SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I've struggled with understanding this and am hoping some BS can tell me how they can offer the gift of R? I realize that I am the epitome of hypocrisy when I say if the roles were reversed and I was the BS, I don't think I could offer that gift. FOR ME ONLY, I see that as a flaw in my character. To be clear, I am in no way criticizing anyone who chooses not to. I would like to get to an emotional level where I would have the capacity to show that kind of grace to someone.

Any insight would be appreciated.

This is a battle for me. Am I letting him get away with it? Am I going against and diminishing my own core values and beliefs? I think about both daily. I'm so hurt and mad! I see her all over him. I see her everywhere and it's so hard. I doubt that I'll be able to make it most days...

Then I look at my kids. I don't want WH to steal my dreams of how the future will be with them. They keep me in it.

Also...I love him. I don't have a switch. I always thought of this happened that I'd be out with a quickness. But, when it happens nothing is black and white, nothing.

If you're being given the chance for R don't bother questioning it...just take it and know it's harder every hour of every day than you can ever understand.

As a FWS, I can say that I would not give R a chance. I tend to keep my emotions in check 98% of the time but I know that would trigger the 2% where my emotions will get the better of me. I would absolutely have the most destructive breakup if I was cheated on. I would never give R a chance. There would be broken plates, smashed objects, and holes through drywall.

But the most important thing to keep in mind is that everyone is different. After learning about my A, my BS never got angry. Not once. Only sadness and desperation to save our relationship. Hell...she even lets me to go the bar where my last A began with friends and without her. So everyone is different. You may not get a chance for R. Because some people cannot recover from learning about an A. You cannot expect R as much as you can expect anyone to want to date you. The ball is in their court. Sometimes you have to accept their decision.

I've only read here a short time. I'm left with wondering why anyone would choose to stay. Marriage isn't anything other than a tax bracket without two healthy people. Staying with someone that only sees you as the worst thing you've ever done is not a precious gift.

It was suggested I read "Not Just Friends". I am reading it and have to say the author is/was (guess she's no longer with us) a lot more optimistic than any of the stories I've seen here.

Does coming here every day really help you heal or just keep you locked into a loop that becomes a mirror?

I grew up in foster homes. One place I lived had an aunt that had been through a tornado and lost everything. She lived that storm every day and talked about it keeping it alive as if it happened just yesterday. She became angry at anyone that was happy or seemed to be enjoying life. She was a miserable person.

I know I'm not the only one with a shit childhood. I also know I DON'T want to talk about all the horrible things I went through, did to get through them, or talk to others that went through things. It was bad enough once. Why would I keep something in the present that belongs to the past? That's one of the best things about time. It takes you away from something.

This forum says it's for cheaters but there are questions for "waywards" and the BS's come in and describe the worst thing their spouse did just tenuously linking it to the topic or answering it as if it's their question. Why? How is that helpful. How is posting you loved lingerie until your spouse fucked someone else in it or fucked someone else that was wearing it a help to anyone other than you getting a chance to take another swipe?

I don't understand it or how this helps anyone heal? I showed my husband this site and he read for about 10 minutes and ask I not come back here. The vicious hatred some feel toward people they're still married to and the horrible things done to people by cheaters was very toxic to him.

If you're married to the people most of you describe run fast and run far. You're losing yourself or have lost yourself and are in danger of joining the other team. If you're screwing around with and on your spouse also run fast and run far. Life is too short to poison those you love or claim to love. It really can be that simple. Not easy, but simple.

Try and view life as something other than labels or sides. I hope you all find the end you're looking for and don't destroy yourself in the process.

Thank you two the posters that reached out to me. You're good people, not two letters.

My husband completely agrees with you, fwiw. And he too would prefer I not still come here.

[This message edited by Darkness Falls at 7:48 PM, July 8th (Saturday)]

Iwish - you really really don't understand trauma

I think many bs who chose r are people who would've said they couldn't r.

And I think many bs struggle with self forgiveness because of the above.

Until you're actually there, it's really impossible to say. Even when you are there, it's sometimes impossible to say.

I am a BH. In my situation, I have been wronged on so many levels. WW affair with AP coworker. Socializing my children with his, blaming, insults, still to this day. WW moved out with my children, spends more time with AP and his kids. Holidays together, "playing family," everything. Text messages between us are laden with passive-aggressive snipes towards me (to alleviate the guilt of her affair) still.

I begged, pleaded for WW to stay in the beginning. Just caused more insults, more blame, more denial, etc towards me.

I just hunkered down, going to church, praying, reading the bible joined a support group, go to marriage counseling ALONE. No dating for me, not even opposite sex friends. Not opening myself up for that possibility.

