SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Just want to share some sadness that resonates with me.

In some recent writing in my journal that I shared with my H, I played out what he would feel if I was intimate with another man. I wondered if there was no other way for my H to understand what I am feeling if he never has to go through it.

I know that I don't want to have an affair, and infact I shared with him that I may have been childish and selfish in my thoughts of wanting him to understand my suffering through some suffering of his own. That's not what I want, not really, not at all.

I came to this as the source of my sadness; uncertainty.

I used to have so much faith in his morality and honesty - as much as I have in my own. I used to marvel at the fact that we were only 17 andd 18 when we began dating, and that we would be each others' last partners in life - and that is gone. My sadness comes from the ability of someone that I know is such a good man being able to commit adultery. My sadness is that I don't KNOW that my H will be my only, my one partner in intimacy, and that I will be his.

We are not special any more. Our commitment doesn't feel special anymore. I don't feel special.

Now, I know what I have to do. I know that I need to accept uncertainty in order to function and thrive in life. I know that I will be ok no matter what. I want to keep my eye on the future, on the beauty of life.

Just wanted to share my sadness too.

Thanks for reading.

I know EXACTLY how you feel. This was the biggest hurdle for me in the beginning, and probably has been the hardest thing for me to accept. Now we are "just like everyone else." There is no more SPECIAL.

I think the best way to come to terms with that is to realize we don't NEED special! Sure, it was nice to have, living a real life fairy tale. But is it something we really need to live a happy life together? Of course not. We have battle wounds now, and in some ways I think it means something more to have fought our way through something so huge and know that we can make it. So many people don't!! So in truth, we really are more special than we ever were.

Take a different view of special, and see if that helps you get past your sadness. We are warriors!

(((((eachdayisvictory)))))

I wish I could pass on to you some great wisdom, but I have none. I do, however, send you lots of strength and hugs.

thanks to both of you. I think I just needed to hear it from someone else today. KC that is exactly the reminder I needed. Thanks thanks!

We are not special any more. Our commitment doesn't feel special anymore. I don't feel special.

It took me a while to get over the fact that there would no longer be the "old us". The "old us" is gone, which included the wedding vows and unconditional trust no longer exists. But the "old us" wasn't perfect either by any means. It's been hard to say bye to the "old us" and by no means complete in the good bye process.

We now have a new special, and that is the "new us". Our "new us" is based more with communication. We are more open with what we say and are not afraid to voice our opinions. The "new us" isn't there yet, but it's a "work in progress".

Like KC said... we now have some special battle wounds. I say we, because both the fWW and I have them and they are special to us.

EachdayisVictory

You said that so eloquent , even in your sadness.

Thank you for sharing.

(((eachdayavictory)))

As a person who really struggled with real temptation of committing a RA I wanted to add my motivations for this.

I get your desire to have your husband feel your pain..that was a part of my motivation.

But a stronger motivation for me was that I wanted to simply go .......escape. Not at all the sexual fantasies of my youth, those childish sexual fantasies I still had floating around in my head as an adult.....this was REAL URGES with REAL PEOPLE with REAL FACES.

I used porn pre-A...wife did with me, we used it by ourselves. I am now 12 months porn free. I thought it normal. I thought all men did it. I thought it was harmless. I thought it was tied to a high sex drive. All wrong.

After 2 months of no porn I started to evaluate my own urges...the times when I would use it. More enlightening...the times I CURRENTLY have urges to use it.

Sometimes it was just out of habit, nothing more....but the big player was when I was feeling rejected or abandoned. I used it to fill in relationship gaps inside me....relationship desires within me.

For me, porn was not about sex...it was about my desire to connect with someone. Perhaps more accurately stated....I had a DESIRE to connect with a woman, but had a great FEAR of connecting too.....a really sucky part of having fears of abandonment......

