Based on BFTG's query, I wanted to provide a long-promised update.
I’m pretty much in this same place *externally* vis a vis the marriage and the facts on the ground, but not internally insofar as my own interior life.
I'm doing much better physically and mentally.
So where to begin?
After my WW failed her polygraph right before Christmas, I was on the verge of filing for divorce after the holidays. My WW knew that I was on the razor's edge and we had some conversations with our oldest about it (who also knows about the affair).
You can imagine this wasn't a very happy holiday season.
Then the heart attack scare came crashing through the door. Not gonna lie, I felt vulnerable and unstable and needed to focus on this health crises. I told my WW point blank, "This is your fault and it's on you." But she said she wanted to take care of me, so I let her. In retrospect, I think this was unfair of me to say. After all, I had elected to stay in the marriage and allow the toxicity of three years to build and build. So whose fault was that?
In any case, that drama lasted from January through February, when I was finally given the "all clear" that there was no heart attack and my heart is quite healthy and arteries are clean as a whistle (at least insofar as stress tests, ultrasounds, and scans are able to determine).
It's obvious that a combination of stress brought to a head by the polygraph, weight gain from stress eating, and a CPAP that wasn't providing me with enough pressure at night (leading to heightened BP) was the cause.
The false heart scare was a wake up call for me.
In February we attended a Retrouvaille weekend, something my WW had signed us up for in the fall. We went not because I really wanted to, but bc we’d already signed up months earlier. I went in with a very reserved and cautious attitude. This was the kind of weekend where you're locked in a pastoral center, staying in a spartan room and focused on the sessions.
I was surprised by it, and it was very helpful to me in renewing my faith and and also reaching more and more towards forgiveness.
It also helped me to see and hear from couples who had been through what we have -- with a wife’s infidelity. We had candid discussions with older couples who run the Retrouvaille weekends about how they'd moved forward. While it was helpful to me to talk one on one with these folks, a part of me just couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the husbands had settled in these situations for something less than ideal. Their faith was helping them, but I wondered if that would be enough for me. And I don’t want that.
(Note: I feel I would be betraying confidences if I revealed too much detail about these conversations and the circumstances of the infidelity in the older couple's situation).
The sad reality is also that I just don’t feel the same about my WW since the affair, and we’ve never reached any resolution about her lack of transparency about the affair, along with the failed polygraph.
She failed, to remind everyone, on the question of sex more than once with AP. This was a "definitive" result by the examiner, who has a stellar law enforcement background as a retired agent with a state bureau of investigation.
Absent the failed polygraph I know for sure without a doubt that my WW brought another man over to our house for the express purpose of unprotected sex, that she played house with him and our kids by haivng him over for extended dinners while I was away on work trips, that she discussed with the OM how she "didn't even care" if I found out and chortled and chuckled about the sex they had, that she gaslighted me to make me think I'd falsely accused her, that she encouraged me to think I was paranoid and needed professional psychiatric help, that she invoked an in-home separation from me during the affair, that she trickle truthed me and blameshifted after D-Day and tried to get me to accept a line that I was 'sexually immature' about her having 'meaningless sex' with another man, that she buried evidence, destroyed evidence, refused transparency and refused to take an STD test or write out a timeline or submit to a polygraph for years. And that she finally failed a polygraph on the question of whether she was telling me the truth about the affair.
Those are some of the fundamentals I know. They haven't changed. They won't change. In the harsh light of day, they look so deeply ugly. They are hard to get past, get over, get through. They are hard to square with the idea of reconciliation.
Almost immediately after the Retrouvaille weekend came the pandemic. And the lockdowns. I'm sure you're thinking "wow, that must have been hellish being trapped together with her." But as I've pointed out before, on a day to day basis we get along great. I tend to enjoy her company no matter how I feel about her long-term. We have great sex together and always have.
The best way I can describe it as a girlfriend that you're not terribly serious about committing to. A girlfriend you know expressed contempt for you, and willingly put her husband and her family at risk for another man.
We've talked about these things relentlessly. We don't talk about it much now, and I suppose that's a form of rug sweeping. She's said she couldn't imagine doing what she did before she did it. She's said that humans are broken, all of us, and since I'm a Christian I can't disagree. She's said some people commit horrible transgression and then experience remorse, shame, an identity crisis and self loathing -- while others don't. She puts herself in the former category. She's said she has been changed by what she did and knows within herself she would never repeat her destructive behavior - not bc it would salvage a ruined relationship but because it's the right way to live. Before, she says, she didn't allow herself to contemplate the horror of what she was doing. Now she does. She takes comfort in knowing within herself she is a safe spouse for me and a safe parent for her children.
I think there's some merit to all of this. It may even be that she had the unfortunate confluence of perimenopause putting her "in heat" (there's some scientific evidence for this) and allowed her to be open to the first idiot who complimented her ass or whatever.
But even if all of this has merit, I'm still not sure how I feel about it at the end of the day. Too little too late?
I'm sure like everyone else the pandemic also put things on hold in a kind of stasis. If I was concerned about my kids before, the idea of springing a separation or divorce on them in the midst of a global pandemic seemed absolutely revolting to me.
We continued the Retrouvaille folo ups via Zoom through the rest of the spring. Again, helpful, but I just don't love her the way I did before. If anything, Retrouvaille has helped me to think about what I would I do differently with a new wife if I decided to remarry.
We've accumulated some debt as a result of marital counseling bills not covered, and the pandemic forced our hands on getting more aggressive about paying down that debt.
It's important to me that the debt be entirely paid off before I make any other decisions. We've been very diligent with this, and I'd say we're now about 3-6 mos from achieving a debt-free goal.
I am no longer triggered constantly and no longer vascillating between that feeling of being hollowed out or angry constantly. I think I’ve pretty much forgiven her, but as you all know that’s not the same thing as accepting it or even deciding to remain married.
My WW understands this. She's talked about taking a trip somewhere for my 50th birthday and even has broached the idea of renewing vows for our 25th anniversary next year. I've been decidedly non-committal about these discussions.
That's really all for now. I stepped way back from SI during the heart scare and the pandemic. I felt it was becoming unhealthy for me and I needed the space. I started lifting weights again regularly, doing more cardio and eating right. I stopped imbibing alcohol except for a few drinks a week socially. I started reading books again, a pleasure I'd denied myself because I just couldn't focus. I've become a near chef in the kitchen, and have delved deep into French and Italian cuisine (knowing how to make your own pasta or tomate-beurre blanc is not helpful for losing weight I can tell you).
A friend said recently, "you're looking really great!"
I'm back here for the time being. Actually it was yet another round of seeing BW’s on a thread denigrating BH pain that reeled me back in. I’m a sucker for those threads bc the amount of cognitive dissonance and logical incoherence by mostly BW’s against BH’s is bizarre and kind of stupefying. They seem almost angrier at BH’s than their own WH’s.
Weird.
Anyway, Hope everyone else is doing all right.
[This message edited by Thumos at 4:05 PM, July 27th (Monday)]
