SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So glad I discovered SurvivingInfidelity.com. The D-Day of my wife's affair is January 10, 2024. She carried on the affair from March, 2023 until mid-September, 2023. We've been married 26 years, and we have our first MT session tomorrow to sort out what has happened in our marriage, the affair itself and if we want to reconcile or not (at this point we both want to).

I have never had to deal with such pain in my life as I am now. The betrayal, the deviousness, the devastation, the insecurities, the lack of peace of mind, body and spirit, the anguish, the mental images of them together, the lack of joy and energy for daily activities, the self-doubt, the daily triggers, the deceit, depression, anxiety, fear, the fog I'm in, feeling miserable, hopeless and helpless and the loss of trust are some of the major pains I find myself overcome with throughout the day.

I don't want to emotionally flood my brain (or get carried away when we do discuss things), but it's very difficult.

My question is this: are there any certain practices/methods you've used to help ease the pain yet bring it to the forefront so it can be addressed? Yoga, excercising, helpfull workbooks, journaling, punching bag or other technique to help the pain?

I look forward to visiting this site daily for helpful hints, shared experiences or other theraputic advice to help me on this most painful journey.

Thank you!

I know I won't be the only one to say this, but you're rushing it.

You just found out two weeks ago, so there's no way you should be making decisions about reconciliation now. You have a lot to sort through first.

1. Has she given you the reason(s) why she did what she did? Keep in mind, it wasn't a mistake, it was a series of decisions. Either she thought about you and chose to ignore her conscience, or she didn't think about you at all. Both suck.

2. Does she want to reconcile just because she doesn't want to lose her meal ticket or end up on the street? Are you truly her first choice, or are you just a plan B because the affair partner wouldn't work out in the long run?

3. Another man touched your wife. For six months. That was something she promised to you alone. Can you handle the mind movies you'll see in your head at random, or any time she touches you will you be thinking about her having touched him the same way?

I think you need some individual counseling first before you start any kind of marriage counseling. You should consider having her sleep on the couch or in a guest room until further notice, or make her go stay with a friend or family member while you get your head straight.

Whether you reconcile or not, the next 2-5 years are going to be absolute emotional hell. You won't recognize yourself at times. Make sure you eat what you can and drink water regularly. Avoid alcohol.

I hate to report for me the peace of mind came with time for the most part. I think our brain gets hit with this total reality shift and the pain is symptomatic of your brain rewiring itself to accept the new reality. Having said that, there were a few things that helped. Talking to an individual counselor helped a lot. I founds there are very few people in my life I would even want to share this news with, so having a counselor helped a bunch. I downloaded some guided meditation apps that helped as well. Although the reduction in pain was short lived.

You didn't give any details about the affair, but it did help me somewhat when my wife started to tell me things that I hadn't already figured out through my investigation. When I was able to ask questions over and over without a bunch of defensiveness and resistance. That's outside of your control though. This might sound a little lame, but when I accepted that I couldn't control her behavior and really believed that I would be just fine leaving the marriage, I started to feel better. For a long time before that the only option I would accept is the marriage being saved. that resulted in me feeling trapped and powerless.

I'm not saying this to scare you, but I still get the little movies playing on a daily basis. I think this is a Buddhist idea. It talks about letting the waves come in and wash around you and then allowing the waves to receded. Not grabbing onto the waive and being dragged out to see. Let the feelings come and then wait for them to receded. Chasing the feeling and overthinking them can make them more painful. That's all I got for now. I know it's not a magic pill, but I hope it helps a little.

I meant to add as part of the reality part. The sooner you accept that you are never going to look at your wife the same way you did before the affair the better off you'll be. For a long time I thought there was a way to restore the absolute trust there was prior to the affair. I kept banging my head against the wall (figuratively) until I figured out I needed to accept the new reality. There's no going back.

I think you need some individual counseling first before you start any kind of marriage counseling. You should consider having her sleep on the couch or in a guest room until further notice, or make her go stay with a friend or family member while you get your head straight.

I would second this and add you BOTH need individual counseling before you start marriage counseling. I made the mistake of rushing into marriage counseling 4 weeks after D-Day and this did WAY more harm than good. Your wife likely needs some IC to truly explore her whys and how she got to the point on infidelity. You need IC to deal with your pain and PTSD (yes, that’s part of this shit show).

