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So when she says her eyes are open now, I don't think she means she suddenly discovered some new version of me. I think she means she is finally able to look back and recognize that the version of me she had created in her own head was not always an accurate one.

This is a waypoint that I don’t think my ex ever got to. She still to this day sees me as awful, allows her to avoid introspection. It’s probably a positive sign that she is starting this process.

If you don’t mind me asking, with the divorce date coming soon, what are the plans for that? Is anyone moving out? Is there any substantial change it drives, or is it just checking a box?

Staying in home separation and untangle financially. Otherwise staying focused on healing and seeing if reconciliation is achievable.

Before D-Day I would have confidently told anyone who asked that my wife wasn't capable of cheating on me. Turns out I didn't know shit.

You and me both, brother. I would have confidently bet my life on it. I'd be dead right now if I did.

I hear you and I agree. There's a difference between even "I'll never do that again" and claiming "I'm incapable of it now." Both of those phrases don't really land right for a BS, but the latter just feels like bullshit. You've already demonstrated that you're capable! More than once!

Yes, people can change. But confidently declaring that just several months removed from d day does not land at all.

I'd rather hear "I'm no longer willing to do something like that ever again."

The reason cheating is possible for people is their ability to lie to themselves and minimize risk.

I 100 percent didn’t have any idea of the real damage I was going to cause. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but until I saw that filtered through my husbands pain I greatly underestimated it.

This describes my wife very well also. I truly believe she severely underestimated the damage this would cause. As for the ability to lie to themselves goes, I just made a post about that in the reconciliation forum.

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums/?tid=667422

I have no doubt that my ex-wife was stunned (for lack of a better word) by how hard her betrayal hit me. I find it hard to believe that anyone could possibly understand unless they've BTDT.

What you are describing from her in her eyes being wide open now was something I definitely experienced.

There were a lot of shortcomings in me that I projected on to him.

I thought he was unable to give me emotional intimacy. Now, I didn’t cheat or even think of doing so early in the marriage but ws do tend to justify your behavior by creating skewed narratives.

I felt he wanted someone to take care of his kids (my step kids) and to do domestic labor. Someone he had available for sex. My husband really is too notch in most things about being a spouse but it wouldn’t have been enough for someone who never truly saw his love. And there were many other erroneous things that once I had developed self awareness I realized I had either consigned, projected, or engineered into our relationship with my own set of issues.

But, I want to say that you do not owe her a reconciliation. No matter how much work she is doing or does. I can only tell you if the work sounds like it’s landing right. And it’s starting to. She will still have failures as well, because it’s a steep climb where she needs to go.

I am rooting for her - not for the purpose of winning you back but because whatever she does to improve will benefit the family you will always be together, even if it’s just improved relationship skills for coparenting or creating stability in relationships she may have in the future.

And I am rooting for your healing. It still may be some time before you reach clarity in terms of an outcome but you have a lot of clarity now for where you are in the journey.

What you are describing from her in her eyes being wide open now was something I definitely experienced.

There were a lot of shortcomings in me that I projected on to him.

Thing I have with your bringing up your experiences, @hikingout, is that your situation and your marriage beforehand, is basically NOTHING like his and his WW's. I even think by bringing up how it was for you so much, that you may even be giving a measure of false hope here. Even though I know that is absolutely not your intention.

It is extremely difficult for me to isolate one phrase, I am looking at the entire picture here. Gemmy has been lied to FROM EVEN BEFORE THE BEGINNING of his marriage with his WW. His WW has a history of saying nice things to Gemmy about him as a partner and then bad-mouthing him to her family. So yeah, just really cynical and skeptical here.

Gemmy, for starters, has your WW told her family the truth about her affairs yet?

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 3:14 AM, Wednesday, September 9th]

I can understand your point of view here and I appreciate the way you stated your response so respectfully.

I do think while our marriages are obviously different, it makes complete sense to me that her betrayal early on would keep the justifications going. Justification often doesn’t stop until the lies hit daylight, otherwise there would have been a confession and no subsequent affair.

