SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I guess I don’t know if I’m supposed to "know" if I’ll be staying for the long haul

I’ve allowed myself to be in limbo for a very long time. I feel like I keep raising the bar in terms of what I want for him to do to make amends and in most ways he keeps meeting it. Not being defensive now. He’s happy to talk about it as often as I want to talk. If he seems to be in any way "making it about him" he responds immediately and shifts back to my pain. He’s asked a reasonable question which is what is he supposed to do when I’m asking questions all about him - doesn’t he have to answer with reference to himself. He’s still giving total transparency and it’s been 8 years without even a hint of anything more than professional interactions with other women. Hess remorseful- only wants to spend his life making it better "no matter how long it takes".

The problem is he can’t change the past. I always want to hide from the fact that maybe it’s a dealbreaker. Maybe it always was and that’s why he was terrified to tell me. Maybe he knew I would never accept it. I have some extra history that my dad and grandfather also cheated with women at work. It feels like a family trauma. god forbid we tell my daughters. I’m supposed to tell them to trust some new guy and just ignore that your father, grandfather and great grandfather all did the same thing.

I want to understand why it seems like other people seem to be able to move on assuming their spouse is doing whatever they ask. Or maybe they just THINK they would accept if their spouse did the work. Then when their spouse doesn’t they can blame it on that when it’s really is the original act that was the dealbreaker.

I feel like I could have forgiven if he did this but every day during the several months it went on he told himself "you must end it tomorrow". Even though he obviously did not end it right away. Shouldn’t anyone with at least a shred of decency be telling themselves "i will stop tomorrow"? He doesn’t say that. He says he blocked it out and would not let himself think about what he was really doing. That feels like a completely unacceptable answer.

I tell myself to stop doing shitty things all the time. Like when I used to smoke i’d tell myself i would stop. Or when I was mean to someone I would tell myself i’d never do that again. even if i still did the bad thing.

does the fact that he never told himself he would stop mean mean he’s some kind of sociopath. I don’t mean that in some sort DSM-V manual, psychiatric diagnosis kind of way. More in a "wouldn’t you tell your daughter to run in the opposite direction" kind of way. It feels like the bar is so low—he just has to have wanted to stop. but he didn’t. I mean he did stop …but it seems pretty clear he stopped because he would lose everything- reputation, children, money—not that he had an ounce of morality or decency in his body.

yes now he seems different but uggg….so painful. i meant literally nothing it would appear.

i’m sorry. i think this is a rant. i don’t even know what i’m asking. maybe i’m asking if anyone has felt like this? what did you do? how did you come to terms with it?

I always want to hide from the fact that maybe it’s a dealbreaker. Maybe it always was and that’s why he was terrified to tell me. Maybe he knew I would never accept it.

Man, can I relate to this. I'm almost 20 years out and I still can't accept it. I love my H. I like him. I like my life with him. He's my best friend. We reconciled well. But I hate what he did to me. To us. I'm still chewing on everything. I wonder if I'll ever be able to stop picking at the wound and just accept it. I feel like I did for a while, and then it got all stirred up again. I know I'm going to have to work at it. It's not going to peter out naturally.

I don't think my H ever told himself to stop, either. A1 was a ONS. A2 fizzled out due to logistics. A3, he did confess, but it was because he wanted to leave me for her. He wanted me to let him go so he told me everything to push me away.

He jokes that he's not my accountability buddy, he's my partner in crime, and it's true. Historically, he's been more interested in a good time than in doing the sensible thing. I keep us grounded. I'm the "solid" one. (That's his descriptor for me.) He's the flag and I'm the pole. We've been talking a lot lately about how I'm tired of being the pole, and how I want him to share the pole-like duties, and sometimes let me be the flag without worrying that there's no pole there to keep us grounded. I see glimmers of change. We'll see how it pans out. But I think this is what I unknowingly signed up for when I married him. I thought I was marrying a protector.

thank you. that was really nice to hear. very very.

i’m glad you’re the good one. i’m glad someone is.

i thought i was the bad one. you know like i don’t put my grocery store cart back. just leave it in the wrong place.

i thought he was the straight arrow. that was his main selling point. maybe he got sick of that role.

our daughter was just telling us how her friend cheated off her on her math test and my husband is literally going on for twenty minutes horrified clutching his pearls that someone would cheat. he’s like yelling "how could someone cheat!!?!"

bruh

it’s been 8 years without even a hint of anything more than professional interactions with other women. Hess remorseful- only wants to spend his life making it better "no matter how long it takes".

