SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

((((((HUGS))))))

I don't have much to offer in words, but know that every single one of us are here for you.

Them having sex in your house would get me too. I can only imagine what my husband's AP's husband felt like when he found out the only place they had sex was in HIS house.

I think I would have to burn the bed.

The other obstacle is we didn't tell anyone about my affair either, but I could do that. There is no reason I didn't tell people other than H didn't seem to want people to know.

You are in charge of your dday. Okay there wasn't exposure for your cheating. If you need something you get to make that choice though. If he has an issue, well what would you tell your fellow WS?

The other obstacle is we didn't tell anyone about my affair either, but I could do that. There is no reason I didn't tell people other than H didn't seem to want people to know.

Unfortunately, unless your friends have experience with infidelity, you're likely to get one of two responses:

"Well, I guess if you had an affair and he had an affair, then maybe the best thing is to forgive each other and not dwell on it. You both regret it, so let the past be the past."

Or

"Your affair was 8 weeks and his was a year and a half! In your house! With someone you knew! You're completely off the hook now, because what he did was so much worse."

I'm not saying you shouldn't call a friend -- I think you probably need to -- but it may be pretty exhausting to educate them on wayward thought patterns. You might just warn them at the outset that you don't want advice or answers, just an ear that knows and loves you.

Sisoon made some good points. Posting as a BS in a WS forum may be holding you back. Do you feel like you don't have a right to post elsewhere?

If you have hesitated to tell people you trust because a) your BS didn't want it to get out or wanted to be in control of who got to know, b) you were afraid if humiliating your BS, or c) you were ashamed of what you did and felt like you had to have it together in order to let people into your life (that you trust)...time to turn a new page. WH lost the right for you to keep this all a secret. It's not about revenge in "outing" what he did, either; instead it's about relief/support for you.

Disassociation is a common coping mechanism when going through trauma. IF that is what you're experiencing, your IC should be able to guide you through that. You're smart to push yourself to get that appt. I think your desire to work through instead of around major issues bodes well for you.

You mentioned some ways that WH is contradicting himself: he said it started out with his confiding in her about emotional stuff but that it wasn't an EA? He didn't mean for it to happen (I may be wrong but I thought you quoted something like that) but he was wondering what it was like to experience it? At this point you need people outside of this thing that you can trust. The OW, her "spouse," and, gently, your husband all sound toxic to you right now. This situation is even tied to your workplace. If it's possible for you to visit one of your children or a friend, might be good to plan a trip soon. Especially if you have a friend with a great sense of humor. Laughter--even if it's macabre--has helped me through some really dark times in my life. Sometimes I laughed and cried at the same time. But it was healing.

BraveSirRobin, that is a very important point. Sometimes people want to be supportive but botch it or have no idea what to say. Some will misunderstand. That preface is good advice. And sometimes you have to try to reach out to more than one friend before you find the one who "gets it." That can be painful, but it's worth it in the long run.

[This message edited by RosesandThorns at 6:51 PM, October 20th (Tuesday)]

HO- it sounds like you are making a lot of justifications for him. Like you are trying to rationalize and down play what happened here. I know you are in shock and this is all overwhelming but I really really would hate for you to not expect him to give you everything you gave to him. You can’t resign yourself to be ok with what he did because you did it too. You don’t deserve this. And your affair doesn’t excuse his.

I'm so sorry. After everything you've done to grow and all the work you've put into maturing that relationship, for him to turn around and bite your hand this way is beyond the pale.

Your affair is NOT a mitigating factor here. If anything, your WH was in a position to really understand the damage. Like most cheaters, you probably didn't understand the scope of the hurt you caused. He did. And he CHOSE to do it anyway. I find that to be reprehensible, so much worse than anything you ever did to him... because HE KNEW. He knew what it would do to you.

And, I think he knows that you still feel so guilty about your own previous infidelity that he's sure to get your forgiveness for it. To my mind, this is a straight up RA. He's giving you a bunch of word salad on "wanting the experience" but he straight up did that at YOUR expense, most likely because he feels he's ENTITLED, and because, even after everything you've been through, he thinks you deserve it.

