SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

^^^ KR,
If you like this idea, I think it’s excellent and would go with that.

Sometimes I feel R shouldn't be pushed so hard because many of us felt/feel the way you do. I think infidelity should always lead to D unless the WS moves mountains and becomes a much healthier person and the BS is able to move past it and also heal themselves, many cannot.

Amen.

In reading your posts you have already gotten excellent advice. That being said I wonder why you ARE staying? Only for the kids? I am a huge advocate of not staying in a marriage only because of children so to the extent you don't wish to discuss that issue you can skip to the last paragraph of this post.

I AM a child who lived though an affair (my mom had one with a married man and got pregnant - my parents had separated by the time we were told she was pregnant but the A had gone on for several years before that happened). I am living proof of this:

From what I've read it's never a good idea to stay in an unhappy marriage for the kids. They will adjust and once you become a happier person the kids will benefit.

Even if they truly do not know (which is super rare). My WH's child knew something was up and she lives 1000 miles away from us - she knew because "we" did not seem the same. When my WH finally told her (she had said nothing to that point about it) she was relieved as she said she could tell something was wrong between us but didn't know what - that things felt "off" and she tiptoed around us sometimes, which was a surprise to my WH as he really thought everything was fine and she knew nothing. My WH was also a child when his dad had a 5-year A. His parents waited to divorce until he, the youngest, had moved out. But the divorce at that stage was a shock to him as no one told him why - he only learned later the reason - and for those 5 years he also knew something wasn't right with his parents, but again he never said anything. I have a good friend who was the WS - she and her BS stayed together and also thought they had hid the A from their kids only to find out 5 years after the A when their daughter was in therapy that she did indeed know AND had struggled with processing it.

That being said, it seems from your comment about having to wait another 7 years until your youngest reaches a certain age, that you would consider divorcing then. How would you explain that to your children (because they will ask why you are divorcing)? Lie to them? Tell them it's between your and your WS and let them wonder? Or tell them that you held on this whole time "for them" - basically inadvertently laying a massive guilt trip on them for being the reason you endured (my friend's daughter's issue as it turns out) and/or teaching them there is no amount of misery one should not endure to keep the nuclear family together even when one member of that family dropped a nuclear bomb on it? Or some half-truth perhaps - just that you grew apart?

And what lessons do you want your children to learn? That staying with someone who hurt you in this way and who has not been able to (or willing to) make it right to your satisfaction is okay in certain circumstances? That sometimes rug-sweeping your issues is the best course of action? I sure wish I had known more about my own childhood circumstances as maybe I would not have stuck around for so long with someone who had treated me so horribly, inexcusably.

To me, when you don't tell your kids some age appropriate version of the truth, you are gambling that they don't already know or at least suspect something is wrong or find out later and feel betrayed themselves.

But putting the staying for the kids issue aside, if there is more to your staying than for the kids, why else are you staying at 7 years out with someone who has not done the work in a way that is palpable to you? Honestly, at bare minimum I would take those posts you wrote and read them to your WS and see where that takes you. Both for you and your WS - you both should proceed forward in honesty. I cannot imagine living in 7 years of self-imposed limbo, or worse, staying when the A was a deal breaker and turning your life into a prison sentence for a crime you did not commit. I'm so sorry you are here.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 8:53 PM, Wednesday, August 28th]

I see a lot of people asking why am I still in this relationship. That's a good question, one I take no offense to.

On one hand, it's kind of like getting sucker punched. Your equilibrium is off, you're trying to figure out where you are, and you have only enough wherewithal to protect what is most valuable to you (access to children, etc.) In other words, I had no preparation for this. I had no idea what was coming, and there is no manual that suits every individual's heartbreak. Admittedly, I was wholly unprepared.

Maybe dragging my feet, so to speak, was my way of protecting myself. Perhaps not entirely dissimilar to walking off an injury. Perhaps I subconsciously governed how much I could let myself feel at any one time in order to preserve executive function.

Maybe I'm just slow. I might be neurodivergent. People often think I'm intelligent, but they often underestimate just how much harder I sometimes have to work in order to get to a point of confidence. I can, however, confidently say that I'm a deep thinker. I can, sometimes, take a really long time to make up my mind when I'm unsure about things. I'm also cautious in nature, which would also play a part.

Again, I believe I'm a resilient person, and I've always been able to rely on myself in that regard. I hustle, I give things my all, and I trust my ability to achieve almost anything given enough time. Perhaps, this time, I overestimated my ability to play the long game; to make peace with the proverbial boogeyman.

Pick any one of those answers. They might all well just be true.

I am the ws, 7 years out.

I started to respond yesterday but I wasn’t sure if I should or not. I want to say I have great empathy for the things you have said in this thread. Much of what you say has been a fear of mine as we have taken this journey through reconciliation.

It takes honesty from both sides to start the repairs. It also takes honesty from both sides to start a divorce. It seems like you all have just hoped time will cure it. And truth is it takes active participation from both parties to do their healing as well as both to intentionally rebuild a marriage. But as you certainly see, holding it in and not communicating doesn’t resolve anything.

