SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

It’s not the affair that tainted it as much as my H was cruel and had such hatred towards me. I have never done anything to deserve that treatment. I understand I was standing in his way of true happiness w/ the OW.

But I don’t understand why he had such animosity towards me. What he had such anger at everything I said or did while he was having his affair.

He would reduce me to tears and then yell at me to stop crying.

SMH still after 7 years

In my experience, it's gone and won't come back.

Even during my two years of thinking my husband had kissed someone and had a short EA with her, it did not come back.

Now a little over a year after knowing that he had a longer EA, and did all of the sexual things with her that he had only done with me, throwing away 20 years of a relationship and even longer of a shared history for the first woman to open her legs and offer it, I know with certainty that it will never return. It's probably my biggest mental hurdle if I'm honest.

I will never have been loved the way I deserved by the person who promised me before God, family and our lifetime of shared friends to love and honor and respect me. If I leave, I'm losing the work I put in for 20 years, the financial stability, the family relationships, my future and have no guarantee that I'll want/find another person I can trust much less one who won't betray me. If I stay, sure I've got a person that if I met him tomorrow, I'd be really proud of, happy to be a partner too, proud of the person he is, but underlying all of that, he's still the same man who screwed his coworker unprotected in a parking garage, wiped himself off and went to do me a "favor" of picking our son up from youth group because I was busy carpooling our daughter to sports. Then lied to me about all of it for two years after watching me disintegrate into a shell of who I used to be and pretending to be honest and repeating that he didn't sleep with her because "I've never trusted anyone the way I trusted you".

Innocence was lost when he started lying to me about things that involved her with work 9 months before he stuck his penis into her when she came to his hotel room during a conference...

If anyone has had better luck at resolving the betrayal this deep, I applaud you and am truly happy for you.

He at this point is my last first kiss. That’s not the case with him though.

This exact thing has been a real big heartbreaker for me too!! I have said as much to him exaxtly - “you gave your last first kiss, your last first touch and first sex to [my BFF]. It’s hers now. Forever. Unless you cheat again.” It crushes me.

Thank you nanatwo for helping me reframe it. The goal is to be each other’s last kiss.

And thank you as always W2BHA!! Insightful and calming as usual.

This thread was really helpful but also kind of triggering and making me sad. Why oh why is this the topic of my Saturday afternoon!? I hate all of this. So much.

I can totally relate. I remember being asked by a therapist how I felt about everything post WH's A. My response was that I felt like someone had died. But it was the innocence that died. It was the notion of "true love" that died for me. It was the reason sadness is never completely gone, but the complete confidence that someone has your back is. So glad for all who have overcome that to some degree. Don't see that happening for me. Life can still be good, but not the same.

There is the loss of the specialness between us. I have told my W that I no longer believe in soulmates, and if there is such a thing, I will have lived my life never finding mine. We are just a great couple that made it through all these years.

She really hates this and even debates me about it. She says “well I have found mine”. I will never budge on this, she tried like hell to find an upgrade from me, and failed, that’s not soulmates.

T/J

The first AP who supposedly loved him didn’t want that for him. She just wanted what she was getting from him, but didn’t really care about bettering him in any way. Otherwise she would have turned him toward the light instead of the walking hand in hand into the darkness. That works both ways. He didn’t care about her being a better person either.

Landclark, I’m going to go off topic bc I wanted to say this is so true. WH told me right after DDayv1 that the cOW was one of his “best friends”. I said friends don’t encourage each other to be the worst version of themselves. It’s proof that As are built on a mirage. Doesn’t make it hurt less that we were thrown out for such BS, but it did help me get rid of that “does he still think about her” obsession. He truly could give a shit less about her. I 100% believe that now because I realize he couldn’t have cared about her then either to do what he did. You want the best for those you love - and secrecy, lies and loss of morals and integrity is not the best.

TX1995, exactly. It has really helped me to understand when he says he has no feelings for her at all now.

