SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

FWH and I just got back from a family vacation that was really great!! We had therapy yesterday and I've been swirling ever since.

There were some triggers that came up in discussing the vacation that tipped our MC off that there was some serious shit that needed to be unpacked. The two hour (!!!) session started with her pinning H down on a few things and ended with her nailing my ass to the wall.

To give the very short version, these are my issues: I hate his job, I hate the life his job tethers me to, I hate that he hasn't had any significant consequences or losses. He still has his job, his standing in the community, his family and me.

I have paid dearly for his transgressions as have my family. His life is markedly better, post-a's.

Our MC said that his job has nothing to do with the decisions he made...he would have made them whatever job he's in. Of course, I vehemently disagreed. She acknowledged that it's all shit and unfair but that...

"This is the price you pay for the life you live."

I spent all night crying over that. Because ultimately, she's right. I have a good life. I have happy, healthy children. I have a remorseful spouse willing to do whatever I need. Our kids see healthy interactions between us, we are loving towards each other. We are a good team and we work hard at co-parenting our kids.

If I ended the marriage, it would be for the past not the present. It would be so confusing for my kids because we have a happy home. We would basically be living two separate lives for the reason that I just can't get over what was done to me.

So that's it. That's the end of my road apparently. I give up the happy healthy home to try and heal my heart, and see my kids 50% of the time...or I keep my kids and home and family intact and just die a little bit more inside everyday of a very broken heart.

There are no answers, no fairness, no justice. He did what he did, and either way I'm the one who pays. It's the price I pay for the life I live.

It fucking sucks.

Oh, I'm so sorry. I know how you feel. I think I will never be "over" it 100%. It really is a scare on my heart. But yes, it is a choice. I too have decided that being with rather than without is my choice ...I guess if I make this choice I DO have to live with it, but I can also make the CHOICE to live it as happy as I can. Nothing left to do but do little by little accept and go on. Yeah, it sucks sometimes. It really does. Never to be able to love the way we did before...but I know I can love better, I have to be true to who I AM, and that means that eventually, I go on and just love.

I am 17 months out and it is still a heart break. But he is a good person, and I know I can be happy again. It is a scare, not a permanent break...there are other scares too and I am doing ok, this is just one more.

Keep posting, I will support you, and others, and we will ALL get through it somehow. hugs.

Thanks MoreThanTrying...I appreciate your optimism!!

Very eloquently put morethantrying. Maybe it's a question of What do you want to do? You love him and he loves you. You have to make the choice to either let go and move on...or keep hurting the hurt. Hold your head up high and don't give a damn about what everyone else says and does or act. Be You!!

Question to ponder...Do you think healing would come as a result of leaving? In other words, why do you feel that your choice is A. to stay in a currently good marriage and family, but where you're in pain from his betrayal, or B. leave this happy family and heal?

At a year and a half it is expected for you to still have hurt. It would be surprising if you didn't. It doesn't have to always be this way though. Time will take care of some of it and you can work to do your part. Is it fair that you have to go through this when it was not a consequence of any choice you made? No. It's soooooo not fair. The positive side of many traumas is that the people who go through them often end up living a much more intentional, authentication life. I hope this will be the case for you. I hope as time smooth the scars you find yourself living a fully connected, authentic life and looking back at this era as a tragic experience but one that helped shape the life you now live. It will always be a part of your story but does not have to always BE your story. Not the sum total of it anyway. I will be a good thick chapter but just one chapter.

(((918mama)))

I am struggling with this choice too, stay and keep it happy for the kids and try to live with the man who destroyed me more than I can imagine but for some stupid reason I still love, or leave the one man I have ever loved and wreck my kids lives because it hurts too much.

Either way I lose. I fucking hate this

I am 5 years from the last dday. I still feel the same way. I feel like I got a life sentence. For a crime HE committed.

I feel the same way. I have a choice between life as the status quo, I have remorse for husband, but then there's the other life and I could just walk away from everything and feel like I've put it behind me.

I thought it was best to try to stay together for the kids, but I don't know if that was what was best for me. Or them really.

I see what his A did to our girls too. H is oblivious to that. He just thinks it's all good. He's not cheating anymore.

I find myself fantasizing about another life. About a life where I don't have to think about him, where the very person whom I love and have loved is my biggest reminder, my biggest trigger. A life where I have peace.

