SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

This is shattered heart 2017. You are in for a rude awakening. Read my posts. I found out about a affair 25 years ago. Found out about 6 months ago..My wife decided to tell me but she tt me for six months. Your marriage will never be the same. My wife was also very attractive and I was in better shape than 99% of the people out there, She screwed one of the ugliest men for about a month told me she wanted a divorce until other guy decided he got what he wanted. She is not telling you the whole truth and I bet on it.

This is me! I could have written this song. Every single word, nothing more, nothing less.

https://youtu.be/UpjKlOM7KQ4

I think if you can read some of DoneGone's posts you may get some real insight into your situation.

http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=557162&AP=1&HL=

Jimmy. Did u get the full timeline? What's next? (What Now?)

Jimmy1962 - "Maybe I need to get a divorce, to clear it, put this marriage behind me, kill it dead, divorce final. Then maybe we can date a while and possibly get remarried? Would that clear this crap up out of my mind?"

This is not a bad idea. It might help if your pain continues. Give yourself a little more time though to see if your head clears up on its own first.

Jimmy1962 - "I finally noticed he was there and I ran him off. I just wish that I noticed earlier."

You shouldn't have had to run him off. Your WW should have done it on her own. She chose not to because she liked the attention.

Jimmy1962 - "I thought we had a perfect marriage."

Yes you did because you were grateful and fully invested in your relationship with your WW. She was not fully invested though and her ungratefulness caused her to cheat.

I'm encouraged that your son realizes that what he's doing with married women can cause pain and hardship. I do understand though that he was betrayed by a self-centered whore and it changed his view of women. I personally never mess/ed with married women; not out of any concern for them, but out of respect for the husbands who are paying the bills.

Here's an update on my thought process and my progress.

Discovery day has made me sort of realize how the people at Hiroshima must have felt. They heard a pop, or a boom, then they looked around and saw a super bright light. They thought what was that?  Speaking with her friends wondering what, what is that? What could it have been? they thought they were OK, that they were going to be fine. Then that devastating wave hit them, and they were incinerated. It is an awful lot like an earthquake also. You have the initial quake, and for a while later you keep having these aftershocks.

As far as I knew, we had a perfect 37 year run. So here I am now finding out that 20 years ago she was in the sack with this hunk. I have a really good timeline all written out on calendars. She has been very forthcoming. I have came to the conclusion that I believe that I know when this went on, from the beginning of the flirting until it ended, maybe a period of a year and a half. The sex part went on for 10 or 12 months. They did it on five separate occasions. I feel lucky that it wasn't 100.

I have had a lot of responses on here. Some made me want to commit suicide and get a divorce, others gave me hope.

There was one person that wrote to me early on saying "they were not going to get rid of their spouse for the one bad thing they did, instead they chose to keep them for the many good things they had done". That is the way I feel. I want to make this work. I'm going to give it my best try. I can always get a divorce later right? I do feel that if any marriage has any chance of being saved, mine does. I've read a lot of stories on this site, some of them seem like they would really be tough to fix.

While doing my timeline, I was really bothered that the calendar pages that I had printed out and was working with, were all contaminated with him. I then realized that of course I only printed out the time period that he was around. I then decided that to get a more accurate picture of my marriage, I needed a timeline from when my wife and I got together until now. It is sort of interesting what I came up with. I broke it down into days. He had sex with my wife on five occasions. Those romps were no longer than an hour or two. I am going to give him those five days. And there are 24 hours in a day, he was with her an hour or two, but I'm going to give him the whole day. We have been together 13,505 days. I have slept with her for 13,500 nights. He was never with her at night, only during the day when they could sneak away for some reason, to run an errand or something. I am having a printing company right now cut me out small pieces of paper about the size of Post-it's, (one page for every day 13,505) and I'm going to stack them in some sort of tube so that they do not fall over. I'm going to start white paper at the floor it will go up for 15 years of marriage,(5,475) then there will be a band with the bright yellow highlighter (540) of the time period from when he started coming in until it was over. In that yellow band will be five (5) single sheets of paper with the redline on the edge. I believe I will then be able to see pretty accurately my marriage, the good, and the bad. Maybe I sound crazy, but I think that's going to be comforting to me. Working with those darned calendar pages made me feel like my whole marriage was a disaster. Of course I was only working on the sketchy time.

