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I'm not writing out all the details, but D-day/confrontation was 3 weeks ago today, so still pretty fresh. I'd suspected the PA for a couple of weeks before that, and for a few months had been feeling like the friendship had crossed the line into an EA (though I naively believed that was all it was, or would become).

When I confronted him, I told him that I was only prepared to try to work on our relationship if he ended it IMMEDIATELY (in front of me), with NC after that, as well as open access to phone/e-mail, agreeing to counseling, etc. He chose to stay, but he struggled with the choice for a while.

At the time, he told me that his decision to stay was about the whole package - our children, the life we've built, his self-respect, and his feelings of guilt and responsibility. And that while he still "loved many things about me," he wasn't "in love" with me the way he was with her, and didn't know if he ever had been. The words "possible soul mate" were used. There is definitely more than a little selective memory there - I have no doubt at all that in the early years of our relationship (before kids, a house, work stresses, etc) he felt every bit as passionately about me. And I'm equally certain that what he had with her wasn't any more "real" - she's the kind of person who would annoy the hell out of him quickly in a real relationship. But it was new, and exciting, and filled emotional needs that got lost in the day-to-day routine of our lives, and since it was forbidden, he built it into something meaningful in order to justify it to himself.

But regardless of whether it would actually have lasted, or had any genuine, solid foundation, over the past several months he's been talking with her for an hour or two most days (according to phone records), texting constantly, sharing confidences with her, and overall emotionally investing in that relationship, while pulling away from me.

And then that was suddenly yanked away from him when I forced him to choose, so it never had a time to die a natural death, and he was still very much in the throes of his obsession with her. And for the first several days or more he was conspicuously and actively mourning the loss of that relationship, and considering whether to change his mind.

I know it's not reasonable to expect that he could immediately break the addiction, and go from caring deeply for his AP to indifference (or better yet, dislike), even if it's what he "should" do, and what I deserve.

What I'm hoping others who are a little further along on this journey might be able to tell me is how long does it take for the "fog" to lift? And does it ever completely? I'm sure there's no one answer, but your experiences would be very welcome.

There have been some signs of the attachment starting to fade (no longer actively mourning for her in front of me, and although she has tried to reach out to him several times in various ways, the last few no longer sent him into a tailspin). And I'm trying to avoid asking too often right now, when I don't want to hear the answer (the last time I pushed was about a week ago, and didn't offer me any comfort).

To be clear, I've been explicit with him that I am NOT ok with staying indefinitely if he isn't able to rebuild the love he had for me, and/or if he continues beyond a certain point to have feelings for her, though I haven't been able to define yet how long that would be. I have too much self respect to spend the rest of my life with someone who loves me less than I love him. But I'm staying for now because I believe that under this mess he's made of our lives, there really is still a solid foundation worth building on.

[This message edited by TooManyCliches at 3:26 PM, January 2nd (Thursday)]

I can help you out with my timeline for a little perspective. My WH was dx NPD by his counselor though, so I am guessing that has something to do with his timeline.

Affair started Spring 2017, I found out in late August, confronted in early Sept. Affair was with an ExGF (he dated while younger & they split up because she was controlling - his words) They reconnected in the Spring of 2017 and A started & when I found out, he told me I love you but I am not in love with you. OW is my soul mate, my one true love, never felt this way before, blah blah blah. He 1st wanted a divorce from me, but then slowly started to realize he was going to lose most all of his time with his kids, certain assets he didnt feel I was entitled to (I was!), alimony, child support, etc. So between Sept-Dec 2017, he said goodbye to her a total of 6 times! He had sex with her twice in that period as well. After December, I caught him going onto the messaging apps he used, I caught him googling her, her address, her husband, where she worked, etc. He had a long grieving process. He refused to get rid of pics of her & him until the end of Feb 2018. He lied about things I found that related to her & most recently, June 2019, I saw he googled her town. I am hoping that is the last incident because it caused a lot of harm.

