SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hello,

New to the forums and curious about where I go from here.

I am WW. My dday was about 8 months ago. I chose to end my affair and self-disclose. Prior to doing so I had researched extensively what the fall out would be and though I’d say I was prepared, I was not prepared.

Since then we’ve actively decided to reconcile and have been making decent progress. My husband has been very gracious, he chose to forgive me fairly early on and is committed to continuing forward. TBH, I don’t really have any concerns about us reconciling right now.

But I’m not sure where to go from here in my own individual journey - I’ve been seeing a therapist almost weekly since a few weeks prior to my disclosure. Read a lot of books on affairs, marriage, family origins, attachment, fawning, etc. I’ve learned a lot about myself and the mechanisms or influences behind some of the decisions I’ve made.

I’m also slowly learning to recognize when it manifests as a behavior and how to choose a healthy alternative. I did get told by my therapist that it’s not really something I can rush, that it takes time.

Weirdly, both my husband and I have recognized this process of transformation will probably be longer than his process of healing. I don’t mean that lightly. We’ve both just learned a lot about things I chose to forget or ignore and it’s going to take time to unpack the history of what came before the marriage and how it intersected with our marriage.

I guess I’m just curious what came next for everyone else. Was it mostly just continuing therapy, practicing what you were learning, and giving it time? Or was there something else that really helped during this stage?

Neither my W nor I had any idea of the impact of her A would be. I did suspect from the start that healing is more difficult for a WS than a BS.

As a BS, all I had to do was process the pain of being betrayed out of my body. That means I had to figure out how to get through barriers to processing pain, too.

My W had to 1) process the pain of betraying, 2) process the pain that her A allowed her to put off for a while, and 3) change from betrayer to good partner.

And we both had to decide to stay or go.

The answer to 'what next?' is in you. I'd agree that part of it is to make a good choice every time you have to choose. Alas, not every choice is easy.Also, I suspect a good general rule is to approach your BS when you have to choose between approaching and letting him be ... except that I often want to be by myself, so I want my W to give me space. She does not have an easy choice in that area. (We're retired and spend a lot of time together.)

The key is that both of you need to ask for what you want. Not intuitive, but it really helps connect.