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Within a couple of months, we will be having our wedding anniversary. It will be the 4th one since d day. We are in r and doing well but this is the hardest day of the year for me. Has anyone ever been able to celebrate their anniversary again? I think of our marriage like a beautiful vase that was broken and put together and now it’s still a vase but has cracks all over, chips amd a rough surface. How can it ever be pretty again?

The marriage was terribly assaulted and how can we celebrate the day we made those promises and vows? I just want to get thru it without crying.. I don’t want to start counting all over with 1. How have some of you handled this?

Do you know the Japanese art of Kintsugi? Where broken vases are mended with gold, making them beautiful in a different way. The brokenness is celebrated as part of the vase's story. That is how I think of our marriage now. Broken, but mended with pure gold. We are closer than we were before, more open and honest with each other. And that is a beautiful thing. Obviously, what broke us was the most awful thing ever, and I am still traumatised by it, but our marriage is beautiful in a different way. In fact I bought us kintsugi heart that hangs in our lounge, to remind us of where we are.

As to wedding anniversaries, they are bloody hard. Last year I insisted we do something we'd never done before, so we stayed in a shepherd's hut, away from everyone else. We walked, talked, cuddled. It was lovely, and I'm hoping we can do the same this year, although it's unlikely with lockdown still in place.

Try to find a different way of celebrating your new love for each other.

@Olgershell I feel ya. I’m one week away from our anniversary and I dont know if I want to celebrate it

Stupidly 4 weeks after Dday I took WGF for our 24th anniversary. She may well be expecting the same again this year 🙄

@Chicklette that is just beautiful, Thankyou for sharing that

I understand how you are feeling. We have our 30th around the corner and I’m embarrassed about it. It feels like a fraud, I know know my family will make a big deal about it on SM but I cannot pretend to feel proud of it.

Hopefully as R progresses I can begin to feel good about it again. Best Wishes to you, none of this was our choice.

I started celebrating with the 4th post-d-day anniversary, 45 months after d-day.

At some point, I think an R'ed couple needs to find things to celebrate about their relationship, and the relationship probably benefits from some sort of date for repeating a celebration.

We don't remember the date we met or had our first date or got engaged, for example. I see the A as part of a fairly long history (staring in 1965), and I think it's a mistake to forget history. So we still use our wedding anniversary - but there isn't a rule that I know of that we have to use that date.

At my insistence, we no longer observe any type of celebration of our wedding anniversary. Coming up on three years into reconciliation it is just another day to me. We will, however have a weekend together once our DDay anniversary passes. I am sure it doesn’t seem rational to others, but I can’t bear celebrating a day with so many happy memories that ended up being such a lie. I am happier to spend a weekend reconnecting with my H in this new relationship. Just my two cents.

I acknowledged my 30-year wedding anniversary this year, because I believe that there was a great deal of good over the last 30 years, but I did not celebrate it, because the date was 6 months after DD2.

Not sure how I will feel about next year, but one thing I have learned--I don't have to know. And that's OK. One day at a time. I'm clear about my feelings, and my WS accepts them because, well, that's what happens when there is a DD2.

Our 20th is coming in April, I have no desire to celebrate. It will be in the middle of the week, the kids will be at school and H will have the day off, I plan to ask for the day off so I can have some time alone. It will be our second anniversary after DDay but he had not gone no contact yet last year.

If I celebrate any day I think the day we met would be a better choice, we had a lot of fun and no promises where made that day.

We don't acknowledge it in any way. I know he would like to "celebrate". I can't. I won't.

I'm coming up on our 17th anniversary in a few days, the 6th since DDay 1.5. WH always says he never pays attention to "annual celebration dates," but he did manage to remember APs bday 2 yrs after DDay (and NC) and have flowers sent to her at her work.... which had been MY work for 12 years prior to that skank getting a job there. Then sent me off to work 2 weeks later on my bday without a single word. (He called later apologizing, but I was already devastated... if I had known about the AP flowers at that point, I'm pretty sure I would be divorced now.)

I will not be celebrating or even acknowledging this anniversary. If he manages to remember, I'll give him the same fucking line he's given me over the years.

Our 35th anniversary was 4 years after DD2 - we had not really celebrated since then. My H asked if we could renew our vows on our anniversary. I was hesitant - felt it would be hypocritical as his A was common knowledge among our friends and family.

He told me he felt that renewing our vows was a testament to our love and determination to take the worst thing a marriage can endure and make a marriage to be proud of. When I thought about I I realized it was the right thing to do for us. For me, our anniversary is more than just a celebration of our wedding day - it is a testament to a marriage that has been rebuilt through the determination of two people who love each other - and I think that is worth celebrating.

2 days from now will be our 20 year anniversary. I told me W to make sure her family knows to not to attempt to make a big deal of it. I told my W I don't want to exchange gifts. Last year was the first anniversary after DD and it was all so fake feeling to me. I knew she was still withholding information, she knew she was withholding (and that she knew that I knew that) and we still went through the charade of it not being tainted for me and it meaning any more to her than it ever did. At the end of it I felt dirty.

