SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This is for the newly hurt.

It's been 4 years almost to the day since I found out. If you told me 4 years ago that I will recover from the pain, I would never have believed you. I did, and I'm here to tell you that you will too.

Most people ask about the journey to recovery. How long does it take? When does the pain go away? Will I find happiness again?

Right now, the pain is real. There is an empty hole in your stomach that nothing can fill. I get it. It hurts. Bad. I remember those early stages and how I clung to this forum with a death grip. This was my therapy. I cried with others who understood what I was going through. They gave me solace and made me feel like I wasn't alone. Then I decided to take a break from this website because it's too depressing and I didn't want to be "reminded." At some point, I noticed that there were actually whole stretches of seconds in my day when I didn't think about the infidelity. Those second turned in to minutes, which turned into hours. Then all of a sudden, days went by when I would "forget." I started to laugh again, I mean, the real, careless, heartfelt kind of laugh that I used to have before "the event." Eventually, I logged in less and less, until it got to the point that I haven't logged in in so long that I forgot my user name and password (i.e. today).

They say time heals all wounds. Here's the problem: it actually does take time. I'm here to tell you that it happened to me. It will happen to you. I am writing this because others have helped me along the way. Every single reply I received, no matter how short, showed me that I wasn't alone. I hope that in some small way this message will help you too. It's my way of giving back to the universe and all those good people like you who lent me an ear when I had no one to turn to. I wish you good luck on your journey.

May you know no more sorrow.

[This message edited by mdohoh at 8:11 PM, December 28th (Saturday)]

I can only echo your sentiments about time being the great healer. It must be a natural process; part of the healing mechanism that only allows us to tolerate pain for a certain while, before our brain moves on and pushes the painful memories into some dark closet.

Thanks for your encouraging words!

I thank you for your inspirational post as sometimes it hard to see what tomorrow will bring let alone what the future might hold ... thanks!

I cannot begin to express how much your post means to me. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you for this message from further down the path. In the moment, it hardly seems time will be able to make a dent in the pain. Messages like this buy me the sanity to get thru the next...hour, day, week...hoping that there is an "until" out there for me too?

Thank you for hope.

I just wish I could fast forward!!!

Great post, right up to the part where I read your tagline.

It has been four months since dday. I am still living day by day. This is not the first time in our 19 year marriage that he has had an affair. We have four children, the youngest is 16. In the past I had asked him to move out. This time he moved to the office. I asked him to move out but he talked me into staying. He started going to counseling and acted like he wanted to work on our marriage. Just last week he started sleeping upstairs and then I found out he is still in contact with her. She lives out of town and it was not a romantic/sexual text but it is contact. I definitely feel like I'm sleeping with the enemy. This is the hardest thing I've ever been through and I fought a rare form of breast cancer in2011/2012. I feel this time is worse because of what we went through together fighting the cancer. I thought after the last time with counseling that he could be trusted. I'm in so much pain....

Thank you for this post. I really needed this today.

:-)

Thank you for this. I am at almost 2 years and I can see so much of what you are saying. I can spend a day or two without thinking about it and then I feel guilty. I guess because I never want him to forget this pain in the hopes that it never happens again.

Someone responded about going through a tough scenario like cancer together as a family and thinking how solid we are after this that infidelity is unlikely. Well, I think sometimes going through a tough scare might actually lead someone to needing the *break* something as screwed up as infidelity might bring.

I was one of THOSE wives that thought infidelity would never happen within our marriage, yet here I am. But I am here doing the best that I can to save my marriage.

I am sick with the flu right now, like really sick and he's taking care of me the way someone who loves you takes care of you and I wonder what the hell happened that made him have an affair with one of my closest friends.

I am getting to that point that I have seen other posters write that this affair could possibly be the best thing that happened to us. I am seeing and living a husband I did not see before, in a good way!