I suspect the problem you're going to eventually have won't be forgiveness; I think you'll turn yourself inside out to make that happen. But what you might find is that you no longer love him the way you did once it sinks in that he's petty enough to willfully abuse you like this. He KNOWS what betrayal feels like, and he used it like a bludgeon, because why? ...he was curious??? Not good enough.

I'll be honest with you, I would hold back on discussing R until I knew EVERYTHING. I understand the temptation to want to parse it out, to think about what you want to know and why you want to know it. Typically, that's sage advice. But he's already TT'd you while KNOWING better and most likely, he's already asked you for every excruciating detail of your affair. Now, he needs to know what it feels like to look into the eyes of the person he betrayed and say every crummy thing he's done. He needs to sit in his own filth so he can fully understand that he's NOT better than you. In fact, he's worse. Because you didn't know the damage and he most assuredly DID.

I'm really so sorry that you're dealing with this. My advice though is to make it tough on him. Make him look you in the eye and OWN every disgusting thing he did. I believe he thinks your grace is assured. Instead, why not make him WORK for it? God knows you had to. Growth and recovery didn't just fall into your lap, and by his actions, he's proved full stop that he's not grown at all.

((huge hugs))

Hiking

First, I'm so sorry you are going through this right now. My heart goes out to you, and I hope you have seen the enormous support system you have here.

I tend to agree with ChamomileTea that this is its own special breed of f'd up, calculated RA (whether he's ready to admit it or not) bred from selfish entitlement. He joined here, he read the pain, he watched you do all the work on yourself, and pretended to support your journey. He pretended, (not just to you) to the entire internet forum full of people trying to help you learn how to truly become a safe partner, to be a man of superior moral ground.

He deceived an entire group of betrayed spouses to make himself look like the KISA who helped save you from yourself. Secretly though, his actions were the very ones every BS on this site hopes to protect every other human on this earth from being victimized by. He has a lot of work to do on himself.

I really hope you understand just why you can't help him with that, and how trying could unravel so much of the inner work you have accomplished. I hope it's okay to reference this because I think it's huge in what you need to remember. When you very first posted your story, you said:

"I didn't want to be loved for what I did for people. I also didn't want to keep up the breakneck pace I was at and I think the way I felt valued was to keep pushing myself. I was completely drained and unwilling to keep doing it."

You are enough. You are loved for WHO YOU ARE, and not for what you do for others. Helping him through this will only set yourself back in your own healing. It will forever make you question his ability to love you based on anything more than just "what you can do for him." It would compromise the boundaries you've learned, the moral compass you've built, and the very skin you've fought so hard to feel comfortable in...

Feel all the emotions that come with this. Own them, and value yourself enough to acknowledge your pain is justified. His ability to heal himself has NOTHING to do with how worthy you are, and everything to to with where he places his own value on himself. Empathize, sympathize, but please...save the compassion for when he's proved to you that he is worthy of recieving it. Right now, he's not there yet.

He might get there, but as you would advise anyone else in this situation, you'll only know that by watching his actions over time.

I’m so sorry to read this update HO. I’m sorry that you are now, again, at the beginning of the painful path of recovery and dealing with it all over again even if it is from a different position. I wish you lots of strength.

Some thoughts: you keep repeating that it isn’t a RA. I disagree. I followed your journey as we are on the same timeline, even if dealing with it all from different camps. I remember when your BS/WS came here and wrote how “healed” he was, I don’t remember his exact words but I do remember feeling inadequate and him giving me something to think about for days. Here I was, still neck deep in the shit of an affair consequence, hurting like hell, and your BH was all healed. This isn’t about me. However it is about how strangely progressive that sounded (and by reading a few previous posts on this thread I can see I wasn’t the only one). Like “hey, I’m over it, life is short, I’m so generous and so giving and forgiving”. Which was great. But so inaccurate when you read people’s healing journeys.

