My thought process as a wounded BS and believer to find positivity in reconciliation
Hi All,
I am a new BS lurking in this forum since DDay almost 2 weeks ago. I would like to share some thoughts and insights from a BS (husband) after 6 year of marriage and 10 year relationship. I literally have no one to talk to about this and I really needed to get these things out of my mind. I will first recount the story of my wife's EA, my experience and thought process, her(WS) current state of mind and behavior and the way I decided to proceed with MYSELF and relationship to safeguard the marriage.
Apologies for the dull vocabulary, English is not my mother tongue.
1. Our Story up to DDay
In the last days I went through some of the most difficult but also deepest emotional and spiritual states of my life. This was compound with the loss of my father 3 months prior to dday which was so far in the charts, the biggest pain of my life.
My personal story with betrayal is quite something. Earlier in my life before meeting my wife, I had experienced a very painful betrayal event, it was at the same time both romantic and professional from different people in the same lapse of time. People whom I trusted stole 2 years worth of my life's work. I happened to discover it at the same time as I discovered that my GF at that time was having daily chat with a guy with whom she shared private details about our relationship. That hurt a lot. I was young and it was such a painful event that it motivated me to travel to a different country/city. Fun fact, it was also in this new city that I met 3 years later my current wife. We both had very difficult pasts, childhood traumas and difficult families which made us overtime understand each other.
Given my previous experiences with trust and betrayal it took me time to accept being vulnerable and trust her. She noticed early in our relationship that I was not a "funny guy" and did not make much jokes. She was afraid that was my personality and almost considered our relationship doomed. As the months passed I started to trust her and accept to be vulnerable with her and telling her about my past. This naturally led me to behave as my "true self" making jokes (a lot). I have a good sense of humor and ultimately can find a way to laugh about anything. This was when she felt relieved and started to develop feelings for me (and me for her).
Fast forward, a few years, we engaged and ultimately got married. Each of us went through so many difficulties to marry and having our first kid that we used to joke that most relationships would have failed by now. We used to feel pride and motivation in seeing a way forward and positively think about the future in our difficult moments. I would say the most lacking aspect of our relationship was a difficulty for my wife to emotionally and sexually open up and have deep intimate discussions or let herself be vulnerable. I did communicate to her a few years earlier that this part of our relationship has to evolve and that intimacy communication is paramount for a solid relationship. We talk about anything and everything but when it comes to deep emotional feelings and intimacy, it was always a one-way process from me. She does communicate with her friends a lot and can write journals worth of thoughts and feelings. When she gets in conflict with a friend or acquaintance she can easily loose sleep for 2 nights in a row. She is a big "people-pleaser" person (extreme in my view). But when it came to our relationship, the only times she talks or writes to me is for complaining about our daily struggles, life projects, and administrative chores but never about her feelings. If I brought the topic of intimacy or sexuality it was visibly painful for her to participate. I motivated her to open-up even by writing emails or messages if talking was uncomfortable and I managed, through a lot of effort, to make her start to engage in intimacy communication. Overall I felt like lifting that whole part of the relationship alone. Then life difficulties hit, Covid being one of the worst for us as we were isolated in a foreign country far from our families, marriage was a huge pain then a painful first child that involved IVF (although successful on first trial). We temporarily put the intimacy side of our relationship on pause, especially me who always had a higher sex drive, I put aside my needs to align with her and fully focused on helping her as a mother. I did not think of bringing the topic as she was struggling with maternity and we had to deal with a difficult child.
A month prior to losing my father, she told me that she "misses me" and I replied that I do as well. We were barely having anytime for ourselves and went through a long dead bedroom period. I understood her message and proposed we should just organize some alone time to try to reconnect. Right around this period came the loss of my beloved father, the mourning, I had to leave her alone for 1 month with the kid but she had everything she needs and helped her manage as many things as I could remotely.
Around 2 weeks ago (so 3 months after my father loss), I discovered that my wife was having a month long EA with an ex lover that I do not personally know. He contacted her after my return home and they started daily communicating. As I was still in the grief process and did not pay attention to the signs. In 2018, she did confess to me by herself that she was talking to this ex lover for a few days and I remember getting angry and telling her to cut contact and never ever talk to him, or any ex boyfriend, again. I was quite clear and remember threatening leaving her if it happened again. I now realize she heard but did not listen.
