SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Just hit the six-month mark and have been processing some thoughts and feelings as I reflect on the last six months. Probably will seem rambling, but feels good to put it in writing.

So many of my assumptions about how this would go were wrong. Obviously we are in uncharted territory so not totally unexpected; however, very obvious how little I knew about my wife's emotions. I typically like to have a plan for every contingency (somewhat a byproduct of my professional life, but also something I developed as a child to cope with trauma). I usually have a pretty good read on people and their motivations, but have an obvious blind spot for the person I am closest to. Very indicative of all the narratives I created in my head to cope with my inability to process emotions in a healthy way as well as my shitty behavior.

Reconciliation is hard. With all the threads I had read and all the work I had done preparing to disclose I thought I really understood how difficult this process was going to be. I was off by orders of magnitude. I completely underestimated how much my wife would want to talk about the details (one of my off-base assumptions) and that has been hard for me as it forces me to think about elements of the affair that I compartmentalized and that have been buried very deep for a long time. Seeing the trauma my infidelity is inflicting in real-time is beyond anything I could have imagined. We are both all-in on reconciling and this process is still very hard so cannot imagine trying this without total resolve to give 100% effort.

I have been pretty fucked up for most of my life. Lots of unpacking in IC and realizing how much I minimized my childhood trauma(s) and the impact they have had and continue to have on me. I do not use this as an excuse or to minimize my choices, but understanding this has helped me understand myself and my choices much better. I know this has also helped my wife and our efforts to reconcile. Frankly I am not sure how anyone can reconcile without understanding the roots of their behavior.

If I am being totally honest some days I really wonder if we will ever be good again. I do not worry as much that we will divorce, but often ruminate about what our future looks like and if we will ever be close. Had a very brutal conversation last night (I am going to start a separate thread on this once I process it more) and spent most of the night awake thinking about how much damage I have done. I have to believe we are early in the process and can get to a better place, but some days that seems like a distant wish more than the path we are on.

I am so grateful my wife is giving this her best efforts and realize that is a gift. She is the best and I cannot imagine my life without her. Sometimes knowing how great of a wife and mother she is adds a layer of guilt, but I am working hard on self-compassion and trying to give myself some grace and understanding that I was completely broken when I made these terrible choices.

Not sure what I want to get out of this thread, but after a night awake ruminating interspersed with nightmares about the affair I felt like writing this would help me.

If I am being totally honest some days I really wonder if we will ever be good again.

No chance to be good again if you're jumping ahead on the healing schedule.

R is just like life, you have to make today the best day possible, and build on that when you start OVER again tomorrow.

I have to say, the damage was far worse than I imagined, and I was pretty darned sure I was prepared to hear all the truth of my wife's A.

Nope.

And our toughest days of R were when my wife through her arms up and giving up on my full healing -- and it is understandable.

There are no guarantees the M recovers.

In our case, the only chance was building a really good day and reloading and trying to add another good day.

If you're there for all her vents, you earn some good faith back, a little bit at a time.

I really like the way you categorized your wife's effort as a "gift". It takes a great deal of effort, time and care to R after an affair. Your appreciation for her says a lot. I felt the same way about my BH. I am not sure I said it as eloquently as you.

I completely underestimated how much my wife would want to talk about the details (one of my off-base assumptions) and that has been hard for me as it forces me to think about elements of the affair that I compartmentalized and that have been buried very deep for a long time. Seeing the trauma my infidelity is inflicting in real-time is beyond anything I could have imagined.

Think of it this way:

1st
It is a way your partner try to regain trust to you, seeing how honest your will be on things that will undoubtedly hurt her more.
Point is, and please be very careful not to lean into what I am telling you here, honesty is crucial: when a BS asks for detail there is a bit of dissonance.

You made mind movies that are far worse than the reality likely was.
You want to know the truth in part as a plea "please, I pray it is not as bad as I imagined it" hoping the truth will be less hurtful than what the mind does (and it does a number on you like nothing else when you are betrayed).
At the same time, you are scanning for lies, expecting that your wayward partner will minimize and try to paint it as "less than it was", so if you get a really tame confession about the details, you think this:

- My partner lies -> trust goes to zero
- My partner preferred the affair partner and is edulcorating the story to protect their real love and to hurt me less

When you get the truth, which is likely much harsher than the "hope it was not that bad", then you have to live with the answer.
Which means you will suffer another wound. But it does rebuild trust, at least a little bit.

We have a void where the life we have shared with our partner was kept hidden and compartmentalized from us. Confessing the details is sharing, even if in this case means gutting your BS again, you are allowing them again into your world, the very world where you cast them out to make space for the AP.

Not entirely sure if you can understand, but this is why she likely craves those details, why they hurt her, and why she needs it still. And above all why she does need the truth, and she will be checking over and over most likely, to ensure the version you told is real and not invented.

2nd
The trauma of infidelity is one of the deepest your soul can ever experience.
Imagine you enter in a communion with a person you trust the most in this world, you give them all your most intimate and vulnerable part of yourself, those secret parts nobody else in the world will ever see, to care and protect them. And they take yours and swear an oath to hold them safe, for the rest of their life.

That's a very deep psychological bond.

And the Wayward Partner not only fails to protect them from the outside world, they expose, mock and spit on them with the Affair Partner, who is a person that will gain self esteem by destroying every most intimate secret of the person who you swore to protect.

And it does not matter if you factually talked about and mocked your wife with the AP (as you probably did to some extent, is common), even if you never said a word, the actions you choose to take and the AP took with you did it, all her vulnerabilities, the treasure she entrusted you with, got tainted, spat upon and burned to ashes.

She gave you that believing you were the safest person to share her most intimate part of her soul. Now (at least) another person (the AP) soiled the most delicate part of your wife forever, with your indulgence in destroying it.

That's what will never be repaired, because it is done, you virtually "killed" her most delicate part of her identity. Once you killed it it will never come back.

That's why infidelity hurts more than losing loved ones.
It's a trauma of loss, ambiguous loss, because it is a loss that is not "addedd" to your life, it is "taken away", the void it leaves, is forever.

I believe you (any person really) will never be able to fully understand it unless you suffer it.
Whenever I heard about I could never figure how this truly feels. Sure is bad, but likely bad as many other awful things. When I suffered it I understood, it is worse.

Hoping you will never experience this, I tried to put it into words.
But words can't fully describe. Just imagine figuratively: my wife's AP. I would end him if I were to follow my instincts, in a way that would give nightmares to Dexter. With pleasure. However if I had the choice to make him go through what I went through, no I would not. Nobody, deserves to suffer through this.

Get the picture?

One day at a time, brother. As Oldwounds suggests, focus on each day as a new opportunity to slowly build a new foundation for the future.

Remember, reconciliation is a marathon, not a sprint. Six months out is still very early in the process. It took me about ten months just to recover from the shock. If your wife is anything like the rest of us she's probably still trying to recover. Keep that in mind.

Being able to read people is always a good skill to have. It's completely useless when it comes to folks who don't have a good read on themselves. Stop try to read her and start asking what you can do to help her each day.