SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I wanted to repost this:

If you decided to go underground after DDay what kind of adjustments did you do? Was this further bonding you to your AP?

Did your AP gladly do this? Did you AP really want to be with you solely or they didn’t mind going underground because they didn’t want you to leave your spouse?

To the WS who kept pushing for reconciliation when your BS is done and wants Divorce.

Did you rug sweep and just hope for the best.

I am battling my WS who just will not accept my terms.

I didn’t expect to ever be asking Questions on this forum again

To the WS, why is there so much hostility toward the BS?

What is the purpose of rewriting the marriage narrative, would it have not just been easier to sit down and try to fix it?

Mickie500,

What is Google Timeline

You can go onto your phone or computer, go to Google Maps, log onto your google account. Click on the hamburger (top left) and click on timeline. You can go to any specific date. It will show you exact travel path, how long you stopped at a store or restaurant. Kind of scary the amount of detail down to the second.

Blindsided,

What is the purpose of rewriting the marriage narrative, would it have not just been easier to sit down and try to fix it?

Post D-day I was shocked that my BW wanted to work thing out with me. I had so convinced myself that she could care less about me. I realized what love meant in that moment. And also what a total and absolute idiot and asshole I had been.

I built up a false narrative in my head for a year before my A even started. My BW didn't love, didn't care about me, wasn't interested in me sexually, would rather spend time with her mother than me. You name it. It is kind of the playbook for an A where you have to rationalize that your BS is evil incarnate and you come up with all sorts of lame reasons why, otherwise we'd have to look in the mirror and accept that we are doing something really wrong and being a bad person.

I learnt post D-Day how much better it would have been to have dealt with my mental health issues and our M issues directly with my BW. Yes it would have been much better to have simply talked to my BW. (sigh).

LadyG,

Sometimes one party simply will not accept the other person’s terms in a divorce—with OR without infidelity involved. I’m sure it sucks shelling out the $ for divorce lawyers (my H and I didn’t so I don’t have personal experience) but that’s what they’re for—to make sure both spouse’s interests are represented, and then if necessary a judge can decide on distribution of assets and debts. It’s a business transaction like anything else—generally, nobody gets all their terms.

Can I ask any WS.. At what point did you realise that you weren't helping the R by not being upfront and totally honest about the A and finally gave up rugsweeping/minimising in favour of trying to help heal your BS??

I had read a thread where BSs shared their reflection of how the WSs acted and what they said when confronted.

Is there any WSs who would share the confrontation from their point of view?

CJ - I am sorry, I don't have anything really that I could tell you that would help. I confessed on my own and told everything pretty much in one sitting.

Fooled 13 years -

As I just said, I wasn't confronted so I had some benefit of thinking about how I wanted to go about the confession. And I had read here for a couple of months prior so I knew it was best just to rip the entire band-aid.

But, I still said a whole lot of stupid things that took a lot of time to recover from. I started out by saying I needed to tell him what had been going on because I would like to try and save our marriage if it was at all possible but that to do that I needed to be honest.

I told him that we had been disconnected for a long time and that I didn't think he really loved me any more (so dumb), that I felt seen by the AP and that I was still in love with him. That I loved my husband but wasn't in love with him. That I wasn't sure if I could get that all back but that I would like the opportunity to try. I told him that I felt like his employee and that he really kept me around to make his life easier. I told him that the Ap was more romantic. I don't even remember what else at some point it's kind of a blur...I was crying so hard that my eyes felt like they were going to pop out and I had snot going down my face. It was one of the most terrifying, horrible things I ever had to tell someone in my entire life. And, I was so very deep still in the fog. But I know I continued to say dumb stuff for a long time after that, what all happened in that meeting versus at other times is hard to remember because we had so many of those types of conversations for months afterwards that they run together in some ways.

If you decided to go underground after DDay what kind of adjustments did you do? Was this further bonding you to your AP?

Did your AP gladly do this? Did you AP really want to be with you solely or they didn’t mind going underground because they didn’t want you to leave your spouse?

Mickie: There’s two broken people’s worth of variables in this...

My experience on going underground looked more like relapses during withdrawal than a deliberate effort. So it was actively trying to STOP bonding with AP, and failing. We had frequently cut contact during the 3 month EA/PA and failed as well, consequently I set myself up for failure by not working on myself at all and expecting to be able to go cold turkey.