The problem is he can’t change the past. I always want to hide from the fact that maybe it’s a dealbreaker.

It’s all on you now, if you want to stay in the marriage, he’s done what he can based on what you have written. He is what he is now, and intellectually it seems pretty good to you, all things considered.

Therefore, if something doesn’t change with you, then it’ll be the same at 28 years. And that change is something you will need to actively pursue. You will need to grow, not just heal. Time will just cement in the status quo, not mellow it.

That effort to change may not work, either. There is risk. Frankly, divorce may be the surer path out of this persistent suffering.

I guess I am saying take action, of any kind. Don’t just wait.

My opinion, based on more than 8 years experience. 😕

You’ve been heard…

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 3:22 AM, Thursday, April 11th]

Hey friend,
Forgive me if I’m overstepping, but I think I’ve read enough from you to hear something pretty different here. I hear you being in a really tough spot right at this moment. I’m glad you came to us, and I also hope that you take steps 2, 3, and 4 to ride out this storm. If I’m wrong, I’m sorry for wasting your time and being presumptuous. But if I’m right, please take care of yourself.

IH

Therefore, if something doesn’t change with you, then it’ll be the same at 28 years. And that change is something you will need to actively pursue. You will need to grow, not just heal. Time will just cement in the status quo, not mellow it.

Oof. Well said.

never never overstepping. so thanks for listening and i don’t know as far as what’s up. it’s gotten noticeably "better". The timeline, though it took forever helped a lot. he’s maybe less afraid that i’m going to ask about some micro detail and then blow up because i’ve decided his answer is a dealbreaker. there’s no attempt to limit how often we talk about the cheating which was a big sticking point. He seemed to shift because there was something non-cheating related and he wanted to talk about it like a lot. and it helped cause i was able to say how would you feel if i limited your ability to talk about this to a scheduled session every three days. this debate went on for a while and so he switched to being game on to talk whenever. Somehow that last piece that i had been asking for for a long time shifted me too. I really didn’t need to talk about it all the time when suddenly no one was telling me i couldn’t.

i do always have a little fear he’s love bombing but really that can be hard to distinguish from him being nice and trying. he wants to spend all our time together, plan for the future, sex isn’t so hysterical bondingy- it’s more just normal and balanced. so all that’s been pretty good.

but i still don’t like the answers about the past. i don’t understand how he could have stared me straight in the face and watched me crumbling. i was a wreck that whole three months. sobbing on my knees begging for it to stop. I didn’t "know" because i had no evidence. but i knew. and he knew i knew. and he did nothing. he truly didn’t even care. not even a little.

I’m not sure I believe people can change that much. His narrative was so delusional I can’t even understand it. He believed at the time that he was working so much harder than me. I was working like 90 hour weeks and taking care of 3 little kids with no help from him. and the story i’m getting—with all the grilling i’ve done in the last 20 months is that he literally had no conscience whatsoever. He’s not shying away from that. If anything he is the one who wants to say how terrible he was and i am the one who wants to make excuses. I’m like begging for some excuses. I don’t know if my experience of human beings is that they can be that bad and not still be pretty bad. It worries me. I perseverate. If it could all be made good by his behavior now it would be good. but can it?

If it could all be made good by his behavior now it would be good. but can it?

Fuck no, it can’t. A pound of perfect behavior can’t erase a spec of offense from the past. And that means that if you divorce his ass you are completely justified. And it means that if you bless him with reconciliation it reflects an uncommon gracious heart. What he is doing now is just table stakes of not being an asshole. It’s about the present, and I’m happy for you that he seems to have come around in the present. But he is powerless about the past. You are judge, jury, and executioner (or pardoner). And that is part of the terrible burden foisted on us.

I’m sorry you are struggling. Praying for you.

House of Plane: thank you. i know this is probably the growth i need to embrace. sometimes adulting is no fun.

i like how you said"based on what you’ve written.…". It calls out the issue i worry about. am i seeing this through a clear lens? my sense of reality was very damaged because he waited a very long time to come clean. but when he did it was not because he would get caught. i would never have known. both he and AP told no one. he could have taken it to the grave.

i often second guess that. Am I really sure he’s changed? I have some trouble believing what i know to be true. believing my own gut. I guess I have to learn to trust myself.

I believe many people feel in the same boat… how sad!

I guess I have to learn to trust myself.

This was going to be my suggestion.

What do you want? If it’s to reconcile then I think that is still possible. All affairs are deal breakers, that doesn’t mean you can’t go for a new deal. And it may take some work with a therapist as well if you haven’t gone. Infidelity is trauma and it often stirs up past trauma in its wake, it might be too big for you to know how to approach it in your own.

