The following is my story and what happened as the result of my wife’s EA and eventual PA. I posted it on the SI subreddit some time back and have had some readers suggest I post it here. So here it is. It is a copy and paste from the reddit and it’s long but maybe it will help others.
I have been reading this sub for over a year now. Oddly, it was my wife who suggested it. See, its always concerned her that I never really spoke in depth about how her affair hurt me and changed me to anyone other than her. She is afraid, I think, that I might harbor some repressed hatred for her. I don’t. It’s like touching a hot stove. Do it once and you never purposely do it again. I am that way about my emotions. I am not void of emotions. I just choose to keep some of them safe within myself. Anyway, I recently created a user name and began posting because one particular story for whatever reason hit me harder than some others I read. I spoke with my wife and showed her something I wrote to this user and asked her if she was okay if I posted our story. She was okay with it and actually encouraged me to include more details than I had intended. Her reasoning was that everyone needed the whole picture to understand why she pursued reconciliation with me so hard, why it worked for us, and to understand why I fought it and how I see our love and our marriage so different now.
After the first draft of this, I read it and got a very uneasy feeling about how my wife “appears” in this story and subsequently in our marriage. While she had no problem with the story as written I decided to add this on the frontend. My wife has become an amazing wife, mother, and woman. She holds a professional degree in her career and is well thought of and admired in her field. She suffered greatly too. Admittedly, due to her own action and to no lesser degree from me during the reconciliation. She has truly been forged in fire and came out as steel. Her betrayal was devastating. But, I think in my case it was the circumstances surrounding the affair that ultimately allowed me to forgive her. Not excuse her. Forgive her. I lost a part of the “good” in me by going through this pain. In contrast, she came out of it a better person. I at times...I resent that. But then I see the positive she has brought to my life over the twenty-three years since this happened and it's okay. I am writing this in chronological order. Obviously, I was not aware of some of the events until later. The details come from writings that my wife did for therapeutic reasons. Something she also incorporated into our reconciliation process. We still have the notebooks. We plan on burning them on our fiftieth wedding anniversary.
BACKGROUND We married when we were both twenty. After about a year, I decided to go back to school part-time to finish my degree. Eventually, we had a child and I felt the pressure to finish my degree. My son had just turned two when I started my last year of college. Two semesters was all I needed. In September of 1993 my schedule was the following. Part-time job from 3 am to 7 am (store stocker). Full-time job (police dept. Administrative job) 8 am to 5 pm. School Tuesday nights from 5:30 pm to 10 pm. And school Saturday from 8 am to 2 pm. My wife was a nurse's aide at a local hospital working from 8 am to 3 pm. My mother kept our son. School and both of our jobs as well as my parents were all close. No more than a ten minute drive from one to the other. We had as good a setup as possible for what I was trying to accomplish.
D_DAY
The weekend before D-Day, we had fought constantly. It was spring of 1994 and finals week for me. If I finished my papers and passed my finals by the following Sunday we would be celebrating my completing my Bachelor's in Science and finally ending this eight month schedule I was working. But she was upset because I would not take time off from studying to take her and our son some place. She had been complaining about my work and school for some time now and it had gotten so bad that we had stop having sex two months prior. On this particular Monday evening I was fact checking a research paper I had completed Saturday that was due Tuesday evening and she was constantly picking an argument. Finally I told her to “shut up and quit acting like a child”. She stared at me and boldly announced “I hate you and I am in love with someone else.” Just like that. I was stunned. We argued for about an hour until she confessed about what had happened earlier in the day while at lunch at work.
It seems for the past two months, she had started an emotional affair with a janitor at the hospital. Basically, it started with him complimenting her and always “showing up” every time she turned around. This graduated to eating lunch together in the cafeteria and then regular sessions of bitching about me to him. They moved the bitch sessions to the car about two weeks prior. She later admitted to twice kissing him during that time. But today it had turned into a full make out session culminating in her giving him a hand job to finish while he fingered her and them proclaiming their love for each other.