What fueled that I have discovered was a tendency to believe that strong emotions (good OR bad) were more credible. So in the throes of deceit I believed myself justified BECAUSE I felt such shame and guilt. It proved that the universe had set me on some great cosmic path where I would have to destroy everything to be with my “soul mate.” (I’m sorry if that’s triggering to anyone reading, it actually is to me a bit.) So while misdirected, it did reinforce the (already false) bond.

I believe AP had similar addictive traits that kept her from assessing what she wanted in exchange for momentary emotion.

To the WS, why is there so much hostility toward the BS? What is the purpose of rewriting the marriage narrative, would it have not just been easier to sit down and try to fix it?

I think most cheaters came from places where there wasn’t a lot of positive understanding of conflict and resolution. For me I was terrified to hear parents raise their voices at anyone. So “sitting down and trying to fix“ sounds to most cheaters, IMO, like rejection. I was terrified of rejection. And I didn’t want to give my BW an opportunity to reject me- Despite her constant giving, that completely flew in the face of my fears.

The hostility is a byproduct of some of this same emotional disconnect. Anger is a mask that is used to prevent hurt- So to keep from conceding the truth of what a cheater has done, it frequently is masked as anger. If really stopped to examine, I could have articulated my sadness at having been so selfish and caused such pain, but instead I used words to deflect and fuel some other powerful emotion, my misdirected anger.

At what point did you realise that you weren't helping the R by not being upfront and totally honest about the A and finally gave up rugsweeping/minimising in favour of trying to help heal your BS??

CJ- It was, cliched enough, while shaving. Men get an extra opportunity to face themselves down daily, I guess...

But joking aside it was about a month into trial separation. We were still spending family time together for Sunday breakfasts, and BW was saying/behaving in ways that made it clear she was ready to “bring me home” in favor of R. That next day I realized I couldn’t accept such grace knowing she didn’t know everything she needed to make that decision and told her of my NC breaches.

That was 6 months post DDay, and a week or two after finding SI on my own. Had I not found SI I think I would have failed somewhere else in R.

I think everyone comes to it in due time, sadly it’s often too late, like in my case. I don’t know what variables affect how long it takes- Mine kinda came out of nowhere.

Waywards how would you react if your bs asked for a hall pass? Hysterical bonding has caused my libido to skyrocket but now every time I try to get it on with my WW I can't get her AP out of my head. I also need to know if other women find me appealing. I've been reading a lot about ENM and I think I need to have this experience

Hi Waywards!

You know what you did, you were there.

Why do Waywards expect Betrayeds to forgive?

Like some obligation to keep trying to patch the marriage together?

Can I ask any WS.. At what point did you realise that you weren't helping the R by not being upfront and totally honest about the A and finally gave up rugsweeping/minimising in favour of trying to help heal your BS??

It was about six weeks after D-Day 2 (same affair, no new cheating, but I had only confessed the basics and minimized/rugswept important details). I had just given him the latest round of trickle truth. Our pattern was that I would bring myself to confess something, and it wouldn't really sink in for him right away. He would admit that it hurt, but his attitude was almost reassuring, that he could handle it. Then, the next day, he'd come back with more of a "wait a second, WTF," and we'd discuss it further.

But this day, it was getting harder for him to believe that the TT was over, and he was not reassuring me at all. This scared me into full retreat. It wasn't a conscious thought process, but my instinct was panic -- "The confessions really have to stop now because they could end the marriage." And so (this is really hard to admit), I started to swear on our dead children's lives that I was done, that I had told him everything. And he just looked at me with such contempt, such absolute coldness, and cut me off before I finished the sentence. He said, "No," and took my hands off him and stepped back.

I've replayed that moment so many times in my head that I'm not sure how much of it beyond that is real. But something just clicked inside my head that he was going to hate me, really despise me, if I couldn't find a way to stop my bullshit. This was, of course, still selfish, wayward, me-centered thinking. But on the heels of it came the long overdue realization that the reason he would stop loving me was because I was destroying the best parts of both of us. He had done everything in his power to save our marriage. In return, not only was I demonstrating just how depraved and craven I really was, but I was forcing him to go into the parts of himself that he hated and never wanted to access. I knew that cold side of him; it had never been pointed at me, but I had seen it in times of extreme emotional stress. I knew it was his survival instinct when he was trying to endure a situation that he really needed to escape instead. That's when I finally took the blinders off and looked beyond my own selfish fear. I realized that I was traumatizing him, and that if I loved him at all, I had to stop it. Even if it meant divorce, the old saying was true that the truth would set him free.