Why? Because I'm not throwing away 10 years of marriage because of this. Because I said "Better or for worse, richer or for poorer, till death do us part." Those words mean something to me. Maybe I'm old school. Because God wills it that I do everything I can. Because I still love my wife, even though as a BS, I'm not in love with her at the moment. Because love to me is more than just "feeling in love."

By amazing marriage counselor gives me excellent advice how to emotionally/spiritually/physically conduct myself. Get right with God. Self improvement. Emotionally stabilize. Leave her alone. Let her go up and down, back and fourth emotionally. People do that. Every 4-6 months, both BS and WS flip flop on whether they want to reconcile or not. Most of the time, they hit that "reconcile-bug" at different times.

No snooping or interference with my WS ongoing affair, let the abomination continue until it crumbles under the fragile foundation it was built on.

[This message edited by HoldTheLine at 8:39 PM, July 8th (Saturday)]

I chose to R. I really loved my spouse, he was my best friend and I can honestly say the best times in my life have been with him. We had a very easy going relationship. We had the relationship that people look at and go how do they do it?

About two years ago, I started to see a change in my spouse. His behavior/personality changed, he had multiple health issues and he was depressed. He was a former athlete and took this and aging very badly. I tried and tried to get him to talk to me but he refused. He took medication for his depression and the month he started cheating he received bad news about his health and stopped taking his medicine. Each time I tried to talk with him he always said he was going through something and everything would be ok.

Come to find out this married other woman had been calling and offering him sex for at least nine months before the affair. It was a perfect storm of a man down to have someone feeding his ego. Mind boggling was that both him and AP said he never had one bad word to say about me.

Listen, there is no good reason for an affair. It is ridiculous, disrespectful, selfish, downright nasty.

The reasons I decided to try R for me:

I do love my spouse.

I do know that my spouse loves me.

He took full responsibility for his actions.

He set up NC right away.

He was sorry for what he did, not just getting caught... this is key.

He could have left for her and she would have been happy to have him, but he wanted to R

This is it for me, if he cheats again, he knows there are no more chances with me.

I love my family and my desire to keep them in my life is high.

I learned a long time ago that many times in life we walk away from a relationship only to turn around and repeat the same issues over with another partner rather than fix it.

There is no guarantee that the next man will never cheat.

We had a loving relationship that was once solid instead of two people who could not make it work.

Another key....I refuse to bring the affair up everyday. It was a terrible event that happened and nothing is going to change it. I refuse to let it destroy the rest of my life by becoming bitter. Become better instead of bitter. Doing my work on me and he is doing his. Honestly there will come a time when I no longer "need" this site. I find myself more and more commenting in hopes of helping others rather than being negative. This is just me and how I am doing.

Back stories of more than one poster here make this discussion strange.

Why not post on reddit where you'll get the attention you're seeking? This site is for helping people recover and live authentically.

[This message edited by gonnabegr8 at 9:39 PM, July 8th (Saturday)]

Why am choosing to give R a try with my wayward H? I love him and I know he loves me. He is good man who made a very stupid decision. After 8 months of counseling (both marriage and individual), and coming to terms with the many issues in our marriage, I can honestly say that had this horrific event not happened, we both would have either lived together miserably or ended up divorced somewhere down the line. I'll be the first to admit that our marriage was not a very happy one. We were just existing together. I am willing to give our marriage another chance despite his infidelity because as of now, I have the husband I have always wanted. We are only 8 months out so I still have my reservations that the changes are here to stay but I am holding out hope that we can have the marriage we BOTH have always wanted. I wish more than anything he wouldn't have cheated but at the same time, I betrayed him in other ways. I may not have went out and cheated but I am owning my part in the breakdown of our marriage. I don't question our love for each other. We have a long history together, I have been with him more than 25 years, married for 20 of those years. I have my moments where the devastation still creeps in and I wonder if I am capable of ever forgiving him, but as of now, I'm going to give it one hell of a try.

gonnaberg

As my threads seem to bother you so, why do you continue to post on them? Maybe you should take your tired narrative elsewhere, perhaps back to a good IC.

Good luck.

I am a B.S. From what I grew up witnessing in my childhood between my parents I always said infidelity was a dealbreaker for me.

When I found out the cold hard truth of what my wife had done in our marriage 5 years ago I initially said we were done. I had over a year of strong suspicions and being told ILYBNILWY anymore. classic fence sitting as it turned out.

When I dug into her actions and found the hard evidence of her betrayals with a friend of mine of over 20 years I kicked that fence right out from under her. Confronted her and blew our world apart.

