Having a bad couple of days
And I mean really bad. I’ve had my ups and downs through the last years since Dday and even before, but this one really seems like an abyss. I guess in large part it is because DDay was 3 years ago last Sunday, or maybe not so much DDAy anniversary, but rather days after, the days when 3 years ago, I was a complete mess, I barley functioned, I was in so much pain and I guess so was WH, but he went and soothed himself with fucking AP on his office desk, and twice, before he shut her down completely. I can't get these images out of my head, me struggling to get through the day and him letting her to his office after he promised not to talk to her at all and then seizing the opportunity when she made herself available for a quick fuck. I mean, who does that, who sees the anguish, the suffering he caused and does it again and again, just to feel better for a few moments. I know in a large scale, these two fuck sessions were a blip in the nine years of lying and fucking others, but for some reason, they are the hardest to accept. And on the top of it, tomorrow is the antiversary of them fucking for the first time. And hysterical bonding hit me hard on that same day, so he came home from work, where he fucked her and than had sex with me. 
Also, I feel like in a way his support is waning as of lately. Not that he is impatient or unkind or anything like that. It is just, before, when he saw me struggling, he would ask me about my feelings, offer to talk, apologize, he would sit with me and my pain. Lately, he still notices when I am down, he still holds me, but that is it. No offers to talk any more, no more apologies, just a hug and some comforting words and he goes about his business and leaves me alone with my pain. Maybe he feels everything has been said already or that the support he was giving me hasn’t really helped in long run or is trying to give me space or something, I don’t know, I haven’t talked to him about It yet. Otherwise he is just as vigilant as ever since DDAy2, there are no red flags, but him withdrawing and in this time period just sucks. I will call him out on it, but even that seems too much. I feel he should be giving his 100% and I shouldn’t be asking him for support, it should be given freely. Anyway, I just needed to vent. It has been a bad couple of days and I expect I have at least two like that to go and I just need reassurance, that I am normal to feel this way even after 3 years.
7 comments posted: Wednesday, July 10th, 2024
How to let him close again
It's been almost 3 years since Dday. I decided to try for R then and I don't regret it, never did. I know this was the best course of action for me, even though, to be honest, the reasons at the begining were all wrong. I just couldn't imagine my life without him in it, he was my first relationship, so I didn't properly consider D at the time, especially because he seemed to be all in. And he still is, there were no red flags since dday2, some bumps in the road, but they were minor, so I can't really complain about much relationship wise since then. But to even begin healing, I had to detach from him and to let go of the outcome. I got that a lot here on SI in the early days and it seemed so counterproductive to me at the time, but it happened anyway. Gradually, but surely and it was necessary for me, for my wellbeing. I still love him, I think I am still in love with him, but there is a rift between us, a wall of my making which I don't seem to be willing to tear down completely.
Primarily because I am afraid, terrified actually, to be hurt like that again. His actions destroyed me in a way I never thought possible. I never thought anyone could hurt me like that, let alone the person who claimed to love me most in the world, who should have my back, not stick a knife in it repeatedly. The pain was so immense, for so long. So I withdrew. I love him, I want to be with him, but I don't trust him at all. With my heart I mean, I trust him with pretty much everything else. I would trust him with my life, but my heart is another matter. Not because he didn't do the work. He is doing a lot to make me feel safe, pretty much everything I can think of, except IC, and I really don't think he is cheating now, but I don't trust myself either. I felt it in my gut when he first started hiding things from me, even before his first affair turned PA, but over time, unfortunately he became a much better liar. And his behaviour towards me, towards our kids, didn't change much in the 9 years of hell. He was acting just as loving then as he is now, so even with him doing everything right now, it gives me little reassurance. And consequently, I don't let myself tear down the walls between us. I let myself hope things will be better with us someday, but I don't give myself permission to truly believe it. Because if I believe in us again, like I did before, if I give myself completely to him again, I feel that will give him means to destroy me again. And I can't survive this again. I just can't.
