SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi everyone. This is my first post. My H had an affair. It all hit the fan about a year ago, but since then, we have made good progress and I @think@ we might make it. Anyway, I hate the OW. So so much. This is obviously stopping me from truly healing. It's easier to hate her than to hate my H.

What I hate the most is that she seemingly has 'got away with it'. I know her H found out and unless he had actual evidence, I'm sure she watered down her version for him. She had an affair with another guy before my H. I fantasise about telling her H about the other affair - I won't as the other guy is married with kids.

This is what I do, which I know is stupid - but it's like a scratch I have to itch - I look at all her social media pages (she has a lot). I obviously can only see stuff she makes public - but she is the type that adds numerous selfles and pics of her and her H snuggled up together. It makes me so mad! My H and I have been through hell over this and looks to me like she hasn't a care in the world. I want to cause her pain (emotional) and her H. Evil to think so but I just feel such hatred towards her.

Help! Anyone felt similar?

Cassie, first of all welcome to the forums. You'll get great support from others who have been in the same place as you have.

Secondly, I know exactly how you feel.

I'm just over 5 months out from my D-Day. I can tell you that the first few months I wanted to do the same things you describe, but also physical pain.

My wife's one night stand was out of town and she only got his first name so I can't investigate that person. The short term physical affair she had however was someone from the gym she went to only about a mile from our home. I don't know the guy, but fantasized often about hurting him physically and emotionally by finding his wife and telling her.

I started by leaving a note on his windshield at the gym that said I know what he did with my wife and that we are trying to reconcile. I said if he ever made any attempts to contact my wife again, that I would contact his. I had hoped that would be the cathartic thing to help me move on.

I found myself obsessing about him (never saw him in person). I too was checking his Facebook page often (although he barely ever posted anything at all). Still, I would stare at the two pictures he had and I would feel seething anger and humiliation. I was doing nothing good for myself or my marriage. That energy should have been spent on my healing. I ended up closing my Facebook account because I couldn't curb my destructive habit.

I found myself parked in the gym lot with a baseball bat many times hoping I would run into him. I never did. It appears he stopped going there after my letter. I even went for a walk one day in the general direction of where he lives (I don't know his exact address) with the hopes of seeing his van. Then I planned on ringing the bell hoping his wife would answer so I could devastate his family with the news. I wanted them to hurt like I was. When I didn't find him, I just kept walking until the rage passed... Which was 15 miles later.

My point is, I expended a lot of energy on a person that will never be a part of my life again, and will probably go on to do this to another family. He is not worth one second of my time. I realized that all my efforts should be directed at the healing of my marriage, my kids and myself.

Your H's former OW doesn't give one care for you, and you shouldn't care one bit about her. As the saying goes, it's like you're drinking poison and hoping your enemy dies. Never works.

I wish you nothing but peace and strength as you continue to rebuild your marriage.

Edited to comply with forum rules... Sorry SI staff.

[This message edited by siyotanka at 10:34 PM, June 29th (Sunday)]

Thanks for replying. You are so right about drinking the poison and waiting for them to die. You have prompted me to think that my obsession with her, I think, is based on fear. I fear she is better than me - stronger, happier, prettier. I have accepted some weak behaviour from my H and I am fearful that I believe I can't do any better - like I couldn't have a H who wouldn't chose someone else over me? Sorry, this is all raw again for me. Thanks for the wise words. I have to log off and see to the kids now.

Hi Cassie!

I'm 4 months out from my DDay and trust me! What I wouldn't do the physically hurt this b!tch my F cheated on me with who is a MW. I obsessed with her too. How could this woman target my Fiance just because she was using her Husband for citizenship. I obsessed with her social sites too and she's the kind of girl that pays for "modeling" pictures when she doesn't even look like them I person because of Photoshop.

But no matter how much I want her to suffer, she is. Her husband divorced her and is trying to get her kicked out of the country, she was pretty much trying to use my F for shelter and convinced his family to hate me so they can convince him to leave me for her. But after our DDay my F realized what shitty scumbag thing he's done and kicked her out of his family's house.

The fact this MW was living at my F's family's house really pissed me off! And I wanted to write her the nastiest email and do everything to make sure she suffered. But then I realized, I don't want to waste my time on this pathetic POS. I know she's struggling and will continue to struggle. I just figured I don't want to waste my time on someone who ruined my relationship when my F and I are trying hard to not fix it, but build a newer and better one. So I stopped looking at her paged and blocked her and my F's entire Family for siding with her(they disowned my F and took her in)

I'm not saying I'm not going to punch her if I ever run into her, but stop obsessing over the person who helped hurt you. And focus on rebuilding and repairing what this whore destroyed. Obsessing over her will just put up road blocks on your road to recovery. You guys seem you're on the right path,and I wish you all the best. And this OW will get what's coming to her!

