SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I think that is a fair assessment. That is also why most affairs fizzle in 6 months.

pinkpggy

If my description was a fair assessment does that mean I have to live with the fact that my wife did experience some kind of love with another man even if it was only infatuation for the rest of my life if I chose to stay married to her or was it all fake ? The thing is that she told me to my face that she loved him more than me just after Dday. Now she is telling me her bubble popped and she always loved me more than him.

The same applies to sex. She told me just after Dday her sex life with him was better than sex with me. Now she is telling me after her bubble popped sex with me was always better than sex with him. This sounds dubious.

I had great sex during some of those short 90 day relationships. Those relationships ended and I still look back at the sex as fantastic experiences from my youth. Does this mean my wife will always look back at the sex with her AP as a fantastic experience ?

I can't answer for your wife.

Once she wakes up and realizes exactly what her affair was, she will no longer (hopefully) think of it with any fondness.

I can tell you two years after my affair, my sex life with my husband is better than it has ever been. Better than anything I had with my AP. It's not cheap, guilt ridden, secret sex. It's sex with someone who loves me and who I have a bond with.

I won't lie and say I didn't grieve the loss of my AP. It probably took me a year to come to terms with everything. I'm still coming to terms with myself and what I did.

For some BS it's a deal breaker. It has been a really long hard road for my BS. We still struggle. I think our mistake was not getting space between us after dday.

pinkpggy

I am afraid of living with my wife while she grieves the loss of her AP.

Just the idea of her grieving another man makes me want to vomit now. I cant imagine living with her for another year while she grieves.

What if it takes her two years to grieve her AP? Or more ?

I read one article that said the WS was grieving four years after the relationship.

I wish I had an answer for you. For me, my BS said he didn't want to know about, hear about it or see me grieve. So I never showed it. I made my focus on healing my BS while dealing with my own issues in private. I struggled with a lot of issues after dday (I won't bore you with details but spoiler alert: my AP wasn't who he portrayed himself to be). I struggled with the lies and not being able to get the truth. That ate at me.

I still honestly don't know what the future holds for my marriage. We may end up divorced. It's not a straight line out of infidelity.

I thought you were divorcing?

I am very likely divorcing and almost certainly moving out of the house.

I am attending about a dozen open houses today at homes for sale in my general neighborhood. I have already driven by all of them and done my homework on sale prices of other homes sold in the area in recent days.

Hopefully the thoughts I and others provided on page 4 of your thread will help you understand that at this point it doesn’t matter if she’s in a fog or not. If you have a chance please re-read them and let us know if you have any questions.

It will take years for your WW to repair the damage she has done to your marriage. She may or may not choose to try and do that. You cannot control that.

So while she goes off and decides that she wants in life and how she is going to achieve it, you should follow your plan and find your own home and begin to detach and work thru the D process. It can be long. Her actions already killed the marriage. The D process is only acknowledging that fact.

If she wants to try and win you back, it should be as a single woman who is attracted and in love with you, a single man. Her actions were not those of a wife, but as of a woman out on her own. Yours should reflect that fact.

There are dozens of things she will have to do to repair and start a new relationship with you. Those are for her to figure out, not your responsibility. If you want to have a chance at a real relationship again someday with this woman, then it will take years of work to make that happen.

Her just saying “I made a mistake, I love you” isn’t even the first step in that journey. Getting herself into individual counseling is.

Good luck again.

[This message edited by Stevesn at 11:30 AM, December 2nd (Sunday)]

For me personally, a LTA is the most difficult type to R from. I personally don't think I could no matter how hard my WW worked. A drunken ONS, or serial A's with multiple partners would be way easier for me to move beyond. In a LTA, no matter what type of pop-psychology euphemisms you try to use to mask the stench, the reality is that your WW took a lover and preferred him over you, in every way, at least for a time. You were Plan B.

does that mean I have to live with the fact that my wife did experience some kind of love with another man even if it was only infatuation for the rest of my life if I chose to stay married to her or was it all fake ?

The reality that your WW took a lover, snuck around to be with him, probably would have left you for him if he'd have had her, all of that will be your reality for life, whether you R or D.