If it’s to divorce, that might be complicated since you said your kids were small at the time of the affair. But it doesn’t make it impossible. Make sure that the narratives you are telling yourself isn’t holding you back because even a divorce is figure-out-able.

You do not owe him anything just because he did the work.

And I will say that everyone I know in real life who had an affair, including myself, really wasn’t thinking much past the day or hour they were in. Most told ourselves to stop many different times. I told myself almost every single day. This push/pull dynamic made me tell myself all sorts of things that wasn’t true, and affairs are highly addictive. People think "addictive" here is figurative but it’s truly a brain chemical thing, complete with withdrawal. And it’s not because of the AP being so great. It’s just a predictable psychological reaction. There is little in an affair that is logical and I hear you wanting to make sense of it.

I also think sometimes holding these feelings in can increase the feelings of isolation. You say he will talk about it and you needed to less but have you expressed these feelings to him? If you would like to start building a connection you need to practice being vulnerable and sharing things like this. It sounds like you are going through the motions and on the surface things look okay to him. That is a tough thing to hold on your own.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:16 PM, Thursday, April 11th]

i don’t understand how he could have stared me straight in the face and watched me crumbling. i was a wreck that whole three months. sobbing on my knees begging for it to stop. I didn’t "know" because i had no evidence. but i knew. and he knew i knew. and he did nothing. he truly didn’t even care. not even a little.

Been There Experienced That. Brutal. Including the "understanding" part. How the f*** could you do that?

Well, the answer is "because you are the kind of person who can do that." The proof is that they did it. They did it, so they can and did do it. Very much a member of the crooked timber of humanity.

I know this causes you pain and suffering. I’m going to rephrase your first sentence, which I bet is now more truthful and gives you the (only?) path out of the pain.

"i don’t accept that he could have…"

I think maybe that is what is going on. You haven’t accepted that the past is what it is. I know I didn’t for a long time. It is HARD. When I just radically accepted it, "Yep, you’re capable of some horrendous stuff" it was a huge lift of pain. Like…a huge one.

So my suggestion, just surrender to the truth. Just accept that it happened, that he did it. When it pops into your noggin, nod your head and say to yourself, "That shit really happened" and let out a big sigh and let it float off.

That radical acceptance is a plus and minus to the WS. A plus because now you’re in less pain. A minus because they could kind of depend on you not really believing they could do that. Now they sit fully exposed. I remember when I told my wife with no anger at all that I had struggled so long to understand (accept) she could do that, but now I just accept it. You did it. It happened…the look on her face. Like I was a mirror into her soul.

But ultimately it is a plus, now you are working from a place of honesty, which is the place to move forward from.

believing my own gut

A lot of interaction with a spouse is really interacting with your minds view of your spouse. One thing I’ve learned is to stop doing that. When I interact with my wife (sometimes) I really try to be aware of her. Give her my full attention and see her directly, not through the lens of past history. Who she is right this second. Unknow what I knew about her. Just be aware.

If you do this, you will first see your WH much better, and it will be a hell of a lot harder to get one by you. But also…this is really the best way to be with everyone. Be present with them. Truly give them your attention. Really see them as they are, not based a narrative built up through the past history.

These are what I mean when I talk about growth. Accept the past as it is. Be aware right now.

Sending strength!

i don’t understand how he could have stared me straight in the face and watched me crumbling. i was a wreck that whole three months. sobbing on my knees begging for it to stop. I didn’t "know" because i had no evidence. but i knew. and he knew i knew. and he did nothing. he truly didn’t even care. not even a little.

Fully relate. In my case it was 4 months. I often tell myself that my ptsd was inflicted by this indifference and the way it floored me rather than by the affair itself. I remember being curled up on the kitchen floor begging him to stop torturing me. I remember driving around the English country lanes at speed wanting to die…

If anyone had met me prior to all this (or now), they would have considered me a strong independent woman. And yet this affair my husband had with a troll completely floored me in ways I never thought possible.

I consider I mostly moved on from it. Let’s say 95% moved on. It will always be there in some form but life is normal. I can’t remember the last time the A was mentioned. There’s nothing left to talk about. It was discussed to death (willingly). WH like yours pretty much did everything possible in the last 6 years. I said jump, he asked how high.

I don’t think he’s putting on a pretend show. Nobody can do that for 6 years. (Or can they?). I feel loved, desired and appreciated most of the time. I can see real change. Less (much less) selfishness in him. We are happy. Not the innocence happiness I thought we had prior to this, but nevertheless happy. We love each other, we talk, we spend most of our time together. We share, we laugh, life is good.

