SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

IsthereEVERanend, 2x4 respectfully taken. My response is based on my bh response to a previous post by Hosea regarding 4 types of reconciliation. We are on the right track for sure. And I can honestly say I have done my 300% and continue to do so. However, I know my BH struggles. However he will not seek help. via IC, nor reading SI. He prefers to carry on and says he thinks he has done pretty well. I sent him Hosea's post and thought the perspective would give us ideas for discussion. He says it only makes it worse. Just to think of it. Thats what I meant by saying the ball is in his court. I cannot deal with his issues for him. He says I have done everything I could. When I ask him what he needs to go forward, he says just time and not to make him read things.

To be fair to both of us; it has been a very stressful time recently. His mother passed away 1 month ago, his sister is getting a divorce, her infidelity suspected and another very good friend is also going through divorce, infidelity confirmed. They are talking to him about their issues, all the while never revealing what he himself has gone through. It's tough when you see your BH hold so much in.

Would It Be Better To Just Say 5 Years?

No. Not in my opinion. In fact I think saying two years is depressing. I don't believe in timelines for this at all. What happens in our lives becomes part of us throughout our future. The effects are permanent but don't have to ruin our lives or even our marriage.

It seems that some members think a day is supposed to come when you wake up in the morning and feel "healed" and even if something relevant to the fact your spouse had an A comes up that day, you won't "feel the need" to talk about it because a magical day comes when you no longer feel the need to talk about it. I will STILL talk about it with my H if some relevant topic about cheaters in general comes up, or if something in particular about the OW should show on the radar (like spotting her out and about somewhere).

On the other hand, how discouraging for new BSs to read that it will take five years!

This, I agree with.

My H and I have been R'ed for over 7 years. I feel we were R'ed within months, not years. Does that mean I never got angry, never hurt again, never brought up the A, never think about it, and stopped visiting the SI forum? No.

What happened is a real part of what shapes my life. My XH cheated on me too and that was over 20 years ago. It still affects who I am today.

I do not believe my H and I swept it under the rug. He never was able to give me all the details I asked for, but it was not for my lack of trying to get them. He said he didn't know/didn't remember. I had a choice to make, either end the marriage, or weigh in everything else that he did right, and stay married to him, and it is obvious what decision I made.

To me, being R'ed means simply that we are both committed to each other, living our lives as any married couple, laughing and crying together, and making plans for the future. It does not mean that issues of the past or present are no longer issues we must deal with.

If I honestly believed at any point that it would take 5 years to get past my H cheating and live even a remotely normal life again, I would have divorced him immediately. Life is for the living (at least that is my philosophy). There is no timeline for me. I try to make the best of every day I have (life is short).

Some days don't turn out that great no matter how you try or what you do, and that is just the way it is.

In my first M, I filed for a D two days after the final D-day. He married the final OW and I started dating fairly soon after filing. I remarried within 3 years of the D. I was not living in misery or still "healing or recovering" (nor rug-sweeping) from what my XH did. I was just living my life. I fell in love and remarried.

My life didn't turn out the way I wanted or initially expected, but I decided to accept this and make the best of it. You can bet some of those nights (after I split with my first H) I cried myself to sleep and grieved over the lost dream that we would raise our three children together, rather than separately.

I'm not sure why I posted here. I don't want to offend anyone with a different opinion, but did want to put my different perspective "out there" for others who might want to see there are other perspectives.

Lotsofhope, my husband prefers not to think about it and hates reading and discussing it too. Because he wouldn't look at what I did squarely in the face he didn't heal and had two affairs himself.

After that he went to IC for two years and continues to go to MC with me.

He never brings up what either of us did. He goes silent now when I bring it up. I believe he's done working on it.

So I'm at the same point as bobbisue in that I need to make decisions because he certainly does good things too! Lots of them.

But here we are back in our old pre affair marriage of having a good life together and conflict avoiding. Hello!!

I agree in that there should be no timeline. However, if both parties do the work there does seem to be a logical progression.

It becomes integrated into a married life. Good years and bad years... and shapes you, as most things do..

Good luck!

As they say, it's not just time, it's how you spend the R time.

Early R years are spent on the implosion/explosion of Affair trauma, and as healing occurs the "work" expands to include pre-A marriage issues.

And it can't be all work, there needs to be time invested in fun and creating new memories.