I have come a long way since dday. I came to a point, where I am comfortable with both possible outcomes for us. I prefer to R, but if he cheats again, if he lies to me ever again, I am gone. I have a detailed plan and I could leave or kick him out the same day. And I am at peace with both outcomes. I often visualise both of them and I can see myself happy either way. By myself in a little appartment somewhere near the sea, or us together, in love, happy, connected, everything I thought we had before and more. But this is a dream, in reality I stay detached, not letting him as close as he would like to be, as close I believe two partners should be. I want closeness and real intimacy again, I know living like we do now is not the way to go, but I just can't give myself permission to let him in again. I want to, but then I freeze, because I am terrified he will destroy me again. I can't live through such pain again. So I am in a kind of impasse. Comfortable enough in my current position, but at the same time knowing it is not good for me or for us in the long run. It is not limbo, I know what I want and I don't doubt my decision to stay, but I sometimes doubt my ability 
.
And then there is another reason for holding back. Injustice. In a way I feel, that if we fully R, he will be getting away with no real consequences and it really is bothering me. I think it was waitedwaytoolong who wrote a while back, that he thought his WW deserved to be happy, just didn't deserve to be happy with him and it really hit home with me. I don't think my WH is a bad guy, on the contrary, apart for the affairs and related lying, I believe he is a good person at his core and I do believe he deserves to be happy. But the problem is, I don't think he deserves to keep me and our family and live on as nothing has changed, when he threw us away for cheap sex and ego kibbles. I know the popular opinion is that waywards who are really remorseful, don't really walk away scot-free. That they have to live with themselves and with what they did. And I get it. I see it in my WH, I see the pain and the shame he is in. But it is NOTHING compared to what he put me through and the bottom line is, I don't think he deserves to stay married to me, to keep what we had, after what he did. On the other hand, I also deserve to be happy and I chose to stay in this relationship, I choose it again every day, and I want to be happy with him, so another impasse.
How do I get through this? How do I stop myself from freezing every time I think about letting him close again? How do I let myself truly believe there is a future for us after what he did? How do I let my guard down?
7 comments posted: Thursday, June 27th, 2024
2 years out
It's been a little more than two years since the second Dday, when WH finally stopped lying. Since he layed out all the bad and the ugly of his actions, spanning more than 9 years. I was devastated, shaken to the core, but still when finding this site and reading about 2-5 years needed to recover, I believed I could at least be on the lower side of this interval, no matter which way I might go, R or D. But like many others, I was wrong. I am not okay today, I am nowhere near being okay. I have decided very early on that I want to try to reconcile if he proves to me he is all in and never, ever lies to me about anything and I don't regret that decision. I loved him and I still love him, these feelings have not changed after his affairs. I mean, I have a lot of pain, anger, resentment, disgust about what he has done, but these feelings were added to how I felt about him and not replaced the love that I had. I still feel R is the best course of action for me and I am proud to have taken the difficult path I wanted, it's just that I didn't expect the pain and suffering to persist for so long and with such intensity.
There have been some positive changes in me in these two years. I had a bit of a codependent streak our whole relationship and that is gone. One of the reasons I wanted to R was that I couldn't imagine my life without him in it. Now, when I think about the future, both possible paths are clear to me. I still prefer the one where we are together, in love and with future grandchildren coming to visit and running around us, but I also see very clearly the other one, where I live alone in a nice small apartment, somewhere near the sea and I see myself happy in that life as well. And I am a lot stronger and more confident than I ever was. I always had a bit of a low self-esteem, and now I totally know my worth. I know I deserve more than he was giving me and I am not afraid to ask for what I deserve, not just in this relationship but in life in general. But even with him being all in, respecting every boundary and every condition I set, doing nearly everything I asked for and much more, I still don't trust him and consequently I don't let myself be vulnerable with him. I love him so much, I am in love with him, but I very rarely tell him that. He tells me he loves me every day, but even these words are triggering for me, because they remind me every time that he had said them to others as well. And it is so hard for me to say it back, because that again reminds me I am not the only one he had heard these words from, but even more, I feel that every time I tell him that I love him I give him one additional pathway to hurting me again. I know I will be okay without him, I have a detailed plan of what to do if I see any dishonesty in him again, but still I am afraid to let him close again. Sometimes I think infidelity might just be a dealbreaker for me. Sometimes I feel like my own worst enemy. I want so much to R and he is doing everything right but I am still holding back. I miss the closeness and the intimacy and at the same time I keep him at bay.