And then the various updates you gave where you claimed your BS was fine, dealing with it fine, not many triggers, not really thinking about it that much (again, not quoting, just snippets of my own reaction at the time), I will apologise to you by I will say this: I remember thinking that it was a clear example of a WS not getting it, because they have no clue how debilitating the intrusive thoughts are even 2-3 years later.

However none of this is a reflection of you. You worked with what you’ve been given. Your H (I’m now lost in the BS/WS abbreviations) had a choice of becoming fully vulnerable to you and lose his pride whilst sobbing on the floor in pain even 2-3 years later to show you, to make you understand he’s still struggling. You worked hard and took what he claimed at face value. I assume you felt grateful that you had a H who could offer so much grace.

I will admit to something many BS won’t, or some will come and claim their integrity and self respect is higher than mine. They are better people than me. You may choose to believe your H is also a better person who “fell into the affair at a vulnerable time in his life”. From the outside it does not look that way though.

So my admission: as a BW some of the thoughts in the first days following dday turned to a RA. I’ll show him. Remember, as a BS the rug has been pulled from under your feet and you still relate to the relationship and connection you THOUGHT you had with your partner. You can imagine my surprise when, in an argument I asked him how would he feel if I did what he did and he told me “if you think an affair helps you get over it then you should go ahead and have one”.

I realised at that point that a RA would just level the playing field, would mean nothing for him, because he severed our connection so badly, I meant nothing for him.

It doesn’t take long to realise that, should you really want a RA that has a similar effect on your partner, you need to pull the rug. How else do you pull the rug other than pretend everything is amazing, going well, rebuild that connection (or lead them to believe it’s being rebuild), here are our future plans, here is a ring, whilst in the background you’re having an 18 months affair?!

Even the fact that he’s so quick to give you the details, I don’t know, it sounds to me like “hey, torture time, remember when I had to sit and listen how the sex went with your AP? Now it’s your turn”. I’m not saying he should lie. I’m just saying that you’ve repeated a few times how eager he is to fill in the details.

For the benefit of clarity: my revenge dreams kept me alive for a while. And then you realise that you’re only harming yourself. That it’s psychotic to waste time, your life, to actually put it in action. It’s just... not for me. But I can totally tell you that when you feel so discarded, when you feel like a nobody, you become thirsty for reciprocation. Or at least I did.

Again. That’s not on you. Just trying to give you a perspective which appears so obvious from the outside. Your H had no intention to reconnect with you at the time. You say you didn’t even notice a change. Can you see how fucked up this is? You don’t mention any A withdrawal, any emotional struggle on his side with regards to ending it. This isn’t an ONS. 18 months. He isn’t feeling any emotional withdrawal because he didn’t emotionally connect with her either. She was just a pawn in his revenge.

I’m sorry this is happening to you. It sucks big time. And, as CT said, I don’t know what you will do with the information that your H is so petty that he actually cold blooded planned this RA knowing fully well how destroying it is, once you see it for what it is. And actually taking away years of potential happiness by just adding to the pile of shit that was just about to get sorted. It’s a mindfuck, but then again, all affairs are.

I’m so sorry this is happening to you and I wish I could give you a hug.

[This message edited by Luna10 at 4:53 AM, October 21st (Wednesday)]

How are you doing HO?

I have found your story has really impacted my thought process. It's as if you are a personal friend of mine that has been abused.

Unfortunately so many people sign up to the site daily, and a significant number since I joined, having my 3yr dday anniversary this month. But there is only a handful of stories which stick with you. I keep being reminded of Speedbump (and her awful story) since you started this thread.

I think it is because of the twisted underhand feeling of the betrayal.