A week prior to DDay, I started to notice huge signs and red flags. When I would see her stuck to her phone with a big smile on her face I did asked her a few times is anything alright ? She would reply, "yes just talking to friends". She started to workout almost daily, taking care of herself, spending more time with makeup and the vanity mirror. Started to initiate sex with me in a very blunt and direct way, which she never ever did this way since I met her. We had one particular sex session where I got aroused from her extremely confident and sexual initiation but I literally felt like having sex with a totally different woman. When I now recall that event all I feel is pure disgust. Anyway, I did not want to invade her privacy and in my "naive mind", I would never think she is in an EA. We did however always share the same lock and password of our phones as we shared using some apps on different phones. On DDay, I needed to check something on her phone and upon unlocking it I stumbled open a Tiktok message thread with the AP. What instantly struck me was the raw sexual words scattered in the discussion. I could not believe my eyes. I went straight to her and confronted her, she looked down and replied "I wanted to tell you about it", "These where just jokes", "I did not know how to bring the topic", "I was hoping you will find out" ...
2. Post DDay:
In past two weeks, I learned that my wife always had a crush for this guy who rejected and humiliated her. Through painful arguments I managed to make her spit out their story (I know I will never know the full truth). She told me that they had "A special relationship" that involved "roasting each other". The guy would call her ugliest woman and that "it made him want to puke to see her". I would like to note that my wife has a huge self-image problem, so making the slightest comment about her look would hurt her. This guy was never into long term relationships and only had ONS. He had so many partners that he burned out from it. This time around when he wrote to her out of the blue, instead of ignoring him or telling me about it, she decided to get the validation she always wanted from him and quote "I wanted to stick it back to him so he feels the pain". She did tell him that she is married and has a kid but he decided to push her into a month long EA.
1 day after dday, I still felt something was missing, so I went to her emails and low and behold, she did reply back to him the same night on DDay after the discovery. She wrote back a closure message and told him that I found out. He replied that he did not want to break our marriage etc (they have absolutely no idea what they broke) and had the audacity to complain that she was not careful enough (what a piece of s**). But it gets worse, I did more digging and found out that she sent him nude pics of herself from the time before I met her. It was late night and I woke her up, my intuition told me to delete everything in front of her, she physically tried to stop me but I did remove everything, his access, the messages everything. I am an IT and networks engineer, so not only I made sure he will never be able to reply to her but if I wanted to I would know if they got in contact again even if she would not give me access to her accounts. I never ever used this skill with her, I never invaded her privacy, I never read her private messages. She agreed to never contact him back. Since then I understood that she is in limerence state and all the signs I painfully learned should have been a huge red flag: change of habits, sport, makeup, dressing, teenager like smile, and I could clearly feel I don't recognize this woman anymore. Keep in mind we are daily dealing with an almost 2y old child with difficult needs.
She is now only focused on her own limerence state. In her mind, her limerence is something special that was always there. I explained that "limerence" in the context of infidelity is like taking ashot of drug. The decision of cheating was the decision to pick the needle. The limerence is the "high" feeling.
I can now finally understand why she never managed to open up in intimacy with me. She is a very good person, generous and kind but she always struggled with immense self-image and self confidence issues. I did try over the years to motivate her to acquire new skills, arts, or do activities that did not involve just pleasing other people. Thinking it would help her move on to focus on herself instead of others. Since DDay I did much reading and could finally put words on what I always felt and observed in her personality: a very high sensitivity to rejection or failure. An unhealthy amount of "people-pleaser" personality which, although annoying, I always categorized as a "generous" character trait. She told me that in that moment when she engaged in the EA, it was as if her personality "split". After countless days of reading I recognize that split as compartmentalizing intimacy and sex from fear of vulnerability. Usually common with people with low self-esteem and childhood trauma. She did have an absolutely horrible childhood trauma and lack of emotional care giving from parents.
3. Dealing with pain and the path forward
So how did I react and how am I dealing with the pain, emotions etc ?
We agreed to try and rebuild our marriage and look forward. We had a lot of arguments since DDay but they are now diminishing in intensity and less often ending in resentment or anger. In fact, I reached now a state where I do not want anymore to argue or fight with her, nor do I care what she thinks or feels about me or her special lover. It just all seems so much childish and inappropriate that it is not worth my mental energy. I know it is still early and she has a long way to come out of the limerence fog but I did push her once to her limits to know if she really cares about saving the marriage.
