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Give yourself a break CBM. The reveal is still fresh relatively speaking. Let yourself continue to heal for a couple more months before making any major decisions. I agree with your thoughts and emotions. You're still on a roller coaster; this is normal. I expressed concern over your WW's fantasies about other people and I still maintain my concerns. If she's willing to do whatever it takes to save what's left of the marriage, have her cut all contacts and unfriend all 'friends' that you're not comfortable with; include the babysitter. And no more male 'friends' including your best friend that she's visualizing naked. Use that as a first step to see if she's truly serious. Lay out what you want from her; no emotion, just matter of fact. If she wants this to work, she'll comply. If she doesn't comply you seek your freedom from that person. Again, don't be too hard on yourself. You're responding normally. Take care of yourself.

CBM I feel for you. I know what it's like to have everyone judging you.

Just stay true to yourself. If a divorce is what you feel you need to do then do it.

If you want to stay with your wife, get into some serious counseling to help with what seems to be a combination of PTSD and codependency. Start working with your wife to establish strong marital boundaries and stick with them.

My wife and I had a very nice weekend, we got out without kids Saturday and really enjoyed each other's company and avoided any major A talk. We celebrated our daughter's bday Sunday and I was a little worried it would be a trigger for me (I hate so much that my kids birthdays are triggers now, it reminds me of my lack of agency back then) but I stayed focused on the present and actually had a very good time. I would say it was the most "normal" weekend we've had since d-day almost six months ago.

My wife has really stepped up her game recently in being thoughtful and working on empathy. She has been proactive in telling me about lunch meetings she has at work and making sure I am comfortable with them, and she frequently asks me how I am feeling and if I want to share anything.

Last night was the first one in a while where I found myself ruminating on her A and getting a little depressed and angry. Scenes in tv/movies of people passionately dancing together is a trigger for me now, which really sucks. It hurts so badly to think that such a scene - one filled with passion, excitement, sexual energy, lust - was what kicked off my wife's affair. It makes me angry, jealous, and feeling like I can never reclaim what she gave to AP, that I can never have that experience because those days of our lives are gone and she choose to give that experience to that asshole instead of me. That piece of shit experienced passion and lust with my wife in a way I never did, and that is a wound that festers for me.

I was feeling really hurt and shitty last night about it, and she held me and told me how badly she wishes she could go back and change things and not do the things she did, and I believe her, but it still hurts and I think it always will. It's that thought, that it will always hurt and that I will always have triggers, that keeps this feeling of dread inside of me and makes me skeptical of being happy in a reconciled marriage. I am hopeful that time will keep numbing the pain, but sometimes it feels like trying to put a bandaid on a gunshot wound. Clearly I still have work to do.

Last night was the first one in a while where I found myself ruminating on her A and getting a little depressed and angry. Scenes in tv/movies of people passionately dancing together is a trigger for me now, which really sucks. It hurts so badly to think that such a scene - one filled with passion, excitement, sexual energy, lust - was what kicked off my wife's affair. It makes me angry, jealous, and feeling like I can never reclaim what she gave to AP, that I can never have that experience because those days of our lives are gone and she choose to give that experience to that asshole instead of me. That piece of shit experienced passion and lust with my wife in a way I never did, and that is a wound that festers for me.

For the first year after my DDay I watched no television or movies. I still don't much. I spent time reading about adultery and how to get over it. I worked out, got in shape and worked on other projects. I did everything I could do to keep my mind occupied and off thinking about my fWW's betrayal. I still have to. So I guess, all I can recommend is that you keep busy and active and engaged in other things.

I was feeling really hurt and shitty last night about it, and she held me and told me how badly she wishes she could go back and change things and not do the things she did, and I believe her, but it still hurts and I think it always will. It's that thought, that it will always hurt and that I will always have triggers, that keeps this feeling of dread inside of me and makes me skeptical of being happy in a reconciled marriage. I am hopeful that time will keep numbing the pain, but sometimes it feels like trying to put a bandaid on a gunshot wound. Clearly I still have work to do.

It's the shit sandwich you must eat if you want to stay with her. She can't un-fuck that guy. She can't go back and not be promiscuous no matter how much you would wish it, so train your brain to stop thinking that way. You have to accept that she lied to you and abused you and somehow she skated. You have to accept it no matter how badly it hurts.