A couple of months ago, he finally said he didnt know if she was his soul mate anymore, when all the time before he said he thought she was. Sometimes I feel foolish for staying & putting up with his crap. Things are better now & I do not think he misses her anymore, but really who knows. Its been 2 years since he has had any contact with her (as far as I know because I can never be fully sure.)

[This message edited by tikismom at 4:11 PM, January 2nd (Thursday)]

In my situation it took about 2 months of repeated attempts of contact before I finally had enough. At that point injanded him my rings and said it's time for you to go. I'm done with this.

That's when his limmerance ended. That's when he fully removed his head from his backside. That's when the real work started.

Yep. My WH was madly in love for 2 years of his 5 year affair. When he told me Only because she threatened him — he said garbage like this.....

- she is my best friend

- she has a good heart

- she takes care of me

- my soul mate

- my life love

- you would love her

-she needs me

“She”, no exaggeration! Is a foul mouthed hooker who controlled him.

He bought her a ring. They liked the same things. Blah blah.

She turned into his nightmare. Tormented him. Threatened him. Etc. But he used all these words to describe her. He deserved every ugly bit of her.

He also told me he loved me because I was the mother of his children. (What a shitty thing to say) but he was not in love with me. He missed her. My response was fine, I guess we are done. He started letting her go then. Told all a week later, and hasn’t spoken to her since.

It took perspective and consequences. He was fearful of her.

Now he can’t stand the idea of her. He can’t believe he did this. Claims to cringe when he thinks of her. Surprise, I am the prize now.

So I know your pain. Stay steadfast. He needs to go to IC. He needs to decide what he wants your marriage and you. And put her in the past. He needs to realize she was part of a fantasy world.

If he can’t, leave, it isn’t worth it.

[This message edited by Tallgirl at 4:58 PM, January 2nd (Thursday)]

Ps... you need to decide if you like him.

My WH dumped AP on D-Day and never looked back.

They exchanged I love you, constant contact daily for about two years, met up once for sex because she lived on the opposite coast.

Whether he pined for her or not, I don't know, but the fact that he knew I wasn't about to put up with his bullsh*t and lose any more self-respect along the way, was an immediate catalyst to end it. All communication stopped, I was given access to everything including his work emails, professional communication came to a screeching halt. Non-negotiable.

I didn't give my WH a minute to be in the fog. He understood that if I ever found out there was any communication between them again, the marriage was over and I would go directly to his boss with the work emails I found that were very explicit.

Tikismom - thank you for sharing your experience. I honestly don’t think I’m prepared to wait out two years for him to realize she isn’t his soul mate. I know that healing fully and rebuilding may take a few years, assuming we get through this. But if he’s not well on his way to at least getting over the infatuation and seeing things in a more objective light within the next 6 months, maybe sooner, I feel like I need to see the writing on the wall and cut my losses. I can’t live my life indefinitely wondering whether today will be the day that he’s weak and reaches out to her again. And if he does, that’s it for me.

I have too much self respect to spend the rest of my life with someone who loves me less than I love him

And so then, you have to decide what your boundaries are. And we never thought about boundaries before all of this BS affront happened.No- before we trusted... and then the trust was broken. And suddenly WE have the unintended onus of trying to figure it all out. All of the f...g emotions with these situations. And always a person who was blind-sided.

I have seen devotion as my parents were married for 62 years.My mother was a PITA often. But somehow my father led it ride off his shoulders. I was amazed how mellow he was.

No answer at all how people react.But people with morals do not take off and mock a marriage.Besides the fact that many don't have any resolve and/or think that years with a person is no big deal,then for God's sake. Go elsewhere- try to realize your insecurity. And my bet is that it rarely happens.

People do not make you any better.time to accept that reality.You are here...anyone who makes your life better is icing on the cake.start with yourself:)

On DDay, I told him I couldn’t be with “someone like him.” Told him to go be with her. I consulted a lawyer. I made the plan to move on.