We used an LMFT that was Gottman trained. Thought we were getting the "cream of the crop". Her focus (as with most MTs) is to explore what is wrong with the marriage and working to fix the marriage. Be prepared to hear how YOU contributed to your wife’s unmet needs and how YOU need to improve yourself and be the kind of partner who doesn’t get cheated on. Of course, there are things you likely need to work on for the marriage. Are you in any shape to hear that and do that while "lying on the floor bleeding out"?

Our MT "Molly coddled" my WW, had zero accountability for her and even "fed her excuses". What broke it for me was (while my wife was still actively lying to me about her affairs including withholding APs) the MT said to me "you have all the information you are going to get and if you can’t accept that, YOU may need individual therapy". My response? "If that’s the case, we are done here and I’m going to divorce her lying, cheating ass". That caused some backpedaling, and the suggestion of a polygraph. Which then led to more disclosures. I stopped seeing the MT and she became my wife’s IC for a while until my wife realized she needed someone to "hold her accountable"….

Am I reading correctly that you've only known about her affair for two weeks?

Deciding you want reconciliation this early is probably a rugsweep and you will definitely regret that down the road (Ask me how I know).

Has she given you a detailed timeline? Beware that whatever you know this early is almost definitely not the half of it. You are on the first few steps of an ultramarathon, be careful to pace yourself and it is always okay if you want to bow out of the marriage. She blew it and you don't owe her a reconciliation.

I spent a lot of time reading SI threads particularly the benchmark ones to try and understand the patterns of behaviour and how various scenarios worked out.

I tried to learn lessons from such and from all the advice given. The is a definite pattern many of these As, the DD, discovery and subsequent TT and all the rest observe. Observing these helped me a lot in my own situation, particularly in the discovery phase.

I think it’s very important to take your WW off the pedestal you had probably placed her on. And to disregard the desire you may have to ignore the wonderful advice you will be given here on the grounds that "this time it’s different". And also to expect the worst rather than hoping for the best.

In terms of my own healing, I spent a lot of time in IC. I needed to find myself and break the co-dependency that I had. I wasted a lot of time taking to therapists who simply validated my feelings or gave me CBT like therapies for dealing with the symptoms rather than addressing my own underlying weaknesses. For me deep psychotherapy under hypnosis that followed a lot of preparation work has been transformative in helping me detach from and see the situation less emotionally. I do not live in the US and therapy is less sophisticated here so it took me quite a while to find someone whom I trusted and was helping.

Exercise helps distract but doesn’t cure.

Talk to a few close friends and friends of your M that you trust. I got massive support from these. They and the wise people here helped me most of all.

Welcome to SI! Very sorry you found the need to be here but you will receive good support. Read in the healing library and the pinned threads. Lots of good info available. It would be wise to be tested for STD’s! Have you and your WW read: "How To Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair", by McDonnell. A short read. Take care of you. Eat healthy, exercise, and stay away from alcohol and drugs. You will be on an emotional roller coaster for an extended period. It’s great if you have an outlet for your emotions or anger like a punching bag. Long distance running helped me immensely. You have suffered a real trauma. If you seek IC find someone trained in betrayal trauma. Give yourself breathing room to process your anger and pain. Good luck.

OP, there’s a large community of folks here who want to help you. The more details you can provide, the better the support & advice we can pass along.

I fully agree with others here - you are rushing full steam into reconciliation (R) without even knowing if your wife is truly remorseful. Hint - simply saying "I’m sorry" is NOT remorse. To start, to see if your (presumably) adulterous wife is even a candidate for R, you must have 100% truth (no Trickle Truthing - "TT"), no blame-shifting, full accountability on your wife’s part, zero contact with OM, and TRUE remorse (beginning with an attitude of she’s willing to crawl across broken glass for at least the next 5 YEARS to try and keep you).

You’ve already made a mistake by jumping immediately on the R train. It’s WAY too soon to commit to that! Let us help you stop the mistakes now. Please post all your details here - it’s anonymous - and we can give you very specific help. Ignore our advice at your peril. The crowdsourced wisdom here is incomparable.

