Hey Uzername :)
We are almost 7 years out....for me
how the hell do you decide that it was OK or that you're willing to accept?! i can't even imagine that. seems like i owe it to myself to not stand for that and to protect myself from her...forever.
It will never be OK that my husband cheated and getting to acceptance is not accepting that it was ok, it is accepting that it happened. Understanding where your truth is and allowing yourself to take a leap of faith and try to work through it and make things better.
It doesn't happen overnight. It's a process. We didn't wake up the day after dday with aha moments. It took time. We both had choices to make, we both had to figure out if we loved each other enough and had the desire to change the marriage and ourselves.
We BOTH had to be all in. I had hope, tiny pieces of hope I kept in my back pocket. I watched, I waited for the other shoe to drop.
But he stood up and he started to do the work and heavy lifting. He removed doubts when I had questions, he was transparent, honest, open and vulnerable.
After about 5 months we both decided to R.
I hadn't forgiven, accepted and damn sure never said it was ok. But I decided to jump in and heal myself. I slowly opened up and we got things back we had lost little by little. Bits and pieces of us came back stronger and better.
He wasn't the only one that had to change. I had to look inside me, be honest, change what I had inside that was broken.
It seemed like it took forever. When it does you grab hold of that hope in your pocket and dig in and work harder.
The best case, IMO are 2 healthy people that make a decision about their future based on truth and open communication. One person cannot make the marriage alone.
Do the healing, give yourself time to find out where your heart is and where your wife's true intentions lie. Once the 2 of you have had time to process and heal a bit you can make a decision based on your truth.
If you do forgive it sneaks up on you, at least it did me. It wasn't a huge event....it just became a natural progression on our journey.
Know whatever road you take you will be ok.
Just be good to yourself.
[This message edited by karmahappens at 3:17 PM, March 20th (Thursday)]