You have a lot of support for you in various guises HO. Be kind to yourself. You are right, in that you do not have to make any decisions right now. You are still learning, processing, adjusting and that is plenty enough to deal with at any one point in time. I remember in the early days how I kept feeling like I needed to make a decision, the relief of pressure I felt, when I realised I didn't have to make any decisions, just deal with one day at a time. Big, tight hugging, bear hug being sent your way xx

Luna10

You describe my betrayed heart and thinking 💯! I realized that in order for my WH to “get it” he had to “get it the way I got it” with deception and lies and yanking the rug and dreams and plans and reality shattered. I recall getting a list of all the restaurants so that I can replicate the atmosphere for my RA. It has not gotten to that place - I am trying to recover but it’s hard because most days holding on to my integrity seems like a waste of time.

Hiking out-

I am not of the school of bashing the WH in this case. While I do believe it was a revenge affair I do not believe that he was looking to her for more than a partner in his revenge. It clearly was all about his need to extract revenge. She was a willing participant do I don’t feel bad for her.

Unfortunately- it doesn’t seem people want you to forgive him for what he has done. I’m not sure what you’ll decide but I think you know that your affair fueled his and be prepared for the feeling/sentiment of “now you can see how hard it is to forgive the betrayal”

Sometimes my husband is asking me to do things I know in my heart he could never ever do and that he didn’t do.

And at the end of the day, he’s probably thinking that he still didn’t get you back because he didn’t develop real feelings for her so you’ll always have that.

Without trying to T/J Mickie500 I do think that if you’re not emotionally equipped to deal with betrayal, it is a very slippery slope.

I don’t know HO H’s story but I know that my FOO are huge and I should have been a wayward by a lot of descriptions here. Hence why I can understand my thought reaction following dday. Luckily I had friends (here and in real life), plus I have a huge capacity of self analysis to quickly realise that you don’t use yourself as a revenge weapon on others.

When you start understanding the cost the WS paid for their affair, the personal cost, I don’t mean the “I almost lost my family” cost, I mean the lack of self respect, the lack of integrity, morals, low self esteem, etc etc, and the hard work they have to put in should they want to face their issues, having a RA isn’t that attractive anymore.

I hope you get to that realisation soon enough, before you actually take any self damaging actions.

[This message edited by Luna10 at 7:29 AM, October 21st (Wednesday)]

Guys I hear you. I do. I am doing the best I can at this point. If I have painted him as eager to give me the details that is not my intention. It's that he goes into trying to tell me what happened like as a narrative and I can't do it and I keep redirecting him. I would say he is only eager in that he wants us to talk. He is beside himself, sobbing, and in these ways I don't recognize him at all. I know he is black and white to you, but there is a lot of history here, a lot of love, it's hard for me to get as black and white as everyone else. I am watching everything closely, but at this point I expect there to be some bullshit. We all know in every single circumstance we have ever seen on here, the WS starts out full of bullshit before they do the work. So, it's all just a waiting game right now.

And, you know, you all think of me one way and that's the person I have evolved to be. He didn't start cheating on me after I evolved. He cheated on me in the thick of it. That's why it's hard to separate it from my affair. I don't feel it gave him a pass, but I can say I would feel differently if this had started up at a later point rather than when it did.

Here is just a sketch so maybe it may help it frame it for you all in the way I am looking at it. And, know - I am NOT excusing it, condoning it. I will hold his feet to the fire if he isn't doing his part. He has a hard road ahead I don't think he can fake his WS work, I truly believe I will know because not only have I done my own I have coached many others here and have watched them. I will not be his coach on this, I have already made that clear to him. He has far more info than I did when I started my work, if he wants it he has to do it.

My A ended at the beginning of July 2017.

I told him at the beginning of Sept 2017 after having some IC. I was foggy as fuck and still "in love" with the AP.I committed to NC and confessed everything but I pined for another 6 or so months.

At month 9 he was at his breaking point and he asked me for a divorce.

At that point he told the OBS, who told the AP. I did confirm that with OBS yesterday in between his ranting. He said that he was afraid of what that meant for their work/our properties. He was pissed at me and encouraged H to take me for all I had. There was lots of discussion during this point between OBS and AP.

We of course went to in house separation for a while and then I begged him to give me another chance.

That brings us to - I don't know almost the summer of 2018. And most of that is history I knew backwards and forwards other than the people who were working for us knowing or what impact that might have in the future.

