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put your life during the A into perspective after you found out? As you can see from my tag, I had a lot to deal with.

I'm still processing all those times of my life that all make sense now. I mean my H's past behavior, us, our relationship, where he was, what and who he was doing, where our money was going.

How long does this last? What was your experience of "processing" everything?? Now, that my anger left, I'm left with remembering the past...It doesn't hurt as much, but it's so bittersweet because we've both chosen to R.

It is a journey that's for sure. My DD was July 2012 and I just found this site last week. I wish I would have found it back when I first found out. It helps so much that others understand exactly what I have been going through. I had such bad anxiety and panic attacks throughout this past year. Always putting pieces together in my mind and the hurt would start all over. I don't think we ever get ALL the answers but my mistake was not asking all of my questions a year ago. We are now 1 year into R but it has been rocky b/c he said he wanted R but wanted to put all of that behind us. It was selfish of him b/c he didn't want to answer my questions b/c he was embarassed and full of guilt. Now that he senses what type of pain he really caused me he now says he is willing to do whatever it takes to help me to heal. This is going to require that he answer alot of questions for me and help me to put the pieces together and understand the timeline. It is very important. I'm sorry for what you are going through and with time it does get a little better.

I think I am 20 months from DDay now and almost a year from last broken NC. I have chosen to remember the great times in a positive light and have shelved the others into what I have considered 'when our M broke down.'

I guess in a way I feel that I grieved our old M and our innocence. We are starting a new relationship, one that I hope we can bring our new healthier skills and coping mechanisms into.

A great article was posted last week:

“memory is a form of internal enactment of whatever is being recalled,” how do we retroactively create a life story out of events that were never experienced? There is a disturbing bifurcation: memory no longer corresponds to objective fact.
As a psychiatrist, I can tell you that it’s often a painstaking process to reconstruct a coherent personal history piece by piece — one that acknowledges the deception while reaffirming the actual life experience. Yet it’s work that needs to be done. Moving forward in life is hard or even, at times, impossible, without owning a narrative of one’s past. Isak Dinesen has been quoted as saying “all sorrows can be borne if you put them in a story or tell a story about them.” Perhaps robbing someone of his or her story is the greatest betrayal of all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/great-betrayals.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

13 months out now....starting to gain perspective. Still hurts daily....but the shock of my wife's decisions to commit adultery is all but gone. I accept that.....it took me a great deal of time and lots of prayers to reconcile that she did in fact sleep with another married man, father of 5. Was hard to imagine two people could be married, drop respective kids off at school, then meet up and do it.

But I now see a bigger picture....my wifes honesty, prayer, weekly counseling, strong desire to break my contributing part of our pattern and lots of reading have helped me gain perspective.

God be with us all.

No answer yet - still working on it. Besides, perspective changes every moment.

Life keeps moving fast.

How long does this last?

For me, I have 19 years to process so I don't think it will end, just too much to do at one time, it will take years imo as things come up, as memories are brought to the surface, as I "reminisce" with the kids about things, etc.

What was your experience of "processing" everything??

For me, there have been huge ah ha moments of things falling into place, and there have been small subtle things shifting. I have dealt with the anger of basing life decisions on lies, to the comfort of having empathy for myself doing the best I could while walking blindly during all those years.

Grace

I am not sure I will ever be through processing my WH#2's LTA. He is not forthcoming with the details, so basically it is things that give me the AhHa moments and then I have to process them and put them away until something else surfaces. It is very tiresome and unfortunately we are not going to be one of those couples that have a totally remorseful spouse who is trying to help me heal. He says he is sorry and hugs me when a new revolation comes up, but he is too ashamed to admit details until cornered with them. So I don't think we will fit into the 2-5 yr mark on here for R, if that's even what you can call it.

I am not sure how long it lasts but I came on the site today in the similar state of mind. Last night I was doing the exact same thing analyzing where she was, what she was doing, the decisions she was making. I started triggering (mind movies) and got in a horrible mood. I thought most of my anger was gone but apparently its not. I have more processing and forgiving to do. Its interesting now that my WW is in IC her perspective of herself during her A is that she was sick mostly mentally unstable and psychologically a mess. I am glad she is finally really taking IC seriously but sometimes I just get down and thats ok. Part of the process I suppose. I hope it fades and I am sure it will eventually. Just think about where we all were at the begining to where we are now. It gets better. Just takes time to heal for both parties.

