SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It really is just that simple...however it isn't right? Every WS is by definition a liar, then add the the cowardly flight response of the human "fight or flight" nature which makes you want to lie more to avoid the consequences of your actions and you find yourself lying to your BS again, and again, and again.

Only 100% truth about your transgressions will give you a chance at reconciliation, and even still you must go into it with the knowledge and acceptance even that might not be enough.

I did not do this...I continued to lie, gaslight, minimize, deflect and deny my spose the dignity of truth and making her own decisions because I did not want to face the possible outcome...which I know have anyway.

You cannot lie your way out of this...you did this. So now that you are a WS, the most important question you can ask yourself is how are you going to face the consequences of your actions and accept the reality of your actions? And I don't mean the "reality" you want, but your betrayed spouses reality.

So how do you do it? How do you face that reality from the starting position as a liar, cheat, and cowardly person to start with?

Hoping that the answers to this question, and my complete failure, can give brand new WS's a reality check to get on the right path immediately and ever look back on their cheating, lying former ways. For me it is too late, except to maybe learn how to accept the reality I have created.

Fight or flight? Fight - which means fight yourself and your every bad instinct that got you into this position, and fight for your spouse with the truth.

All comments are welcome.

I’m 100% agree with you
Because I’m facing it at the moment. I’m in the exact situation

No stop sign so BS here. I agree with you, I wish my wife could bring herself to be 100% brutally honest with me. I feel like she’s still keeping things from me likely because she fears the ramifications from it when in all actuality she’s taking more of a risk in losing me because she won’t be 100% honest. For her to tell me more about the affair, knowing how painful it may be for her, would be a huge trust building opportunity in my eyes, but by not being honest, it simply erodes what we have left.

[This message edited by Copingmybest at 10:07 AM, Monday, August 28th]

BS, and we're divorced. I hate lying. I ran across this quote, and it rings so true for me:

The worst part about being lied to is knowing you weren't worth the truth

- Jean-Paul Sartre

I agree with you, I wish my wife could bring herself to be 100% brutally honest with me. I feel like she’s still keeping things from me likely because she fears the ramifications from it when in all actuality she’s taking more of a risk in losing me because she won’t be 100% honest. For her to tell me more about the affair, knowing how painful it may be for her, would be a huge trust building opportunity in my eyes, but by not being honest, it simply erodes what we have left.

Also a BH. I couldn’t agree with this sentiment more. My WW’s affairs (yes multiple) were all 19-39 years ago. We are on the path to divorce not because of her cheating then but rather her lying now. I wanted to build a relationship out of the ashes of infidelity where we were intimate and "one". If she can’t (or won’t) trust me enough to be 100% honest with me about her lowest points in life, we can never be "one". We can never be anything beyond the broken ruin SHE made us…..it just baffles me how she can’t trade some short term pain for a better life together.

ImaChump, I guess it still boils down to them still being selfish and thinking more about themselves and not their partners. I have told my wife she is still not safe for me simply because she puts her feelings and concerns first above mine and that is something she has to work on. I’m a patient man and I’ve told her I will continue to endure the pain of the affair until she begins to make change, however, I’ve also told her my patience has a shelf life. I don’t know what that shelf life is, but when it expires, it will simply be game over, done, adios, move on time. I suspect when I get to that point I will have made peace with myself in such that I will be driven to move on to better times in my life, because this middle world many of us BS live in is not a healthy place to stay.

I guess it still boils down to them still being selfish and thinking more about themselves and not their partners. I have told my wife she is still not safe for me simply because she puts her feelings and concerns first above mine and that is something she has to work on.

Well, that’s really it in a nutshell isn’t it? The cheating was from a selfish perspective. The sabotage of the marriage to justify the cheating was from a selfish perspective and now the inability to recover is from a selfish perspective. What’s changed? Nothing other than not actively cheating.

With the infidelities being so long ago, I am plagued by "I don’t know" and "I don’t remember". We have a deal that any recovered memories or discovered information will be shared immediately. After my wife’s most recent therapy session we had a discussion that led to her revealing some recovered information of her second AP. (This affair is extremely hurtful for me because I discovered it when it first began and was still an EA. My WW wound up leaving me for a day but then asked to come home. I agreed as long as she went NC. Well, she didn’t and it went on 7-8 more months and turned into a PA. In our house.).

She had remembered the AP’s last name, the church where they used to meet, where his parents lived and used that to discover the fact he died 9 years ago. She had been sitting on this information for several weeks. When I asked why she didn’t share, she said "it would have resulted in a long conversation and I didn’t want to do that". She also then had the balls to say she was "proud of herself" for finally coming clean and not lying and saying she had just discovered all this info. No clue of all the flashing red lights this causes for me.

So like I say, less about the cheating then than the lying now for me. Not the type of person I want to be with. If the cost/benefit analysis lands on its worth inflicting more pain on me than having a difficult conversation, she is not R material…..