I love him, he loves me. I don't know if we're really happy with each other. It seems there are some bright spots, good times, but for the most part we're just going through the motions.

I have a good life. I have happy, healthy children. I have a remorseful spouse willing to do whatever I need. Our kids see healthy interactions between us, we are loving towards each other. We are a good team and we work hard at co-parenting our kids.

If I ended the marriage, it would be for the past not the present. It would be so confusing for my kids because we have a happy home. We would basically be living two separate lives for the reason that I just can't get over what was done to me.

So that's it. That's the end of my road apparently. I give up the happy healthy home to try and heal my heart, and see my kids 50% of the time...or I keep my kids and home and family intact and just die a little bit more inside everyday of a very broken heart.

There are no answers, no fairness, no justice. He did what he did, and either way I'm the one who pays. It's the price I pay for the life I live.

It fucking sucks.

You have summed up how I am feeling and what I am struggling with in a nutshell! ^^^This EXACTLY!!

It drives me insane.

{{{918Mama}}}

918 - I'm so sorry. I could have written parts of your post. So could have my husband. And although we have children, they're grown.

I sit here on vacation with all of them under the same roof thinking I would be giving these kinds of things up too. Or he'd be doing this with another woman and my children.

And for what, something he did over two years ago?

I'm not being mistreated now. Are we deliriously happy? No. In fact when we get home, i'm going to ask him if he could take me or leave me, because it feels like that sometimes, even though we make plans for our future, make love, have great times together.

And it's 2.5 years later and I still woke up with a nightmare of me not knowing where he is or how he feels about me. The time he treated me the best is after I confessed. He was home every night at 5, so very attentive, worried that I would leave, etc. Now, he said it would hurt but never as badly as when he first found out. So, does that mean he isn't in 100%? not sure. sorry t/j...

I think what you are feeling is the real acceptance we all have to get to - that our lives were changed forever. We're not living the dream we wanted to, what we had mapped out for ourselves. My leaving him now would be because the affairs were dealbreakers, and that he can't have me because he did that. Well, that punishes me as well. I don't really want my life to change because of his dumbshittedness. But is that enough? Is it for you?

hugs honey!!

Strange, I went back to re-read your post after I had finished my reply... and what does my eye fall on? Your tagline:

Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be. -- Sonia Ricotti

Yup; I could have written that post myself. Sorry we are all struggling with this. The way that I stayed in the beginning was due to something that my IC said. She said, "You are hurting tremendously right now, and you are going to have to heal from this. It will be a process. You have to go through this process, and you can do it alone, or you can do it with the help of your husband."

She knew that i had a husband who had ended the affair and wanted more than anything to fix what he had done. He was in IC and MC with me, and so I stayed. We are doing far better than we ever had before the affair, and certainly better than the 7 weeks that he was in the affair, but mourning the loss of what I thought we had, thinking about what he has actually done can be paralyzing. Why do I go there? We have come so far. My husband has worked so hard to heal his brokenness and heal himself and to help to heal me. We are actually functioning so well together, and making a conscious effort to live a better life, focus on ourselves, work as a team, etc. So how do we reconcile in our minds the betrayal of the person we trusted most in the world to have our backs with the new life that we worked so hard for and deserve??? Strength to all going through this....

[This message edited by Neverwudaguessed at 8:01 AM, July 18th (Friday)]

(((918mama)))

After a good weekend I often regress into pain....sounds like you may have done the same thing after a good vacation. I believe it happens because we find the courage to lower the walls sometimes and it feels good. THEN an "oh crap" moment occurs because their is still pain buried deeper than we ever thought could be buried. Happens because our spouses hurt us deeper than we ever thought we could be hurt. Often times the pain of adultery rolls back and ties to pre-M pain....pain that we buried long ago and had either forgot about or denied we ever had. (oh the surprises within me!).

Couple thoughts....

I spent all night crying over that. Because ultimately, she's right. I have a good life. I have happy, healthy children. I have a remorseful spouse willing to do whatever I need. Our kids see healthy interactions between us, we are loving towards each other. We are a good team and we work hard at co-parenting our kids.

Careful on this line of thinking....could be a start of true healthy mature intimacy or a start of a "great roomate" relationship. Two very different creatures. One healthy to nurture and model for your kids, the other.....not.