Like my wifes A was not about me, my use of porn was not about her. Certainly we influence each other....but the actual choices are stand alone choices. That pain of rejection and abandonment has been a part of me since age 12...when my parents D and my Dad disappeared from my life completely. Due to coping skills I was quite good at hiding this pain from myself for decades. Porn helped me do that. Total surprise to me......

I mention this because of this.

I used to have so much faith in his morality and honesty - as much as I have in my own.

This resonates with me...except I would change the ending to.......MORE than I had in my own.

I always knew I needed boundaries...felt like I needed them more then most men, needed them FAR more than my wife needed them. I was aware of how vulnerable I was and am to the surface level relationships affairs are.

So my world was seriously rocked by my wifes affair.

Perhaps I was leaning to hard on what I perceived to be her strong moral code...allowing me to NOT work on strengthening my own?

I don't know....hate to waste time thinking on that one as my view of my past is really skewed.

Once my wife broke our vows, killed our commitment.....took our specialness away and gave it so freely to another man.....the urge to engage in full on illicit, meaningless, cheap sex was large. I thank God for a very good male friend who was kindly but gently there for me each step through that dreadful period.

It was like I enjoyed a fantasy life but knew it was fantasy and destructive. At the end of the day I knew my wife and children were worth more than acting on this fantasy...but I did have a very active fantasy life. Once my DD happened I began to wonder if the REAL fantasy, the REAL farce was my M. What had I committed to, why did I.....I was the weaker one.....I should have been the one to stumble this hard.

My wife and I were firsts....and on schedule to be onlys. That was PART of our specialness....the part that I instilled hard boundaries to protect.

But that was not are only specialness.

18 months out here...so take this from that standpoint. I have shared many other special things that are just between my wife and I.....debt struggles, pre mature births, multiple career starts, caring for an elderly parent....all special to us.

The uniqueness of being each others onlys? Yeah, that is never coming back.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often. -- Winston Churchill

Change we instigate is more comfortable than change that is thrust upon us. And, while I don't think Churchill ever meant this towards adultery...and adultery is a unique vehicle of change....he makes a good point.

I have had this change thrust upon me. However, I have improved because of it. My M has the potential to improve as well. It is far easier to insure change will improve me than it will our M....but even if just one person changes, improves....the whole dynamic must shift.

God help us all.

[This message edited by blakesteele at 4:05 PM, February 17th (Monday)]

(((Eachdayisvictory)))

The loss of specialness is hard. I can't speak to the thoughts about a RA because I haven't felt that personally, but here is a reaction to

I don't feel special.

I have struggled with that too, and it helps to remind myself that the person who isn't special in all of this is my husband. I'm still who I was in the sense of the healthy, thoughtful, caring person that I always was, and I've done nothing to diminish the 'specialness' that I brought to our relationship. It's amazing how easy it is for us to feel unspecial when it is our waywards that have shown themselves to be less than special!

I have always believed that my husband is a fundamentally good person who got into a situation that he couldn't cope with in a healthy way, and he made a decision that had devastating consequences. So I'm not saying that he is a bad person or that I am better than he is, but simply that it helps me to remember all of the good and special things about me are still true. They're not defined by him or his actions.

On this:

Our commitment doesn't feel special anymore

I like what blakesteele says about how the specialness in his relationship comes from he and his wife having shared so much in life together.

I was thinking about this recently after reading a post about wedding rings on SI. My husband and I always have worn our wedding bands and neither of us stopped after D-Day. Recently I was thinking about all of the scratches and dings on my ring from years of everyday wearing and how our jeweler offers polishing to make rings look like new again. I was tempted to do this with our rings...but started to think about how despite the fact that his ring touched another woman's body during sex, the scratches and dents on our rings come from all of the things we've shared together - pushing baby strollers, building a cottage for our family, pursuing the outdoor activities we love together, and all of the shared experiences that are ours alone. To polish those scratches out of our rings feels too much like it erases the marks of our life together. In other words, the A isn't the sum total of our relationship or the substance of who we are.

Just another perspective on it in case it's helpful.