Upon hearing this I basically broke from the conscious world. I disassociated from all reality I think. Later I will go into further details regarding my thought process that night. In the meantime this is what my wife wrote about that moment... “it was strange...when I told him what we had done I was fully prepared for some type of outburst….he just looked at me with the most horrible pain you can imagine..then it turned to something I can’t describe. It was blank. He turned around and walked to the bedroom and quietly closed the door. I remember getting mad then… the bastard would not even fight for me? I just knew at that moment I had made the right decision and everything was going to work out. I did it. I was breaking free of the man that was ignoring me all these months…”.
I returned to the living room with a suitcase and walked past her and out the front door. I remember her repeatedly asking where did I think I was going? “Running home to mommy?” was one I remembered. I placed the suitcase in the driveway went back in and grabbed her purse and held it out and told her to leave. This shocked her. She refused. I gently threw her over my shoulder walked out the door and sat her on the hood of the car. Her shock at this allowed me time to get back into the house and lock the door. She tried to get in but I held the deadbolt and she eventually left to stay at her parents. She told them we were separating but not why. That was a long night. I called in to both jobs to let them know I had a family emergency come up and would not be in the next day. At some point I fell asleep.
Tuesday D-Day +1
I woke up at seven and immediately began to occupy my time by planning on how to minimize contact with my STBX. I called my mother to ask her to keep my son. She was worried because normally he was there by now. After that I made a list of things to accomplish that day. And I started working the list.
First, I dropped my son off and explained to my mother that I would need to sit and talk to her at length later that day. I then went to the office of a lawyer friend of my family. He had gone to school with my dad and I knew him all my life. I explained I wanted to file for divorce as soon as possible. He listened to my story and suggested I think about things for awhile but I was adamant. He said he could have the divorce papers completed by the end of day. I told him I would pick them up that day and file them with the clerk’s office myself. I dealt with this type of thing at my job with the PD. Next I went to get new locks for the house and made a stop off at the bank. I emptied and closed both our savings and checking account. I placed half the money in an envelope and stopped by my sister-in-laws place of work and gave her my wife’s half of the money. I told her to tell my wife that she is not to contact me at all and that was her half of the money from the bank. I also told her I had cancelled our only credit card.
Back at my mom’s I told her everything and she and my little sister came up with a plan for my little sister to stay at my house and watch my son while I worked and went to school for the rest of the week. I made my way home and changed the locks. Spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning and playing with my son and then went to school. My wife also decided to not go to work that day. She contacted the janitor and told him what had happened. He was sympathetic and invited her over to his “house” that evening to get away from the stress. More on this “house” later. Long story short, she went and she fucked him. Here is what she wrote about that night…”he fell asleep after. I remember being so excited at the beginning but during and afterward it began to feel wrong… since he was asleep my mind began to wonder. I thought about G___(me) and how he had made me do this..pushed me to find someone else. I got up and left. On the drive home I began to remember the first time G and I had sex. We were each others first...I broke down and thought about how disgusted I was with myself...then I got mad at G all over again. It was really a sick cycle. I would not face the responsibility of how truly horrible the thing I had done was...I convinced myself it was his fault”.
Wednesday D-Day +2
That day began as normal. I went to work. Came home, showered and ate breakfast with my son and sister. My wife called and wanted to make arrangements to see our son. She was cocky and spiteful on the phone. I told her that I would meet her Sunday at 1 pm and she could spend some time with him at a local park. She wasn’t going for that. She wanted him for the weekend. I said no. She knew him staying at the house solved the babysitting issue for right now (both her parents worked) so she did not push it. She slammed the phone down. I went to work at the PD and the first chance I got, I went to the Clerk’s office and filed for the divorce. Later in the day I was notified by a girl I knew there, that they were ready to go to the Sheriff’s Office to be served. I called a deputy I knew and told him the story and asked him to serve them to her at work. He said he would the next day. STBX also returned to work. Her janitor came by her station and chatted her up throughout the day. They were not able to eat lunch together that day nor meet that evening. He claimed he had to go to something with one of his kids. He told my wife earlier in the affair he was divorced and had three kids. She went to her parents after work. Later that night she called me three times and each time I hung up on her after found out it was her. Caller ID was not the norm back then in my area.
