SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi DG. I'm Nekorb. I'm new to this thread, but not to

SI.

I read this whole fucking thing today (true confessions, I started reading only your posts after page 5 or so) because I had to find out if what we old-timers suspected was true, and that your WW was only fessing up to what she had to.

I'm sorry we were right. I was SO hoping she was truly remorseful, doing the work of R, etcetera. Not so much.

I will say that on some level, I think she deserves another chance. But ONLY once you've reached the point that you feel you can be perfectly fine without her. You seemed to be terribly codependent. Things would never be the same, but that doesn't mean it would be bad. There is no shame in trying to save a marriage. It does not make you weak or less of a man.

On other levels (most of them), I'm wondering why you haven't filed for divorce yet, or maybe you have and I missed it? The part about WW and OM disparaging you and belittling you is very similar to what my WH and MCOW did, and it's cruel beyond words and once you've read those things they are nearly impossible to forget. I don't know as though that person deserves your love anymore.

If I were you (and I'm not), I would quietly file for divorce, and just let go. Stay in counseling and get that anger thing under control. Feel the pain and move through it. Support your kids as they do the same.

I was also with my WH since I was a teenager. I thought I couldn't live without him. I didn't want to. I loved him and our family and our life. BUT, now that I've started letting go of some of the pain and anger, I'm almost thankful that he set me free of him.

Hang tough.

DoneGone,

Great post.

You perfectly and logically explained why R is essentially impossible for some BS....I know I had the same thoughts when my LTgf begged for another chance.

The one thing a BS truly wants is exactly the one thing a WS can NEVER give them....and that is to have never cheated in the first place.

Some BS's can eventually make their peace with this....others can't, or like myself actively choose not to even try.

Your update on what happened with POSOM was classic.

All that tough guy schtick from his emails...bragging about what a badass he would have been if he walked in, blah, blah, blah.

Then to go into such emotional hysterics and try to physically confront you for exposing his shitty behavior to his BW....only to have his ass handed to him in a total beatdown.

Brought a smile to my face....what a pathetic worm.

If I were you, after that scene, I don't think I could have refrained from looking directly at the WW and saying:

"THAT is what you destroyed our M and severely damaged your relationship with our daughters over?"

Third Strike IMO.

Strike 1- traitor...the A itself

Strike 2- total disrespect....the email exchanges

Strike 3- Fucking Stupid....to think a fucking cockroach like POSOM was somehow a 'real' man and better in every way than DoneGone.

I hope you are not entertaining the idea of R with this woman.

DoneGone,

What are your daughters thoughts and feelings on you divorcing their mom NOW that they know the whole truth, including how they were manipulated and used as a weapon against you in the aftermath?

If they are still asking you to R, you may need to share the general content (not the details if you want to spare them and WW that pain) of the emails to them to explain why you cannot stay in the M no matter how much they would want you to.

Having your daughters stay angry with you for kicking their mom to the curb is asking you to put up with too much IMO.

Explain to them the general content of the messages, if necessary to help you daughters accept and understand why the D must happen.

I know it might hurt WW's relationship with them further and you don't want to cause her unnecessary pain, but that's no reason that YOU should have to carry your daughter's anger and upset feelings.

SHE did this....SHE wrote those things.

She has to own it.

DG

Your last post was excellent. So logical and perfectly articulated.

It comes down to this: is possible to love in any sort of healthy way when you trust is destroyed and the one who destroyed it is your wife.

I am not sure I really know the answer. I think it is possible. Most of the time I think it is.

But I have moments, even 5 years later...

It is hard to go back and R because the reality is you never would have chosen the person they became and know they can be in the first place. You just can't un know. It is like taking the blinders off and never unlearning something that was just so horrific and terrible that it seeps into every facet of your life. Sometimes all I can think is soylent green. It is very difficult to have hope and faith in someone and see past the affair and if you do- it has nothing to do with them and everything to do with you and your own character and there is nothing wrong with choosing to walk away. Only you know what is right for you and what you can live with. Good Luck and I am so sorry for all the disrespect you were dealt.

this woman got off on humiliating you...Wow!!

He out alpha'ed you ? This unemployed, living off his wife for 12 years while cheating on her, addicted to video games loser ?

Footsie's in your presence ?

Manipulating your daughters and therapist ?

Your wife is literally trailer trash material...

From your last post it sounds like you are coaching yourself well. You sound clear. It's kind of amazing how we can seem so matter of fact about the pain. It's surreal, but we have to deal. Like you are telling someone about a movie you just saw, but then you realize you are talking about your own life!

I agree:

this woman got off on humiliating you...Wow!!

He out alpha'ed you ? This unemployed, living off his wife for 12 years while cheating on her, addicted to video games loser ?