He freaked. His fog cleared immediately. For an entire year, I made sure he knew I was ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Even if I felt things were off, whether he was up to something or nothing, I would leave.

He stayed on the straight and narrow ever since. I still maintain about 20% of “I don’t give a shit”.

He’s free to leave anytime he wants.

In my situation it took about 2 months of repeated attempts of contact before I finally had enough. At that point injanded him my rings and said it's time for you to go. I'm done with this.

That's when his limmerance ended. That's when he fully removed his head from his backside. That's when the real work started.

But here's the thing..."some' do not want to forget or forgive. I went through the "choose me" phase. And in doing so, I finally realized the extent of how I lowered my normal, self-loving criteria. Just because I thought (even without children) that I would be lost without that person.Think about it...I was a good partner, yet I had to go through humiliation. I had to go through times when my ex was not only foreign to me, but shoved it all in my face.

Obviously, each has their own unique situation and I understand when family is involved.I get so sad knowing that they see and experience the crap happening in front of them. And those are the unintended consequences of parents who suddenly changed their 'secure' environment.

The lesson? When those who've you trusted suddenly are in la la land...when those whom you never thought would hurt you...people make mistakes, but when there is evidence of ongoing infidelity, then it's time to realize that you are so much better than they are. Nothing is without sadness, but when men screw so many women and I am so different, then I have no hope for anyone to see any difference:)

A nice guy (albeit not a fool) seems to be such a foreign concept.Nonetheless, kudos to those who have grown tired and stuck up for themselves. Whether man-related or not:)

Tallgirl - those are so similar lot the things I’ve heard. I’d almost welcome aggression, because seeing the “ugly” side of her would kill the attraction more completely and quickly than anything else could. But I think in this case, her ugly side is selfish and manipulative rather than confrontational. Which are much harder to pick up on. I don’t want him to come out of this seeing her as a good person in any way. But right now, he’s trying to shoulder all of the blame on himself (where most of it admittedly belongs), and not prepared to recognize that her actions also represent character flaws, or that she had anything in mind other than his genuine best interests as she saw them.

He did started IC this past weekend. His second appointment is Monday. I’m waiting until he’s a little further into that to start MC.

Annb & tushnurse - I think if I had drawn the line in the sand on D-day and left, or kicked him out, he would have accepted that as what he “deserved” at that moment. And he would have gone straight to her, and a part of him would even have been happy about it.

I do think it would have taken very little time for the limerance to fade if he was with her while regretting leaving me. And he would have regretted it. But I couldn’t have reconciled if he’d seen her again after I found out.

I don’t think me ending it (or threatening to) would kill his feelings for her if he wasn’t seeing her. I do think it would (probably) make him fight for us. But he is already trying, and doing more or less all the right things. It’s the feelings that are harder to control that I need gone.

I do remember in those early days thinking strategically (it's just my personality) that I wanted to turn it into a situation where I had the choices/power rather than this strange one I'd found myself in where I had none. And I intuited that he needed to cut her off for his feelings to disappear.

TBH I was almost disgusted with how quickly they did disappear. You nearly threw away our children having two married parents for a relationship you got over in a matter of weeks? Not that I would have wanted the alternative where he moped and pined forever. There's simply no winning when it comes to giving yourself a secret boyfriend or girlfriend while married.

If I could go back, I would have been less concerned with the power balance (though it worked out in my favor) and more concerned with letting go of the outcome and accepting a future without him in it. But I'm glad that I was decisive and emboldened. I told him in no uncertain terms that I could find someone else and he should go be with her because they seemed to deserve each other and I didn't know if he could deserve me again. I do think part of me was calling his bluff, but I did mean it as well. I didn't want a future without him, but I couldn't accept a future where I was second choice.

At this moment you're the mean mom who made him give up his bestie. And that's a really unfair and no fun position to be in. When you cut him loose, you give him the opportunity to come back to you as a true partner, not a petulant child. But he may not come back at all. Letting go of the outcome means that you will be a fabulous, self-loving woman, but you may find yourself without a cheating husband. Here's to trusting yourself to be enough no matter what the outcome in this new year.

