SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

(MilwaukeeMike42))

(akward one pat on the back man hug)

Mike it is very common to sexualize trauma. You might not know it, but you are trying to cope with it in a way. It is not helping is it ?

I get that you don't want to talk to people, but a good IC well help you get there.

I understand where you are at right now. I know the sex part is where you are trying to focus. A lot of us went through that too. You keep trying different things until you find what works for you.

Running is a great escape. Ruminating these thought over and over . . .you are causing yourself a lot pain by doing that. I think you need to try a different approach. Maybe get some time away from home and your W ?

Maybe you have a trusted friend you can confide in. Look I am all about SI. This place literally saved me. I also found that talking to an IC IRL helped me process and think about things in a way where they did not get stuck in my head. You don't want the thoughts to become obsessive. Your are in crisis. You need to get through this first and foremost.

The thing about breakdowns is that they are terrible but sometimes getting a release like that can unburden you. It can very cleansing.

Mike,

I want to say how positive and significant it is that you have opened up so much in the past couple of days. What you have said provides a much better, clearer picture of your situation, and it can help to inform the advice people give to you.

It is clear how difficult discussing this has been for you. I am hopeful that in sharing and reaching out, this can be the beginning of your journey out of a state of something akin to shock, and towards the healing that many, many people here have successfully achieved.

Reaching out breaks the solitude and withdrawal that you were locked into, so when you say...

I am just rambling. Totally rambling.

...what I hear is a man letting out six months of pressure, which, like steam, is propelling a jumble of thoughts out into the light in what may appear to be random order. That is not a problem; the more thoughts and elements that are released, the less pressure there is, and that seemingly jumbled and disconnected mass of feelings and thoughts can be spread out and put into order.

Please do not worry about making sense or telling a coherent, cohesive story. It is way too early for that. Everyone tells their story a different way, but the one common characteristic of every thread here is that the action of telling their story helps them to make sense of it.

Sometimes it can take months for people to reveal key, significant elements of their situations, which cast a whole new light on things. That is fine. You can take all the time you want, and do it in a way that suits you.

I think that the women in this forum are a lot better at providing a softer emotional landing for new arrivals than we men are. It really can be a bumpy landing for some guys. What I know is that there are a lot of very good male posters here who really do care and want to help, and that if this was a meeting in a lounge somewhere, and not an online forum, you would have had a lot of bro-hugs, a lot of handshakes, and a lot of thoughtful looks from other men who can recall their own moments of despair only too well, and who know the place in which you dwell.

Are there trolls here? Yes, probably a few, but I think there are also a few people who are angry about what happened to them, and who project that onto other people here. At times that is not helpful, but what I hope you will notice is that the well-intended advice and calmer statements do outweigh the more extreme views that are sometimes aired here.

The standard advice about how to use these forums is to 'take what is useful and leave the stuff that is not'. It is sound advice, but there is no way around the fact that reading some of the more extreme posts is bound to be hurtful, particularly if people go out of their way to try and rub a betrayed spouse's nose in the very worst possible interpretation of their situation. That benefits no-one, and yet it happens many more times than it should.

I want to apologise wholeheartedly and sincerely to you if that has happened to you here. There may be a tiny minority of people who get some kind of kick out making someone suffer, particularly someone who is already vulnerable, but the vast majority of people here mean well. We may not always get it right, we may be clumsy, we may say something that hits a raw nerve by accident, or because we do not know the whole story, but the majority here are well-intentioned.

I think that Bigger and others have made good points about getting into IC at some point. I am hopeful that by talking here, and getting your raw thoughts and emotions into some semblance of order, you will be able to advance to the point where you feel able to start seeing an IC.

If I were in IC or MC now I would just cry or explode. I can barely talk about any of this.

Well, perhaps you would. Perhaps that would take up the majority of your first session. However, you know what? Maybe it would be good for you to go and explode or just cry with an IC. There is no shame in that. And after that initial release of emotion, the healing can begin. I am sure ICs see an awful lot of meltdowns or eruptions of raw emotions. What I hope is that concerns about such a meltdown will not prevent you from trying IC when you feel ready, because a great deal of good can come from it in the sessions that follow the stormy first one.

Also, if it would help, you have written a lot of things in your posts that would really help an IC to figure out what you need, and how to get you there. So, with apologies if this is a dumb idea, perhaps you could copy some or all of your posts into a Word document, and send it to the IC you want to see before you have a face-to-face session. That would get a lot of the tough stuff 'said' to him or her without you having to say it out loud, and it would give them a lot of insight before you even sit down for the first real session.

