The "rest of the story" means a new D-day
(44m) with a (44f), high school sweethearts, married for over 20 years, blah blah blah. This is my story but I've read it a hundred times from others. Our marriage was stale. My wife found attention from her boss, it turned to flirting, it turned to making out, it turned to sex. Sex went on for about a year and my wife confessed that she had sex with someone because she couldn't make it stop on her own/handle the guilt/whatever. The boss had quit his job about 6 months before the affair ended. I could have outed him to the entire community but it wasn't worth the effort to me.
Since the original D-day, my wife has done everything by the book except for holding back information. She did what all the cheaters seem to do and trickle tortured me for 10 additional, unnecessary months before I finally got the bulk of the truth via the AP and the OBP. I had to lie to get the truth ironically. This did get my WP to own up to everything and give me the whole story in her words. She is in IC and with a second nutritional therapist to deal with her anorexia. She has many problems to deal with from childhood trauma/abuse which seems to be par for the cheater's course (Good afternoon folks and welcome to the 2022 Wayward Open, presented by Jack Daniels). I have bounced around and I think finally found a good IC with plans to do EMDR.
So here I am in the gutter. I am as devastated as day 1 because of or maybe regardless of trickle truth. I have somehow avoided losing my job but I have been an absolute wreck this entire year. I haven't had even 1 full "good day". Just an occasional partial day of clarity/hope. My wife hates herself and is disgusted with herself (as she should) but she doesn't let that be the focus. She focuses on me when I let her but it's hard to accept and it's impossible to trust her. Over this past year, communication has opened up (I imagine that is pretty common because once you say you did this horrible of a thing, why not say anything?). We have identified problems in the marriage and both of us know what needs to be done to fix them on each side. We tried a couple different MC but I felt like they were a waste of time. We have known each other since age 13 so once we communicated, we figured things out better than any MC could. With plans in place, I can see how we could actually have a better marriage than before but DAMN, it hurts so much. I don't know if I can or should stay. My children are almost grown, the youngest is a high school junior. I would like to stay in the house until he graduates if I'm going to leave, but I just don't know what to do.
"Write it all down, it might make you feel better". Nope.
21 comments posted: Tuesday, December 13th, 2022