So instead of feeling badly, work on making yourself into a man that could leave her at any time, at a moment's notice, and not bat an eyelash about it. Work on your co-dependency (if it is there), work on your self-esteem, work on your body and mind and spirit. Get to a place of total emotional independence. Then you won't feel lost anymore.

@LivingWithPain - I really appreciate your thoughts and advice. The realness shines through and I need that.

It sounds crazy but simply coming to peace with the truth of "she can't un-fuck that guy" is probably the most difficult thing for me. The fact that it happened way back then and that I really do love my life and the person my wife has grown into makes me very resentful of what she did. It feels so fucking unnecessary, which is another crazy feeling to have, but that's how it feels to me. Like, things weren't ever that bad, it was just so selfish, and now it has poisoned the water of this great life we've built and it will always be there lurking just below the surface.

I am working hard on myself, going to the gym frequently and building my self-confidence in case I can't make it work (and because I just want to and always have, but kept finding excuses not to). It is having a huge positive effect on my mindset and decreasing my feelings of co-dependency. I want to know inside myself that if I stay, I am choosing to stay out of love, not out of fear of being single. I chose to stay out of fear 12 years ago, I won't do that again.

@LivingWithPain, such a righteous post...

She can't un-fuck that guy.

work on making yourself into a man that could leave her at any time, at a moment's notice

work on your self-esteem, work on your body and mind and spirit.

And especially this...

Get to a place of total emotional independence.

Such simple words for every BH to live by.

Nicely done, Sir.

CantBeMe123

Read over all your posts and replies - don't take all of the posts literally - look at the message therein.

The sum of what has been said to you is a guide and possible ways you can eventually learn to live with what life has dumped on you.

"Life isn't fair!" - say to yourself every time the memories start - and believe those who keep the Mantra - it will take years to gain peace. You won't ever forget (unless Alzheimer gets you) - but you will one day be happy and (not to belittle the facts of your spouse actions) sort of look at the past as, maybe a bad car wreck. Unpleasant but you carry on.

I am assuming your WS is on board with staying together and accepting responsibility for all the pain and showing empathy. From reading your story - she still has some way to go. If she is sincere and keeps working - she will one day "get it."

CBM, I'm glad you've been able to have a few good days recently, and that your wife has shown some improvement in being more thoughtful and empathetic. Despite her many screwups in this area since DDay, I really do think she wants to do the work and be better. It seems like one of the things she's done since DDay is consistently underestimate the extent of the damage and the work that's required to repair it. She underestimated how much jeopardy this would put your marriage in, she underestimated how much pain it would cause you, and she underestimated how much work she was going to have to do on herself.

In a way that's not surprising considering how long she spent burying the lies, and I'm hoping that now she's figuring out that it wasn't just the lies that needed digging up but also the host of personal issues that enabled her to do what she did. Fixing the coping mechanisms and thought patterns that define you for so many years is an incredibly daunting and time-consuming task, and that's part of why recovery from this sort of thing is a marathon and not a sprint. She has to look deep inside herself and confront all the ugliness and brokenness and start fixing it, and you have to heal from an extraordinary emotional trauma.

Just keep working on healing, keep working on your health and self-confidence, and keep your wife accountable. Unfortunately even waywards who truly want to do the work need a kick in the pants sometimes. Best wishes.

CBM,

You wrote, It hurts so badly to think that such a scene - one filled with passion, excitement, sexual energy, lust - was what kicked off my wife's affair. It makes me angry, jealous, and feeling like I can never reclaim what she gave to AP, that I can never have that experience because those days of our lives are gone and she choose to give that experience to that asshole instead of me. That piece of shit experienced passion and lust with my wife in a way I never did, and that is a wound that festers for me.

It's like that for many of us, only years later do we realize what we lost. In my case 25 or so years of a plan B sex life. By the time I figured out what happened my W said it was too bad that we recovered too late to have a better sex life.

My W got to check off one item from her bucket list, sex with a handsome Hispanic, and has those beautiful memories.

It's not that you want a divorce but that you should be granted an annulment since she married you without full disclosure of a significant fact.

It is having a huge positive effect on my mindset and decreasing my feelings of co-dependency. I want to know inside myself that if I stay, I am choosing to stay out of love, not out of fear of being single. I chose to stay out of fear 12 years ago, I won't do that again.

Excellent attitude CBM.

