SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

(Not sure if this should be in General or Reconciliation...)

I'm sitting here staring at my laptop. I have so much I want to say, but can't seem to find the words...

Except to say I miss my old life. I feel like I'm mourning a death. Is that normal? I miss the days when I could look at WBF from across the room and just the site of him would make me smile.

Now I stare at him and wonder what happened to the man I thought I knew? Did he ever really exist?

We are currently in R, and things are going really well. So I don't know why I am feeling this way, but some days I wonder if it is worth it to stay with someone when I'm not sure I'll ever feel the same way about them again.

It's not that I don't love him, because I do. It's not even about love. It's about the way I felt about him before his A. You can never get that feeling back...can you? I guess I'm just not sure if you can recover from this. Am I suppose to spend my 30's figuring out that I can't do this? And then I'll be too old to have kids...get married? Have a life?

I'm just utterly sad...depressed right now. I don't understand why life is so cruel sometimes.

[This message edited by 4everfaithful83 at 8:56 PM, April 20th (Sunday)]

I hear what you say. I wondered that too. Because love isn't enough, IMO. What would it look like, afterwards. Would there be an afterwards? Would it connect with before?

It's different. That's all I can say. It's different now. It's mostly good, but there are times when it isn't. Before, there were times that it wasn't either, but there was this sorta blind faith that it would all straighten out and that there would always be time for everything to straighten up.

I, nor FWH believe that anymore. That things will just "straighten up." Now we know, there's work to do every day, connecting, checking in with each other, examining ourselves and communicating that to each other. There is no longer that blind faith that things will just magically straighten themselves out. That we can just ignore the things that irritate us, that worry us, that take us away from each other, because we have the time to reconnect later. Later, that faith in later, has been taken from us. And neither of us will take that for granted again.

We're two different people now. There are similarities, a lot of them, but fundamentally, at our core level, we are two different people now. More realistic people, I think.

4ever,

I am sorry you are having a tough time. I am starting my 5th year post A. I was so deeply in love with my H before his A. He was my everything, and there isn't anything I wouldn't have done for him. He was the center of my universe. I can't even describe my feelings. Then he had his A. I wont go into details, essentially he repeatedly hurt me and slowly destroyed the love I had for him. At one point, it was totally gone.

With that said, can you have the "old" feelings back? I don't think so. But that doesn't mean that you cannot have new feelings. The reality is neither of you are the same people as you were before his A. You are each different now. With the difference comes different feelings. I do love my husband very much now, but the old feelings belong to an old marriage. My new feelings are part of my new marriage. I am afraid to trust at the same level as I did before, so I cannot totally release my heart. I don't know if I could do that ever again.

Grieving for the old marriage is very normal. Wondering who the person is that you are marriage to is normal. It takes time, patience and lots of work.

Thanks Skan. You are right. Its about so much more than love. It's everything else if you take love out of it. It's those feelings of "its us against the world" and like you said the blind faith that everything would be OK.

Because before the A it didn't really matter what happened between us. We had bad days and good days. But even on bad days I was thinking "We are a team, we love each other, nothing can change that!"

But it's been stolen from me. And I'm not sure I can live without that feeling...

I've often made comments about how I wish my bubble wasn't burst. The blind faith in my marriage, my husband and the naïve contentment I had prior to DD. IC has assured me it is normal and it is grieving not only the loss of the marriage I thought I had and I thought I had signed up for, but the loss of my prior self...that is a death in a sense because you will never get that blind naïve self back again. Sure, I was naïve and blind to all of this, but that person was fundamentally happy with her life and I'm sad that he stole that from me as well. We are also in R and I find when I try to explain this to him he usually says he wishes he had just straightened out his life on his own and never had to tell me about the As, just stop them and allow me to stay 'happy'. I don't believe this would have benefited either of us in the long run. I know why he says it though, he knows I'm mourning the loss of my 'spark' and happier person and he feels if he got help without me ever having to find out, I would have been better off but I disagree. I do hope in time and with lots of efforts I will regain a new sense of self. A more confident, independently happy person who feels whole and content whether he's in my life or not.

While I would never say the As were a good thing, I have learned a lot about myself from this situation and I do believe that if nothing else these types of scenarios do force us to examine old behaviors and traits and learn and grow from them. I don't know what to suggest about M and children because I'm not in your shoes - I don't feel I stayed for R because of the children or the marriage, I feel I stayed because it was what I wanted and was best for me in the moment. I can see how it's different when the As happen before the marriage because you are still considering a sense of a life and children together, whereas that had already happened for me and he didn't cheat until we were 12yrs in.

Thanks to all who have responded.

Sunvalley - My WBF actually thinks that his A was a good thing. He said obviously this sounds wrong, but to him, he says it opened his eye's to his what he was taking for granted and his bad choices. He said he feels we are closer now, more than ever. I'm glad he feels that we are closer, but its at my expense. I feel like he didn't lose anything...

Yes, my bubble has been burst! I guess its wrong to feel like I wish it never had, because who wants to live in a dream state? The bubble isn't reality. Maybe I'm jaded now, but I feel like everyone's just waiting for their bubble to be burst...

And brkn_heartd, thanks for the kind words. It's nice to hear from someone who is 5 years out from DDAY. I think you are right. I'm don't think you can ever get those feelings back...maybe we (wbf and I) can make new ones?

I'm sorry. :( I could have written your entire post. Word.for.word. :( Devastated doesn't even begin to explain the feeling. :(