That night, I wrote out a full account of the A, and it's been almost two years now since I told my last lie. It's why I press new arrivals so hard to let go of the outcome. I wanted to save myself, and saving the marriage was part of that. I wish so deeply that I had been willing to see what I was doing to him instead.

Fooled13years,

I had read a thread where BSs shared their reflection of how the WSs acted and what they said when confronted.

Is there any WSs who would share the confrontation from their point of view?

I broke up with my AP before D-Day. I actually started IC about a month or so before ending the A as I knew i was not right. I was trying to build up to tell my BW about the A (Yes, I was trying to write out a narrative that would not paint me in a bad light), well my AP went nuclear on my BW and painted a really different story to her about the A.

My BW called and asked me about this strange email she got. At first it didn't make sense since the story was different from my affair. But in that moment I admitted to the A. Something just kind of tweaked in me and I started to vomit out the facts. My BW also made it clear that she wanted the truth.

I was floored that mt BW dealt with it as well as she did and that she offered me the chance to come clean. I knew then she chose the harder path rather than simply walking away. I cried. I had to dig deep to find a way forward. That moment changed my life for the better. I needed a saviour and my BW was it. She really shocked me with her understanding, patience, grace and restraint.

Why do Waywards expect Betrayeds to forgive?

I'm not defending this attitude at all, but newly minted WS expect it because the A is over. We see it as a trade: we didn't want to stop, but we did. You won. Also, most of the time, we've assigned some blame to you, and we're agreeing to work on forgiving you for the dead bedroom or the messy house or the lack of support or whatever justification we created in our own mind for why we cheated.

Remorseful waywards do not expect forgiveness. We work for it, we hope for it, but we understand that we are not entitled to it.

Why do Waywards expect Betrayeds to forgive?

Affairs are inherently based on lies. When one lives a lie, breathes a lie and speaks nothing but lies; one start believing that lie. And when things explode (and they always do) then the only way one knows how to deal with reality is by lying some more. So we tell ourselves it was a mistake; it was no big deal; and we stick our head in the sand hoping reality shapes around our lie.

I doubt any marriage that survives past infidelity will have a cheater that stays in that mindframe.

My wife owed me nothing but contempt for my actions because they were contemptful.

Letting go of the lie, seeing reality, not running and dealing with the consequences of my actions was the only way forward - and understanding that theree's no guarantee the marriage can be saved.

Trexor

I think you’d find a remarkable amount of discomfort from someone who actively lied to their partner to just say “OK” to a “hall pass,” but there’s a lot of variables to consider. My BW RA’d and it put me in the wrong headspace- That was my failure. In the post timeframe, she asked for trial separation with the understanding that she was eager to recover some of what you’re describing.

I WAS (and remain) ok with that because my focus remains on her healing- Which is remarkably slow going. But it still guts me to know that she’s given up on trying to work towards trying to establish the intimacy we once shared, albeit a second time. But I can’t focus on feeling bad because I’m the one who made that impossible and consequently owe her whatever gets her to a better place, which will only be time.

This perspective took me 6-9 months to get to and took me through the process of disclosing hidden facts that I knew would kill R.

ETA: In my opinion (and this comes on the heels of a lot of FOO examination) there are very few people who are built to do ENM. My BW pitched this (as close to the pick me dance as she got) and I perked up, I think it would have been disastrous. The problem I see with pursuing this is that you’re potentially likely to cement a correlation between desirability and value/worth. If this doesn’t “fix” things for you, you’ve just introduced a very unpredictable variable.

My pitch would be a trial separation with concrete understanding that either of you can pursue relationships while you spend time apart and assess what you want out of life. The placing of a “one and done” time limit thing (especially with the acknowledged goal of satisfying your libido) is induces too much pressure for it to serve you in a healthy manner in my mind.

Fully acknowledged this is coming from a former cheater, but I am one who has had a year alone to really delve/examine my lifelong unhealthy/counterproductive attitudes towards sex.

[This message edited by JBWD at 12:26 PM, August 7th (Friday)]

Trexor, I am not a wayward.. But my WW put the same offer on the table after DDAY.. I never even considered it.. She said she wanted me to see sex and love could be separate.. But to me they never are.. And honestly if I ever was with another woman I would only do it if there were feelings there..

Looking back if I followed through then it would have been a case of.. Well now YOU have done it too we are even..

OK so a ONS in her eyes equates over 2 yrs of lies.. Gaslighting.. Stress and money spent.. Nope

Its just not worth it.