SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It took me 14 years since D-Day and 5 years of divorce to come to the realization: Infidelity is the best thing that could have happened to me.

I was stuck in a verbally, physically, and emotionally abusive relationship. My ex-wife suffers from extreme and untreated (or perhaps untreatable) mental illness. I spent most of my time during the marriage trying to protect myself from her, my children from her, and her from herself.

I am incredibly tenacious when it comes to solving problems, and I literally NEVER GIVE UP. Even though 4 marriage counselors told me to get a divorce (as did some of her family members and her best friend), I still thought I could fix the situation. I have never encountered a situation that I couldn't fix.

It was the intense pain of infidelity combined with the sage advice of a friend dying from cancer that give me the motivation to finally pull the trigger and file for divorce.

Filing for divorce was literally the best decision of my life. I wake up incredibly happy every single day. I know I would be miserable if I were still married. The stress of the marriage was depleting me in every way imaginable; I am not even sure I would be alive today if I had stayed married.

It was the enormity of the pain of infidelity that gave me the courage to finally leave. If it weren't for infidelity, I would still probably be stuck in a toxic and a unrelentingly abusive relationship with no hope for the future.

So, as strange as it sounds, I came to this realization this morning: Infidelity is the best thing that could have happened to me.

[This message edited by betrayed1965 at 10:21 AM, July 18th (Sunday)]

[This message edited by betrayed1965 at 4:21 PM, Sunday, July 18th]

I am still in a lot of shock and pain so while I am not quite ready to say that yet, I can relate. I was not happy in my relationship, we had sex about once every 2 months or so & he showed me zero affection. He was able to fake those things for several years but he just has major intimacy issues. Anyway those things were making me MISERABLE and I begged him to work on them and he made so many promises. I was WEAK and couldn't leave, because there were so many other things that were good. But it was plenty of reason to leave! So I do feel that if it weren't for the infidelity I would have wasted many more years of my life on a relationship that had not been meeting my needs for many years.

Betrayed1965, I could have written your post (just reverse the sexes). I feel exactly the same way, and was in exactly the same kind of marriage. I know I would have stayed forever had he not blown it to smithereens in such a spectacular fashion.

[This message edited by WhoTheBleep at 12:07 PM, July 18th (Sunday)]

Infidelity has been the best thing for my personal growth. I was stagnant in my marriage, and frankly I wasn’t even curious about my own mental health or growth. This was not obvious to me, and I didn’t realize it was something that we should be curious about in ourselves.

Infidelity hurt like nothing else, but now I feel I finally know who I am, who I am meant to be. And I know that this is probably the only way I would have stopped to evaluate where I am and who I am.

Weird, but lovely, silver lining.

[This message edited by BearlyBreathing at 3:49 PM, July 18th, 2021 (Sunday)]

Isnt it ironic, that it is the waywards that claim their needs were not being met, who ultimately seek something outside of the relationship, yet it is the betrayed spouses who have been enduring a toxic relationship, only to realize upon leaving, that they were whit knuckling a terrible marriage just to do what they felt was right.

One of the most difficult and valuable lessons, was to learn to put myself first.

Infidelity is the best thing that could have happened to me.

The instant I discovered my XWW’s infidelity, I knew, with 100% certainty, I was going to divorce her.

Amongst the devastating emotional pain, the shock of the betrayal, the agony of what my children would be going through, and the anger, I knew there would be no going back from what she had done.

She did not want to divorce and wanted to reconcile.

I did not.

It has been over eight years since I divorced her.

Today, I could not conceive being married or in any sort of relationship with that person.

I now wonder how I ever even gave her the time of day.

Given that, I would never say that the infidelity was the best thing that happened.

It was a horrific way for a marriage and family to end - in a broad and deep web of lies, deceit, disrespect, blame shifting, emotional abuse, and betrayal.

Our children, who loved and adored their family, suddenly watched their foundation being destroyed from within for reasons they still do not know of till this day.

Just prior to D-day, I discovered that my XWW was committing financial infidelity that was crippling us as a family.