BS Only

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:30 PM, August 22nd (Tuesday)]

Jimmy I know youre in hell right now emotionally. Pay attention to your eating, exercise when you can an get youre rest. I know its devastating what your going thru. Now forgive me if I anger you,your wife made a conscious decision to take a chance an cheat with this so called hunk.She did it because she wanted to.It took a great deal of planning an deceit on her part to do this. She had absolutely no regard for you or the OMs wife. She recklessly for quite some time exposed you to STDs, some of which can lie dormant for years an could even kill you.You believe they only had sex 5 times in a year an a half, really ? In all likely hood this affair was going on longer than what you think. Your wife has suffered no consequences for her behavior. She essentially lied to you for 20 years. You really don't know how long the affair continued or when it ended an more than likely you never will. I also find it troubling that youre wife chose to tell your son whose behavior toward women mirrors what HUNK does. Frankly, divorce might be best.You can alaways remarry. Stay strong.

I broke it down into days. He had sex with my wife on five occasions. Those romps were no longer than an hour or two. I am going to give him those five days. And there are 24 hours in a day, he was with her an hour or two, but I'm going to give him the whole day. We have been together 13,505 days. I have slept with her for 13,500 nights. He was never with her at night, only during the day when they could sneak away for some reason, to run an errand or something.

OP, you have got to be the poster child for rationalizing. Your situation is not unique. Just about every BS can do the math the same way and come up with similar ratios. The last time I checked, a marriage is not an open competition for nights slept together. The OM was not eligible to compete. She betrayed you by allowing it. It doesn't matter whether she f*cked him 5 times or 50.

As I said earlier, you have a reasonable chance for genuine R. You don't need to rationalize or minimize what she did. You're allowed to hold her accountable, forgive her and give her a second chance.

But as long as you keep her on that pedestal; you can't help but rugsweep this. And if you do, you'll wind up regretting your false R.

[This message edited by badmemory at 4:57 PM, August 15th (Tuesday)]

I've said it before and will again, you both should be in IC to work through this. I can't remember if you said you are. If not, please find one that specializes in infidelity.

We are going to start marriage counseling the end of next month. That's the soonest they could get us in. They may not even be any good, who knows?

It's amazing how all my feelings, and my moods have evolved. I do not really seem to care, or feel anything right now. After much discussion with my wife, I have came to the conclusion this guy was nothing but a boy toy. I would feel much much better if she had paid him $1000 a pop. It is amazing to me, that one person's little nothing, can be the most devastating something to ever happen to another person. I am not sure that if under the right circumstances I could have had an affair. Let's say an attractive girl approached me and made me feel special, and I had the opportunity, and didn't think I could get caught, why not? And then if I did get caught, and it devastated my wife, I would be really upset that she was so upset over a little nothing, a quickie. I myself, had no idea of the devastation that an affair could cause until it happened to me. I am all in on getting this behind us. We had a fantastic marriage, except that rough spot there. I know that I have several options, and the only one that appeals to me at all is reconciliation. I have the woman of my dreams, and I am not going to lose her. I feel that we should tell every young couple that we come across our story so that it does not happen to them. It is a shame that people have to get on this site and find out all this hurt and devastation after they're in the middle of it.

You need to each be in individual counseling to work through your individual feelings about all of this.

MC may be worth it later. You both need IC now.

Please listen to the advice given here. You certainly need both IC initially and then at some point MC.

You must not rug sweep this. You are trying to rationalise the affair by implying that it was nothing in the context of your 35 year marriage. This was not the case at the time. She was in an affair for a minimum of 18 months both emotional and physical. That was 10% of the marriage at that point in time.

