matters, but your feelings matter too. Sometimes someone can do everything right after the fact and the damage is still something the other person cannot move past. I think the most important thing is being honest with yourself and with your wife about where your heart truly is, because both of you deserve the chance to be in a relationship where you are fully chosen.

For me, I tend to agree with fellow member Unhinged — infidelity is a dealbreaker.

It took me awhile then to figure out if I wanted to continue with the M or move on.

We never owe anyone a final chance.

I did wonder what would happen if I found a way to offer grace.

If this person who hurt me evolved into a better version of herself, I was curious would that would look like.

Ultimately, it always takes both partners wanting the relationship.

Ten years in, I’m happy I offered a final chance, but I will always understand why people are done.

I do agree with HouseOfPlane, we definitely have a choice in how the narrative works in our life.

My wife’s choices never reflected a single thing on me, and nothing in our M is ruined.

We have had great days, fun and happy years and horrible days, and unpleasant years — and I find that when I focus on the good stuff (hers and mine) we tend to have better days.

It’s illuminating that so much of your post is devoted to the AP. After 6 years of simmering, the sauce of your emotions have reduced down to what looks to me like resentment.

You, the speculative fiction reader, the tax attorney (no hate brother, I’m an attorney too and pretty much only read speculative fiction), the responsible choice for a spouse and him the antithesis, the hunky loser bad-boy.

She hurt your pride. I feel like what your post is saying is "Guess what WW, I can get a hottie too." You go to the gym too, you’re attractive too, right?

I’m also sensing that you no longer really respect her. Is that fair to say?

To state the obvious, if you no longer love or respect her, it’s doing nobody any good to stay in the marriage.

Just remember: they always affair down. https://survivinginfidelity.com/topics/558762/honey-they-always-affair-down/

ForceOfWill, I understand right where you are. BTDT. There's a few differences in our stories, though the plots are similar.

D-day for me was in April of 2015. My exww had a ONS / fling with a serial cheater (seasoned predator) at a trade-show out of town. A few days after her return, I read the text messages between them.

About 6 years later, we separated and then divorced.

In most ways, she was a model formerly wayward wife. She went the distance, owned and fixed her shit.

But! The damage had been done and as much as I wanted reconciliation and tried to convince myself that we had reconciled, I'd fallen out of love with her. We were essentially roommates. After one particular fight, I realized two things. One, I didn't have any fight left in me. I just didn't care anymore. And two, I was never going to love her the way she wanted me to and that wasn't fair to her, or me.

I do not regret trying. I don't regret those years we stayed together. And I certainly don't regret divorcing.

The greatest lesson I've learned in my nearly 60 years is that peace - of mind, body and spirit - is the greatest gift we can ever give to ourselves.

Find your peace, brother.

[This message edited by Unhinged at 6:30 PM, Saturday, July 18th]