SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

What's she did, and I think many WS's do to not feel like a selfish POS, is tell themselves "my marriage is bad and I'm going to leave so it isn't really cheating, not like bad cheaters, I'm special. We are already divorced in my mind." You know something like this. But you aren't special. Most likely you would just keep right on eating cake. Lie to APs face that you are going to leave. Lie to you BS. Lie to yourself.

Yes, I agree. I would describe my thinking very much this way.

Difference? He could walk out the door tomorrow. I would be sad and hurt but not devastated. I know I would survive. Because I already did.

This ! Absolutely this. My WH was also willing to leave. We are in R and doing mostly well. But the above holds true. The survival instinct kicks in big time once you are almost discarded easily and are dispensable.

This might sound contradictory… but what can empower a marriage is the realization of how delicate it really is…

It’s a like an egg. An egg is remarkably strong, at the exact level where it protects the chick but enables it to break out. It’s also like an egg where we tend to take care when carrying one, because we know it will break if not handled properly.

I love what Bigger says here. This has been true for us.

My WS not only told me he loved her on DDay, but in the days after, I discovered his secret cache of text records to her, which included a plan for her to move into an apartment in the neighboring town (she lived an hour away). Also love poems. Ughh. The love poems.

In the year or so that followed, we have come to recognize that, for a variety of reasons, his thoughts during the affair were distorted. He was in a self-created bubble of fantasy fueled by his desire to escape things he did not want to FACE. He was a kind of addict chasing a fix.

The way back has not been easy. I can’t lie. But we both recognize now the ways we did not handle each other with care and did not protect the thing that mattered, and he has realized he needs to face things to find peace in his own heart.

We are not done with the work, but whatever comes, we are both better people for working through this together and finding ways to empathize with each others pain… because his affair was a way to escape pain. It was a fantasy he fell into to try to feel better. Now he has to face the shame of what he became and what he broke. We both have to choose, every day, if we stay together. There is something to that. There is no taking each other for granted.

I wish we had found a better way to cut through the pain and find the brutal honesty that came after his affair. I will carry scars from this for the rest of our lives, and he will carry shame. But we still choose each other. And now we realize the power and importance of that.

And here is one more truth, one year later. It echoes what others have said. I also have work to do, and if I do it, I will be strong enough to take the risk I am taking with eyes wide open. if he cheats again, he betrays himself and fails to be worthy of me. I am strong enough to give him a second chance, and I am wise enough to know it is a gamble. I have faced betrayal. I am still standing.

[This message edited by RecklessForgiver at 2:19 AM, Thursday, April 18th]

My husband did dump me for the OW on D-Day. He lived with her for three months or so.

But here's the thing, I explained to him what his life would be like should he choose to remain in our house. He left.

In his own words, he simply said to me "that's where I want to be."

Sure.

And later he wanted to return. His words "the grass is not greener on the other side." Plus other stuff.

Right. How many times is this true?

I did give him a second chance. We are entering our sixth year of re-coupling.

Looking back in time my husband never said to me that he loved her only that it was infatuation for both of them.

There was sex of course. She was older than me and him. They had a LTA, full of travels abroad. My husband paid 90%.

At that time my husband drank excessively. A functional alcoholic. So was the OW. How they lived like that is beyond my understanding.

We overcame many hurdles.

The deepest cut was his abandonement.

His affair is no longer an issue for me.

My life is.