Our sex life is also not great. After a year-long stint of hysterical bonding, we had a gradual decline in frequency, which is now at once a week or even less and I hate that. Don't get me wrong, the frequency is as it is because of me, if it was up to him, we would be doing it every day and twice on Sunday :). And it is not that I don't desire him, I do and I think about him in a sexual way all the time. He is still the one in my fantasies, the reality just doesn't keep up. So often I think about him during the day, imagining our night together, but when the night comes and he is actually there for me, the mind movies of his affairs take over and that kind of kills the mood. When we do have sex, when I succeed in pushing the memories of them together out of my head, it is always great, but it is so hard to actually get rid of them. And afterwards I still often feel like crying for what was lost,for what he has taken from me, from us.
In the past two years I've been contemplating a lot about what I want and need in R and what it comes down to, besides, of course, him being a safe and honest partner, is first, I need to feel special to him again and loved the way I deserve to be loved by the person I decide to spend my life with, second, I need to believe that we share the same core values, and third, I need to find a way to trust him again. Without that, I don't think we can make it. I know that trust is going to take time to rebuild and I am OK with that, besides he is really doing a lot to help me on that front. But the other two proved to be more difficult than I imagined. I know he wants to be with me, he is showing that everyday in a million ways, but I don't know if it is the life we have together that he wants or me, I don't know if he truly loves me or am I just the best option he has at the moment. I fear that my love for him is more than the love he can give me, and I refuse to be in such a disbalanced relationship. He says I am wrong, that he truly loves me most in the world and that I am special to him and his actions say the same, but his actions were just as loving in the 9 years of hell if you take out the cheating and lying. He never changed how he was with me, or with the kids in those years, he was just as loving, attentive as before, except he added the OW in the mix and mostly in the work hours, so our time together didn't suffer that much. He says it is because he always loved me and never meant for us to split, but it is just hard for me to believe that you can truly love someone and do what he did. I hope time can give me some clarity on that, unfortunately there has not been much progress on this front up to now.
Core values are also a problem. I always believed we shared similar fundamental beliefs and importance of fidelity was one of them, now I ask myself if I ever really knew him at all. We talk about it a lot and he maintains that he believes in fidelity, even though his past actions don't show that, but he swears he will spend the rest of his life showing me that he can and has changed. He wants to be a person he and our kids can be proud of, he wants to be a role model for them and it is hard for him that he has not been that kind of person for 9 years. He says it feels hypocritical to ask certain things of the kids, when he was not that way for so long. But of course, all this could just be a ruse, to make me lower my guard, to enable him to keep a life he wants. I just can't know and it is killing me.
So here I am, after 2 years, the affairs are still on my mind every day and I am still in so much pain. Maybe it is not as debilitating as in the beginning, but it hurts more than I ever imagined I could bear. Getting through these past two years has been the hardest thing I ever did in my life and I still can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. Not that I am unhappy all the time, I have good days or even weeks, we can have fun, just us or the whole family together, but the affairs are always in the background, sometimes as white noise and sometimes they override everything.
I don't really know what I wanted with this post. Mostly, I guess, it makes me feel a little bit better writing it all down, but also I am looking for some reassurance, that I am where I should be in this timeframe. And to ask where you were at 2 years out, both betrayeds and waywards. I am not in IC, so maybe that's why I am a little slower on the way, but I read a lot and muse about our situation and my options and I talk with my WH, so hopefully I will manage to get somewhere better anyway.
5 comments posted: Wednesday, November 8th, 2023