Thursday D-Day +3
After another long night of grieving, my day started out like the day before. I went to work. After I arrived at my second job, I received a phone call from the deputy that was going to serve the papers. He told me he would get there around noon. I explained that would be fine. Her lunch hour was from 11 am to noon. I sat at my desk and tried to work. I was antsy and got up and went to the restroom at least three times until I finally threw up. I calmed myself and kept reminding myself it was the right thing to do. Thankfully, I had not heard from my wife so far.
11 am- My wife meets the janitor for lunch. They retire to his car in the parking lot and fuck. (classy). They clean up go back inside and grab something in the cafeteria for lunch.
Noon- My wife returns to the nurses station on her hall along with the janitor and starts talking to the RN in charge of the hall. Five minutes later the deputy walks in. He asks the RN where he can find K (my wife). K speaks up... “that’s me”. The deputy turns to her and in a loud voice says, “Mrs. K you are being sued for divorce due to infidelity”. My wife falls on the floor. Here are her words describing what happened…” When I heard that I felt this massive wave of shame and guilt. It hit me that I had destroyed my marriage. That G was really going to divorce me. Some stupid part of me really believed that he would not do it. I thought this was just another argument I was trying to win. Really sick thinking. I remember the deputy physically picking me up and putting me in the chair. There was screaming. It was me. A(the RN) was trying to calm me down T(the janitor) tried to grab my hand and I punched him. He turned his head and the punch landed on his neck. I scratched him as he pulled away. A said I was yelling at him. That he had “ruined my life…” They got her calmed down. The deputy said the janitor left immediately. She was able to go back to her shift but A did a lot of covering for her.
2:45 pm- My wife was close to finishing her shift when she was called to hospital administrator’s office. She was scared. She guessed someone had reported her outburst. When she arrived the lady closed the door and immediately told her she was fired. Not to come back on the property and that she would receive her last check through the mail. It seems the tryst in the parking lot had been witnessed by someone. They had reported it. At some point A had been called in and had relayed the story about the divorce papers. The janitor was brought in questioned, fired, and escorted from the property just an hour prior to my wife being fired. Everyone in the hospital new about it all. She says she just went to the car and drove to her parents. At this point they still did not know what was going on. Just that she and I were split up and it appeared serious.
5:30 pm- I was eating supper with my son at home. My sister was out with friends and we were just spending time together. The deputy had relayed the events from earlier and I had gotten quite a bit of satisfaction knowing the reaction. The janitor being there was just blind luck. I was surprised she hadn’t been arrested for assaulting him but hey...you can’t have everything. Then there was a knock at the door. Standing in front of me was a lady about five feet tall and enormously pregnant. Barely able to stand straight. She asked for K. I explained she no longer lived there and would not be returning. She asked if I was her husband. I said soon to be ex-husband. I had served the papers today. She said she was D, the janitor’s wife and she was pregnant with their fourth child. I let her in to sit down. She explained what had happened earlier. About her husband and my wife getting fired and the circumstances surrounding it. I felt like throwing up. Who the hell was this psycho bitch I had married? She also explained about the “house” that my wife met him. It was at that point I would have murdered him in cold blood right there if I could have found him. Not for my wife but for humankind in general. This guy was a piece of shit. Again more on the “house” later. She asked me where my wife was and I explained that she was with her parents. I gave her directions after she assured me she only wanted to talk to her and let her know the truth. My son was still in his chair at the table and you could see him from where we sat in the living room. She commented on how wonderful of a father I was to take on the care of my son alone. She then got up and left.