Thanks everyone!

So I think most people generally got what I was getting at.

I agree that for a great many people telling them it's going to take a full 5 years would seem to be troubling, to say the least. Discouraging, probably. That being said, there are a great many troubling things about this whole ordeal that we just assume that we're going to have to swallow, and I guess I'm just wondering out loud if being realistic about the timetable is one of them. I think Chicho said that if he would've been told that, he would've been gone.

I'm sure that he's glad that he's reconciling, as am I, but I don't know that there's a whole ton of people out there who would say that someone divorcing a cheating (or formerly cheating) spouse reacted too quickly or didn't think it out thoroughly enough, you know? It's kind of the appropriate response in that situation, anything else is a gift extended to the WS. The vibe I've gotten (mostly, anyway) is that the regret seems to be a one-way street...meaning that there seems to be a ton of people who are years down the road in R (or something resembling it) and are still hemming and hawing about all the 'wasted time', and people that divorced right away because they didn't want to go through all that tend to not second guess the decision AS OFTEN. They may think to themselves "What if I'd stayed...", but it's not nearly as close to "I wish I would have stayed...."....you get me?

Bobbi_Sue:

I agree that reconciliation is not linear, it's really a process, and that everyone's marriage, and thus their process, is different. I tend to take the approach in life that to assume you're going to be the exception to any rule is setting yourself up for failure and disappointment. It's like teaching your kids that scratch tickets are a sound financial strategy as opposed to a budget and slowly saving. Sure, SOME people do get rich that way, but most people....not so much. It seems far more cautious (to me, anywayz) to assume that as a newbie you're going to take a longer time frame. I don't doubt you for a second that you considered yourself R'ed months after DDAY. I assume that infidelity is going to be a pretty standard distribution like anything else...68.2% of people are probably going to fall into that 2-5 year time frame, but there are certainly people who are going to be on either opposite end of the graph, meaning within a few months, or possibly longer than 5 years. Outliers exist.

Thanks everyone!

Ugh. Holding onto hope that the majority of people who got over it just stopped posting :) Long road ahead.

Holding onto hope that the majority of people who got over it just stopped posting

I think there's a lot of truth to this. As many members heal, they are ready to move on to thinking about other things and don't really need SI anymore. I really do believe it.

2-5 years is a generalization. Others have used the formula of one month for every year of M. And where do you start counting? From d-day? What about multiple d-days? For some that resets the clock. Is it from the date of D?

Why do you feel you have to quantify your healing based on what has worked for someone else? Everyone is different. You will be healed when you are healed and not a minute sooner.

Why do you feel you have to quantify your healing based on what has worked for someone else?

Whereas I agree that this doesn't make any sense at all, there is a particular type of person that gets reassurance from leaning on someone else's experience.

It would be more accurate to say, "How the hell should I know when you're going to heal? I'm not YOU" but it doesn't provide comfort to someone who is reeling.

"2-5 years" is brought up because it has been observed within this community that big changes take place in that window. Not for everyone. It IS a very general, non-specific statement, but I don't think it's used to tell people where they should be in their own healing. The mom in me likens this to their kid falling down and their arm is at a wonky angle and you're rushing to the hospital and the kid is gasping "Am I going to be ok? Is it bad???" and the parent says, "You're going to be fine. It's going to be ok."

We don't know anyone's damage, but we know there's a good chance they can be ok on the other side of all of this. We know the pain doesn't last forever, and we can vaguely recall the window when our head stopped spinning a la Beetlejuice. That's all we have to offer the suffering. Our experience.

I think it's a great topic for conversation, but I don't understand why people are getting punchy about it. Take what you need. Leave the rest. 2-5 years, or 5 years doesn't apply to you. Ok, that's fine.

I think it's a great topic for conversation, but I don't understand why people are getting punchy about it. Take what you need. Leave the rest. 2-5 years, or 5 years doesn't apply to you. Ok, that's fine.

Uh, yeah. I've started topics that I expected to generate some heat, this wasn't one of them. I'm not saying that anyone can't or shouldn't heal outside of 5 years, I was mostly just saying that I think on a spectrum of:

<--2--3--4--5-->

...more people rather than fewer trend towards the higher end of things. If someone doesn't that's cool, too. Everyone takes however long they take on their own healing timeline. I just know that as a BS we sometimes get down on ourselves for not being healed (or more healed that we are at that moment) in years 2, 3, 4, and I am just honestly curious that if every new BS started with the mindset of "Ok, this is going to take about 5 years to come back from...", they might tend to be gentler with themselves overall. Just a thought.

