Hi LJ
You know that I have not been an active poster on your thread. You also know why. I wanted to make absolutely certain that noting I said or did could have had undue influence on the tough decisions that have been thrust on you.
Now that you have so clearly communicated your decision, I feel that it might be in order for me to share some of my experience in the hope that you will find it supportive.
Recognising that I might still have some healing wounds and be in a vulnerable place, I try very hard to be careful which forums I post in and on what threads. I still seem to bring out the Ohfor police on occasion. I am not always sure why. I sometimes still see what, to me, looks like a little bit of bias on SI. I am most probably just seeing this from my own, very narrow, still healing perspective. I mean not to offend anyone, but I have been more than a little irked by what I see as unfair pressure being put on you in some recent posts. Even after you specifically asked for it not to be done. You still seem to be getting posts that, instead of having your healing as their only aim, are clearly aimed at desperately trying to engineer an outcome that you have said you don’t want. It is said that you will not be pressured to choose a certain path, and then this is followed directly with a bulleted list that I know I would have experienced as immensely pressuring, if it had been posted in my JFO thread. I have no vested interest in what decisions you make. I just want to share my experience as a fellow traveller and hope that it will be useful in your healing.
So no! I am not giving you any advice here, and I will not be disappointed in you, regardless of how you act or what decisions you make. I will not be disappointed if, even after you have communicated you decisions so clearly, you then change your mind. They are yours to make. I can never know your feelings, now or pre D Day. I can never know your personality type. Your moral programing. I don’t know your hopes or dreams or which of those are still possible, or which can now never be.
All I can share is some of my own, very personal, experience and hope that somehow you find some of it helpful.
I can tell you that when, after I had announced my decision to D to SI, a band of brothers, good men all, took the trouble to come onto my thread and share with me elements of their personal experiences along the following lines;
There is always a future for each of us, better than what we had. I can only guess that finding the courage and justifying the reasons in one's head for divorce is never easy, especially after decades of marriage. For me, the moment I realized I will not be able to live happily ever after knowing what my WW was capable of, and the history she made, I decided to the take the D path and felt relief. The reason was that I knew I had the power to take action and go after the type of living I thought was worthier than what I had and what I would have.
You are an honourable man who cares about his loved ones and does everything to make them happy and care for their well-being. Nobody - including you - deserves to be betrayed. When you D your WW you have nothing to be ashamed of and should be proud of yourself, you are the prize and will re-find happiness and a better life awaits you. I know from experience.
You built a life together but WW destroyed it with her betrayal, and you don't see yourself planning a future with her anymore. There's NO shame in that - in fact, for many, that is the more difficult choice. I have always thought it royally unfair that the WS can cheat and smash their spouse's world, then get busted, then plead and cry for another chance to 'save our marriage'...and suddenly, it's the BS who must ultimately make the gut-wrenching decision to end the marriage or not. On top of everything else.
I found thoughts like these tremendously encouraging.
To get to the point where I made my decision to D I traveled a torturous path. I should have known that for me infidelity was a deal breaker. I am an honourable man. I give only pure love and believe that I am entitled to settle for nothing less in return. I am a man of worth. Worthy of far more than having to live for the rest of my life in a marriage with a damaged goods wife, and having to accept only 2nd hand love. But, so much pressure was placed on me saying that R was the only desirable outcome. Should be the only goal after infidelity. This was long before I even found SI. It was in the literature, the MC, the first IC. All of society. The common consensus seems to be that the perpetrator of the A is not at fault. It is the BS that can’t find it in their heart, that is not the “big enough man”, to find forgiveness, he is the flawed one. The one responsible for the failure of the M. So I allowed myself to be pressured by society’s twisted views, and subjected the 2 of us to a path of hell. It was all BullS. If I had just been man enough, brave enough, to stand up to this pressure, to live what I believed, we both would have been in a better place now than what we are.
I was also constantly told, “wait, wait, wait”. Not one of those screaming “wait” to me was living in my hell. Once I shared with them the depths of my hell, and asked what could possibly be worth another moment in that hell, not one could truly justify to me the why I should wait,.
One more point from my personal experience. You don’t need to be still married to your WW to be able to give her care and support through life’s hard times. I have constantly provided my WW with solid support. I know, and all on SI agree, that on that front I have gone above and beyond. On the most trying days I put in place the very best support systems. Went the extra mile to make sure that good men were on hand to help her nest in her new place. While we are firmly on the path to D, very nearly at the end of that road, I still make sure that WW is supported and cared for. She fired me from this job, but I am after all, a caring human being.
On to the next point. Logistics dictated that there had to be quite some time between the day I made my decision about D and the day I could tell WW about it. The day I made the D decision, I felt tremendous relief. You have described feeling something similar. You say that it is so powerful that you are concerned your WW might misinterpret this as a sign of possible R. My WW definitely interpreted my new found feeling of relief as a possibility of a stronger R. It got her hopes up, and meant that when I told her, the crash was so much more severe. While I know that I needed the time to make sure that I could protect our 2 precious people as much as possible, I still feel guilty for this extra hurt caused to WW. I cannot say what you must do, only you know why you might want to delay. All I can share is that if your decision is as clear as you say it is, and you delay, you will be causing your WW hurt in the interim and chances are you are going to feel awful guilt.
Then the final point. Those band of brothers were right. I have discovered a new and improving me. I like this new me so much, I wish that I had gotten to meet him earlier. He is in fact, such a nice chap, people are attracted to him. Good people. All manner of people. People that one would want in their life. I now have friends where before all I had were acquaintances. I am happier than I have ever been in my entire life, and my journey to a “New Me”, is only just beginning.
TJ, this is what I wish for you. That your future can be as bright as what mine is turning out to be.
And that your journey to here, can begin as soon as possible.
All the best,
Ohfor