The whole "staying for the kids"? I buy into that but there is a nuance here. It is far healthier to stay in a COMMITTED MARITAL RELATIONSHIP than to just stay married. KWIM? One has a hopeful attitude of "Okay, so we aren't where we want to be but we are BOTH committed to improving every day"....the other is a defeatest attitude of "it is what it is" (noticeably lacking in hope).

Your counselor is spot on with regards to "if not her at his work, it would be the clerk at the filling station or a girl at church". My wifes OM was not the cause of my wifes affair...her ability and desire to say "yes" to it was. Adultery, like all sin, is selfish in nature. Even though it takes two to make adultery happen....my wife was in it for what it gave her. The OM was in it for what it gave him. Sure, lots of lies to the contrary were woven to make it SEEM like something it wasnt...this had to take place in order for sin to be chosen. And this is what your therapist means by "this is the life you live with the choices you make". Don't JUST apply that to your choices....make sure you fully understand and accept your husbands life has grown in the same manner.

Plus side to this? We CAN change!!!! We have to choose differently. For me that meant going through the pain of breaking my CoD tendencies....it feels healthier to break free from them but also makes me feel very naked and exposed. Learning that painful does NOT mean "unhealthy" is relatively new to me. I spent a lifetime avoiding pain...and I am paying the price for MY choices regarding how I did this.

My wife choosing adultery was a product of a lifetime of coping as she has. Adultery is very much the fruit of many choices....not a singular one.

"Adultery is not a symptom of a broken marriage...a broken marriage is a symptom of a persons ability to choose adultery."--therapist.

2 years out here....pain is still very present but I am healing. Flatlined123...was disheartening to hear that 5 years out you still feel as 918mama feels. Peace be with you.

God is with us all.

[This message edited by blakesteele at 8:03 AM, July 18th (Friday)]

Okay, so we aren't where we want to be but we are BOTH committed to improving every day"..

with this, comes a pricetag of the acceptance you'll need to do to stay. It is almost too big for me. Yes, i'm getting healthier but so? He still did it. IT still happened. Can we be better? Maybe.

Your MC is right, your H was the problem, not the job. The job just offered opportunity. You are going to have to decide if you can forgive him at this point.

It has taken me the better part of two years to figure out the answers to what you are struggling with right now. This stuff isn't easy.

First of all - I think that your MC was out of line with what she said. She totally minimized your feelings rather then trying to work them through and get you to a better place of healing.

That said....

I hate that he hasn't had any significant consequences or losses.

Can you tell me how a public or life altering significant consequence or loss would have created a more healing environment to you?

"its not fair" is not a great argument because the mere fact SI exists is not fair. However, what you can choose to do after the fact could change your outcome.

Also, his loss is you. You are physically there, but he still has a LONG way to go to actually earn you back. A good job, a good home, and a good life is really not much when you can't share it fully with the person that you love.

His consequences are underneath and behind closed doors - and sometimes, those are more painful then the public ones.

All I can say is I remember feeling that way, for a good, long time. I don't any more. It probably took....4 years to get out of that. It lessened over that time, of course.

I was on the five year healing track, for sure.

It sounds to me like you have the fundamentals in place. And now, you wait. You keep working the process, you keep growing together, you keep layering good memories over the bad.

I liken it to creating a pearl. The center is just a grain of sand (the affair), but over time and with effort, you put layers and layers and layers of beautiful over it and it creates someting quietly lovely.

Great post rebreather! The waiting can be excruciating for ppl. I suppose as long as they get to a place where they're good either way, that is the key...

Rebreather.....LOVE the pearl example. Helps me visualize my sitch better. Thanks!

Peace

The waiting can be excruciating for ppl

It fucking sucks.

I wish I could fast-forward many of you through years 3 and 4.

Beautiful expression of a common quandary, 918Mama. Reminds me of the Talking Heads lyrics?, "How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful wife (husband)." Many of us get on that marriage train young, giddy, and full of optimism; but without a clue :). Then we are slapped in the face by reality and have no idea how to get a "do-over". I went so far as to ask my husband to quit his job and when is enough money enough money? He looked at me like I was crazy and said, "It's never enough."

Hugs to you.