6:30 pm- My father-in-law answered his door and D asked to speak to my wife. Thinking she was a friend of K’s he went and got K who stepped out on the porch to speak to her. D told her who she was and that she just wanted her to know the truth about what she had gotten herself into with the janitor. D and the janitor were still married and living together. She was eight months pregnant with their fourth child. K was upset and crying at this point and apologizing over and over again but it got worst. You see, the janitor and another guy at the hospital, along with one of their friends were playing a game. The goal was to see how many married women they could fuck in the span of ninety days. Up until my wife, the third guy was leading with three. My wife was the janitor’s third. Oh and the night he had the thing with one of his kids...he screwed a fourth woman. D said she that lady had been married twenty-five years and D was informing her husband next. It was their neighbor. The “house” was a place they rented to take the ladies. D found out about this two hours after he was fired. He came home high and crying. Confessed everything in an attempt to work it out. D left with the kids and told my wife she was leaving him. She then squared up her shoulders and slapped my wife hard across the face and called her a stupid cow. K was stunned. D told her she should be ashamed of throwing away her family. She told her how she was at our home an hour ago and watched a “loving man feeding his son all alone because his wife was a stupid, selfish, whore.” My wife lost control crying and D walked away, got in the car, and left. My in-laws checked on her after hearing the car drive off. She was basically catatonic. They got her inside and was discussing taking her to the emergency room when she began to just talk out of her head. My father-in-law thought she was on speed or something. She started talking about how terrible she was and how she had to fix it. They calmed her down eventually and got the whole story. My father-in-law was really hurt. He was and is a good man. He later said she (my wife) could see the shame and disappointment on his face. My mother-in--law...well she blamed me as usual. I’m not fond of her.
Immediate Aftermath
My father-in-law called me the next day and apologized. The one and only time I ever suspected that my father-in-law had tears in his eyes. He told me what happened and said that K had been in her room all day and night. I told him about the appointment K had to meet me on Sunday at one at the park. He said okay and hung up. I worked Friday and went to school that Saturday. By the end of the day I had found out I had passed and would receive my degree. Bittersweet but I had made it. My parents celebrated that night with extended family coming over and cooking out. I have a great family. No one brought up K. The next day I did not hear from K at one. I chalked it up to a blessing. Something I could use in a custody hearing if needed. At 3:30 her father called. He said K was still not responding coherently to them and just walked around in her bathrobe with this notebook in her hands and would not let go of it. She had not bathed in days and only ate sparingly. He was worried and tired. He found himself afraid to sleep in case she hurt herself. He asked me to come see her. I declined. I couldn’t feel anything for her. I told him to get her some help and I would let her see our son when she could get herself together. I really felt nothing for her. That first night I had gone through my own trial by fire and came out stronger.( more on that later) I was not going to care about this person ever again. I did not hear from her or her family for two weeks.
Reconciliation- Two weeks had passed since I had last spoken with my father-in-law. During that time, I had quit my part-time job and was actively looking for a new job. I had plans to get my MBA but wanted to take a year or two to get settled in a new job. My son was asking about his mother. I could only comfort him at that point. The longer she went without reaching out to see him was better for my chances to get a good custody deal. I was at the PD when she called and asked to set up a time to meet and see our son. I asked her if she had pulled herself together enough not to scare him and she replied yes. I told her I would meet her at 9 am at the park on Saturday and to bring her dad. I did not want to meet her alone. My mother went with me. When I saw her I knew I had made the right decision to limit her contact to only two hours. She was a mess. She had lost a lot of weight. She was not wearing makeup. She smelled like Ivory soap. No perfume or deodorant or any of those feminine smells I always associated with her. I found out later her mother had bathed her and dressed her. K was not able to function completely yet. Park meetings lasted about three weeks and I extended them to four hours and Sunday too. She looked better each week but I was till concerned about her mental health and would not let him stay with her over night or see him alone. Eventually, my mother-in-law tired of that and hired an attorney to sue for custody. Now K had not signed the divorce papers yet. I was okay with that. In six months I could petition the court for a divorce anyway. But the custody suit pissed me off because she was suing for full custody. I had already told her father I was willing to eventually work up to 50/50 custody but her mother blew that out of the water. I responded with a request for full custody on the grounds of mental defect. Really, I was ready to rumble. I was pissed and needed an outlet. This was it. On the day of the custody hearing, my lawyer said her attorney had come to him with a request. K wanted to speak to me in private. I said no. He said it might be an offer. I relinquished but wanted it in the hallway outside the courtroom in full view of both attorney’s but where they could not hear what was being said. They agreed. She started out with small talk. Asked how me our son was doing. I said great and getting better everyday. She asked about my school. I told her I passed and graduation was next week. She was happy about that. She looked down and asked if she could come and see me walk? I said my graduation was for my family and friends and she was neither, so no. I really hurt her with that. We had worked hard together for the majority of our time together to accomplish that and me saying no showed that she could not share it with me. She said please and I told her again no. I said, “it’s special to me. It didn’t matter enough to you when you let someone use you like trash.” I was really becoming a huge asshole and I wanted to hurt her. She teared up, turned, around and walked back to her attorney. The hearing started.