[This message edited by gr8ful at 9:57 PM, Tuesday, January 23rd]

If you are able, continue to post on this thread on a daily basis letting us know what is happening with you. As others have mentioned, you are very early in this process and the roller coaster ride from hell is only beginning for you. Take heed of the advice from the people here who have walked in your shoes. Some here have mentioned that EMDR therapy has helped with intrusive thoughts, what we refer to as "mind movies." All the best to you.

We used an LMFT that was Gottman trained. Thought we were getting the "cream of the crop". Her focus (as with most MTs) is to explore what is wrong with the marriage and working to fix the marriage. Be prepared to hear how YOU contributed to your wife’s unmet needs and how YOU need to improve yourself and be the kind of partner who doesn’t get cheated on. Of course, there are things you likely need to work on for the marriage. Are you in any shape to hear that and do that while "lying on the floor bleeding out"?

This

I might as well chime in on the "you are rushing it" squad. Totally agree.

You need time to process a trauma this significant. I know, as men, we generally are very solution oriented and want to fix things, but this is one time you need to slow down and process this. The healing journey is non-linear, so prepare for that. As well, as you heal, you may feel very differently about your WW. At a specific point in my journey, I realized that I actually didn't like my WW very much and chose to D.

Keep posting. Good luck.

I am truly sorry you ended up here.

I don’t and can’t tell people what to do. But I can share my experiences.

I wish that I had moved slowly and not allowed myself to be abused by marriage therapy . I needed 1:1 support for the trauma EXWH inflected.

The marriage was broken by ex WH’s pattern of lies and affairs. I was not responsible for either him lying or him cheating. And I did not need a MT to blameshift the death of our marriage into me. It did not help me and it did not help save a more than 3 decades long marriage.

In my case I needed to be somewhere EXWH wasn’t and to get my head on straight and I needed to take exquisite care of myself.

Gentle exercise was good for me. Trauma-informed exercise would have been best but is harder to find.

I did get full STD testing and because I never did get the truth from WH but what we did know was high risk, my provider repeated certain tests at an appropriate interval.

I cannot emphasize how much I regret not putting myself first when I began to find out about the betrayals.

I wish you peace and healing.

I was lied to so resumed sexual relationship with exWH which I also do not recommend until/unless a wayward does the work to become a safe partner.

Some tips to take the edge off the pain:

1. Hit the gym. Burn off that cortisol and redirect the adrenaline into exercise. Exercise releases feel good hormones, improves sleep and appetite, and provides a good rewarding distraction meeting fitness goals.

2. See your physician about sleep aids and antidepressants if necessary.

3. Individual infidelity trauma counseling.

4. Don’t abuse alcohol.

5. Friends and support

6. Post here on SI, not just about you, but also helping and commiserating with others.

7. Healthy and not too unhealthy distractions.

8. Research

9. Talk to a lawyer, just to see what divorce would look like. Knowledge reduces fear thereby reducing stress and anxiety.

10. Get on the right path. No short cuts. No rug sweeping. No denial. No fear based decisions. No concessions made at your expense. Having confidence in the path you have chosen and the methodology used to make that choice…is probably the greatest analgesia, even better than time itself.

[This message edited by RealityBlows at 8:42 AM, Wednesday, January 24th]

I only started to heal once I left and went NC with my XWW.

You're 2 weeks out from d-day. In all likelihood, you're still in shock - and will be for many more weeks. You might know what you want now, but that's only part of the process. What you actually choose is more a product of what work you and your W are willing to do. It makes perfect sense to work on your M now3. Just know that you're in shock and any promise you made can be withdrawn.

*****

The pain - which I think is some combo of grief, anger, fear, and shame - is excruciating for most BSes who post about it. It comes in waves, and my reco is, like that of Legatus: let the wave come, but ride it. Keep your head above water, and feel the pain. Feeling it let's it go.

The thing is: our brains play some tricks on us. Sometimes we think about the pain and ruminate over it. That's different from feeling it. Ruminating keeps the pain in instead of letting it go. If you can't let yourself feel the pain you're pretty much like most people, and a good IC can help. Not many of us are taught how to handle emotional pain as kids, so we have to learn it as adults.

But I'm convinced of this: The fastest way to get through the pain is to identify what one is feeling and to let the feelings flow through one's body.