A lot of what you have written about the trauma related to sexual issues is stuff that only a professional counselor can help you with, but I do not see anything there that cannot be resolved with the right approach and techniques. The problem is that so far you have been working through it by yourself, and in some ways possibly making it even harder for yourself...

Please keep in mind I have no idea which sex acts she actually did so I am torturing myself with the worst case scenarios of all the unknowns.

Reaching out to professional help is a way to break that cycle, and begin moving forwards. It might be stormy at first, but it will be worth it. It cannot make things worse, but it can start making them better. And until you feel ready to make that move, there are a lot of people here who are to listen to anything and everything that you want to say.

Sending you strength, brother.

Edited to add:

She was a great wife for 27 years. This is why I am not divorcing her. I want back what we had. I know this is unlikely.

The past cannot be undone, but the future can be what you choose to make it. What you have in the future may be different, but people can and do survive infidelity and build new relationships that are stronger for having had their weaknesses exposed and fixed. It takes time, and work, but it is not impossible.

[This message edited by M1965 at 4:37 PM, June 18th (Monday)]

Everything you are saying leads me to believe that you are suffering from severe depression or extreme PTSD. Even more than most folks on here. Y

If this is as far as you have gotten in 6 months on your own, you cannot "process the pain" on your own. You need help.

Get some IC. Don't wait any longer. And make sure who you go see is qualified to treat PTSD and has experience in infidelity.

This. So much... this! Get some help for yourself, MM42. Don’t try to wait until you’ve “processed the pain.” One thing therapists are there for are is to help you learn different means to cope with pain.

While you’re at it... research EMDR therapy. Some people have experienced lessened mind movies with it.

[This message edited by Drumstick at 5:42 PM, June 18th (Monday)]

My friend, you will be much better off with IC than treating yourself as you have been.

You are intelligent, balanced, and traumatized. You ought to do what myself and others here have done and delegate the coping plan to a qualified professional. ER docs don't give themselves emergency surgery. Same with psychologists. They have someone outside do this because it results in a much better outcome. savvy?

BTW I had a crappy marriage to a crappy person, so dday, as painful as it was, was the day I was certain I was getting a divorce. I had it easier than you have it that way. Even so, I got IC (because this is he most horrible and damaging thing I've experienced), and it did me and my kids a lot of good.

best to you, brother

Mike, I'm not sure about trolls. I do know there are some very strong opinions here.

With that being said, as others have stated, maybe an IC would help you to get rid of these images.

We've all been in your shoes. I'm not sure if there's any more advice i can give you that hasn't already been said.

Just wanted you to know that me and 60k more members are pulling for you.

Keep posting and working this out.

Am I wrong that some of the posters are just trolls ?

Probably, it wouldn't be the interwebs without them, but I think the harshest posts are actually heartfelt by men who tried to R but had deceitful WW. I think the reasons are;

1. The surest way not to be cheated on by someone is to not be with that someone, who has already proven to be a cheat.

2. I think it's more socially acceptable for a man to cheat, because biologically spreading your seed does have an evolutionary advantage. I don't subscribe to the theory myself.

3. It's easier to see the faults in a situation that you're not in because it is unclouded by emotion and it's easier to hate someone else's cheating wife than to hate your own wife that you love and the more a person reads on these forums, the more they hate cheaters and cheating in general, buy you can't lay all that hate and anger on your own spouse and successfully R, but you can certainly freely hate other people's cheating spouses.

I don't think that the harsh advice is even wrong, but only you can decide if it's right for you. You do have somethings going for you; she did come to you willingly and out of guilt, it's the only affair and she is remorseful, as far as you know. If my wife had done all those things, I think we'd be a lot further along in R. About the lack of desire, it sounds like depression and is understandable and all the more reason to see an IC.

Mike, what I have seen:

A BH that wants answers will still want them 35

years later. So better to get them now rather then

wait till a WW will claim too much time has gone

for her to remember to answer.

So best to get your answers now. Good way to do it

is by email.

Caution, once an answer is heard it can never be

unheard. Also best to ask limited questions so

you control how fast the information is revealed.

This way you control the answering and can possibly

stop the WW from going to far.

Remember you can always probe deeper. If you

feel the need.

[This message edited by oldtruck at 8:58 PM, June 18th (Monday)]

Mike,

There are a group of men who like to come to just found out and encourage divorce after infidelity.

You do not need to follow this path of divorce.

You have loved your marriage and your wife. I pointed out some basic issues surrounding her affair to illustrate the deeper points of her infidelity.

You love your wife. Please do not be embarrassed by going to IC. The IC is there to help you navigate your hurt. I went to IC for a year. I desperately needed it. The affair is devastating.