Footsie's in your presence ?

Manipulating your daughters and therapist ?

Your wife is literally trailer trash material...

Done gone, it would not surprise me if she had sex with you the same day she had sex with OM. but I hope this is not the case.

I can't think of anything worse here beside her getting pregnant with OM's baby and thank god that didn't happen.

Speaking of that...^^^^^.....I assume you've gotten all of your STD testing done?

DG I haven't chimed in before but Ive been reading from the start. But I had to comment on your last post. It was so well explained and written. I felt like my bubble burst too. It's a horrible feeling that there's nothing special about your relationship anymore. We are still in reconciling form, but I do mourn the death of that innocent pure love we once had. I hate it.

You're doing great and it was great to hear about what happened. The nerve of him. Bravo to you!

"Joystick". Seriously? What a moron.

bumping in hopes that DG will check in....

Very good posts DoneGone.

Why not divorce her and if it suits you, you can date her and other women to find out who is right companion?

Nekorb

I will say that on some level, I think she deserves another chance.

Yes, I agree with you. She probably does deserve another chance, just not from me. She gobbled up the three chances I gave her and now wants another one. Idiot me, I would probably give her another one, except, I have none left to give. She cleaned me out. I have searched my heart but cannot find another one. She’s run out of chances and her next chance will have to come from someone other than me.

“You seemed to be terribly codependent.”

Yes, "terribly" is a good word. I was co-dependent. I did not get it earlier, but I do now. However, I am not sure that it was really a bad thing. There is a fine line between co-dependency and caring. I think that if you are in a healthy relationship, then co-dependent beliefs and behavior can lead to healthy, happy marriages.

I have always been very clear about my purpose and goals in life and have pursued them relentlessly. I enjoyed feeling successful. We had a good relationship, a great marriage and were very happy. The greatest majority of everything I have done since the day I met her has been for her; to make her happy. If she was happy and contented, so was I. Her happiness and well-being were always at the top of my to-do list. I enjoyed taking credit for her happiness. On the flip side, when she was upset, fussy, unhappy, sad, pissed off, frustrated, etc. I felt like a failure and took responsibility for that also. I took her unhappiness personal because I associated my own success as a man based upon how happy I was able to make her feel.

I think that if you love someone with all your heart and need them with all your might; good chances you are going to be co-dependent. I know, we can't "make" anyone happy. Everyone has a huge role to play in their own happiness. But at least I wanted to try to meet her emotional needs, and I expected her to meet mine. And I wanted to avoid hurting her, just as I expected her to avoid hurting me. We both believed that we had a responsibility to each other to try to make each other happy, and avoid making each other unhappy.

Things would never be the same, but that doesn't mean it would be bad.

I know what you mean and appreciate your heart, but when you say that 'things would never be the same, that means I would have to settle. I don't think I care to downgrade..

There is no shame in trying to save a marriage. It does not make you weak or less of a man

My way of thinking is that the time to save the marriage was ‘before’ she cheated and she was given the opportunity to do just that. In the months leading up to me discovering her infidelity, I noticed a certain distance that had come between us. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It is like she wasn’t quite there. I asked her about it many times but each time she assured me that everything was alright. I was very much in tune with her and continued to have a premonition of something not being right. I worried that she had perhaps received a bad medical report and was keeping it from me. I wondered if something was going on with one of the kids and she didn’t want me to worry. Could be it was a female thing, perhaps the menopause transition… it never once occurred to me that she was having an affair. It would have been impossible for that thought to enter into my mind.

As usual, I thought her depression was something that could be fixed. Were it a health problem we would do what we had to do to take care of it. If she were worried about one of the kids, well, we’d been through that before.

What I really thought is that it was the empty nest syndrome. The youngest of our three daughters had just gone off to school. So I put the fix in. I took time off work and we spent the summer doing things we have been wanting to do for the previous 20 years. We did the things we had always talked about. We vacationed, we traveled, we had romantic dates and passionate evenings. My motto to her was, “you gotta laugh, you gotta sing, you gotta dance, you gotta let the wild child play!”

All the while, there was this undefinable distance between us. What an idiot I was. I mistook her guilt complex for something innocent that I could help her with. Her wild child was playing all right; and not just with me. The only thing that was wrong with her is that she was in conflict with her conscience. Idiot me contributed all her text messaging to missing the kids when in fact, she was missing OM. The reason she seemed to be a thousand miles away is because, in her mind, she was.

[This message edited by DoneGone at 6:03 PM, August 13th (Thursday)]

nekorb

There is no shame in trying to save a marriage. It does not make you weak or less of a man.

MC said she personally thinks my inability to move past the cheating speaks more to my insecurity. She believes that WW has probably earned another chance. WW argues that if I have really forgiven her, then I will give her another chance. That is not mine to give. Many, many people have that gift, I do not.

