SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My 35th anniversary is coming up next week. It's been 19 years since DDay. Over the last few months, our relationship has become happier and more peaceful than it's ever been.

Every night, H and I have the same routine: We hang out in the garage for a bit, talking and watching music videos. We're both insomniacs, so we smoke a little weed to relax for bedtime, which also allows us to really get into topics authentically and intricately. Sometimes we look up conversation-starter questions on Google and see where that takes us. We both really enjoy this, even when the topic turns to infidelity.

During our conversation last night, one of the questions was about whether we thought we were a good spouse. He said that I've always been a good wife and he's never been unhappy with me; that his unhappiness was all his stuff. I said that I always felt like he liked me as a person, but he hasn't always been happy with my actions like how I kept house or how often I wanted sex. About 15 years ago, I got fully fed up with his criticism and told him to lay off, that this is who I am and I'm not changing, so accept it or leave me, but that the shit that caused me to feel less-than was going to stop one way or another. I was DONE with it. He said last night that it was probably the best thing that ever happened to strengthen our relationship. He really likes our more relaxed life now, and I do too.

He recognizes that I've always believed in him, wanted him, and supported him, now and right after DDay, and he tearfully thanked me. He says often that he wouldn't be the man he is today without me. I told him "I was betting on the come" which is something he used to say about me. I've struggled on and off over the years with my life's path and taking action. Now we know that's largely about anxiety and ADHD, thanks to IC and introspection. He's learned a lot in IC, too, and we both understand what makes the other tick so much better now. We're happy and relaxed.

We've been betting on the come for a long time, and we've finally hit the big payout.

He's the commander at a veteran's organization and the officers were fussing at him a bit for not being there enough. One of them said, "I'm worried about you. I know you really need to be social and you haven't been here much. Are you getting that need met?" H told him about our evenings and how he prioritizes that over everything else, which was not the case not that long ago. He made that place the priority for a couple of years, which really hurt us, but his dedication literally saved the place from dying due to Covid and caused it to come back better than ever. Then he prioritized us, which got us to the best place ever, but which leaves the post lacking. I remarked that now it's time to find the balance. We decided that he would stop by there on his way home from work a few days a week and be home by 8:00 or so for our nightly ritual. It's a win/win because he really likes running the post and seeing lots of people, and I really enjoy my alone time. We'll both be getting our needs met without neglecting the other.

I'm looking forward to the next stage of our life. I think we've done the majority of our recovery work, though we're both continuing with IC, and now we get to enjoy the marriage we always believed we'd have. It only took us 35 years to get here!

This post makes me so happy. Sounds incredible. Great idea to just hang out and look up conversation-starter questions on Google. And some of my most cherished times in my marriage are trips my wife and I have taken, relatively short to a theme park or the beach or whatever, and with no kids and just her and I in the car ride. It's not the destination, a lot of times it's the car ride together that's so awesome (kinda like the garage I suppose). And then we'd each take turns picking a song on youtube and be each other's DJ for the ride, reminiscing on music we loved when we were young and newer stuff we're into now. You can learn a lot about a person by knowing their music, the soundtrack of their life as it were. We'll be riding around and over a couple hour trip have listened to 90s boybands (me, surprisingly, lol), slipknot (also me), eminem or Kayne (more her), and Luke Combs (her), some weird eastern tantric instrumental meditation stuff (definitely her), and maybe even finish off with some Beethoven (why not).

I don't know you're story quite well enough to know, do you guys have kids or have they grown up and moved out? What phase of life are you guys in? I'd say if me and WW (?) stay together, we're rounding that corner from being smothered by 4 kids and losing ourselves in the role of parents and transitioning into kids getting older and not being as demanding (except as an uber driver and ATM). So I'm kind of looking forward to this next phase if we can get there. It sounds awesome. Thank you for sharing.

Road trips are the best! They're terrific for bonding, I think because there's nothing else you can or should be doing but driving. We also take turns playing songs. He leans more Metallica, Pantera, and old obscure metal, but also a little 70s funk. I'm the classic 80s/90s alternative/punk girl with a little red dirt country thrown in. We've also done the questions in the car, and played Trivial Pursuit without the board. I used to read David Sedaris aloud to him, and he loved that. We just got a travel trailer a few months ago and drove it almost 400 miles each way to the beach two weeks ago. It was a hard drive physically, but emotionally it filled our tanks.