Your wife confessed. In this world of infidelity...the willing confession truly can set the stage for reconcilation.

This doesn’t mean rugsweep. I still stand behind my statement, your wife needs to figure out why flattery lead to her complete loss of her morals and integrity.

I never want you to think she threw you away. She didn’t. She sold her morals for something cheap. This is what she needs to figure out and work through.

In most cases (but not all), if the WW is having mind blowing sex, the BH is cut off. That did not happen in this case.

Also the WW tends not to stop the affair.

She has suffered consequences such as exposure and loss of your love.

You have not rug swept this either. You confronted OM and got him fired.

If you do want to reconcile you need to stop giving this guy head space. I realize it is hard but is very doable.

In most cases (but not all), if the WW is having mind blowing sex, the BH is cut off. That did not happen in this case.

Also the WW tends not to stop the affair.

She has suffered consequences such as exposure and loss of your love.

You have not rug swept this either. You confronted OM and got him fired.

If you do want to reconcile you need to stop giving this guy head space. I realize it is hard but is very doable.

MM42:

Isantmyglasses has given you sage advice especially about getting IC. You will benefit from professional help in dealing with the emotional trauma your WW’s actions have inflicted on you. You can learn some effective coping mechanisms. I only wish that I had sought IC sooner after my WW’s infidelity. Although she sought counseling almost immediately and made huge changes in her life to repair the damage, I let the pain and anger linger for 18 months before I finally wised up and got some help. The counseling helped me immensely in moving forward and letting go of my anger and I came to appreciate all the hard work and change my WW had done. You can get thru this. Good luck.

Incoerced confession is extremely rare—perhaps one in a thousand cases around here. If true, then it is fair tonsay she has remorse—which puts your situation far ahead of most around here. Most wayward wives are unremorseful.

I just wanted to say that: It gets better. It takes, literally, years. But there comes a day when you no longer feel the pain. You will get through this.

Yes... she did confess but I want to say again:

There is a good chance she confessed because the reward/risk ratio decreased to the point it was no longer worth the risk. She got what she wanted from the affair and moved on. She may have confessed to me because she actually felt deeply guilty or to rid herself of all negative/guilty emotions.

My wife's affair can be summarized as follows:

A good looking muscular trainer came on to her and she decided to have sex with him for validation that she is still attractive to men at age 47 and she wanted the sex.

The trainer was a sexual predator picking up an older married woman ( probably not his first ) but she is no innocent dove here. She knwe what she wanted and she got it. It was only sex to her - no emotions.

The thing that my wife never expected/understood is the enormous damage she did to me.

I believe she learned this within the first weekend after telling me. ( Maybe the first few hours )

She told me on a Friday night and I freaked out until Sunday night.

It took about 15 minutes to sink in that what she told me was really true. Then I started crying uncontrollably. She never saw me cry like that in her life. I have not cried like that since I was toddler. I cried like that for about 2 hours.

Then I started thinking about all the horrible possibilities: Condoms/No Condoms, STDS on penis/mouth, cum in vagina/ pregnancy, kissing me on same day she gave him oral sex(maybe to completion in her mouth), sloppy seconds(almost certain multiple times), cum swallowing, ect. I started screaming all these things at her and crying uncontrollably. It was obvious she never thought of most of the things on this list.

By Sunday I stopped talking to her.

I’m forewarning you, MM42. A gentle 2x4 is coming your way.

You’ve been on another site, which I cannot mention due to this site’s rules, for around two weeks now. More, or less, you’ve asked the same questions there as you are asking here. In my opinion, you’ve, for all intents and purposes, received the same answers there, as you’ve gotten here. Further, your replies to the questions asked of you there are strikingly similar to the as answers you’ve posted here.

You’re stuck in a self-destructive loop, analogous to a shame cycle. We cannot break you out of this loop. You have to do that on your own.

One means to learn how to get out of a self-destructive loop is to read about them. Another would be to seek professional counseling (i.e., IC) to learn how to break out of these loops. Ultimately though, a good IC will not break you out of the loop; instead, they’ll challenge you to learn how to break out of it on your own.

Once you break this loop, the conversations you have with others here, any other board, or an IC, will be immensely more fruitful. No one here can help you on the deeper level you seem to need until you help yourself first.

Read about shame cycles, self-destructive loops, and seek IC, please.

The thing that my wife never expected/understood is the enormous damage she did to me.

I believe she learned this within the first weekend after telling me.

Has she been....empathy challenged (for lack of a better phrase) her entire life? Or just in this situation?

I ask because I find it fascinating that a spouse could be this clueless as to what the effects of having sex with another person would have on their partner.

