SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My H may now tell me every day how beautiful I am and I will probably never believe him. But that's his cross to bear. he did this. So it's his job to make me feel wanted.

And I'll probably never believe him.

I'm sorry, but not all things are fixable in my opinion. When you foul your nest by hooking up with someone else, you don't deserve to have the unconditional love you used to have. I still don't know if this is going to work out, but this is a major issue.

Mine had affairs with 21 yr olds, as well.

I’m now five yrs out, and our marriage is pretty good.

I will never get younger. I’ll never be prettier.

But frankly, I just don’t care about what he wants as far as wetting his dick anymore. In order to heal myself, I had to see him for the superficial idiot that he was. I don’t want to be like the other women. I just want to be with someone that loves me for me. Maybe that’s him, but I suspect he is white knuckling to be with me.

Whatevs. I have my own shit to do. He can join me, or not. That’s on him.

There are times I can find some compassion for him, (anonymous hookups on CL, history of being molested by a sister when he was a kid).

But inside, I know that there are people who would love me as I age, and appreciate me as I am. More importantly, I’m that person who loves me for me. I don’t need him or anyone else to, because I do. My body will age, and people may not like me. Oh well. This life is not about whether he thinks I’m pretty. I will not sink to his superficial level.

If he wants to join me on my life journey, great. I’m going scuba diving in Jamaica, and doing cool stuff. That means being a grown up. Otherwise, I ain’t got the time for drama, and there is the door (and a book teaching him how to adult).

I found freedom from this when I simply stopped caring whether he loved me or not, and started to love myself. Your BS needs to withdraw from you and stop being codependent to heal. That’s gonna sting for you, but you already left, so it’s fair.

[This message edited by 3yrsout at 8:18 AM, March 11th (Sunday)]

While the BS perspective is probably helpful on this thread, I think your WS friends are giving you the best advice. You have created a lifelong project for yourself. That's one of the biggest personal costs you've assumed for your infidelity.

Here's my experience: I'm not a bad looking guy, and I have some physical traits that women find attractive. But I also have a dad bod and am in my late 30s (so is XWW). The AP, who she is still with, is in his mid 20s. While he's in general a weird guy, he's younger and in better shape than I am.

D-day and the few days after that, prior to a separation that never ended, I slept with my shirt on for the first time in years. I felt like a pile of disgusting dogshit. That feeling lasted a while.

What has helped me feel better since then? Good sex with other women under healthy circumstances.

Not too helpful for a married couple trying to recover from infidelity, I know. But it's the truth. I can only speculate that if I were to have somehow stayed with XWW, the only way I would have recovered my self-esteem would be if she were to act in the ways described by MrsWalloped and Root.

I don’t think saying how beautiful I am, etc would help at all. It would actually make me even more concerned that my WS is a superficial person. And everyone ages. So what will happen when I get older and uglier, as everyone does?

I get dumped (again) for the new model?

Confidence comes from inside. You kicked his confidence in the head so it's going to be hard to recover. You can initiate sex often, throwing yourself at him. You can tell him how attractive he is, you can brag about what a handsome husband you have at every opportunity you get - those things will help. But also: do the work, go to IC, don't be defensive, if he tells you something that would help jump like a woman trying to grab onto a life raft to do it, speak his love language, be transparent, journal, read all the books.

But it won't truly get better until your BS stops relying on outside validation to feel good about themselves. It is a common problem and I have suffered with it too.

I am a BS. I am beautiful and fun and clever and awesome and my husband was so addicted to outside validation that he risked all of my awesomeness over some one who isn't very fun or pretty at all. I decided that no other human would ever have that much power over my self worth.

But that doesn't mean I want my h to stop fawning over me though, you know?

[This message edited by strugglebus at 6:34 PM, March 11th (Sunday)]

While you might be getting very good advice from other WW's on this thread regarding how they dealt with this issue, the fact is that a BH can best relate to your BH's feelings. I'm not saying BW's can't be helpful, but it takes a man to understand emasculation.

Other than encourage your BH to work on himself in counseling and not overtly trash his physical appearance, I don't know what you can do to effectively help him.

Oof. This is a hard one.

I will never. And I really do mean *NEVER* believe what my WH says about his attraction, love, devotion, etc. about me. He had paradise, he traded that belief and trust for an overnight stay in a trashy RV park. His words literally mean less than garbage. I don't think that will ever change to be honest.