She attempted suicide, and seemed truly remorseful from our conversations. I foolishly saw her regrets at being caught as remorse. In thinking she was truly remorseful I decided to try and pick up the pieces of our marriage after around a month of talking . We had been together for 17 years at that point and had two children together. I thought if nothing else they deserved for me to try and save our marriage so they could grow up with both parents in their life.

I set conditions to our trying again. N.C with three men I knew inappropriate things went on with. Seeking I.C for long standing mental health issues that she had refused to address. And tranparancy in her communications with others.

I thought it had only been the last year of our marriage, at that point, that she had done these things to me and thought she could change and grow into the person I thought she was all along. I was wrong. She broke N.C, she started hiding messages and friends and interactions again.

I can admit now that I was a fool in thinking she could change as a person. I'm not saying people can't change, just that she doesn't seem to have the introspection required to do so. Her betrayals continued and escalated to coworkers, all while still portraying herself as a victim of some sorts to those around us.

I went through over 4 years of false R before the decision to divorce was made. I flushed away another 5 years of my life on the false hope that she could change.

Those were my reasons for trying again, our length of time together and our two kids. That and my false belief it was only recent and she was remorseful. Turns out she has done these things our entire 22 years together, by her own recent admission. So that was a big kick in the teeth let me tell you.

Moving forward in my life, if anyone I'm involved with cheats on me, I will put boot to ass and never look back.. Life lesson has been learned, in the most painful of ways

God help me I love him. Other than an insane amount of TT which he has managed to convince himself was best, he's has been remorseful. It's a lot if trouble to get divorced. Plus I want to look my kids in the face and say I tried everything. We also had what I though to have been a good marriage. Clearly it wasnt if I am here. I have choices. I am making moves to where if he pulls this stunt again, I can make a clean break. Because I am choosing R doesnt mean I'm forgiving another trespass

Take no offense, but I do not expect you to truly understand the answer as we are wired differently. Plain and simple, I love my wife...

I know her issues, but I do it for her. Not because I am codependent, though I am sure it sounds like it. I do it because I make the choice to love her. Because I want to see what she grows into. Because.... read Johnathan Livingston seagull, maybe that will give you some perspective.

I know what she thinks, I know that it was a huge mistake, I know that when she messes up, its huge...truth is, I know her better than she knows herself.

It's an interesting question and one we probably ask ourselves often.

For one, you can't really know how you'll react until it happens to you. Plenty of BSs here who thought they'd divorce in a heartbeat if it happened to them....until it did.

Why do I? Because it's already a lose-lose scenario. I don't want to be a part-time dad, owe alimony as a result of someone else's choice, risk my wife winding up with someone like AP or god forbid another POS and raising my kids. What if she really does turn it around and become a better person and I miss out on that? And despite what this has done for my self-esteem or self-image or whatever, she's still been the one person in my life I feel like I can actually be myself around and my best friend. I don't want to lose that and I should at least give it one honest shot.

If things go sour I can always divorce her later, and even if I do feel like she's getting away with murder, at the end of the day she still has to look herself in the mirror and know what she did.

[This message edited by mouthkeptshut at 12:31 AM, July 9th (Sunday)]

Love is a decent start, but if I've learned anything over the last year, love is rarely enough.

I was voted least likely to R too -- at least what my wife thought which is why it was a secret for so long.

My wife finally confessed to me what she did because we had tried just about everything else to find what we had lost along the way. She could have quit and walked away anytime she wanted. And she has truly fought for me every day since "discovery" day.

Once I realized that infidelity is neither permanent or fatal, I chose to see her as a whole human instead of only her worst moments.

As with anything else in life, the only thing I can control in this world is how I respond to adversity. I chose grace for a genuinely remorseful person.

I very much understand the traumatic emotional pain and why so many people either get stuck or walk away.

I'm so glad I made the choice I did. We're finally building the relationship we wanted from the start. Neither of us is happy it took tragedy to get here, but I can't change that, only how we take care of each other today.

This is a question I have been asking myself since DDay and I spent a lot of time thinking about it as well as another one:

Why just why WS proclaims love and is glued to BS on DDay and after?

If you were in love with another person or whatever feelings you had and very likely considered at some point leaving your family, why you are sticking to BS now? Why wouldn't you just leave without dumping on BS the decision many can't simply make being in shock. Have you ever considered that most of BS being blindsided by their WS are just overwhelmed with enormity of betrayal and CANNOT make decisions because all their efforts directed towards psychological survival.

I believe that many WS consciously or unconsciously prepared themselves for DDay. They accessed risks and knew the consequences , were willing to take a chance and therefore at least intellectually are ready for DDay, whereas BS is completely unprepared.