He said when he let go of the divorce he truly thought he had let go of it and that we could move on. But, it was bumpy as you all know it is. He didn't do IC, he didn't talk to anyone. Other than me, it was only these other two people who knew.

He said that at some point past that he found out the lady knew too. And from time to time she would ask how he was doing and sometimes the answer was curt and other times things just started spilling out.

Over time, there was a bond and a trust there, and the way I see it, these are not his words because I do not think he had put it together like this - this secret and burden he was carrying around fused them. He didn't talk extensively to the forum, he didn't talk to anyone but me, eventually I think she became his confidant. It should not have been that way, but how many BH's on here tell us all sorts of shit they can't say to their WS? My husband was no different. He bottled, he manned up, he went to his way of coping with the stoicism. It didn't work.

The weird thing is on this one track of his mind the entire time he believed he was fine and that we could get through it. My early writing here haunted him. Again, he didn't tell me that in these recent weeks, I knew it long ago. I am the one who is building this timeline for you, he is not blaming me or my A at all. I am not either but I am trying to illustrate where we actually were when this happened. The time lapse makes it seem like I became this other person and then he decided to get me back. I don't think that's what happened. It happened around the time I think I really got to cooking on my work and he was so exhausted and turned inside out by what happened.

Eventually, she started bringing him things she baked or business items and she would linger longer and longer. She started encouraging him to go through with the divorce, and saying he deserved better, you all know the drill.

I think part of him saw what I was doing and how hard I was working and wanted to hang his hat on that. He wanted to be strong, and see himself that way. This other track that started with her gave him the kibbles and the dopamine. He is ten years older than me, she is 7 years younger than me. I think part of him felt encouraged that someone else would show him interest if he did decide this wasn't working. I see it (and again, HE isn't saying this next part. He is a mess) as he used her to bolster himself while working things through with me, and between those two things felt those things he wrote.

I did ask him about it - why did he even write in the forum? Mostly because so many people here mentioned it. And he said he felt like he was supporting me. He didn't like that I was staying somewhere that people were ugly to me and he saw it as defending me. I don't get that either. In all that is happening it's hard for me to really care what he wrote or didn't write in the scheme of things. At least at this point. However, I mean no offense to anyone, I can understand if his way of communicating made anything harder for you. I don't think that was an intention, his concerns and issues were around me. I actually kind of believe he was legitimizing me, because he felt guilty about what he was doing and he knew I was working so hard. In his wayward mind, I was getting better and he was getting worse and he wasn't sure what to do about it. And, I look back and think did I really get in the floor with him? Or did I just try and get better and coach him along with me?

None of this excuses his affair. But, this is what I believe happened at this point. I still do not see it as vengeance. I see it as he leaned on someone in the thick of all of it who I believe was predatory and he made a lot of fucking bad decisions.

I considered CT's comment a lot, as she is a poster I respect immensely:

And he CHOSE to do it anyway. I find that to be reprehensible, so much worse than anything you ever did to him... because HE KNEW. He knew what it would do to you.

I think just like any other wayward, he didn't consider what it would do to me because he didn't care what it would do to me. His pain was more important, what he needed was more important. He minimized me the way I minimized him. And, yes, he did use my affair as entitlement.

In the reverse situation, I didn't care what it would do either. I told myself he wouldn't find out. I don't see how he could believe I wouldn't find out because of the proximity and role of this person.

So I do agree he banked on my understanding. He pretty much has said that much - he felt solace in that I would understand. He was entitled as the affair began for sure. So much of this part I knew inherently. Noone knows a cheater like another cheater.

Where I kind of go in a different direction is I don't think he is expecting my forgiveness. Part of me believes that he still wants a divorce but could not pull the trigger because of all the work I did. It's not hard to see that all WS are cowards.

What he says is that he felt it was helping him to get to where he needed to be and that he is clear he wants to be married to me. I know that's what he believes but I also know fully it's going to take a long time for him to untangle himself and have real clarity.