It reminds me somewhat of Waitedwaytoolong and Spaceghost wives. The it was just sex, I never loved him, so why is it such a big deal, type of explanation.

MM42, I can see myself when you are describing how you feel. The main difference is that during a period after DDay1, when I was asking questions, I was not getting answers or I was getting lied to. Then the pain from the questions just transformed into the pain for being lied to/denied. My WW was not remorseful, we were in false R. But I remember how I felt when some question entered my mind. You just cannot get it out, no matter what mental gymnastics you performed. You could feel it eating you up from inside.

I see that you are feeling the same. You are living in hell by trying to hold everything inside you. You are living in hell by trying to process every possibility of what happened and every possible outcome. This is just plain impossible. From the way you describe it, I don't think it can get any worse, no matter what her answers would be. It looks like the most terrible thing that you imagine is that you have to D her if "the sex was better", so you are afraid to ask. Your brain is trying to process all this shit without having enough information and you are driving yourself crazy by trying to "create" this information yourself. Why not just ask her and then decide? Your WW looks really remorseful and if she read a ton of books/articles she should know that honest answers are the only way to R - so it looks like possibility of being lied to is somewhat minimized in your case.

When I started getting answers from WW, the question itself, not knowing, speculating, fearing possible answers was always worse than the answer itself. Always. Even if the answer I got was "worse" than I expected. Even when she came to me with additional details on her own (that was the first time ever she offered info on her own), which were quite damning (that they managed to squeeze in even more fucks during those 3 months than I was previously told, that she sucked him and swallowed at least once, that they tried initiating anal, that they fucked unprotected once - my remark was that "so there's no fuckable hole in your body that he hasn't been in"), but I still don't regret having that info (the opposite, I cannot imagine living without that information, living a lie).

I agree with other posters that you need IC ASAP. You don't process and go to IC. You go to IC to help you process. But BEWARE of crappy ICs! There are a lot of ICs that have no fucking idea how to deal with infidelity trauma. They encourage rugsweeping, put a blame on betrayed spouse, etc. They can do you a lot of harm. Advice would be to interview them first how do they handle infidelity - red flags would be such phrases as "there's always two sides to the story", "we will find out your role in her infidelity", "you have to stop asking questions", etc.

ramius

You said:

"Has she been....empathy challenged (for lack of a better phrase) her entire life? Or just in this situation?"

I am not empathetically challenged and I had no idea how bad being cheated on hurts. Every molecule in my body is on fire most of the time. I had no idea. I dont think anyone knows the extent of this pain unless they have experienced it.

DarkHoleHeart:

You wrote:

"You are living in hell by trying to hold everything inside you. You are living in hell by trying to process every possibility of what happened and every possible outcome."

Yes. It is true I am in living hell but I have made some process.

For my processing all the sex acts and the meaning of the sex is the worst part.

I have processed all the sex acts. When she first told me I thought it was literally impossible to stay married to a woman who swallowed, allowed another man to ejaculate inside of her, kissed her husband on the mouth after kissing/having sex/giving oral earlier in the day, highly probable sloppy seconds. All of these things are nightmares but I am not going to divorce her over these things.

The things that could end our marriage are 1) he was/is the best sex of her life 2) he had a bigger penis than me and she liked it more than mine

I think the idea of him being the best sex of her life destroys a connection she had with me and to some extent moves it to him.

If I dont ask her about the best sex of her life it will harm me the rest of my life. If I ask her and get the wrong answer it will kill me and our marriage.

Edited....I just read your response and realized i read it wrong.

I hope you find some measure of peace soon.

[This message edited by ramius at 2:16 AM, June 19th (Tuesday)]

MilwaukeeMike42, what I'm seeing in your posts is that you already know that having no information is worse than hurtful information. You said you would D if she did this and did that. When you received confirmation that indeed she did all of this, you didn't. What I take from this is that you thought it would be worse knowing the answers, but it wasn't. Oh yes, it's still special kind of hell. But it is more susceptible to processing, especially by engineer's mind.

So what I suggest - stop trying to plan your future based on "what if"s, get the information you need and start from there. Apply the same principles that you use in your work - when you encounter some problem, you gather info and then you make a plan how to resolve the problem. You have gathered some info about what to expect on SI, now it is time to get to essential piece on information - get answers from her. Then give yourself some time to process it before coming to a decision.

And I want to warn you - even if she had "the best sex of her life" (which I don't believe she did), life is not over yet, there's still plenty of time to have "the best sex of your lives"

[This message edited by DarkHoleHeart at 4:15 AM, June 19th (Tuesday)]