Thanks for that. Reading this site is both awful and wonderful. How are you and your F rebuilding? We are doing ok - but I have this seething rage still. I was reading another post before - maybe I am angry at myself for not leaving? idk. Thanks for your thoughts tho, it all helps.

Siyotanka and Jamieeatsworld,

Please remember that this is the Reconciliation Forum and that there is no OP namecalling or venting.

Thank you.

I get it. This was me, too, and it did nothing but make healing harder.

I think it's time to block OW's FB page, or get rid of social media for awhile (I know...GASP!!!!!) to wean yourself off of her.

Another thing that helps for me is to visualize what I would want OW to see if she peeked into my life (which she never will - she lives on the other side of the planet.) I'm sure she would be THRILLED to see me looking at her pictures, or obsessing over her in any way, or crying at how inadequate I feel because of her. But what would I want her to see? I would want her to see me on the days I feel confident in the knowledge that AP will never measure up. Or even better, the days when I realize just how insignificant she is. I want her to see my beautiful family as the strong, resilient unit we are - becoming closer and more authentic every day. I want her to look at me and see a strong, confident, happy person. I want her to see my marriage and recognize that what she had was a ridiculous, farsical imitation.

I get that it's a little sad and ironic to use AP as a tool to get to a place where her opinion means nothing, but if I get in a funk, it works. I want to live the awesome life that I know would make her miserable to witness. That desire can keep me moving forward on my particularly stuck days.

[This message edited by Zengirl at 9:22 AM, June 29th (Sunday)]

Yes. Let it go. Know that they will meet karma all on their own.

I do look still but only to know what they look like. As we age people change and I dont want to even be socially polite to them even by mistake. Let it go they (ow) will meet karma if they continue the same path of destruction.

Focus on the good in life.

Oh yeah. I have so many plans. How to really get to her. I know she was emotionally invested and WH was not. I have all sorts of scenarios that I fantasize about. I believe in karma 100%, I just want to nudge it along a bit. I try to remind myself that she got the worst of my WH. Granted, so did I, but I also got the best. She can go forth knowing that even offering no strings attached blow jobs in his truck after work, he still dropped her like a hot potato. But yeah, I still spend way too much energy plotting her destruction.

Cassie, I completely relate. We are getting ready to move across the country and I so badly want to call wh's hr department and tell them what is going on. The ow has moved on to screwing wh's boss (wh was her boss during the affair, now she reports to his boss) who is also married with children. I fantasize about calling and outing the whole thing and I fantasize about having a knock down drag out fight with her. (of course I win) absolutely feel the same about this as you do with the fears and insecurity. Clearly I don't deserve having a faithful marriage and I don't think I'd find anyone better. Terrible place to be. I definitely am staying for our kids right now, one of whom is going through some issues. I hate feeling like I'm only staying until the point where I feel like the kids and I would be okay. The worst is that wh is a model wh. Remorseful, not defensive, trying to make me feel good, going to ic and Mc, etc. I just feel like maybe this is a deal-breaker for me. :'(

The home wrecker is away on vacation. I have fantasies of going over to her house and spraying all her shrubs, plants, and lawn with round up. I would also love to pull the gifts WH gave her out into the road and set them on fire.

Just passing fantasies, however!

EVERYONE -

This is not a vent thread. Respect the original author's intent so that we are not forced to move this to General.

Dear Cassie

I understand your journey very well. I still (2.5 years) have no evidence of any post-infidelity fall out for the AP. I have had a lot of ups and downs with this.

I put a lot of work in trying to disclose the infidelity to the other BS. But still do not know for sure that he received any of the correspondence. I believe he knows. I believe they either rug swept, or like you, think she successfully and completely minimized her actions and painted my H. as a crazy over attached stalker.

For the first year and a great part of the second all this haunted me.

I would dream about her and her children.

The AP became my obsession far longer than my husband was engaged in his infidelity with her.

I know (and knew at the time) this gave away so much of my power and energy that I needed, my children needed and my marriage needed.

I had to develop a lot of discipline. I still check her social media. I still want to know where she is and what she is doing. But now I check only every couple of months or so.

I am not an example of good discipline in this regard - but it is a big (BIG) improvement on what I was like in the first two years.