Just like in Tallgirl's example, the WS has to SEE the AP for what they are. One of the trolls my WH was having sex with tried to convince him she was pregnant after he ended contact. She wasn't. She was just trying to con him out of a little more cash. And yeah, he stood there in our kitchen, right to my face claiming "she's a nice person" before that happened. He said that about all three of them, "she's a nice person".

Well, "nice" people don't fuck other people's spouses.

My WH went on a Craigslist binge, so there were three AP, overlapping, and with various degrees of emotional attachment. The last of the three had him in full-on limerence and careless enough to get caught. She was also 20 years younger than him and married. At one point in our discussion, I remember asking him what a man in his 50's had that a man in his 30's didn't. Why was she advertising for "older gentlemen"??? He looked flummoxed because I doubt that question had ever really occurred to him, and if it did, he probably thought it was "daddy issues". The color actually drained from his face when I reminded him that the biggest practical difference was EARNINGS POTENTIAL. The dots connected. You could almost see the gears turn in his mind as he made small connections which gave her agenda away.

In a lot of ways, affair partners are like mirrors. They reflect back to the cheater what he wants to see. They like to see themselves as sexy and exciting, generous and compassionate, etc. So, you end up with Narcissus staring into the pool... seeing what he wants to see and ignoring what he doesn't. Because if he really LOOKS at the AP, he's going to see a woman who thinks it's A-Okay to fuck someone else's husband, to ruin someone else's family, to lie, perhaps to cheat on her own mate. But that's not the end of it, if he really LOOKS, he sees those things in himself too. He's no longer a good guy who made a mistake and got close to someone. He's a liar and an adulterer who doesn't care who he hurts, not even when it's his own family. He's a person without integrity, whose solemn vows mean nothing.

This kind of "fog" comes from being unwilling to look at himself and at his AP and SEE the deficits in character. When he sees it himself, he's able to see it in her. When he sees it in her, he's able to see it in himself. And he has to do that. A meaningful reconciliation demands it. If he's allowed to view giving up his "soulmate" as a sacrifice he's made on the alter of being a responsible person of good character, you'll never be able to trust him again. He'll have learned nothing. He has to see the evil if he's going to avoid the evil. He won't have repaired the flaw which allowed cheating to be a choice.

If you think about the gap between a cheater's stated values and what he actually does... there lies the defect in character. It's that character defect which needs to be repaired. Marriages don't cheat. People do. It's never a marriage problem. It's a people problem. The cheater has to change, otherwise R fails.

There have been some signs of the attachment starting to fade (no longer actively mourning for her in front of me, and although she has tried to reach out to him several times in various ways, the last few no longer sent him into a tailspin). And I'm trying to avoid asking too often right now, when I don't want to hear the answer (the last time I pushed was about a week ago, and didn't offer me any comfort).

Just be aware of the affair continuing.

My husband after dday1 sent an email and showed me stating no contact. He whenever I asked told me he had no contact and went to lengths to prove it eg she blocked him at one point on WhatsApp and he showed me this

It was a lie. Granted he was trying to end the affair (she is/was a nutcase), as he hadn’t confessed the full facts at that point she had a lot to use to threaten him with. I later found out that contact in fact resumed immediately. They hid their contact more so instead of WhatsApp messages (which is what had caught him out when he lied about when she had last whatsapped him) they started using the status part but only showing each other etc.

I will agree with what others said. What saved our marriage was after finding contact on Instagram 4 months after dday1 I threw him out. I told him to go to her. He didn’t, he went to a friend but the next day confessed to pretty much everything (a few parts come out in the next couple of weeks) and this time went no contact. She lost the things she was using to blackmail him because he had come clean about them and as such the relationship ended immediately that day.