Furthermore she was obviously planning the physical betrayal with the exercise regime and the plastic surgery whilst playing your loving wife. If she is now saying that you did not have a good marriage that does not justify cheating. She should have talked to you and then if that didn't work out divorced you, not had a long-term affair behind your back.

This was a significant betrayal of your marriage, not just a glitch. Please deal with it accordingly.

She is regretful but not remorseful. With good counselling I'm sure she will get there. You must both understand that this can take 2-5 years to recover from, if that is at all possible.

Your marriage is one of the few that can benefit enormously from counseling.

Here I am 5 weeks after discovery day. I really thought this was something I could get over in a week or two!

At first I was in total denial, and I thought I could somehow fix this. I tried to rationalize how she must have been chloroformed or given a date rape drug or something. It was just impossible, it was simply impossible, that my sweet, angelic , perfect, devoted, fantastic wife could have done that on her own. She gave me a basic story that did admit there was an affair and the number of times and places. She thought that would be enough for me, and when I asked questions she was a little reluctant and said " I already told you, you know the big of it." Well of course the big of it was not enough, I needed details, every little detail. Neither of us knew what to do, we have never been down this road before. She wanted to help, but did not know how. I needed help, but I had no idea what to ask for. We bumbled around on our own before I found this site. She sat down and wrote out all the details that she could think of. They were not in the right order, because after 20 years she had forgotten many things. But I was very happy with what she could remember. And I've asked several questions that she either knew the answers to immediately or could think about it and give them to me in a little while. I printed out calendar pages and filled them, trying to get as much information as possible. She was very upset about this, almost traumatized every time she saw my papers. I explained to her I was doing this to try to weed him out of my life as much as possible. I was trying to get on paper facts rather than me go with a broad suspicion.

I explained it to her like this. To me her affair was like me standing at the beach looking at the ocean, as far as I can see to the left, as far as I can see in front of me, as far as I can see to the right, is ocean. How big is that ocean? How deep is that ocean? Well, with her help, and my calendars, shortly I had that ocean down to a swimming pool. After more fine-tuning with questions and answers and my calendars I feel that her affair was nothing more than a mud puddle. I could see a start date, I could see an end date, I had an idea of how many hours were spent together, I was able to weed him out of a lot of my life.

Right now, and for the last week or 10 days, I am in a different stage than I have been. I was trying to candy coat it, I guess I was rug sweeping for sure, trying my best to make her not at fault. It has became painfully clear she is truly at fault. She worked to do it. I am slapped in the face every few minutes with the shock that this has happened. It happens over, and over, and over every hour of the day. It's like someone jumps out behind something and scares you, I almost jump out of my skin. I went through a numb stage for a few days. I did not really care, and I was not really too upset by anything. I knew the facts, but I was not bothered so much. I suppose after going seven days without eating a bite, and three days straight with no sleep, when I finally did start sleeping it would only be for two or three hours a night, I guess my body took over and made me numb so I could rest. Once I got caught up on some sleep, and ate a little bit, all hell broke loose in my head. I have been in a living hell ever since. So here I am at five weeks from discovery day. I think I feel worse now than I did when I initially found out. I feel so hopeless, I feel like I am zero, I feel like I am nothing. I would like to go to sleep and not wake up. I keep reading that an affair kills, destroys, and ends your marriage. In two days will be my 35th anniversary, I do not want my marriage ended, destroyed, or killed. I have read the affair kills the marriage, and then you rebuild a new one, it will never be the same, it could be better in someways, I can be strong, but it will be different. Those words make me cry. I loved my fantastic marriage, I loved and I was so proud of my wife. My marriage, and my wife are what made me me. Is that really destroyed? Can I get over this, ever?

Triggers, triggers, triggers everywhere! One trigger that I have, is going to be a big problem, A really really big problem. Every time I have to pee, I see my penis, and I think about him. How in the hell am I ever going to get over that?