I got up testified. Nothing unusual. MIL got up and put all the blame on me. Said I was seeing someone and it drove my wife crazy. No proof of that but she was never one to care about truth. She also claimed I had assaulted my wife by grabbing her and throwing her on the hood of the car the night she left. Then it was my wife’s turn. K began answering questions from her lawyer but stopped after about the third one. She asked the judge if she could say something. He told her she might want to confer with her attorney first but she declined. He said go ahead. Here is my wife’s words from her notebook…”I remember how sad I was after the hearing started. I listened to G give his side of the story and how he had taken care of J (our son) all these weeks. I needed to make this right. I sat there listening to momma and I knew she was lying to protect me but it was just another lie on top of a lie. I had enough. I had to fix this.” K then stated that she wanted to apologize to my parents who were in the room. She also apologized to her own parents. She looked at me and said she knew that right now I hated her more than anyone in the world. She said everything that had happened was her fault and at this point she just wanted to salvage anything she could of what we had together. If it was only to get me to be able to look at her without disgust. She then told the judge she wanted to withdraw her claim and would adhere to any custody arrangement I saw fit to give her. I conferred with my attorney and we offered supervised one hour visits for six weeks with him staying with her every other weekend after that if there were no problems. We adjourned. Looking back I think that is when I saw a small ray of possibility we would be nicer to each other. Not reconcile but at least cordial. The schedule worked fine. After the third week, we were spending that visitation time with just her, me, and our son. It usually extended to three or four hours. I was not friendly but I really enjoyed watching my son play with his mom. It helped them both. The only negative incident happened during the fifth visit. She came up behind me and hugged my right arm while I was watching our son play. I freaked out. I yelled at her to never ever touch me again. She hugged our son and left quickly. The next week we just acted as though nothing happened and she kept her distance. Another month passed and we were talking more about day to day issues. I had a new job that was paying more and she had begun nursing school. She had begun to tell me that the janitor was calling her and would not leave her alone. She claimed she wanted to be honest with me in case I heard. She had told him to leave her alone but he still showed up at her parents house one night. FIL threatened to kill him if he didn’t leave her alone. I told her I did not care who she slept with anymore. She said she was not sleeping with anyone and never would until she knew that we could never put our family back together. I told it was never going to happen. Six months after our separation I brought up the fact that she needed to sign the divorce papers. She said no. I reminded her I did not need her to sign them but it would be easier if she would. She asked if she could come by the house that night so we could talk and if I still wanted a divorce she would sign them that night. I agreed. She showed up with these notebooks. The little black composition notebooks that look like a bound book. She told me she started writing down things the day after she got the divorce papers. She does not know why but it seemed to help. She said she wrote everything she could remember about what had happen in as much detail as she could. She wanted me to read it but warned me it would hurt bad. She wrote about what she said and did with the janitor. I really did not want to read it. She said she knew she was taking a risk but she had to do something to make me understand why she was trying to save our marriage. So I read it. She was right it was hard. The sex part was not really detailed it was described in general terms but what she said about me and our marriage to him. Damn that cut deep. The book I read that night also chronicled her mental breakdown. The writing was jumble and unorganized. But everyday it got better and better. She eventually began to dissect what she did and said. It was her therapy. One funny passage was when she described this insane conclusion that she came to and was convinced it would set all things right. You see, she remembered she never had an orgasm with the guy. Never. If she did not cum then that meant she did not enjoy it therefore, she did nothing wrong and I would have to take her back. She believed that until she explained it to her dad, much to his discomfort, and he told her it did not work that way. Reading the book did not change my mind but it scared me. I was still concerned about her mental state. Until I read what and how she wrote during those two weeks, I did not realize how fragile her mind had gotten. I greed to give it some more time.