This thread has me triggering hard but I really needed to hear it.

My WH is and, if R happens, will always be the only man I've ever been with. He can no longer say the same about me. He is my always, while I am now his once and again. It's not an easy road, but we are both trying hard to let go of the old and instead find new ways to be special.

I hold onto hope for us, and I hold onto hope for all of you too.

I never viewed my H as my soulmate. Maybe we had a great emotional connection before the A (and after too) but he never was my soulmate.

I just don’t believe in that crap. Sorry. Never did.

I have friends that all bring something to the table.

None will ever be my soulmate.

I like the idea of soulmates, What Dreams May Come and all that. I never really thought of my WH as mine though.

Lemonspearmint and GTeamReboot, I’m so sorry for the trigger. :(

This loss is one of the reasons I would not stay married, that and resentment and loss of trust. Loss of respect for my XW, too.

I now knew with certainty what she was capable of.

If I got sick, or lost my job or something like that, I knew she would not have my back.

She was incredibly cruel, as well as stupid, selfish and immature. I could never respect someone like that.

The shitty truth is that its impossible to get innocence back but that doesn't mean the marriage cant go on to be good in other ways .

Hmm ... to some extent, at least, I go my own way.

I never valued sexual 'purity.' If I wanted sex with a girl, I wanted to see it as something that benefited both of us, and that implied no loss ... as in 'no loss of anything of value.' Hence, purity and virginity just didn;t seem like they were worth much, IMO. My W's A sex most definitely was a problem for me, because it was betrayal, but I didn't experience any loss of purity.

Innocence? IDK ... I certainly felt it, but we're still together, and we both feel psome childlike joy about that. The memories that spring to my mind are the good ones, not the bad ones. But I've always been in love with my W. My love for my W has certainly changed over the years, but she can still take my breath away. Alas, my doc says my heart skips beats on its own....

Where you are now, landclark, isn't where you'll be in 7-8 years. You're not even where you'll be in 7-8 months. The loss of innocence IS a real loss, and I think it's a good thing you recognized it. But your recovery is ongoing, and you can't know yet hwo you'll feel when you say to yourself, 'I've recovered.'

...she tried like hell to find an upgrade from me, and failed, that’s not soulmates.

we all get to have our own ideas about 'soulmate.' Gently, the fact that or WSes looked elsewhere and realized the BSes was what they wanted may be evidence that we are our WSes' soulmates.... Of course, even if one Rs, that WS may not be the BS's soulmate

That only applies to WSes who dumped the ap for other than external reasons. It doesn't apply to those who were dumped or to those who stayed for financial reasons, the kids, etc..

Also, it's a hypothesis. I generally like to reframe things in ways that benefit BSes.

Unhinged

Thanks, Unhinged, for the thought about needing to have an A. My W says she needed to have an A to recover. I guess she thought she had to be the bad person she always thought she was - she had to show it, otherwise the people who counted on her just wouldn't understand, or something like that. No one believed her when she talked about her darkness....

I sure didn't need her to cheat to make our M better - but our M wasn't the problem. My W felt she needed to change, and I couldn't change her. No one who loved her really wanted her to change, I guess. We all thought the world of her.

[This message edited by sisoon at 12:13 PM, October 18th (Sunday)]

My WW and I met in HS. We started dating just after I graduated, she had a year to go. We were each others firsts for just about everything. I had dated a few girls and made out with a few of them, my WW dated a guy and kissed his a few times, otherwise, we experienced firsts with each other.

As a young guy, I was somewhat embarrassed about my lack of “experience” when getting together with guy friends. Not sure why.

On dday, I learned my WW (GF) at the time had a ONS about 4 years into our relationship. She kissed other men and women, had EA’s, propositioned a long term guy friend many times (he never took the bait), and had a PA, which I found the evidence and hence, dday in 2015.