We finally got into a counselor, we were there for an hour and a half. All we did really was just tell our story, a very short version of it. You really can't get much done in an hour and a half. My doctor did prescribe me Zoloft, which pretty much knocks me out, all I want to do sleep. Oh yeah, it also gives me diarrhea! Maybe the diarrhea is a good thing, maybe it will take my mind off all those movies I keep playing in my mind. I can't keep this up for long, something is going to have to change. Not waking up looks awfully good.

Sent from my iPhone

[This message edited by Jimmy1962 at 7:00 AM, August 26th (Saturday)]

How could my wife kiss me goodbye in the morning and tell me she loves me and that she'll see me later, and come home after work give me a hug and kiss and us go out to eat or exercise or whatever. But during the day maybe she left her job, went to a payphone called this guy, met him out on some country road, they drove around and talked or maybe even pulled over and kissed a little bit, and then come back home to me in the afternoon And act like absolutely nothing happened? Of course there were sometimes when they didn't go ride around and talk, they went to a motel and had sex. But she still came home told me she love me, snuggled up next to me and slept with me. We were together every single night. Is this how affairs are?? Is this common? Is this how it works? I never knew, I had no clue, no idea. They had nothing in common. They were both married. They both had children. They never went to eat, never went to a movie, they never bought each other gifts, nothing special for Valentines or any other day, they just met for sex. Does that sound like a normal affair? She tells me she never loved him, he did not love her, she said she never stopped loving me. Is that possible?? Does that make any sense to anyone??

[This message edited by Jimmy1962 at 8:11 AM, August 26th (Saturday)]

Could my wife's affair have been as simple as just easy side sex? That is after all, all that they did. They were not connected really in any other way. They were not involved in any other way. Neither of them were looking to fall in love, or looking for a girlfriend/boyfriend to keep up with. I have looked, and I have looked on this site, and I see all forms of affairs, but not something as simple as that. I have really beat this horse, I have wrung this thing out, and this is the best that I can come up with.

[This message edited by Jimmy1962 at 7:54 AM, August 26th (Saturday)]

Jimmy, please don't do anything irrational.

You don't deserve this. It sounds as if you both are doing all of the right things.

Keep posting whenever you need to.

We're all here for you.

Strength brother!

80% of affairs are never exposed.

The kind of affair you caught is probably rarely caught. There were few if any signs because they weren't in love, if that is actually true. When woman fall in love, they usually cut off their husband and show other redflags.

When they are just having sex with someone for kicks, their homelife can be unaffected. If it goes on at the workplace it may leave no trail at all.

You have to consider that she happily and willingly gave no thought to destroying your family for a roll in the hay. They say things like "it meant nothing!" What that boils down to is they gambled everything for something that meant nothing. Seems to me they think nothing is as valuable as their marriage.

From what you have said, you are in dire need of individual counseling. You need EMDR therapy for PTSD and you need it now.

At the time of her affair, your wife had a completely different take on the marriage than you did. She may not have left you simply because she knew from the beginning he would not take her for more than a roll in the hay. I certainly can't imagine she loved you and was willing to destroy the marriage for so little.

The one that cares the least controls the relationship.

Yes its that simple....hell ask your son..It's been my experience that yes its just about sex.

Actually sex was just the currency your old lady was paying for the attention.

Your wife looks good cuz she likes the attention, she does nice thing for you cuz you give her attention.

20 years age Hunk worked on her for months and then one day he didnt show up to give the attention and when she got sad the Hunk made his move.

Of course I'm guessing here.

But for the most part when I wasn't around my old lady found attention else were and as the garden got more more weeds my old lady payed for the attention she got by having sex with men that made her feel good.

So yes its nice to have a toy to play with. To bad for both of us that our chicks made the unhealthy choice to pick another man as a toy while we work out asses off.

[This message edited by TheGuy123 at 9:23 AM, August 26th (Saturday)]