This gave her the courage to start pushing me to write to her. Sit down write a letter or something about what had happen. She would then get a better sense of how to help me. I thought about this and I knew I was still messed up pretty bad and that maybe at the least it would help me move on and still have some type of healthy relationship down the road. Her writing therapy, as I called it, evolved into this. We would meet two nights a week. Our first assignment would be to write down where we saw the state of our marriage prior to D-Day. At the meeting we would exchange letters and make notes. We would then put our questions in writing and ask them to the other person. We would talk until each question was fully answered and go to the next one. If we did not finish then we would extend those questions to the next meeting. The rules were simple. Answer honestly. No yelling. And no declining to answer any question. We started with an analysis of our pre-D-Day marriage and went through each subsequent day until the Sunday I spoke with her father after she received the divorce papers. After that we would re-evaluate and go from there. I will say I was a complete dick about this. I answered questions honestly except for one (more on that later). But, I used it to humiliate her. I made her repeat over and over the bad things she said to him about me. I made her give excruciating details about the sexual contact. She balked sometimes but she always went through with it. While it was really vanilla compared to what she and I did when we were together it hurt. Honestly, I thought I could handle it because I really was not interested in getting back together. But it really was bad to hear it. It’s hard to believe how cruel I had become but again in my mind it was justified at the time. After about a month of this, I had to admit it helped me some. She proposed to move back in and try the next step. I said no. She really begged and offered a good argument for it but I said no. I told her even if I wanted to reconcile there was no way I could be intimate with her again. She was okay with that and said I could go outside the marriage while she stayed faithful. That's not me so no. After another month I relented but, laid down some rules. The rules were non negotiable and set in stone. First, she had to sleep in the spare room. Second, absolutely no physical contact at all. Third, she kept her money in her checking account but I handled her banking and gave her checks to pay her bills including rent for the room and expenses and money to spend. This was due to the fact that she had given the janitor three hundreds dollars out of our savings account a week before D-Day. Plus, I thought she would say no and not move in. Fourth, her mother was not to come into my home until we decided to reconcile. I was still pissed at her...still am a little. Fifth, all prior custody agreements were to automatically kick in if we did not reconcile. Sixth, if I found someone else, she had one week to move out. She agreed and moved in. It was harder than I thought. I no longer had that cooling down period between the times I saw her. She was there all the time. I started small fights all the time. Said hateful things to her. I wanted her out almost immediately after she moved back in. I had to do something so we implemented Thursday Night Fight Night. This came out of the meetings we had where we were writing. Every Thursday night after the kid was asleep we would sit in the living room discuss things that we were having issues with or any arguments that were still ongoing. Those had to be settled on Thursday night before bed and could not go any further. We actually still have a version of this today. It evolved into simply asking over dinner if we had anything to talk about that night. The kids never knew where it came from or really what it was. I was still being difficult. I threw her affair at her every chance I could. She took it in stride and never engaged when it got to that point. I would say I was emotionally abusive to her. But she was strong. She knew that we were meant to be and and since she destroyed our lives she had to build it back own her own until I saw what she saw and joined her. And she was committed to giving me the time I needed. Six months after she moved back in, I had my own breakthrough. After a particularly hard day of one trigger after another, I had locked myself in the bedroom. I just could not do it any longer. My wife came to the door and knocked and quietly said, “You need to talk. I will be out here when you think you can.” And I heard her slide down the door sit in the floor and lean her back against the door. For an hour she sat there. It was almost midnight when I opened the door. She asked me if she could come in and I told her no and said let’s go to your room. We went to her room and she sat on the bed and I sat in a chair. And, I finally told her what had happened after I kicked her out the night I found out about the affair.