We're mid-50s with grown kids (DD34 and DD28) and three adorable grandsons. Except for the nine months before our oldest was born, we had NEVER lived alone, just the two of us, until this year. The girls left and his mom moved in, which was a debacle because she treated H like a child. She finally moved out in May, my mom (who also lives with us) went away for the summer, and we got to be by ourselves for basically the first time. It's been glorious. My mom comes back in two weeks, so we won't be able to walk around the house nekkid anymore, but she's a giant introvert so we both think we'll be okay. We go see his mom for about an hour every week and thank our lucky stars that we don't have to deal with her 24/7 anymore.

BTW, my H is also a Marine. Semper Fi! Sending you good juju and wishes for a happy life and happy marriage.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 2:58 PM, Tuesday, September 26th]

Semper fi to him as well. If he screws up, tell him to "unfuck himself". I'm sure that'll send him back, lol.

That's so funny about walking around the house "nekkid" . I actually have told my 12 year old son, who says he's never leaving and going to live with us forever (strange kid), "I'll give you until your 20 years old. I'll give you that. The day you turn 20, I'm walking around this house butt nekkid, gonna let my ding-a-Ling hang out completely free and natural. Your mama's gonna be nekkid too, and I'm gonna be chasing her beautiful nekkid butt all over the house.... so you do what you want, but I'm telling you what's gonna happen, and it's gonna be a very traumatic, awkward, and traumatizing 20th birthday for you if you still live here." I say it all tongue in cheek, obviously. But you saying that made me think of that. I think I heard it in one of the "Friday" movies a long time ago when the dad was saying that to Craig and telling him he needed to get out the house cuz he wanted to enjoy his "golden years" chasing Craig's mammas big beautiful nekkid ass around the house. I thought it was hysterical. Check out the clip on YouTube if you have never seen it. The look on Craig's face is just pure gold.

Anyway, I'm liking this post. And as an aside, yeah, I talk like that to my kids. It's lighthearted, but ever since they were little, in what I think are age appropriate ways, I always wanted sex to not be a taboo subject for my kids. I wanted open conversation. We never hid the fact that mom and dad are a very sexual couple from our kids. We'd flirt and embarrass them at times, kind of intentionally. It's how we wanted to live our lives and keep our sex life alive (which even during her affair was still great and passionate and frequent, surprisingly enough), and we wanted our kids to have not being embarrassed about sex as they grew up modeled for them. I've always said that I want them to wait for love and marriage ideally, but once that happens, let your freak flag fly with your spouse. Have fun. Enjoy life. It's great. So we intentionally destigmatized sex in our home. So telling my 12 year old something like that isn't really shocking in our home. He laughs and runs away covering his ears, lol.

I LOVE the Friday movies. If we happen to see them on the channel guide, we'll never flip past. They're friggin' hilarious. "Don't nobody go in there for about 45 minutes" is quoted often around here. I told H the other day that I want to name our next dog Craig. He said we'd have to get two and name the other one Day-Day.

And I'm so with you on modeling healthy romantic behavior in front of the kids and talking freely about sexual emotional and physical health, especially in a humorous way, which makes it so much more accessible. Our kids still jokingly say "GROSS. STOP IT." when they catch us kissing and grabbing ass. I was the mom who was handing out condoms to all the kids and fussing at them to "wrap that rascal!" and telling them truths about "clap of the yap." (Nod to the Marine Corps!) The girls knew they could come to me if they or their friends needed help. I'm very proud of that.

I hadn't heard that phrase before...so I had to look it up. That is pretty cool that y'all feel y'all hit the big payout now .

This is a very POSITIVE post...and I am very HAPPY for y'all !!

There is only one other thing that could make me happier...if you could post your story into the "Positive Reconciliation Stories" thread at the top of this Forum !! ALL you have to do is copy your post and then paste it into that thread .

Thanks so much for sharing this post !!!