You'll note that I said 'quantify' rather than 'qualify'. I'm all for sharing experiences and ideas on how I've progressed through the ordeal, but I feel putting a time limit on it isn't helpful at all. Time and time again I see someone lamenting over the fact that "It's been X amount of time and I'm still not healed!"

There's no magic formula, and comparing your progress to someone else's isn't helpful.

I saw the number 2-5 and immediately started planning for one year or less. I could barely manage to get through a day.

I was so incredibly pissed that I had to serve even a day of this hell, and there was no way, I was doing 5 years of infidelity servitude. I remember spitting nails when I saw that time range. My plan was to cauterize the wound with some hellfire and damnation, slap on a band aid and call it day. I was going to find a way come hell or high water, to be the exception to that timeframe. I didn't want to be realistic, I wanted it fixed and the pain gone.

I tend to take the approach in life that to assume you're going to be the exception to any rule is setting yourself up for failure and disappointment.

I was desperate to be that exception.

However, I'm not disappointed that I failed. In fact, the failure helped me. I felt so set against putting in ALL that time, that the force of reality against my resistance, broke me wholly. I needed that clean break in order to get better.

Now, I know better than to have a finish line of any kind in mind. In fact I feel that I will always be healing in some way, right into the grave. There are too many areas where I can't tell which came first, the infidelity or the pain. It's too intertwined for me to separate. The more I am here, the more I learn and the more I learn the more I realize how little I know.

Through infidelity, I'm learning about so much more than the lessons of infidelity.

I feel the same about R. I don't see myself putting "fully R'd" in my profile. This feels like it will have to be a lifelong commitment to R without a finish line. I'm surprised that saying that, doesn't make me feel sad, or angry. I think the idea of reconciliation will be a lifelong project just like my healing. I've accepted that.

But the timeline is sensible and pretty accurate, and it was helpful at least, in the beginning to have a general marker for the milestones. It reminds me of the way we keep track of the growth of child, using a range of "average" to mark the milestones. If you aren't reaching some of the milestones, it offers a way to reevaluate progress and explore new methods to find healing. I needed the help of an IEP.

It's just another tool to be used as we see fit. I've made my

peace with 2-5.

You'll note that I said 'quantify' rather than 'qualify'.

I actually did note that. I understand the difference. I think it's somewhat useful to quantify it because despite being individuals with individual experiences, none of us are in a completely unique scenario. Infidelity is an old, old story, and from what I understand these sorts of healing timelines are actually related to healing from trauma in general, so the human process for that is even less unique. I view our differences as variations on a common story, not as completely unique situations.

I feel putting a time limit on it isn't helpful at all.

I don't think anyone wants a time limit, per se, just a general guideline.

There's no magic formula, and comparing your progress to someone else's isn't helpful.

I agree that there's no magic formula, but I think comparisons can be helpful...there are widely recognized stages to dealing with trauma that most people experience, and MANY people experience them on a roughly similar timeframe. Not everybody. I don't deal in absolutes. However, there's something oddly comforting to knowing that there is a process for this shit-sandwich-eating-context....something that others have lived through and have shared how long it has taken them.

Otherwise, why not just throw our hands in the air at every newbie and say, "You take as long as you take! Could be 10 months, could be 10 years!"

We don't, because millions upon millions of people have lived through enough trauma (including infidelity) to recognize that there seems so be some measure of quantifiable commonality regarding timetables of healing from traumatic experiences.

Rachelc, wow I'm impressed with you and your husband for continuing the reconciliation process. His betrayal certainly adds a second complicated layer. My bh has mentioned more than a few times that he feels like a revenge affair. But he says he knows it wouldn't help and would only make things worse.

Today he surprised me by asking for our counselor's #. He actually said the words, I need to talk to someone. Wow. I'm praying it helps and that the counselor is available. We saw several ones in the years after dday but she was the one he related to the most. We are not sure she is counseling anymore and the thought of starting over with a new one is exhausting to him. Best wishes with your reconciliation.