She had a previous history of gross financial irresponsibility that I had bailed her out of and for her to do it again was unforgivable.

I was already seriously considering divorcing her and had set up appointments with a couple attorneys.

It was extremely difficult to accept how hard it was going to be on the children but I thought that, at least, the divorce would have been more amicable and we could have had a friendly relationship even though we weren’t married.

The infidelity guaranteed that she was a toxic, back-stabbing figure that I have as little as possible to do with.

My refusal to attempt reconciliation, along with the entire rugsweeping of it all as she would have done, guaranteed that she would need to continue casting me in the role of the villain so as to pretend to shed responsibility for her selfishness.

There are far and away better ways to end a marriage in a healthy, adult manner.

Infidelity just guarantees that one will be dealing with a selfish, child-minded asshole in the heartbreaking dismantling of what was once a family.

Fuck infidelity and those who do it.

Isnt it ironic, that it is the waywards that claim their needs were not being met, who ultimately seek something outside of the relationship, yet it is the betrayed spouses who have been enduring a toxic relationship, only to realize upon leaving, that they were whit knuckling a terrible marriage just to do what they felt was right.

One of the most difficult and valuable lessons, was to learn to put myself first.

YES!

Fuck infidelity and those who do it.

Amen!

XWH is a covert narc. I told him he gave me the golden ticket out of a miserable M. I'm still healing from the A, but happier now than I've been in years.

I'm in the same boat. I kind of appreciate AP taking her off my hands. Her non-infidelity issues were never going away since she didn't seem them as problems. In my view we could have had a happy marriage, but I was always going to be doing the heavy lifting and compromises to keep the marriage going. The contrast between my first marriage and my current one where both of us are doing the work and want to be there is stark.

It was the enormity of the pain of infidelity that gave me the courage to finally leave. If it weren't for infidelity, I would still probably be stuck in a toxic and a unrelentingly abusive relationship with no hope for the future.

Yes, yes, yes. My whole marriage dismantled me, but the infidelity grand finale gave me a chance to reassemble all the pieces, and add a few new ones.

I agree in that infidelity was the only thing that would make me stop trying for our marriage. Literally nothing else she did stopped me. Her physical and emotional abuse, disrespect, and treating me like a subhuman weren't enough because there were good times and I figured she would get better slowly over time. Now 2 months out from DDay I am recognizing how much I held back of myself to give everything I could for a woman who was not treating me right.

If it weren't for infidelity, I would still probably be stuck in a toxic and a unrelentingly abusive relationship with no hope for the future.

It was the infidelity that initially opened my eyes. His subsequent abuse post D-Day helped push me off the cliff.

The stress of the marriage was depleting me in every way imaginable; I am not even sure I would be alive today if I had stayed married.

Can relate to this. Leaving the M literally felt like saving my life.

100% agreed. My life is so much better now, in every aspect.

I thought I was so happy while married, but was incredibly abused and always walking on eggshells and putting his needs first.

I didn't know life could be so wonderful. Going through infidelity was soul-destroying, but the life that I live now is how I should have been living all along. I'm so much more grateful for everything because I know what it's like on the other side.

I think like many, infidelity was the impetus to getting my life to a better place. It sure didn't feel like that at the time, but reflection after the trauma had started to recede points to it being one of the top event in my life as far as eventual positive outcome. Though I sure wish I could have gotten to this place without all the trauma.

Since I'm still with my WS, not sure I can fully speak to this, but since there's a part of me just waiting for the other shoe to drop ie. him to have another major fuckup (I know it will happen, just playing the waiting game) I get it. WHEN (not if) it happens again, I think there will be a part of me that is relieved. I will then be released from all the other narc behaviors, not just the actual falling-into-other-women's-vagin-itus.

Trapped74 - you don’t have to wait for another fuck up. He already cheated. You are free to leave whenever you want to. I know you know but - do you know that? Hugs to you. This stuff sucks. But you only get 1 life. It belongs to you.