And, again, I haven't offered R. I have offered him time. I want the time too. While my affair isn't an excuse for his, it's intermingled. There is progress that we have made as a couple that is real. It will take me a lot of time to untangle the parts that were not.

He has not TT'd me that I am aware of yet, but again it's early and there is so much ahead. Until the last couple of days I haven't been able to sit with him long and I had been directing him away from going into certain areas of it. Mostly the sexual ones. A lot of my quizzing had been more trying to assess whether there is limerance because I didn't even want to keep talking if the AP was not going away. When he hesitated on firing her immediately is when he was kicked out to the camper. So, I have parameters.

I now have a good deal of details. We talked all evening into late in the night. It will be a harder disclosure to go about because the time frame is so vast in comparison to my experience. Honestly, I don't know if I am in shock or just jaded from years of reading these stories. There hasn't been much I didn't expect and in some ways I have imagined much worse. There were a few hits I wasn't expecting, and I am not ready to discuss them here. Nor do I know if I ever will be. I need some time with those. They are things I didn't see coming, and I expect they are going to be pretty big hurdles moving forward.

And along that vein, at this point we are not being intimate, and he is not sleeping in the bed. After all I learned last night, I am not sure when or if that will happen. It's just going to take some time and recovery to even know. I still hope we will want R, after all I have invested I think that is only natural.

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:46 AM, October 21st (Wednesday)]

Unfortunately- it doesn’t seem people want you to forgive him for what he has done.

I'm not sure this is true. I don't think anyone wants HO to forgive him immediately, without him doing the work. Some of that is for her own sake, because there are no shortcuts to R, no matter how badly we want them. I'm sure some of it is us speaking from our own feels, both because we like and respect HO, and because her H came here and played us deliberately, for reasons we don't understand. As a wayward, I was worried that she'd get stuck in her own self-blame as a diversion from holding him accountable. After all, the work on both sides is fucking exhausting. But as a madhatter, I know how important it is to acknowledge your BS side and honor its legitimate pain by insisting that the betrayal be processed.

It's a lot. TBH, I've seen far less knee-jerk reaction and "obviously you need to do x" advice than I expected, given the circumstances. I think many people would support eventual R here if her H proves he's as willing as she was to earn it. Until he does, I expect his defenders to be pretty thin on the ground.

Unfortunately- it doesn’t seem people want you to forgive him for what he has done.

I haven't gotten this at all from this thread. What I've seen is a bunch of people who want to see her succeed in whatever she decides is her best path forward, and help empower her to stay comfortable in who she has worked so hard to become.

Two wrongs just don't ever make a right. Hiking is a woman of value, and I think we all want to help her see her value in a time where we all know it will be tempting for her to question it herself.

It clearly was all about his need to extract revenge.

I don't believe this. If you were familiar with his posts, you might think otherwise as well.

I also don't see what is going on in this thread as bashing her husband. More, people are defending her.

And its not that people don't want her to forgive him. First,its way, way too early for her to even consider forgiveness. She JUST FOUND OUT. She doesn't know the whole story. It can take years to get to forgiveness, and thats ok. Anyway, I think people are worried, because she blames her affair for his affair, that she will glide over important steps that BS, and WS, must take in order to reconcile the correct way.

[This message edited by HellFire at 8:44 AM, October 21st (Wednesday)]

Also, HO, to clarify, my fear that you'd rugsweep was an initial fear. That doesn't sound like where you are at all now.

Hi there Hiking. Not the crack of dawn, but still pretty early in the AM where you are.

I wanted to take a moment to encourage and gently remind you of the critical basics of self-care.

Stay hydrated. If you are experiencing loss of appetite, try to eat a little something from time to time.

Most of all, I know how important running has been for you. I know for me, in times of shock or depression exercise is the first thing to go overboard, even though I know in my frontal cortex it would be the single best thing I could do. So if you at all can, lace up and run a little. If you can, the endorphins will help your body and brain. It can seem an insuperable heavy lift. If so, OK. But try again tonight or tomorrow.