Flashback to the evening of D-Day
After she drove off, I spent a lot of time in my son’s room just watching him sleep. I went into my desk and retrieved the checkbook and my bill ledger and took them along with a copy of the life insurance policy and put them in plain sight on the kitchen table. I went and took a shower. I then went into the bedroom and got my shotgun down from the shelf in the closet and laid it on the bed. I dressed in a pair of jeans and a button down shirt. Put my shirt tail in and all. Combed my hair. Sat on the bed and stuck the barrel in my mouth. Tasted the oil on the barrel. I remembered being obsessed about that taste. It tasted exactly like it smelled. I have no idea how long I sat there. I then got up unloaded the gun and put it back. Stripped off my clothes and went to bed. Unfortunately, I think this type of thing enters into many betrayed spouse’s minds.
I explained to her that that was the only thing I had held back during our recovery. For the first time I allowed her to hug me and kiss me on the forehead in something other than a good-bye or see you later. It was the first emotional touch I had allowed her have with me. I told her I forgave her that night but I didn't mean it. It was a number of months later before I actually meant it but saying the words then cracked the door open for me.
After that, physical touch increased slowly. Holding hands, kiss goodbye, a hug, etc. These began to be more normal occurrences in our relationship. Sex was not happening but we were headed that way. And eventually, almost a year after she moved in, we finally were intimate. I think this was our hysterical bonding time. She was still journaling and according to her we had sex thirty-two times in twenty-eight days. Years later we were talking and she told me that until the night we had sex, she woke up every morning thinking today would be our last day together. She kept telling herself just one more day. She knew me well enough to know that sex meant I was re-bonding.
Today we have a good marriage. Both successful in our careers. We have three grown children. They do not know about any of this as far as we know. No plans to tell them but no plans to lie if they ask. We both changed a lot. My wife is a lot stronger and wiser. She looks back on this as an unnecessary evil that she caused but she successfully overcame. I sometime think she still punishes herself for it. For my part, it does not come up in discussions or arguments at all. Hasn’t in over twenty years. She is very perceptive and more often than not she recognizes when I experience a trigger. And yes they do still happen. Maybe once or twice a year. They are swift and short but they sting. Usually she will grab my hand and hold it. Sometimes she will hug me and say “I love you” or simply “thank you”.
I lost some of the good in myself. I hold a lot of my feelings back and deal with them myself. While I try to support her emotional needs she knows I will not be her emotional tampon anymore. Its her job to let me know what the issue is and put forth a plan to fix it which I will help to implement. I love her. I had to learn to love her again. Its different more realistic but intense nonetheless. As I said earlier, I feel I had to lose a part of the good in me so she can become a better person. And at this point in my life….I am good with that.
I hope this helps someone. Every situation is different but this worked for us and I am thankful for that. I am not preaching reconciliation. I am preaching self. Handle yourself. Fix what you have control of...not what you can’t. Do what benefits you in your situation. Be selfish to a point. Then see about becoming a “We” again in a marriage or relationship later. Google the “Serenity Prayer”. No truer words have ever been written in my opinion. And remember, the sub is survinginfidelity. You are reading about the worst days of our lives and marriage. There are many greater happier memories we have created that far outweigh this tragedy.
I wish you all the best in this journey. You do win on the other side of the pain if you put forth the effort for yourself.
And that’s it.
Since posting I have learned terms like, “do the 180”, “affair fog”, and “hysterical bonding”. We had no clue that these existed or that all of these and more were part of a common result of infidelity. I want to close with this. Affairs thrive in darkness. Because one partner allows a third party into a relationship and then covers it in a blanket of lies and deceit to hide it in the dark. Exposing that to daylight will guide you to the path that will ultimately make you happy. With or without your wayward partner.
[This message edited by thirtyyearsmore at 5:55 PM, May 19th (Sunday)]