I also have a close friend who also did the same thing- had an affair at the beginning of the marriage, and then 10 years later had a second one with our coworker who she eventually left her husband for. Later as she unwound that, her answer was the same—she’d minimized her husband all that time and it never had occurred to her she had been doing that. She told me well into the first year of her marriage to the ap so she really had no reason to lie.

It is not my intention to create hope, the truth is he has hope or he wouldn’t still be here evaluating her. I simply believe that one thing can do is say yes that tracks wit what I know ir experienced or no it doesn’t, and there have been things she has done that I have said doesn’t track. This one does for me, I understand why it would not for someone who hasn’t experienced the ways ws lie to themselves.l to keep from feeling bad about what they do. It’s part of the coping with cognitive dissonance.

It is not my intention to create hope, the truth is he has hope or he wouldn’t still be here evaluating her. I simply believe that one thing can do is say yes that tracks wit what I know ir experienced or no it doesn’t, and there have been things she has done that I have said doesn’t track. This one does for me, I understand why it would not for someone who hasn’t experienced the ways ws lie to themselves.l to keep from feeling bad about what they do. It’s part of the coping with cognitive dissonance.

Sure, I understand and again I know your intentions are good.

Gemmy may also be looking for a PERMISSION STRUCTURE to D as well too though.

With that said, the story of the woman who left her BH, really did sting for me reading it. I mean, good for her if she eventually became a better person, but at the end of the day a man was used as an emotional punching bag all these years and then left cruelly. That matters and always will matter. I mean, it is probably not any comfort to the BH that she finally became the wife she was supposed to be--for the guy she left him for. I hope the BH is doing well and has moved on with his life. And that his fWW has done what she could to at least apologise and treat him as fairly as possible in the D.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 3:41 AM, Wednesday, September 9th]

Don’t want to threadjack too much- I liked her husband a lot. I used to try to coach her to have a better marriage and I didn’t know about the affair until the marriage imploded. He is doing well today and while she was my friend (we are no longer friends) I have to say I think he is better off without her. I used to think what she struggled with him about was nitpicking.

So again, it’s not a statement about what I think he should do. I don’t know that answer, but I have faith he will come to the best conclusion for him.
End t/j

Fair enough @hikingout, thanks for updating.

So when she says her eyes are open now, I don't think she means she suddenly discovered some new version of me. I think she means she is finally able to look back and recognize that the version of me she had created in her own head was not always an accurate one.

I understand why hearing this feels like progress compared to outright vilification, Gemmy, but I urge you to look at how inherently dangerous this framing still is.

What you are hearing as an admission of flawed perception actually leaves a dangerous loophole wide open. It implies her decision to cheat was dependent on your performance and her subjective assessment of your character. If her fidelity relies on maintaining a favorable view of you, what happens five or ten years down the road when life gets heavy, resentment creeps back in, or she inevitably builds up another unfair caricature during a rough season? Does the threshold for betrayal open right back up?

It sounds less like an evolution into "cheating is fundamentally and morally disgusting" and more like a reframing: "Well, if you were the awful person I had built up in my head, my actions would have been justified, but turns out you weren't that person."

That isn't a foundational shift in basic morality. It is merely a correction of facts.

What you need, and what every betrayed spouse deserves, is a partner who is diametrically and morally opposed to cheating. You need someone who refuses to betray you not because you are a top notch husband who successfully proved her negative projections wrong, but because betrayal is completely incompatible with her own core values as a human being. If I over a course of years come to believe my partner is a horrible person. I would either address this with her, request counselling or ultimately leave. Note how none of these options include betrayal.

Obviously, none of us on an online forum can see the complete picture of your wife’s internal work. But based on the snippets you’ve shared here, she has not achieved that level of baseline morality yet. She is still managing and untangling her justifications rather than discarding the entire framework that allowed her to justify it in the first place.

You deserve a morally upstanding partner, Gemmy. Don't settle for someone who is merely recalculating whether you deserved the damage she caused.

[This message edited by DRSOOLERS at 10:04 AM, Wednesday, September 9th]