At first, you'll probably fear that the pain is endless. It isn't - if you let yourself process it out of your body, you'll heal - not as fast as anybody thinks it should go, but you will heal.

*****

MT/MC treats the M, but your M didn't fail - your WS did. Your WS, not your M, is the biggest problem that needs to be solved.

Some MCs do deal with the A first. Some MCs do hold the WS accountable. If your MC does those things, it will probably help a lot. Our MC was like that, and having both my W and me in the room accelerated our progress.

Most MCs see the M as a system that needs to be fixed. To R, your M will change, but the change will come from individual changes.

To protect yourself against incompetent Cs, keep reminding yourself that your WS chose to cheat and add to their and your problems instead of resolving the problems they already had. Keep reminding yourself that nothing you did or didn't do caused your WS to cheat; they decided to do that on their own. Your WS failed; you didn't.

Many of the pre-A complaints will disappear if your WS does the necessary post-A work.

*****

Let's go back to basics:

I recommend thinking of R as 3 healings:

1) You heal you. Most BSes are inundated with immense amounts of one or more of grief, anger, fear, shame on d-day. The largest part of your work is to process those feelings out of your body. A good IC can help you do this.

2) Your WS heals themself. They need to change from cheater to good partner. I think that requires IC for the WS, but others disagree.

3) Together you build a new M.

This means you can recover from being betrayed without your WS; that is, you can survive this crisis and thrive without your WS, but you need your WS to R. You can heal yourself because you control yourself. You don't control your WS. I recommend making 'survive and thrive' your primary goal and R your stretch goal.

Have you read the Healing Library here? If not, there's a lot of good stuff there. Click the link in the yellow box in the upper left of the SI pages.

I think there are a number of keys ingredients to R.

First, what do you want? Do you really want R? If not, don't lie to yourself - both R & D are morally good responses to being betrayed. R is hard work, and wanting it makes it less difficult, but it's difficult even when you want it.

I recommend figuring out your requirements for R and seeing if your WS will sign on. If they won't, perhaps they can come up with something else that will meet your requirements, but if you can't negotiate something truly acceptable to both of you, great - you can go directly to D. Otherwise, you can monitor them for 3-6 months and commit to R for yourself if they are (is?) consistent in meeting your requirements.

The requirements need to be observable and measurable. That way it's easy to monitor progress and make adjustments as you go along.

Common requirements include:

NC - no contact with ap; if ap initiates contact, report to BS and together decide how to respond

Transparency - BS has passwords to e-mail, voice-mail, phones, etc.; WS keeps BS informed of whereabouts, activities, and companions at virtually all times

Honesty - WS answers BS's questions when they're asked, although sometimes a break is necessary, sometimes an answer is best deferred to MC session, etc., no more lies.

IC for WS - to change the thoughts and feelings that supported the A, with signed release that enables C to talk with BS about WS's goals and progress (so the BS can make sure WS's IC isn't being lied to).

IC for BS - for support - and for resolving any internal issue that comes up

MC - to help communications between the partners. Be careful to avoid MCs who don't deal with the A first. An MC who starts off trying to identify systemic problems probably won't help. You need someone who will help resolve the trauma before going into systemic problems.

Some (Most?) people have individual requirements - my W had to arrange dates for us on a weekly basis and must initiate sex sometimes. What do you want from your W?

And R is a joint endeavor - if one of you hides objections to the other's requirements, you sabotage R. And you have to see your WS as a human being of worth equal to your own to make R work. You don't have to see your WS as a human being whose worth is equal to your own, but you sure can't R, except with an equal.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:02 PM, Wednesday, January 24th]

Sir, Im glad you found this place and Im sorry for your need of it at the same time.

The above posters have given you tremendous pratical input as to the optimal steps for you to take. You would do well to heed their advice.

Other germain questions include:

• Is she 100% no contact with her AP?

• Has she given you complete and full access to all devices, email and social media accounts?

• Has she given you a complete detailed written timeline of the affair?

• Is the AP married? If so, does the other betrayed spouse know?

• Has she gotten an std test?

To name a few.