Why would a WS care now? It just feels like "had my fun, whoops got carried away!" "Didn't mean for you to find out!" "Gonna keep working overtime doing little things to try and make up for something that can never be undone." "Still need you for some things, just not an honest relationship." Maybe that's crass, but bahhhh.

I think it’s natural to feel that way without the work a ws has to do as well as the communication streaming both ways.

I think you are imagining what she would say and how she would feel and lumping it as truth. The reality can look very different. I can say to you with a straight face that I never causemed myself as much damage by doing anything like I have by having an affair. It’s my only deep regret in my life. Not only is it the worst thing I have ever done but it robbed me of happiness for years on end. not one moment was worth it and I have no fond feelings about that time.

Now, I am not your wife. And she could feel precisely what you describe. But without open conversations you really don’t know what she thinks about it.

And you say she isn’t interested in an honest relationship, but you are holding everything in. That’s not honest either.

I am not trying to give you any lecture, I feel terribly for you as this weight you are carrying, but you have to look deeper at why you carry it. And you have to work on yourself on it. Not for her, but for you.

I like steven’s advice. Show her what you have written. Let it all out. It will be a relief.

I think you should consider working with a therpist in this. Not for marriage counseling, but for individuals. I don’t mean that in a stigmatized way. I just think there is a lot here that you are not sure how to cope with and I think if you find someone good they can help you unravel it in a step by step way. It’s hard to find clarity just swimming around in your own thoughts.

I wish you the best no matter what you decide. But I urge you to start speaking your side of things. If she has worked through her issues, she will want to help you work through yours. If she has not, then she will be defensive and start the gaslighting. There you will have at least a piece of the puzzle. That’s the other issue- you only have parts of the puzzle and you have had to imagine what the other pieces look like.

Your wife has stayed too these years, and it sounds like in that time you have withheld love and affection because you understandably don’t have it. Why do you think she has stayed? I think whatever her reasons are they must be strong, because all this time she likely craves the same things you mentioned…like feeling loved. I am not saying that to make you feel badly, she caused it. But I am saying it because it’s been seven years she likely does feel strongly about staying in the marriage and may even see an opportunity to work through it to have a happier marriage. If not, that’s it, she will have given you clarity that it’s not worth staying a minute longer.

[This message edited by hikingout at 11:40 PM, Wednesday, August 28th]

Double post

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:52 AM, Thursday, August 29th]

KR,

Did you DNA your kids, get STD testing, have your WW write out a timeline subject to polygraph.

Did you as a minimum expose and confront the OM or was it OMs?

One question is why does your WW stay with you if she shows you this level of contempt.

I’m going back to your thread title. So quit holding it all in! Let her have it. All the words and all the pain. Really at this point and the way you feel, do you really have much more mentally to lose? You already know that continuing on like this isn’t sustainable.
Get yourself over the finish line. I’m not saying that line equals divorce. I don’t know what is beyond that line, and neither do you I don’t think. But I do think you are peeking over that line now, trying to figure out what is beyond it. Maybe a Little scared to actually see what it is.
I do think you will feel a relief you haven’t felt in a long time by doing this.

I let it out. She started a bit of darvo, not in an extremely offensive way, but still. I dont have much capacity to entertain that stuff atm, regardless of my witholdings, so I just called it out and that was that. I got triggered that i was reading Spring’s book on how to forgive, and she was reading some fiction. It made me feel like Im still carrying all of the burden and doing all of the hard work. That didnt sit well with me.

I then let her read a pasted copy of what I said here. That was a gut punch. Even in my despair, it doesnt feel good to hurt another person. Lots of tears and all that stuff. Ironically, she said "i want you to be happy, but i dont want to imagine you with someone else, I just can’t!" I said "yeah, tell me about it.

We hugged some. We talked. Its all out there. Living one day at a time, even all these years later.

Ok good start. Now make her live up to her role of being more than 50% owner of the solution.

Ask her if she wants you as a partner and if she's willing to give you what you need in order to start AND FINISH the rebuilding process.

Ask her to document a first draft of what she thinks and researches what is important to do to help you heal and build something new.

Is she willing to divorce and maybe try again down the road? Ask her what ramifications she feels she has had from her cheating. Ask her if she feels those ramifications are sufficient to doing what she did.

Then tell her your thoughts on that same question.

There will not be a perfect fix to what has happened. If it were me, as I said in my previous post, and I felt as you have described, I'd tell her that while there is a possibility for a future together, it's not in the current marriage which was so damaged by her choices.

So ask her if she's interested enough in a life with you to move forward under that idea, that you may or should divorce now and get some individual counseling and then if both of you are willing, try again in a different way.

This is just a. Start and hopefully will get you in a better place in life over the next 7 years.

I think your conversation was a good start.

I agree that a written expectation in R is very useful. That's something that helped my wife and me a lot.

As a former "hold it in, then blow up when I can't" type, I promise you it's better to let the steam out continuously. You don't have the big talk, cry, let it out session, then go back to normal. You are still unhappy, you have just let it out for a bit. You can go back to bottling it up until it overwhelms you again, or you can take advantage of it being out there.