So here we are. The big 2.0. and I just wish there was a way that January went from to 12 to 14 without hitting the 13th. The date didn't carry real meaning to her before and now it's just a reminder of how much of a fool I was to believe it ever had real meaning.

The people who know us but know nothing of the ruse our M has been will attempt some grand gesture and I have no desire to fake it ever having real value or us "making it" this far.

It's just a reminder of what never really was.

Thanks for the input. Chicklette, I love your analogy of the mended vase. it’s just a crying shame we had to go thru what we did to try and find something to celebrate. It should just be natural to celebrate our anniversary instead of having to work at it!

We had been married 35 years when he committed adultery and I didn’t find out about it till after our 50th anniversary. So I felt an additional betrayal of 20 years of not knowing and those years being a lie. I destroyed all our wedding pictures and photos from the past 20 years so there’s not a lot of good memories to help me thru this.

Olgershell, I understand completely. I found out years after, too.

I think that's the hardest part. He looked at my face and lied for years. I find our wedding vows to be the first lie.

Last year, when he tried to celebrate, I lost it. I told him if we celebrate an anniversary, it should be August 8th. The day we both knew what our marriage really is.

I didn't get rid of pictures. My daughters are in them. I made him box everything up and put it in the attic. I have slowly replaced everything in our house. There is nothing I have to look at or dust, where I wonder if it was before, during, or after.

Our wedding anniversary is my absolute hardest day out of the year now. Prime A season 4 years ago, and the jerk called her as soon as we got home from celebrating. I’ve had to let go of the notion that I will ever be able to understand how someone can do such a scummy thing.

We did go to dinner this past one. I had it in my head it was just a regular date night. I’d like to think I can take it a bit further next year. I mean, it is quite a feat to stay married after infidelity, when so many people call it quits for the most trivial reasons. I can look at it more as a factual celebration than a romantic one. We did get married 11 years ago, and hey we’re still married. There isn’t some rule that you aren’t legally married anymore after someone strays. I had this fear that no one would be able to say “and he was faithful to underserving for x years. What a gem!” But you don’t hear that at a 50 year anniversary celebrations anyways. It’s celebrating the fact the couple worked through the hard shit, and both stayed in the marriage.

When it would have been easy to leave, I chose to stay. The truth of the matter is, he chose to stay too, and it has NOT been an easy ride for him, even if it was a mess of his own making.

My point is, if it’s not something you care to celebrate anymore, I understand not doing so. If you do want to acknowledge the day, there is also no shame in it. Wedding anniversaries have no requirements other than you two are still married. After the beast of infidelity, I think it’s a miracle when people DO stay married, and that’s definitely worth celebrating if you want to.

This July will be the third wedding anniversary post-DDay. Normally I'm all about anniversaries and birthdays, but since DDay I have left it up to him to acknowledge. The first year was very difficult as it was about three months post-DDay and last year I was out of town and he only remembered after the fact, so we didn't do anything 'big.' Unfortunately I no longer want to celebrate and it saddens me a lot.

One thing that sticks with me is a week after I found out about the affair, we had gone to my dad's place for a family get together. My husband lost his wedding ring and his engagement watch and was tearing up the house looking for it. He found it eventually, but then two months after that I found out he had had sex with her even though he said nothing happened. Apparently they only had sex once, and I traced it back to three days before we had gone to my dad's house. I vividly remember yelling at him about how he had sex with her and then ran around my dad's house looking for his wedding ring as if it actually meant anything to him in the first place.

So yeah, anniversaries are hard.

Chicklette, thanks so much for the reference to Kintsugi— it is a beautiful idea. I have been struggling lately with feeling broken. I don’t feel more beautiful and strong after all this but I’m trying to convince myself. I am going to purchase a Kintsugi gift for myself so that it may help me.

I have been thinking a lot about the kintsugi repair method ofusing gold, so I ordered a piece. Have something to look forward to on our anniversary, I will share the story and then we can open it together.I’m feeling this may get me moving toward a more positive anniversary. Thanks chicklette!

I’m so glad some of you like the kintsugi idea. It really resonated with me. Apologies for this next bit if you’re not a Christian: I am not the sort of Christian who has visions or actually hears God talk to me, but one night I was awake in the usual middle of the night panic, and I prayed about my marriage. I genuinely felt God say to me “your marriage was broken but now it is mended with gold. Pure gold”. I already knew about kintsugi so I looked for somewhere to buy a heart. Every time I look at my kintsugi heart it reminds me of that. And I really do feel our broken marriage is mended with gold.

I hope you find a kintsugi gift that you love ❤️ .

[This message edited by Chicklette at 3:45 AM, January 15th (Friday)]

Chicklette is it against the rules to ask where you got your heart.