I’d say the key element to moving on was the moment I realised my value and started trusting myself. Moving on myself. Not us. Me. I don’t know when, but my focus shifted at one point from "us"/our marriage and its future to "me". I kept holding him accountable but I also grew as a person. I got into this habit of self challenge. You may laugh but I still do it. I set myself goals. Exercise goals. Reading goals. Career goals. Whatever works. Self love as cliche as that sounds. Do things that I never had time before. Now I make time. Face routines. Massages. It sounds minimal but it isn’t. It puts that focus from trying to figure out who your partner is, to figuring out who you are and what you love.

Before long it suddenly didn’t matter anymore. The more goals I achieved the better I felt about myself, the less the affair mattered. I didn’t care if he "loved" ow "more" than me, I didn’t care if he regretted not running into the sunset with her (I don’t think he did for the record), it didn’t matter to me if he thought he "settled" for me, it didn’t matter if he truly felt grateful to still be with me or not (I do believe he does). Basically I reached a point where all those torturous post dday self doubt thoughts became irrelevant.

Of course I did care about the work he did but in the context of assessing if this marriage still suits me. For every decision we make, I first ask myself how will that affect ME, the potentially single me, and then I agree or disagree. He knows that.

We function very well. I do consider us happy and he continues to evidence true change. I don’t see life as black and white anymore. I’ll always know he did have it in him to act the way he did and there is no justification for it. You will never find it. However people are capable of change if they truly wish to do so. After all my WH was capable to change from a model husband and father, to my worst enemy for a period of time acting and living a completely delusional life.

I hope you find your answers soon.

His narrative was so delusional I can’t even understand it.

You are not alone in this aspect either. Similarly to the narrative my FWS gave. She accused me of being "gone all the time", "never home", "not wanting to be with me and the kids".

"Delusional" is a good word for this thinking.

I worked 4 long days per week, but was home every night, every weekend, and every holiday. I made her coffee every single morning, before she got up as I left before then, and made family breakfast every weekend. I called her every day from work, at least once. I washed clothes, dishes, kids, cats, and dogs. I gave up my hobbies to be home, because I wanted to be home. We went out on dates almost every week, and a family out night almost every week.'

When she truly confessed, she admitted I was home watching the kids when she went out to "get a break"and had sex with the AP.

But, she still said she felt like I was never there, while acknowledging that this wasn't a reality based feeling.

I think part of it is that WS's get "disconnected" from their spouse emotionally, even if they hide it. They don't really see the relationship for what it really is.

think part of it is that WS's get "disconnected" from their spouse emotionally, even if they hide it. They don't really see the relationship for what it really is.

Yes, I think in a lot of cases this is accurate.

I was disconnected far before the affair. And honestly, I don’t think I was fully aware of it or why. I had a lot of distorted thoughts about my marriage, and it all came from that lack of connection.

Later, I realized that it was me that didn’t know how to connect. I just kept doing things and waiting to be appreciated and loved for them. Then resenting that I wasn’t seen. The reality of it was I felt I wasn’t loveable for who I am and so therefore I couldn’t seem to see they ways I was loved and cherished.

It’s almost as if so much that he did "didn’t really count" because it wasn’t what I was waiting for or expecting. Often, I look back and wonder how I got so delusional.

I just kept doing things and waiting to be appreciated and loved for them. Then resenting that I wasn’t seen. The reality of it was I felt I wasn’t loveable for who I am and so therefore I couldn’t seem to see they ways I was loved and cherished.

It’s almost as if so much that he did "didn’t really count"

My wife said almost the same thing, except she believed that I did everything that I did because I had to, because I felt "stuck" with her.

Stillconfused2022, you are probably experiencing that difficulty now, "disconnected", unfortunately, even if your spouse does the work, some couples cannot reconnect after betrayal. My FWS had her sense of disconnectedness from her FOO, and struggles with it to this day, it remains problematic, but recognized for what it is, in our relationship.

For every decision we make, I first ask myself how will that affect ME, the potentially single me, and then I agree or disagree. He knows that.

I like doing that. When we both know what we want as individuals, issue resolution is about getting as much of what we want as we can rather than giving up as little as possible.

Sometimes we have to give something up, because 2 wants really are in conflict, and we have to choose one or the other. When that happens, I think we're both aware that one of us is giving a real gift to the other, and we appreciate it. We don't keep count, but I think giving and getting balances over time.

Maybe I shoul. sign this... pollyanna - but maybe I'm seeing what we do accurately....