My world was rocked. Everything I thought I knew about our relationship was fake.

The fact we were each our first and only was something I thought was special. Apparently, it wasn’t too special to my WW.

I can relate They are called scars for a reason. It will never be the same. It’s been said you build a new relationship I could never figure that out. It does take two

I’ve seen it referred to a broken vase. It takes time and patience to glue it back together. It will always have cracks. Maybe a few missing pieces. It’s not the same vase. And also the experience of the vase breaking. The disappointment. The sadness. It would have been great if it never happened. But it did happen. And your left with what exactly?

I’m very sentimental. I loved being married. Having a family. I didn’t want it rearranged. I wasn’t asked.

Acceptance. I get tired of accepting crappy things What innocence did they lose? A diffetent experience completely

[This message edited by cancuncrushed at 10:13 PM, October 19th (Monday)]

Getting the innocence back / loss of the specialness between us

My spouse was sixteen when we met. I have been head-over-heels in love with her ALL my life.

She always complained that I put her on a pedestal.

But actually I was just treating her the way that I felt a girl friend, wife, mother should be treated.

And being naive to boot.....

On DDay I was told about her affairs and the 4xOM.

I also figured out that she had been sexually active before I came along, like aged 15.

Call me dumb.

Call me naive.

But that sense of 'specialness & innocence' was all my own imagination running wild.

My own way of substantiating being in love.

That's on me!!

The innocence is always lost.. I am a firm believer that the moment the A started your old marriage died..

It is always part of R to build a new marriage if you so choose.. But it is one where you accept that your WS now has history with them..you have to accept that part of that person is that they CHOSE to betray you in one of the worst ways possible..

If you can get past this.. Fall in love again with them.. Then the innocence you will have is that of a new relationship with them.. One that is better than the old one.

That is what I am trying for.. Only time will tell.

I am a FBH who is remarried to a wonderful woman.

The innocence I had going into my first marriage is not there in my second marriage.

The trust I gave my ExWW is something I will not ever be able to give to anyone else ever again.

Understand that I trust my wife with my life but it is not the total and complete trust I had given to my ExWW.

I wish I could say that I trust myself the same way I did before.

I missed every sign I saw after everything was exposed and I no longer trust my judgment totally like I had previously without some type of verification.

I wish that I could say that the betrayal of my ExWW and former best friend hasn't affected this marriage in some small way but I think all of us BSs will always carry a small part of the betrayal with us the rest of our lives.

I have a few questions about the concepts in this thread:

1. Is innocence a good thing? Isn't it typically associated with being naive and/or young and inexperienced? So is a long-term marriage supposed to have innocence?

2.

it is not the total and complete trust I had given to my ExWW.

Is it a good thing to have this kind of trust, or was it naive to start with?

3.

I missed every sign I saw after everything was exposed and I no longer trust my judgment totally like I had previously

Again, if I was the kind of person who missed every sign, I would not be happy about that? So is changing and growing a bad thing?

4. I guess the idea of "getting the innocence back" is confusing to me. Is it good to have innocence in a marriage? Am I not understanding this concept correctly?

It was the notion of "true love" that died for me.

Yes, the illusion of true love, "the one," "the love of your life" die away.

When you were a child, you thought as a child and reasoned as a child. Now you have put these things behind you.

That's a good thing. This may be the unbidden, hidden, unintended favor your WS did for you.

I find it liberating to understand that I can have the same or likely more rewarding relationship I've had with my WW with a number of other women if I want.

Of course, I won't come across every compatible woman in the years I have left, but plenty will cross my path. I'm reasonably confident that a number of them are in my geographic proximity and will be available.

I feel quite confident in finding other life companions who will make me very happy -- if that's what I want.

First, though, I'll be focused on enjoying being alone. I don't find it daunting or scary. We've been sold a bill of goods by social programming that there's something weird about enjoying solitude. It's perfectly normal to do so for extended periods if we want.