I am always in favour of reconciliation if there is true remorse. My thinking may be naive but I feel that the person who hurt you is the best one to heal you if you still love her, she loves you and has genuine remorse.

"I want to know inside myself that if I stay, I am choosing to stay out of love, not out of fear of being single."

This is a huge statement. I would adjust the wording slightly to "...choosing to stay for me," This is what every betrayed spouse needs to be sure about.

Even a band-aided gunshot wound heals eventually.

I am working hard on myself, going to the gym frequently and building my self-confidence in case I can't make it work (and because I just want to and always have, but kept finding excuses not to). It is having a huge positive effect on my mindset and decreasing my feelings of co-dependency. I want to know inside myself that if I stay, I am choosing to stay out of love, not out of fear of being single. I chose to stay out of fear 12 years ago, I won't do that again.

Good. Concentrate on the things you CAN control for your own self, and not her. She will either jump aboard your train, or you leave her at the station. It is that simple.

Take the focus off her and focus on what you want out of life for a while.

And if you have not, please please look into EMDR therapy. It looks and sounds like witch doctor bru-ha-ha, but it does really work and it will help you take control over those self destructive thoughts that get you down on yourself. Believe me I was a skeptic until I underwent it, and it helped heal me like nothing else.

CBM, are you with us?

I am posting today with a sense of deep hopelessness, which is not new for me during the process. We just hit 7 months post-DDay, and the routine for the past month or two has been something like this:

1. Enjoy a nice week together during the week and at least one good day on the weekend.

2. Something that happens that triggers me, always on the weekend. A nightmare, something my WS says/does (this is less often now), a song (a big fuck you to Vampire Weekend for literally making the chorus of their happy-go-lucky sounding new song about cheating), an intrusive thought, a new question, whatever.

3. The trigger puts me in a bad place and I spent a day or so miserable.

4. The misery turns to hopelessness, where I think over and over that I cannot accept what she did, cheating is a deal breaker for me, and we're wasting both our time trying to pretend that it isn't.

As far as Flawed goes, she is what this site would call an A+ Wayward (tell my past self that that is a sentence I would ever type). She is still immersed in improving herself, she is patient with me and doesn't run away from my anger/misery, she is remorseful as she has always been, she's still in IC, we started a new MC, etc. I truly believe she is a better person and I do not fear her cheating on me again.

But all I can think is: You fucked up the natural order of things. "Us" shouldn't exist. You got caught cheating while we were just dating, we should have broken up back then. I don't want this life, life as a "cheated on" person. I don't want triggers in my life forever. I want to be with someone where infidelity is not a part of our story.

I keep having this bad dream about our 50th anniversary, we're dancing and "I only have eyes for you" comes on and I just run out of the room and want to kill myself.

I get so mad at her, because I love our life together, and I still love her, and I just feel like it can't work. She let me see this version of our life for 12 years as if the infidelity didn't happen and I loved it, and now I can't have it anymore. I keep yearning to go back in time and learn the full truth and just end it back then. I don't think I will ever stop resenting her for what she did and lying to me.

She knew that it was a deal breaker, she knew I couldn't take what she did, how sensitive and fragile and insecure I was, and that's why she lied. She lied and hid and let me believe I had the life I always wanted, the "her" that I wanted, this amazing girl who was beautiful and fun and loved me and committed to me when she could have had anyone. Except she didn't.

What we didn't have were kids or a house or much of anything at all. Breaking up would have been so fucking easy, but she loved me and wanted to build this life with me, even if I couldn't love her back if I knew what she did. Even if that life was built on a rotten foundation. Her answer was to let me love the version of her she presented and tuck the rest far away.

So I just keep marching on, hoping one day I either gather the courage to file for D and just be done and start over fresh (with joint custody and a home to sell and assets to split and on and on, I get so angry thinking of it), or I magically find acceptance and forgiveness even though I highly doubt it will ever happen. I guess this is what limbo is all about. It really sucks.

I hate that I feel like her confession has made her a better person and me a worse person. I hate that I think she deserves better than me now. Not then, but now. Because she is a good person now, but what she did is too personal to me and I can't let it go and I am now a miserable person, mean, agitated, vindictive. I hate how much happier I am at work and out of her presence, how normal I feel, how the affair seems to melt away and be replaced by everything else I have to do. I yearn for that.