Although in that time there many moments I was overwhelmed by loathing towards my husband - I couldn't sustain it. She was a much safer place to 'park' my disdain.

I understand now that she became a symbol to me - a 2 dimensional representation of all my feelings in those first traumatic months. She became a cardboard cut-out frozen in time. And I would take her out and visit with her each time I needed to vent, purge, grieve or rage.

She was became a useful tool. And reducing her to that over the last 9 mths or so has been much more helpful. Her image or the memory of her is just a representation of all that pain and anguish. 'She' is no longer real and doesn't breathe or have any powers.

I am not suggesting I don't any longer have bad days. I do - and she remains my small indulgence.

One day I will take that paper cut out and burn it up - won't need it anymore. I hope it is not too far away.

I do know - that no event in her life can touch or alter my reality. The AP having an epiphany or her marriage standing or falling, means nothing to me or mine.

What matters - all that matters - is each step I take - who I am in my world - the ethical choices I make each day - and fulfilling every bit of potential I have as a woman, mother, wife, daughter, sister / friend, citizen, employee . That is all that matters.

The affair, my husbands choices, that woman - never took any of that from me. There were days it felt like it - but for better or worse even on those days - who I chose to be laid with me.

I can tell you honestly if anyone said to me I would write this 18months ago I would have not believed them.

I hope you continue to heal. Feeling loathing and hatred towards her is ok. This woman helped your husband to break apart your world. Expressing your feelings is very important and it is still early for you.

This is a place you can talk about those things. But the road to reconciliation is as much with yourself as it is in your marriage.

Look into yourself and to your own horizons. Many here said to me in the early days ... Time is friend... and that is a truth Cassie. Time will take you further away from the pain. and Time will open up your horizons little by little.

blessings to you

Meg.

"Drinking the poison and waiting for them to die." Thank you. I so need this conversation right now. I need a giant smack to my head. I can't stop hating my fWH's OW. It drives him nuts when I refer to her as "his," but that's how I feel. I feel like he shared himself with her and for seven months she was his wife, not me. She figuratively came into my home, my family, my intimate world, and, as someone in SI so perfectly phrased it, helped herself to my husband. But the reality is that the onus to protect my M is on my husband, not her. She didn't say vows to me, he did. She didn't come into my home and take my husband, my H opened the door to my family and brought her inside. And handed her my one and only protected treasure, which she happily plundered and destroyed. And, yes, she pursued him, but he embraced the whole pile of sin and spiritual destruction. She owes me nothing in life. She has an obligation to humanity to be a decent human being, but that is her free choice to follow that code, or not. She has to go through life living with her behavior and decisions and the rubble she leaves behind. Her inner world has to be a mess and I don't know how she cannot be rooted in Maslow's bottom tier. Without integrity, the value of life is as primitive as basic survival.

There's just so much intense pain caused by my fWH and his complicit AP, and the swirling black emotions have to go somewhere. When they zero in on my H then I battle cognitive dissonance. Extreme love, extreme hate, love, hate, love until my head explodes. Exhausted, I point the laser at the OW, so I can catch my breath. It's so stressful and debilitating to hate someone I love. There are two things that are helping me with this. One is that perfect sentence about drinking poison meant for someone else and the other is from my therapist telling me to hate my fWH's behavior, but love his person. What a giant mess my H handed me. I feel like I'm constantly running around bouncing off the walls inside my head...raging, screaming, crying, running away, dead numb silence, apathy, impulsive blurting out words of pain, spontaneous outpour of love, clinging with need for reassurance, need for space, rejection, fear again, mind movies, haunting text messages… exhaustion. The OW is simple. I'm not all over the place with how I feel about her. I can just hate her. There. Easy. But THAT is not helping me heal.

cassie345, I so understand everything you wrote, including wanting to tell the other BS. It's complete unfairness that we're swimming in a sea of pain that has no visible horizon while the OW seems to be going about life unscathed. I know she's not really, but I don't see it, therefore it's not real to me. What's real to me is that the OW continues to work at the surgery center and no one has a clue what she and my fWH did. She deserves to have a different reputation than the one she has. My H removed himself from that center, so he has no interaction with her anymore. But his partners don't know, so it's only a matter of time that he gets scheduled there again and he doesn't see it until it's too late to move himself to another location. But, H still periodically gets text messages from the other doctors about how she said this or that. It's all benign work-related stuff, but it sends acid pouring through me to see her name. I collapse in crippling emotional devastation and mental overload.

