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I have read on many posts on SI that both the WS and the BS need to ‘heal’ before they can truly reconcile.

What does that mean? How do you know when either of you are healed?

i’m 10 years out now. I don’t know if healed is something I am. I was the BS so I’ve learned to live with it. My wife asked a few days ago about what kind of love I had for her. I said mature. I’m not crazy in love with her anymore. That died the day I found out. But healed? i think about it I still get a bit angry. Could care less if the AP lived or died. But I view my spouse as human now. And I know that she doesn’t always have my back. So I always seem to take what people are telling me with a grain of salt. I really look at what they are doing not saying. It changed me. But I don’t think I will heal from it. Just it gets to be less important the farther out you get.If you stay you have to learn to live with it. That’s the toughest thing to do. Learning to live with it.

I agree with jailedman. I'm just outside of 3 years out. I'm most certainly not healed and I honestly wonder if I ever truly will be. I believe he is also correct that to stay with your spouse you will have to learn to live with something that is likely to never go away. Yes the effects of the pain may lessen, but I believe a lot of how much healing does take place will be determined by how much effort your WS puts into healing the relationship. My WW seems to be blocked in being able to do the work or at least show me the work she has done, so I feel like I've been on the bubble. I love her but I'm much less "in love" with her now. Now I know what she is and what she is capable of. We do have a lot of fun and good times together but we've been relegate to really good friends instead of soul mates. Problem is, I'd rather have a soul mate.

[This message edited by Copingmybest at 2:47 PM, Saturday, July 20th]

Just my opinion on what "healed" means:

For WS: knows and accepts who they are--their good parts and bad, knows why they do what they do, likes themselves as they are without needing external ego kibbles, appreciates and actively cares for their BS and family, speaks without defensiveness about their growth and change, makes healthy choices in all areas of life.

For BS: knows and accepts who they are--their good parts and bad, knows why they do what they do, likes themselves without needing anyone else like their spouse or family to define them, appreciates and actively cares for themselves, speaks without shame or hostility about their M and what it has gone through, makes healthy choices for themselves in all areas of life.

Then you can create the M you want with acceptance of faults and imperfections, but full of hard work and devotion. A marriage that has been tested can become the strongest marriage of all. Having two people who value themselves and know who they are is critical before they can then actively value and appreciate each other.

Cultivating personal strength and self-esteem separate from and outside of the M is the most important aspect of the individual work. The WS has to stop defining themselves through external validation, and the BS has to stop defining themselves through their M. Once we have learned that we decide how we see ourselves and that other people's actions do not change who we are, we are fully healed. We are titanium.

Owning it now nailed it. I will add in a couple of thoughts:

While the priority should be on your personal healing, my experience is through these incremental periods of growth, there will be some reflection of that in your relationship.

So for example, let’s say the bs really focuses on their healing journey, but the ws does not. That gap will or should start to make the marriage feel less tenable. Same came go in reverse, we have certainly had ws in bad marriages, they have strived and their bs remained toxic (not all bs are toxic, but often ws are somewhere on that spectrum just by definition)

And if you both work towards the things owning has laid out sometimes the marriage is still too little too late.

But for us, those incremental improvements eventually lined up and our relationship improved incrementally along with it. We had our points where divorce seemed certain. Near the first year after my dday was one point, and then at year three when I discovered for the last 18 months things were going better because he was having an affair of his own. It seemed like there was no use in trying anymore because our marriage was officially a dumpster fire. It was hard to find hope for some time after that.

But as we both took a hard long look at ourselves and kept working on that, the marriage started to shift into a better place.

I think it is usually five years or more before most people seem to be at peace with their decision to stay. But I doubt for those who decide to keep the marriage that it’s a daily struggle clear until then. The struggle for me slowly became just on my bad days until very seldom. I honestly think the seldom part doesn’t go away for a long time. We can still have a disagreement and feel that way because there is that loaded back story that amplifies the issue. For us, those feelings are more rare now and generally very short lived.

I think you have to go with how you feel most of the time, knowing the first two to three years are the hardest even in a potentially good situation.

But I would not put up with the ws’s bad behavior continuing, saying that just because I am not saying stick it out if that’s not the direction it’s trending in.

[This message edited by hikingout at 2:57 PM, Friday, July 19th]

13+ years out. The markers of healing that worked/works for me include:

- For the last 10-11 years, memories of my W's betrayal come up, but almost all the memories are annoyances, not mini-traumas.
- Memories of the A have gotten fewer and less intense as time goes on. It's been years since the last trigger that I can remember (3 or 5 years ago - I'm not sure). Having written that, I may get a painful trigger in the next month.
- I don't fantasize about my W getting punished.
- I don't fantasize about revenge.
- I've made peace with the lack of justice.
- I love and desire my W.
- I sleep well.
- I know a new trigger can knock me down at any time - triggers at this point are going to be surprises.
- We deal with day to day issues; the A hasn't come up as an issue in the last 10 years.

