SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I needed details. The way I pictured it was way worse. I stopped obsessing about it as much after I knew more. Plus I needed to know where he was with his level of 'involvement'. But you truly cannot unknow something so you should carefully consider your own personality type and what you are likely to do with the information.

I am 3 years out.

Mind movies - I had them for a very long time. After a year they don't hurt that much but thry are still there. After 3 years, I rarely think about her during sex. Very rarely.

Hysterical bonding - enjoy it while it lasts. It's awesome ;-) and very normal. I too, found this place only after 6 months or so and thought I was the weirdest thing on earth.

Details - I wanted all of them. It's a personal choice. For me, knowing would hurt in the short run, but my imagination was always worse than reality. If I thought of something and wanted to know if it really happened, I asked him. I've been duped for too long. I wanted the truth.

It sounds like you have a very remorseful husband. Not everyone is as lucky. You have a good chance of recovery, but his remorse doesn't shorten your journey. There are no shortcuts. This takes years. I get the feeling you haven't hit the anger stage yet. Maybe then you would want to know more. And your husband's remourse, and willingness to "do everything" will be tested.

Also, gently, such a short MC and IC, worries me. I would keep the dialogue open.

Welcome. It sucks having to be here, but there's a lot of hope too.

UK - You are still early on in finding out and it would help you a great deal if you also had counselling to help you deal with stuff this whole thing has brought up.

My FWH had almost 2 years of IC to sort his crap out and it has completely changed him as a human being which I am eternally grateful for.

The sex you are having now is called hysterical bonding... it's a way to reconnect and reclaim your spouse as yours (in my situation we didn't have hysterical bonding as I couldn't even let him touch me for 17 months- so anyone who says A's are about lack of sex are wrong.... he didn't stray in all those dry months ) Some people need to know all the details and some don't.

All I will say to you is you can't unhear something once it's out there so choose what you need to hear and what you think you can live with not hearing.

I didn't ask anything about the dynamics of their sex as I don't need to know a blow by blow- I had a full discussion with FWH about their first sexual encounter that still haunts me to this day so I didn't want to add to that. Suffice to say I know she didn't moan or writhe about the bed, wasn't too 'up' on her personal hygiene and cleaning habits down there in her lady garden and was really self conscious of her body that she tried to keep it covered as much as possible! THAT tells me all I need to know- anything else is too much information!

As for how long the comparing yourself to OW goes on?

That depends on how quickly you grasp the realisation that SHE wasn't the catalyst for the A - his brokenness was so there's no point comparing yourself to someone who could be pretty/ugly/fat/thin/white/ asian/tall/short/bust or flat chested as it was the stroking of his ego that his brokenness needed and NOT what she looked like.

Sometimes even now I have to remind myself it wasn't OW he chose because of something special about her I remind myself it was because he was such a screwed up man .

[This message edited by MrsDoubtfire at 8:36 AM, May 17th (Friday)]

Grimwyrm - I have reread your post again and have found it so helpful. I have decided that I am going to also write down the many questions which pop into my mind plus those I obsess over. Then, like you, I will put those questions away and go back to them to reassess which, if any, I really need to hear an answer to. On D-Day, and the days immediately following I did ask lots of questions which I don't need to go back to - things like: did you ever come to our house? use our bed? did you use contraception? did you talk about sexual fantasies? I have no need to revisit these. But the other things that I don't know if I need or want to hear I'm going to write down. Thank you again for your advice! x

wtf2 - thank you for responding. After carefully considering these responses to my very first post here I have decided, and already spoken to my husband just this weekend, about restarting MC and him resuming IC. I am the one who had called the MC to a halt. One of my main reasons is that I get truly angry about the financial cost of this counselling (free in the UK is not an option unless referred from a doctor or living on benefits and then there is a long waiting list!). I feel that he caused this unbelievable pain and to add insult to injury we have to actually 'pay' for someone to sit and listen to us! Hereby lies another issue in that the counselling we received immediately after his disclosure was with a woman who was very hands off. It kind of suited and did help to have a neutral place to go to and specific times where we could discuss things in a more rational way but I felt we needed more guidance than we were given. Also, to make things worse, this counsellor divulged her own personal struggles with being a many times cheated on spouse!! She went on to suggest that I, like her, may need to look at why this happened to me and both myself and my husband thought she was way offline in this.

Anyhow, I've said to my husband that I'm prepared to try again but that we should find someone who specialises in couples therapy. For his own part he is going to reconnect with the IC he started (he had 6 free sessions through his workplace). I believe that he never got started on looking at him during his IC - he admitted he spent most of the time talking about how I was dealing with things and how to help me.

MrsDoubtfire - thank you for the explanation of HB - I have shared this with my husband and we've both had a good laugh at the terminology!! Something we do a lot which is so 'us'!!

Thank you all again.

I may start a post regarding views on counselling too so that this thread doesn't get too long!