It's a giant mind game. My mantra is listen to the wise. All the books I've read, the sage advice on SI, and my therapist all say it's not about the OW. It's poison to me to think about her, but it's impossible not to. Whether it's my pride (I read her text message making fun of my love of animals), or just the trauma of having lost so much and she was a perpetrator to the crime. I somehow feel like she has something of mine in her possession and I want to go into her world and take it back. But it's not true. She doesn't really and I'm feeding her more of my own personal power and healing by constantly thinking about her. I hope time helps me stop perseverating.

Meg M - that is a beautiful reply.

The AP was my friend, so it is even more complicated. I learned this week that during the affair she told him she wouldn't "be caught dead" in a place my H had bought me a gift certificate the day before the A went PA. She was obviously trying to show how "different" she was than me. She is different all right! My H was so dense. You know where I wouldn't be caught dead? In the backseat of a married man's truck.

Ha ha - I started out on the the healing route, but showed I have a bit of work to do yet in being indifferent. But, I am getting there.

[This message edited by bionicgal at 8:31 AM, June 30th (Monday)]

Do your self a favor. Go look at your social media. Cruse through it as you would her's. Does it tell a story of a woman going through hell with relationship? My guess would be probably not. That's because people cherry pick what they put on their social media sites. She's not going to put her hardships on there. If you go to her pages looking for hardships, you are going to be disappointed. Most people just don't put that stuff on facebook. Instead they put the most exciting, happy moments of their lives. If you try to compare your life to this filtered version you are always going to just end up feel bad. No matter who it is.

Cassie,

I too found myself in the exact same place as you regarding having extreme rage towards my WW's AP. Our R was going great and my WW was extremely remorseful,apologetic,ashamed and sorry for her actions. We had made great progress but, for me, all my anger and rage became focused like a laser on the OM. I found myself stuck on this point and I didn't know how I would ever get past it. In my case, the OM pursued my W and he was single. His only motivation was to have sex with her and he waged a campaign on her that eventually worked. Of course my W was equally to blame but he knew she was married with small children.

I too felt like he got away scot free with no consequences and this made me sick. He was the son of a family friend. All I wanted was an apology. So I began a campaign of exposure to make sure the world knew what kind of person he really is and it finally worked. He called me late one night and apologized profusely and begged me to stop but told me that he would have done the same had he been in my shoes.

All the anger and rage left me instantly with his apology. It was something that I never thought possible and was the single biggest step in my personal recovery. I'm not sure how I would have ever been able to get past this had he not called that night.

ps Feel free to PM me for exposure technique ideas that I used

5 years out from dday1, and yep, still consider it. At least once a week! I want to send her husband all the emails where she made fun of how stupid and worthless he and I were. I also consider going and getting involved with her BH (ultimate RA) But then I'd just be a ww....

It sucks, because she's having all this success and adventure, while I'm crying my way through dday2... When I should have just let her win... I'm angry all over again, with her, because this should have been her dday.

I know all of that is silly...

Have you read How Can I Forgive You (by Spring)? I read it only a few weeks after DDay and am re-reading it now. Very different read for me after 6 months' perspective. I recommend it if you haven't. She devotes a chapter to Acceptance, which she differentiates from Forgiveness. She says, with Acceptance:

You give up your need for revenge but continue to seek a just resolution. When somebody deliberately wrongs you, it's not unusual to want to inflict upon him the pain he inflicted on you. But you should remind yourself that what usually brings lasting satisfaction is not hurting someone but having your own hurt understood and validated...[With retribution] your mind is likely to become a battleground, overrun with fruitless fantasies of revenge that block you from living your life in ways that generate pleasure or meaning...The goal of revenge is to crucify the offender. The goal of Acceptance is to resurrect your best self. Revenge is other-directed. Acceptance is inner-directed. When you contain your obsessions, the offender becomes less important to you than you are. Getting back or getting even becomes less important than getting well.

When I read those words nearly 6 months ago, I thought "nice idea, but nowhere near there yet." I burned with hatred for OW. I had horribly vivid violent fantasies, checked her social media accounts, had obsessive thoughts of how I would ruin her life. This just made me feel worse. It took some time, but I think that in a twisted way all that obsessing and rage was productive in that it showed me how non-productive it was, if that makes sense. Now I am working to focus on my family and me--becoming inner- directed. Not always successful but it's my aim. I'd say Step 1 in this journey is for you to stop looking at the social media accounts. No good will come of that. Try to focus your attention on you and your best self. I promise you will feel better for it.

[This message edited by veronique12 at 7:12 AM, July 1st (Tuesday)]