I think that point in our relationship and our affair showed my husband that the only way to save our marriage was to be totally honest (thankfully the friend he went to told told him so too). He thought he had lost me and our family - I text him that night to tell him that I was sick of lies and at least now I knew they had had sex I could divorce him on grounds of adultery. He had nothing left to lose. I was no longer taking blame for things - which I had been doing, I was no longer prepared to be lied to and I knew I deserved better.

It is said on here, and I live by it, that sometimes to save a marriage you have to be prepared to lose it. At the minute despite you saying that you won’t stick around forever you are still in that early stage of bargaining and hoping.

If he has resumed contact with her (this happens so often) he is still living the best of both worlds with a wife who will put up with his abusive behaviour and who isn’t questioning him too much (I did the same) so is making it easier for contact.

I hope I’m wrong but so many people on here have more than 1 dday due to the affair continuing and going underground.

I'm staying for now because I believe that under this mess he's made of our lives, there really is still a solid foundation worth building on.

I hope he values you and your family and stays for the right reasons.

Time will tell.

Now he can’t stand the idea of her. He can’t believe he did this. Claims to cringe when he thinks of her. Surprise, I am the prize now

^^^^^^This^^^^^^

I am 4 years past DDay and I still get super irritated when my husband physically cringes when she comes up. REALLY? NOW she is disgusting? She was a 70 year old client. He was in his early 50s. She was manipulative and needy and morally bankrupt, but she was his "best friend" and "no one understood him better", blah, blah. He was supposed to go NC, but called her repeatedly for about a week after discovery...until she mentioned that she knew a lawyer who could protect his interests (meaning HER interests). He did not want to lose everything, so he dropped her. She reached out a couple of times (once to MY email address via LinkedIn - did I mention she was stupid?) and he saw her once more, texted her once more. All of that ended when I asked him who was texting him from an "unknown" number. I threw him out of the car and had his crap packed when he got home. The. End. Started to work on himself and was completely transparent. It took a LOT of work (including MC), but we are doing well....although I never, ever forget who I am married to.

In my opinion, it vital for cheaters to participate in IC. If the IC is decent, he (probably best if it is not a she) should help your WH out of his fog and find out what was broken in him that caused him to engage in destructive behaviors....but it is important to maintain a position of strength. Cheaters capitalize on weakness.....and they lie and lie and lie. It is hard to believe that the people who we trusted to keep us safe can be such incredible turds.

Please be vigilant. Cheaters are liars. Only his actions will tell you if he is a good candidate for the gift or reconciliation. They often get a whole lot sneakier and continue the affair. Sounds like you are a no-nonsense gal. This is incredibly helpful when dealing with an unremorseful cheater. If he cannot get out of the fog, put your bitch boots on and file for divorce. You do not have to go through with it, but it should pop his head out of his arse.

I see echo's of my own situation so often in others. The number of commonalities always amaze me.

AP threatened outing my WH all the time. She was impressively controlling. She too knew a divorce lawyer, she too said that they needed marital $$s, while not a sugar daddy, he was her way up/out.

WH & I are currently separated. He kept lying about cheating 5-10 years ago... and it was a deal breaker. Telling him to get out was really hard. Although I am the prize, he is not. I am not sure I can live with him, much less recommit. AND he snores.

I have realized as a result of this separation, I need him less and sometimes find it difficult having him here. (we spend a day or two together a week)

And I'm not sure I like him, we are generally not having fun, and I no longer admire him.

This is why I said, figure out if you still like him. Infidelity and LYING can kill love, and it obliterates trust.

If you had a great marriage, and have lot of "Coin" in the love bank, it may not be a question to reconcile. But he has to come back to reality, limerence is bullshit fantasy.

For me, I don't know if I like him, much less love him.

What a great life they dump us in...

I am sorry for your pain, for all of our pain. Infidelity is about lying and selfishness, and frankly a lack of balls. If you want to be with some else, talk about it with your spouse, figure out what is what, but don't crush them because you don't have the guts to do the right thing.

OK, off soap box.

Happy New Year all.