Am I attractive? Yes. I've been working on myself since a couple months after DDay. I'm 14 months out, and my self esteem is returning. I'm not the one who traded something worthwhile, he did. That's a reflection of his taste, not me. The more I read, the more I learn, the more I know this really wasn't about me or my looks or my worth, it was about him. His insecurity, his immaturity, his stupidity.

We are together. We did not reconcile per this website's definition because he's too selfish but for me the good outweighs the bad. If we had done counseling I can still be honest enough to say that I still wouldn't believe him, no matter what he says. That trust is forever gone.

So. Your betrayed needs to work on themselves. They need to do whatever it is that they need to regain that confidence in themselves, and you need to support them. (I didn't ask.) You can give the compliments, you can say the words. I don't mind hearing them, but I don't get the warm and fuzzy loved feeling I once did, either.

rollercoaster, men that cheat do not think that

their wife is not attractive.

They cheat for many reasons. Though the excitement

of a new conquest, of getting a taste of the

forbidden fruit. Of being bad and getting away with

it is the attractiveness of their AP.

Did you notice that these things that the WS finds

attractive have nothing to do with the AP's looks?

Claire, I think this is a great opportunity for some introspection on your part. Based on your username, I’m going to presume you are female. How would you feel if your spouse or partner had an A with a better looking person, say Kate Upton? Likely, that you don’t measure up and feel inferior, right?

Now, you may say that the AP is not better looking than your spouse. Then, what made you choose the AP over them? There has to be something superior about the AP, right? Why else would you risk your M? These are the questions the BS asks themselves. Addressing those Q’s will probably be a good start. But don’t expect to have too much credibility with your BS. You’ve got a lot of work to do.

Oldtruck, no I get that. I know he finds me attractive. It doesn't matter.

What he found attractive about his AP's? Frankly? I have no clue. My WH didn't have emotional affairs. He got along with them but they were more FWB if you will. He pitied them in a weird sort of way. He thinks he's a fixer of broken girls and his magic wand is his penis.

It comes down to he was willing to throw away our marriage and trust for women he wouldn't want for anything real. My personal opinion of their attractiveness is diminished by what I know of them. He was willing to trade filet for scraps...so his opinion isn't exactly something I trust, therefore have any belief in either.

I’m a BS. Honestly, and I don’t say this to be cruel, but sometimes what is the most difficult/repulsive to us is how badly we want the approval of someone as low as our WS.

Thinking about my WH and what he was willing to do, over and over and over, compromise everything he said was important to him and blame me to her, over and over, for all of it, for the downfall of our marriage that I honestly thought was absolutely fine at the time, to say things about my personality and my body and experiences we went through together and insult every part of me... it makes me revolted with myself that I am even speaking to him.

It is many many months since he acted like this, and I can see that he’s not proud of this behaviour, and he maintains over and over that it was all for her benefit and not a representation of his true feelings. I think some combination of the two is the real truth. He probably did think those thoughts about me. He probably thought similar thoughts about her. He definitely thought he was too good for either one of us for awhile.

But I still desperately want him to think I’m perfect and wonderful and flawless. Before the A, I didn’t NEED that, because I liked myself and was proud of my life and marriage. Having the person you love and respect more than anyone in the world tear you down and expose the things you always worried they thought about you to someone they’ve chosen over you, specifically to make their affair about you? It’s irreversible.

Most days I wish I didn’t want anything from him, so I don’t have to look at him anymore. Unfortunately his likeness is written all over my children. He will always be in my thoughts and in my life. I can only hope that one day all of these insults that I’ve internalized will start to get drowned out by self-respect and self-confidence, but I can see that’s a lifelong road.

I’m sorry to be a downer, not least because I really do believe that reconciliation is the ideal in relationships with real change. But that’s as close to my truth as I can express.

When your BS feels ugly as a result of your betrayal & can't fathom how they could possibly be attractive to you, is there anything you can do to show them that isn't true?

Any BS who is feeling ugly as a result of a WS’s betrayal is not understanding that the betrayal had nothing to do with them.

As if simply being “better looking” would have stopped their WS from their selfishness and addictions.

Their WS’s reasons for their infidelity existed within them long, long before they even met.

Looks, how fit you are, how big your dick is, or how big your boobs are have nothing to do with it.

I’m a BS. Honestly, and I don’t say this to be cruel, but sometimes what is the most difficult/repulsive to us is how badly we want the approval of someone as low as our WS.

You're right. The further out I get, the more my self-respect speaks up and asks me why his opinion would even matter given he was the kind of person who would behave in such an abhorrent way and treat me like I was nothing. Why should I value it? Yeah, that's a tough one.