Healing is not like a business project with clear goals or stop points. Life is always a work in progress. The A remains part of our life stories - one part of thousands.

Jailedmind nailed it. My wife publicly cheated on me more than 10 years ago not just a betrayal, but a public humiliation as well. Before that, I had 100% trust and, as relative newlyweds, had her on a bit of a pedestal. She fell hard from that pedestal that day and is, at best, a flawed human. I never felt the same about her, even as we had our daughter and moved on with our lives. I still don’t. Personally, I don’t think I’ll ever be "healed." Investing mostly moved on from it and I try to maintain forgiveness of my (I think] remorseful wife, but healed? Probably never.

Thanks so much for creating this thread. Seems many of the big hitters that I have the most respect for are contributing so long may it continue!

Owningitnow in particular... I have read that response about 10 times. I feel like I'm there (or close). My W has a few left from the WS list but we'll get there (I hope).

I don't post much anymore but I really appreciate these insights. Have a great weekend everyone.

How do you know when either of you are healed?

And maybe a couple good questions for those who have not healed are:

What does 'healing' mean to you?

And what is keeping you from being healed?

I do believe that (my opinion):

We heal ourselves; no one can do it for us, whether we R or D. Healing ourselves is an inside job. It's us vs. the way we frame things in our minds.

And also, only a willing BS and remorseful WS can heal the R. A willing BS can heal themselves personally and get strong, but they cannot heal an M with a toxic WS. And a remorseful WS can heal themselves personally, but they cannot heal an M with an unwilling BS (i.e. it's just a deal-breaker to them). Staying in these types of relationships is purgatory.

Healing does not equal forgetting, but it does mean accepting. And accepting to me means "remembering, admitting, knowing but not having a lot of resentment or bitterness anymore at the thought." It's an emotional acceptance, not a logical acceptance. And that takes a lot of inner work--IC, reading, journaling, podcasts, videos, conversations, inner dialogues, learning new ways to counter unhelpful or unhealthy thoughts, etc. I had to learn a lot about me and my beliefs before I could understand where my hang ups were in my thinking.

Have a good weekend, Ozzy! May the hard but very worthwhile work continue in your M!

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 7:29 PM, Friday, July 19th]

I think *the marriage being healed means that I feel safe, happy, and secure in my relationship, and like my H and I are on the same team. If those are the metrics, we're pretty much healed. There's always some tweaking to be done, but we're pretty solid now.

I truly thought that from day one of R that he would never cheat on me again, and as far as I know and feel and believe, he hasn't. So I probably would have told you at about three or four years out that we were healed, when the big feelings about the A had subsided and we got "kicked out" of MC. Life went back to somewhat normal.

I know now, at almost 20 years out, that healing is an ongoing process for me and probably always will be, and like someone else said, I may never be fully healed from such a huge trauma. I had some pretty significant abandonment issues before my H's betrayal, and adding the affairs on top really cut me wide open. It was the worst thing I've ever experienced. Also, like others have said, it's on me to heal myself and I'm still figuring that out.

*edited to add

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 10:45 PM, Friday, July 19th]

I read recently that the goals of healing are to allow more feelings back in like joy, confidence, contentment, etc.

I think in many ways that is true. It happens greatly through reframing like owning mentioned. The narratives we have when we cheat or get cheated on are more of a long term evolution than a destination.

So much of what happens in trauma is it stirs up old trauma as well. The process of healing for ws or bs should include looking at that which is why we discuss things like Foo or past relationships.

Generally, at some point I started noticing that I could feel positive emotions again. I still sometimes feel restriction in my chest where joy wants to well up, I find that I sometimes still have fear of it. I work on that.

Thank you everyone for your responses. I guess I really don’t know what ‘being healed’ looks like for me and I’m not sure how to work that out.

I know I’ve have accepted everything that has happened and now this is my life BUT I still hate it. And there is still anger and sadness which whilst isn’t as strong now (11 months from D-Day) it’s still there.

WH is working on himself (therapy has helped) and working out ways to stop his shitty behaviour, like with holding truth from me to avoid confrontation. He was even able to tell me a trait about myself that he didn’t like so much (I asked). That was a big step.

So I guess we are moving forward in the right direction. Just doesn’t feel like enough sometimes and I’m honestly scared it never will be.

OIN's posts on this thread have been great, but it all comes down to this, IMO:

It's an emotional acceptance, not a logical acceptance.

As she says, emotional acceptance takes a lot of work.

Cultivating personal strength and self-esteem separate from and outside of the M is the most important aspect of the individual work. The WS has to stop defining themselves through external validation, and the BS has to stop defining themselves through their M. Once we have learned that we decide how we see ourselves and that other people's actions do not change who we are, we are fully healed. We are titanium.

If you have achieved this, you will have done more than healed yourself. You will have grown. You will be more than you were before.