As someone said already this is a loose loose situation anyway. I was traumatized on DDay and lived in a shock for about 2-3 months at least, in a zombie mode, woke up, ate or not ate, went to work, came back home and crawled to bed. One year later I don't remember lots of details about this time, just mostly mental and emotional agony, yelling at WH to relieve it.

Do you really believe that a person in such state is able to make a decision particularly if kids involved? The goal was to survive the cruel assault at me as a woman and wife.

Another important thing to understand is kicking WS on DDay does't stop the pain of being betrayed, because if this were true, R would never be a possibility.

The only positive moment of my WH staying after DDay was being a target I used to direct my anger and pain, and this brought some relief but at the same time his presense was and still is the major trigger.

One year after DDay, I am able to assess situation somewhat emotion free. A lot has changed, WH has done tons of work but I keep wondering wouldn't it be so much better if WH simply took all his sh.t and simply left me for good on DDay. It would sure hurt a lot, but maybe I healed faster.

So really before questioning R, ask why won't WS leave BS alone? WS is usually resentful and unsatisfied with M, yet keep abusing and wouldn't leave their spouse. ( this is about WS who stays). Basically WS makes decision to have fun and hurt their spouse and then run away from the final decision.

For the record, I consider every day of my WH's lies as abuse to me, he had no right to string me to the M he wasn't committed. I would had made a better use of this time for sure and in fact a lot of my anger is about me wasting energy on something that was fake and not worth any investments at all..

Sorry if my answer is harsh, a lot of it comes from my personal struggle and is not directed at anyone here. My point is to question the decision of WS to stay after he/she chose to disrespect and abandon their spouse? Why would not you guys simply leave? A fair divorce, give full custody of kids to your spouse since they won't important enough and your needs were prioritized over keeping family intact and persue any AP or fantasies you want... From BS's perspective it is a logical and fair solution...

In the end, BS could leave later, in some cases they take time to process trauma because this is more important for their well being than kicking out WS.

ff, I suspect very much that you are a bully. I refer to your reply to gonnabegr8 but this isn't the only time. I have great sympathy for your BS. I suspect she suffers from your aggressive and mocking manner.

take your tired narrative elsewhere, perhaps back to a good IC.

Good luck.

The sarcasm in this quote is palpable.

Perhaps you should do the same. Take your tired narrative elsewhere like to a good IC about preferring to remain as a committed liar. How about trying to become authentic and honest.

What would a BS who doesn't know about the WS's betrayal be reconciling? That R will be for naught should the BS ever find out the truth. IMO, you are playing with a loaded gun hoping the firing pin never lines up with a live shell.

It seems to me that in the minds of at least some people that living a lie is still in the infidelity. I believe that. The 7 years following the end of active fucking by my WW before I found out was part of the LTA. She was still cheating. Cheating by lying.

SI is to help people to firstly get out of infidelity and then heal. IMO, your BS is still in infidelity and is being denied the opportunity to heal.

From my perspective, you want the atta boys about doing such a marvelous job on yourself and support for your position but reject some, at least, who oppose your position. You also have the arrogance to provide yourself with an unearned title.

Quite frankly, I don't give a shit about you. I do give a shit about your BW. Should she ever find the truth and decide to attempt R she should have an open, honest, authentic, remorseful WH fully committed to supporting her and making retribution. IMO opinion she doesn't have that now with a WH continuing to justify a dishonest relationship.

If you haven't done so already I would recommend reading and re-reading "How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair" by Linda J. McDonald.

Good luck to your BW.

steady

I suspect very much that you are a bully. I refer to your reply to gonnabegr8 but this isn't the only time. I have great sympathy for your BS. I suspect she suffers from your aggressive and mocking manner.

The sarcasm in this quote is palpable.

Of course my response to gonnabergs comments, as well as yours, will be met with all the sarcasm they deserve. I also find it more than a bit incredulous, and a trifle amusing, that you can claim to have any idea how my wife and I interact based upon some postings on SI.

You are yet another fine example of someone who is incapable of controlling themselves. Like gonnaberg, you have an issue with me and the path I've taken which is fine. But instead of staying away from my threads, you come into them and call me names. Instead of offering constructive criticism, you completely go off topic and attack me. You obviously think I should sit idly by when someone attacks me and tells me I have no business being here? You obviously have read next to nothing I've written because I have received plenty of harsh 2x4's during my time here. I am always respectful when I receive the same consideration regardless of their content. I even offer my response to you in one of my other threads as proof of this. But sending faux sympathy to my wife and asking me to post elsewhere certainly doesn't fall into that category.

Who is the real bully here my friend? I would also suggest you take your own advice and find a good IC. You are clearly projecting your own anger on to me which is concerning to say the least.

[This message edited by ff4152 at 10:06 AM, July 9th (Sunday)]