I think the best thing I can report is that I do still love her, and so when I can go a day or two without thinking about her A, I can feel really good with her and enjoy ourselves with our kids and still have great sex. It just feels so fleeting, I always know I am one thought away from misery and starting over and it feels like it will never end as long as I'm with her. My IC tells me to divorce someone you love is next to impossible, some days I hope she is right and others I want to prove her wrong.

Anyway, here I am venting again, not sure what I'm looking for but that's my update.

I'm sorry to hear you are still struggling like this.

I will say that perhaps you are expecting too much of yourself. 7 months may feel like an eternity right now, but the reality is, that is a short time in dealing with infidelity. If you still have these issues at 2 years, then that is a different story.

I would say that it seems normal to me that you would still be having issues like this at this time. I don't have any advice for your situation, unfortunately. Be patient with yourself.

I can't believe I am about to post this. I'm getting soft...

What do you think her motivations were for not telling you? Were they purely selfish motivations? Do you think that she loved you, and wanted a life with you, and did what she thought was best in the moment, despite being objectively wrong and deceitful? From your reports, it sounds as if she made a serious effort to give you the life that you wanted, despite the rotten roots.

You can't go back. What happened was fucked, wrong and unfair. This is your life, and you get to do with it as you see fit. Nothing is going to change the years between when she should have told you, and when she did.

If you can go a couple of days without thinking about her infidelity, maybe in a few months you can go three or four. Based on the idea that what you are feeling now will almost certainly improve, can you see a happy life with her?

Not trying to minimize your struggles, but the anger phase typically hits around 6 months.

It's a long road out of infidelity.

In everything (long term relationships, work, whatever is important to you), the advice I give people is:

Hang in there for a month. See if you still feel the same way. Then give it another month. If you still want out, then start making plans to get out.

A lot of times though, one's perspective changes over that 1-2 months. But sometimes it doesn't.

I hate that I feel like her confession has made her a better person and me a worse person.

It hasn't done either. She is exactly the same person before and after her confession. The only change this caused was an overall increase in honesty/transparency from her to you, albeit painful honesty. That doesn't affect whether she is a "better person".

I do perceive that, over the years, she has become a better wife to you generally. That wasn't impacted by her confession. Rather, I see her confession as a sort of culmination of the work she had done in the previous years to be a better wife.

I hate that I think she deserves better than me now.

"Deserves" is a dangerous word in this context, and mostly inapt. "Wants" or "desires" is the more important term. Nobody is perfect. Feeling that somebody "deserves" a better mate, that is the hallmark of wayward thinking.

For 7 months out, you're pretty much feeling the normal way a betrayed husband would feel. Don't be so hard on yourself.

I know the past 7 months post DDay seem like an eternity, but I agree with the others it is still relatively early in this agonizing R process.

I have and continue to root for both you and Flawed. Hang in there, you two can survive this.

My W was an 'ideal WS', too. That whole concept is mind-boggling.

I, too, thought for several years that my W was better off for confessing, that I was worse off, and that the total amount of pain we carried was less than before d-day. That was not any consolation.

3.5-4 years out - YMMV - I started to think that my W was better off for confessing and doing her work and that I was better off, too.

That was not because of the A - it was because of the work we had done on ourselves and on our M.

I don't know what's in your future, but I'm pretty confident that you're about where you ought to be at 7 months out. It's too early to tell if R will work for you, but the signs are good.

You write that you want to R, but you don;t want to be pressured into it. It's hard to separate one's owns desires from pressure from outside, but I think going after what you want, rather than going after what you've been told you should want, is a very good basis for recovering and starting R.

I committed to R 90 days out from d-day. That didn't mean D was off the table. Rather D shifted from the first thing I considered when any issue arose to the last thing. Before committing to R, every issue was 'stay/go'. After committing, I assumed we'd solve every issue - but if we hit one we couldn't resolve, D would be the outcome.

I urge you to stay mindful of the fact that you are choosing to R, because it's what you want - and that you can change what you want at any time.

As for the immaturity of your W2b's brain when she cheated, that's a good explanation, but it doesn't mitigate your pain. It just doesn't.

I recommend embracing the triggers and living your hopelessness. IMO, those things are pain coming to the surface. If you let the pain in, it will come in and flow out of your body. That specific pain will not come back. You have to do a LOT of this, because being betrayed brings a LOT of pain with it, but the process works.