Where did I find the strength to look forward and accept R ?
a. Faith: I am a strong believer in God. This event, the circumstances, my history, made me dive into the most inner parts of myself. The first week was a spiritual journey for me. The pain and loss of my father, whom I loved so much, then the loss of what was before with her, allowed me to get much closer to God and question the meaning of life. I did go through a lot of anger, regret, disappointment, grief, disbelief, confusion and pain in all its shapes and colors. It reopened the grief of my father loss and I felt all of it mixed and tangled together. Oh, if the story was not captivating enough, I did get a horrific muscular injury to my back 2 days prior to DDay that made me unable to sleep in a laying position for a week, all meanwhile she is cocooned in her lala-land fog and her empathy went down the gutter. I really honestly from the depth of my heart do not wish to anyone to experience this pain alone or without faith in God. This event would have happened to me a few years earlier I would never had found the strength to endure or accept her infidelity.
b. We have a beautiful (and difficult) kid, and this behavior is totally incompatible with her personality, ethics. Some would say this is part of her personality. I decided to not judge all her life and our history based on a single event. If God is the most merciful, he expects us humans to showcase or experience some of it.
4. Random thoughts and my current state of mind
- Infidelity is an act of extreme (maybe absolute?) un-love and selfishness to your SO. A BS accepting R and moving forward is and act of extreme love and selflessness to balance out the WS fuck up. I imagined myself in many situations of temptation in all its forms. No matter the situation, my wife's thought would come right in front of my eyes and would stop me from jumping.
- I consider this event in my life a tribulation from God. I could have been on the other fence of the tribulation. I need to act on my current reality. Either I decide to "heal" my ego or accept the tribulation that I should let go of it. I direct it back to the all knowing all merciful God. I accept to carry the weight "without expectations". I did put clear boundaries though, God did not ask us to subjugate ourselves to anyone. If she does make the same mistake (I know it is a choice), it will forever severe any emotional attachment I have towards her.
- Humans are imperfect. Idealizing any human beyond its imperfections is unhealthy. Once you start to see humans through the lenses of imperfection it is easier to give a second chance after an episode of infidelity. I am far from perfect, and this event made me clearly see the absolute ugliness of a human even if we used to see that person as the most beautiful one. This realization made me look back into my own imperfections and I decided to become a better person with God, in the marriage and to myself. I do not want to disappoint other people and I pray to God to never inflict such a pain to an other human being.
- Never rely on any particular human being to define your "self" and your worth. You might never know what hidden luggage they are carrying.
- I would have liked some NC time off from her but the kid and her "mother status" come first.
- After DDay she came to me and told me "I love you but I am not in love with you". It took me 10 days to fall out of love with the woman I knew before. I do still love her but the previous love was for an imaginary woman that I spent 10 years of my life with. I will learn to love the new one if we manage keep positively moving forward. I do not resent or hate her.
- In some regards I know her better then she knows herself. In others, I have no idea who she really is. I do hope that she gets out of her bubble and self-reflect on her personality and life to understand what lead her to that choice and become a better person.
- Some days I think without our Kid I would have left her. Some other days I think I cannot leave her as I know the pain that would cause to her would be even bigger than the pain she inflicted to me.
5. The state of my WS since DDay
- She has been extremely defensive.
- She kept portraying the AP only in positive for days. I hammered into her head the obvious gigantic flaws of this guy and it helped her wake up a little.
- So far she apologized only once by herself without me initiating a discussion or asking for an apology. BUT it was after she read a short book "How to help your spouse heal from an affair: compact manual".
- She is still in fog, often disconnected and her mind wondering.
- She spends more time watching herself in the mirror than watching me. When she watches me I feel pain and discomfort.
- Her excuse for the EA was: she wanted to stick back to this guy who rejected her and debased her when she was younger.
- I asked her "was it worth it ?" She replied 50%. I told her without our kid, you would give me this answer I would instantly you leave you which hurt HER.
- She had very low or almost non existent empathy toward me in the first week. After much reading here and elsewhere I figured this is normal at this stage for her. It started to get better and she started to show emotions and caring.
- She told me I am the only man she wants in her life and cannot imagine her life without me. She is willing to fix the marriage but is not as enthusiastic or positive as me. It was always her personality though, I am always the motivator.
- We must be in the Hysterical Bonding phase as we almost have daily sex since dday. I think I managed to get aroused because of my naturally high libido. I can totally understand a person who would actually feel disgust and discomfort.
Finally, the current state of affairs is that she is acting as if nothing happened. She is a conflict-avoidant person and I got tired so I decided to not bring up this topic anymore unless she initiates a discussion or apology.
I will try to make an update in a few weeks.
2 comments posted: Thursday, January 1st, 2026