That said, heres my input: Slow Down. Do not go into "fix the marriage" mode. I know whereof I speak as I did that very thing and spent an absolute miserable decade before it all ended. A marriage cannot recover unless the person that demolished the marriage via betrayal is willing to both admit their horrible wrong and begin to fill in the moral/ethical chasm in their soul. Sisoon said it well...You heal you, she must do the same for herself. This is why this place and others discourages MC before extensive IC is undertaken. "Cart before the horse" and all that. I learned this the hard way as well.

The other reason to slow down is that once your emotions catch up and you have time to process, you may well decide that D is the better choice for you and thats ok too.

Hope you keep posting.

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 7:45 PM, Wednesday, January 24th]

I'll chime in here and make note of not doing the pick me dance. My WW told me of many of the things that were lacking in our relationship that she felt pushed her towards cheating. In my head I thought "yes, I can make these changes as they are things that a healthy relationship needs". But I stupidly thought that by me making these changes that she would also make changes to herself. Boy was I wrong. She got what she was wanting but I was still living with the same woman who cheated on me. I'm almost at 3 years out and I'm still waiting for her to show true remorse and show me that she is working on her flaws. I should have held strong to my convictions from day one and told her she had better show me that she was willing to fight for me or i was gone. So here I am knocking on 3 years, I have started EMDR for the trauma (it is helping a lot) and every day I am learning that I am the prize and that life will be A OK with or without her. This newfound attitude is now starting to scare her as she can see me losing my codependency with her. Like the others have said, you are about to go through hell as it hasn't really sunk in yet. Talking to others who have been there and understand the pain helped me a lot. Keep coming back and talking about your pain, we all "get it" and are here to support you.

Hi there SheNotMe,

I'm so sorry you find yourself in this position. The pain from infidelity is unimaginable - I don't think any of us properly appreciated that until we'd experienced it ourselves. Please know that none of this is your fault, nor the fault of the marriage. No marriage is perfect, but problems in the marriage don't "cause" cheating. There is no magic bullet for curing the pain/trauma either. The only way past it is through it. Please be gentle with yourself.

You've had good advice, I just want to reiterate that you should not feel obligated to jump into either R or D right now. It's still incredibly early. Presumably there is a lot you still don't know about the A yet. Even if you think you may wish to R, it's still way to early to know whether your wife will be a good candidate for R yet. Sometimes people jump into it too quickly and it creates unrealistic expectations for both partners as to how quickly things should be "back to normal". I know "back to normal" is probably all either of you want right now but I assure you that that is not possible.

I suggest you read as much as you can. As unique and special as cheaters tend to think their As are, you will find that there are a ton of patterns that emerge. I often found that it was helpful to hear other people describe feelings/emotions/frustrations that I too had experienced but maybe didn't have the words to express quite the same way.

Best of luck to you and I hope you'll keep posting.

Thank you to everyone for your responses to my OP. I have read all of them and have taken to heart some of the sound advice that you shared. I am also a member of a 12-step program (GA) so I am very familiar with the sharing of experience strength and hope.

As a courtesy to all who took the time to reply, I will share some more info. The last 5 years or so our marriage has been more of a platonic roommate situation. While we love eachother, things became stale. We were both caught up in our businesses, our son's HS athletic careers, family illnesses, finances and all of the other traditional pressures of marriage. We drifted apart. I have a few character defects that can rear their ugly face every now and again.

We'd talk, things would improve and then some new drama entered the scene. My coping skills were in poor shape (even though I am clean from gambling for 23 years), I wasn't working my program. She became more and more distant. Finally, after a huge blowout last March, she'd had enough. An old friend of hers from college started flirting with her on FB. That lead to messaging, texting, sexting and nearly daily communication. The AP is in NY, we're in IL. He's a drummer in a traveling band of a popular 60"s singer.

She fabricated a plan that her compoany was having an employee retreat in Michigan in July, 2023. They had met at the hotel the band was staying at on a Friday, they had sex that evening and again early Saturday morning and then spent the day togetherbefore the band's show that night. After the show, they stayed in her room tiL about 3am when he left to his room and then the band left at 7am on SDunday. She came hoime Sunday afternoon aftenoon after a 6 hour ride.

I found out about the affair as I was looking for some our insurance cards in her night stand. Lo9ng story short, there was a professiopn of love, caring, acknowledgement that what they were doing was wrong to their spouses