SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Background: Trying to reconcile with WH. ~6 weeks post-D-Day #2, and 4 months post-D-day #1. WH had physical and emotional affairs with a woman he met in an online forum for finding extramarital partners. Married 12 years, together 19. No kids, but years of dealing with infertility.

As we all know, surviving this is a lot of ups and downs. Currently in a down. I started on antidepressants about a month ago, which has been tremendously helpful in keeping me functional enough to work, see family, etc. But it is still hard to get through the days.

Sometimes I worry I am ruminating— am I fixated on this? Am I just picking at it? And then other times I worry I am in denial and not upset enough. It’s exhausting to not trust my own emotions.

The thing I’m currently "ruminating" on is feeling devalued. How could I not? I have mentioned this multiple times to WH, and said I need to feel like he actually loves me. He is trying, so I will give him credit for that, but it just doesn’t feel like it’s moving the needle for me at all. If anything, overtime I feel worse. I wonder if this is in part because he does not really seem remorseful. He flat out said he wasn’t sorry for the initial affair, but he was sorry for starting it up again. He has said he is sorry for hurting me, but obviously it wasn’t enough to prevent him from continuing to hurt me.

I know that it can take a while for the wandering spouse to break out of the affair and come to terms with the reality of what they did. But as I sit here waiting for him to feel sorry for shattering me and our life, I have to wonder how long is it supposed to take? And what if he never feels sorry? Am I okay with that? How can I heal and try to rebuild a life with someone who isn’t sorry for doing something so cruel? Sometimes I wonder if that was the point, or at least part of it. That he wanted to hurt me. That would partially explain why he’s not sorry— he wanted to hurt me, and he achieved that goal.

Anyone else feel like it took a long time for true remorse to kick in?

For me personally, I had disassociated so much before and during the affair a lot of my emotions were numb. The numbness itself was painful and frustrating l, and I felt guilt,but beyond those emotions I didn’t feel anything. I really didn’t care what happened to me. This was only compounded by the narratives I told myself justifying the affair.

I was in therapy for two months prior to confessing and if memory serves, remorse started to surface around 6 months into the process, but it took about four months to be able to name all the things I felt remorse about.

It took a while to take in what he was saying without being stuck in my own emotions/thought loop.

I am not claiming this is normal but I don’t think it’s abnormal either. And there was no relapse for me.

That being said, it doesn’t mean you are obligated to wait for him, or that you owe him time or anything like that, ai am just sharing my experience as one point of reference but it’s not indicative of what your can fully expect or anything like that.

I will say that I did grow a lot after that and really have engaged growth ever since, but not every we does so really the best thing you can do is focus on you, what you need, and protect yourself.