When reading the stories on this site, I always root for the WS to kick the cheaters to the curb; make them pay; get revenge; make them squirm and beg. I want to see them crawl. That happens sometimes but not nearly enough to quench my sick thirst for justice.

Then I see people, like you, who are willing to work on their marriage, willing to forgive their WS; willing to work through all the pain, and I say, “What the heck?” Who are these people? Where did they come from? What are they made of? Are they enriched with some secret ingredient or were they created out of a special formula with some kind of super DNA? Are they weaker than me, or, are they stronger than me; or neither. I don’t know. What I do know is that they have my admiration and respect and I wish them well. And, I should add, I truly wish I could do it. If I could just put all this behind me and move on with my life and my wife, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Even though I have filed for divorce, I realize I can stop the proceedings at any time. I do not see that happening. Although I have had many long and protracted discussions with WW it’s hard to shake the suspicion that all conversations with her are pointless. There is a cartoon where Wile E Coyote ran off a cliff, but kept spinning his legs, trying to prevent himself from falling into the void into which he would shortly plummet – that’s where we are.

She is sure we can still have a wonderful future together, however for me, the past will always be present in the future. WW feels that great emphasis should be placed on the wonderful 26 years we have shared together. I feel growing paralysis through an overwhelming sense of contingency, that our 26 wonderful years together are not as important as just one of the nights she spent with other man. She doesn’t understand. I don’t either, but you do not need to understand gravity to fall off a cliff.

Whether it is because I am too much a man or not man enough, is of no pertinent value to me. The existential pointlessness I feel is that no matter what we say or do, any future we share together would be a watered down version of what we had and I have no desire to spend the rest of my life thinking about the way we were.

[This message edited by DoneGone at 4:36 PM, August 13th (Thursday)]

MC said she personally thinks my inability to move past the cheating speaks more to my insecurity. She believes that WW has probably earned another chance.

Your MC is an idiot

You said it so well:

Too weak, too strong?

No, we all have different tolerances, breaking points. All affairs are different. All marriages, before and after are different.

You know in your soul what you can handle.

You have to honor yourself above all else.

I like what you said about the bottom line in a relationship: you just depended on her to avoid hurting you. She didn't do this because she put herself first. That hurts.

I agree with Orbit: MC is out of bounds making that kind of judgment call.

DG, I fully understand and support your decision to not attempt reconciliation with your wife. She's one of the worst WS I've seen during my time here, so I'm very happy that you'll be cutting that tumour out of your life as much as possible.

Best wishes to you and the girls!

MC said she personally thinks my inability to move past the cheating speaks more to my insecurity. She believes that WW has probably earned another chance. WW argues that if I have really forgiven her, then I will give her another chance. That is not mine to give. Many, many people have that gift, I do not.

When reading the stories on this site, I always root for the WS to kick the cheaters to the curb; make them pay; get revenge; make them squirm and beg. I want to see them crawl. That happens sometimes but not nearly enough to quench my sick thirst for justice.

Then I see people, like you, who are willing to work on their marriage, willing to forgive their WS; willing to work through all the pain, and I say, “What the heck?” Who are these people? Where did they come from? What are they made of? Are they enriched with some secret ingredient or were they created out of a special formula with some kind of super DNA? Are they weaker than me, or, are they stronger than me; or neither. I don’t know. What I do know is that they have my admiration and respect and I wish them well. And, I should add, I truly wish I could do it. If I could just put all this behind me and move on with my life and my wife, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Even though I have filed for divorce, I realize I can stop the proceedings at any time. I do not see that happening. Although I have had many long and protracted discussions with WW it’s hard to shake the suspicion that all conversations with her are pointless. There is a cartoon where Wile E Coyote ran off a cliff, but kept spinning his legs, trying to prevent himself from falling into the void into which he would shortly plummet – that’s where we are.

She is sure we can still have a wonderful future together, however for me, the past will always be present in the future. WW feels that great emphasis should be placed on the wonderful 26 years we have shared together. I feel growing paralysis through an overwhelming sense of contingency, that our 26 wonderful years together are not as important as just one of the nights she spent with other man. She doesn’t understand. I don’t either, but you do not need to understand gravity to fall off a cliff.

Whether it is because I am too much a man or not man enough, is of no pertinent value to me. The existential pointlessness I feel is that no matter what we say or do, any future we share together would be a watered down version of what we had and I have no desire to spend the rest of my life thinking about the way we were.

You are an incredibly articulate writer. This post should be appointment-reading for any betrayed spouse

DG,

your best post yet, especially the first one today. You have passed BS 501

You are right in every aspect.

My only question to you now. What is your gameplan bro