For some men, that's a deal breaker. No matter what, some men cannot fall back in love with a WW who does those things. Look for threads by Spaceghost, and LtCdrLost, for example. No matter how often and loud and emotionally she now says "I changed my mind and my heart and I've put you back in the Plan A slot now," some men (myself included) will never believe that at an emotional level.

For some men, they never stop loving their wife and try, but no matter how sincerely the WW works on herself, they cannot get beyond it. See threads by Waitedwaytoolong for an example. I point this out because people divorce wayward spouses even when they still love the wayward spouse.

Some BH/WW successfully recover from a LTA. Walloped is probably the highest and best example, but in that case, Mrs. Walloped, who also posts here, "got it" more than any other WW who has ever posted here.

What is your definition of the fog?

The fog is what some waywards decide they were in during an A in order to:

- lessen the responsibility

- R once they find out a relationship with the AP isn't going to happen bc they got dumped

- R bc they realize they're about to have a significant negative lifestyle change

- R bc they realize their AP isn't good H /W material

- lessen the impact of statements made during and immediately after the A that painted the AP as being superior to their spouse sexually, and other statements like they loved them more and want to be with them

In other words, the fog is one big excuse used for a myriad of reasons to get their old life back. Waywards that don't want to take full responsibility like to claim they were in it.

What was the tone of the conversation? It just feels like her answers were twisting the knife. I get the need for honesty, how long, what kind of sex, was it in our house. A WS needs to give honest answers. I even think answering these with I thought I felt this, would have been better..

Of course now that her world is imploding she runs for cover under the guise of some sort of fog. Sex was better with him, oh wait, now it was better with you. Hardly believable. I think you have every reason to be dubious.

Her AP dumped her. That is why you are the better guy now. Her escape valve has been shut. She probably feels betrayed by him, and that is the reason she loves you more. It doesn’t change how she felt the year she was screwing him, or how she felt after DDay

If you ask her now if he called and said he now wants her how she would feel about it. Just not sure you would get an honest answer though

[This message edited by waitedwaytoolong at 1:46 PM, December 2nd (Sunday)]

Can the fog actually make a WS love their AP more than their spouse?

Can the fog actually make a WS want to be married to their AP rather than their spouse?

Can the fog actually make the WS feel sex with the AP was better than sex with their spouse ?

Can the fog make the WS so cold to the BS after Dday they answers questions that cause incredible pain to the BS without flinching ?

Specifically, I want to know if she could possibly have loved another man more than me because of the fog then changed her mind after the fog left or popped. Also, could she possibly have had a better sex life with another man because of the fog then changed her mind after the fog left or popped. I want to know how to analyze this possibility.

Gently, bro, it doesn't matter much what you call it, but FWIW I think the 'fog' is just a shorthand way of saying the WS lost touch with reality.

In any case, what your W said just after d-day was probably true then, and what she says now could be true now. I say that because, IMO, WSes lose touch with reality. I believe their thinking is so messed up that they don't know their own minds.

Maybe you're your W's backup plan. Maybe you're what she has really wanted all along.

But you need to lead your own life. Attending to what she may or may not be thinking keeps your focus away from where it needs to be. I urge you to put what she wants aside. What counts now is what you want independently.

************************

I framed my questions somewhat differently from you. The big questions for me were:

What do I want?

What do I think is possible?

My big 3 for her were:

Do you love me?

Are you in love with me?

Will you agree to sex only with me from now on?

*************************

I wanted R from the beginning, but I didn't commit to R until I saw that my W was actually doing the work necessary for R. For 90 days, every issue was 'Go or stay?' for me.

One of the things I did during my decision period was to figure out my requirements for R. I made a list; my W agreed to it; R proceeded.

*************************

Look, I know an A is a giant insult. You can't change that. You can, however, choose how you'll respond to the insult.

If you go for what you want, if you minimize the effect of (understandable) fear on your decision, you've got 3 honorable paths open to you: D, R, and waiting to gather more info.

But there are no guarantees. A D could turn out awful or great or in-between; R is likely to be awful or great.

The thing is: you can't predict the future.

You express some uncertainty about what is best for you. It makes sense to be uncertain right now. Give yourself the time you need to make your decision - you want the best decision, and that doesn't necessarily mean the quickest.