Ladies_first, an excellent article that I just sent to my fwh's email.

Wow, talk about hitting the nail on the head.
Thank you.

Traveling w/ fwh to A City & Hotel all week. Yippee

[This message edited by fourever at 5:50 PM, October 15th (Tuesday)]

As a veteran at 5 years Out from DDay I can say I was actually relieved when I finally had proof.

During the A NOTHING I did was good enough what I cooked how I parented, fuck even how I shaved. It was insane and I felt I was loosing my mind. When I finally ha proof I knew it wasn't me It was him what he was doing.

But my concern Of course was wh was he so miserable. Why wasn't I good enough? How come I couldn't make him happy ? Hell read my profile you will see that I questioned this and felt if I had only done more... Funny thing is, it had NOTHING to do with me. He was miserable because he was broken. Not my fault. He had to do the work. He did. I was horribly codependent though and part of our healing our M meant that I couldn't just work to make him happy. I had to find my own happiness on my own. That was my hard work in R and that was a bitch. But I came out stronger happier And knew in my soul that no matter what happened in my life I would survive it and find happiness again.

[This message edited by tushnurse at 6:17 PM, October 15th (Tuesday)]

Everything about not only my marriage but MYSELF at the time that A was taking place seems like it existed in a parallel universe. Life is so different now, my marriage is so different now and even I feel different now. I consider myself a pretty sharp and intuitive person and it was really a blow to my pride to find out what was going on behind my back. I was angry with myself because I stifled my suspicions so often. I gave WH the benefit of the doubt when I knew better. I let him gaslight me long before I even realized what he was doing. Discovering the A just made everything about that time in my life seem like a lie. Our MC tried to tell me that I shouldn't feel that there was a dark cloud hovering over every good/happy memory that we created while the A was taking place because despite the A going on on the background, those times we shared were still fun, were still good but you know what they weren't? . . . they weren't authentic. They weren't genuine. That was lost. How COULD they be when there was so much deceit surrounding every single moment . . . every single day. The innocence, the exclusivity of our marriage was just destroyed.

I disregarded red flags . . . they all make sense now. I'm not really angry anymore. Not like I was. I am not really hurt, per se, anymore. My feelings about my marriage and even WH have changed so much since DDay that so many of the things that sparked dramatic emotional reactions before I now feel sort of numb to. Numb or indifferent, I'm not sure which, I guess.

WH and I chose to R. He was the ideal remorseful spouse. I still love him with all of my heart but the A truly did change the way that I feel about him and our M. He doesn't take my breath away the way he used to. It's not as intense as it used to be, our relationship It's like my image of him and our marriage has been tarnished. THAT has been very hard to process. I loved the lust, the passion, the admiration I once felt. That really got kicked down a few notches after all of this.

But, he is a better person all around now than he was before. He is a better husband and a better father. So that has been a positive change.

IDK, this truly is a long process but time really does bring healing. Every day that goes by brings with it more peace, more distance from this horrible ordeal, more time growing closer with WH and recreating our marriage . . .

THIS

I still love him with all of my heart but the A truly did change the way that I feel about him and our M. He doesn't take my breath away the way he used to. It's not as intense as it used to be, our relationship It's like my image of him and our marriage has been tarnished. THAT has been very hard to process. I loved the lust, the passion, the admiration I once felt. That really got kicked down a few notches after all of this.

That sums me up post DDay. Thanks kourt090

Part of my trouble was that, with regards to my H's wayward choices, there never was a "before the A" period for us. I've been trying to figure out what the reality of "us" was in the beginning of our relationship. What was I to him back then? I am having a hard time grasping it, and I can't ask (yet), because he gets defensive. I don't want to be too negative ("oh, I was someone who was annoying him and he didn't even think of me as existing") or too positive ("he was in love with me"). Neither extreme are true. So what was it?

I do know that I was a lot more committed to him than he was to me. So I'm guessing that our connection during the 3 or so years of his wayward behavior wasn't real. It didn't exist. I was waltzing with my own shadow. So we're making a brand new connection after 3 years of him treating me like I was expendable? What the hell kind of connection did he think we had back then? That would help to put some perspective on it.

Someone once noted: has your WS ever asked you what you went through during their affair period? What your life was like? A very telling question.