SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Are you sure that divorcing her would actually destroy her? Maybe she would be able to move on with her life.

Or is her moving on with her life and getting over you the thing that actually scares or enrages you?

Buck, I think you need to take a long hard look at your own personality. You come across as possibly having some form of OCD. Or you may be bringing something from your childhood where you have to be in control. When I was growing up a woman in our family would never forgive anyone for anything. Friends, family members, it did not matter. If she perceived any a slight she dropped them and never had anything to do with them again. When I hit middle-age I met a group of women and one of them was almost identical in personality. I finally realized that there is an enormous amount of pain brought from childhood to make someone that bitter. It means that the person has to be in control all the time. All. The. Time. If they can’t be it is so hard for them because it throws their anxiety into the stratosphere. Anxiety it’s almost impossible to live with. People get posttraumatic stress disorder because of it. I think you need to look at where you are coming from. Do you suffer from unrecognized anxiety? If so that’s driving everything you do. You are never going to make what she did go away. That’s the sign of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again thinking you will change it. I believe that’s from Albert Einstein. I think EMDR might help you.

WWTL, my wife was the golden child in her family. She was the pretty, petite, bubbly girl that could do no wrong. She was the oldest of 6 kids and helped her mom with her siblings. She was a people pleaser, everyone told her what good, helpful girl she was, etc. If she did do something wrong, her mother fixed it for her. I'm talking about fixing fairly insignificant school related stuff too, nothing major, but the thing is my wife never really learned about accountability or personal responsibility. And she needed constant validation from people around her. We married young, had kids from the start, money was tight at first, fairly typical stuff. I think her A was born out of the no accountability thing. She thought she wouldn't get caught and she rationalized the risk by thinking I would fight for her, be jealous, be scared of losing her, that kind of thing. Stupid high school shit. Her A happened over 20 years ago. She ended it on her own saying the OBS's answering machine message scared her. It took her a few months to end it though. AP outed her.

My biggest fear in D is damaging the relationship I have with my children, particularly my daughters, and grandchildren. I also don't want to be the reason she spirals into some sort of depression. I don't know how to convey this properly, but she's frantic to stay married. It's truly bizarre. I'm 51 and it's a big financial hit to D at this age too. Together we can have an awesome retirement, apart each of us would have a fairly comfortable one.

My biggest fear in D is damaging the relationship I have with my children, particularly my daughters,

How could divorcing a wife who cheated damage your relationship with your kids? Most people understand when a divorce arises from infidelity.

My biggest fear in D is damaging the relationship I have with my children, particularly my daughters, and grandchildren.

I'm not sure that's true. My cynical side says that you fear a D would surface the whole story, including your As, and you don't want that big a dose of reality.

My more analytical side says you are probably hiding your biggest fears from yourself. And you won't conquer those fears - you probably won't even be able to identify them - without the help of a good IC.

I also don't want to be the reason she spirals into some sort of depression.

How is that your problem? Especially if you are as honest as you say you are, how is that your problem?

To heal, you have to detach and take responsibility for yourself and your own healing. Your W can't heal you. Really. She just can't.

I don't know how to convey this properly, but she's frantic to stay married. It's truly bizarre.

Not necessarily. She might really love you and be in love with you. Maybe she's waiting for you to figure out how to heal. Maybe she's hoping you will choose R.

I'm 51 and it's a big financial hit to D at this age too. Together we can have an awesome retirement, apart each of us would have a fairly comfortable one.

Oh, bullshit. How great can your life be when you're living with someone the way you're living now?

I haven't checked the mortality tables, but I think there's something like a 25% probability that you'll both live into your 90s. That 40 more years living like you live now ... except that your bodies will deteriorate, so less fun and more physical pain is is your future.

You haven't healed on your own, so get help. Heal. R - if that's what you want, and I think you do. Or D, if you won't heal or if you want D.

I told her I wasn’t going to be faithful to her going forward and she was free to leave if she had a problem with that.

It's still cheating ... especially when followed by a clandestine A.

You're right, though. Your W can pull the plug just as easily as you can.

How is that remotely comparable with what she did? Your gender bias is causing you to make some faulty equivalencies.

I don't see gender bias. I see you doing heavy blame-shifting.

I see Buck, WWTL, and Thumos as sort of three sides of the same coin.

Strange coin.

I see some major differences. WWTL worked hard to figure out what he needed. He changed his approach instead of doing the same things that didn't get him anywhere. He (and Thumos) did not cheat. He owned his problem and focused on solving it.

*****

The irony I see is that both Buck and his W cheated to gain something they felt they lacked - and both of them made it less likely they'd ever achieve their goals.

Maybe she's waiting for you to figure out how to heal.

I can't express adequately how grating I find this sentiment. Like nails on a chalkboard to use a a phrase. It's like a hit-and-run driver showing up in the ICU and yelling at the victim to figure out to heal themselves. Really flawed thinking. It seems to represent some mid-century therapeutic cliches. Next we'll be talking about warm fuzzies and cold pricklies.

Strange coin.

Quantum coin.

[This message edited by Thumos at 12:03 PM, July 28th (Wednesday)]

Very strange coin indeed...

WWTL has made his choice and moved on in a healthy manner that isn't damaging to himself.

As for the thought that Thumos is a part of this strange coin... I highly disagree. He has behaved a manner that is honorable and healthy. Just because he hasn't rushed to R doesn't mean that he is unhealthy.

And IMO...the difference me and WS is that I was often tempted (still am) and I didn't choose to have an affair. It was my conviction to who I was as a person that separtes me from him.

Buck...

Are you afraid that your relationship with your children will be damaged because there is no "villain" here? You both cheated.

I will tell you that your story helped me. I was angry with my WS last night and I realize I don't want to my time being angry. I will have to deal with my emotion and I am in therapy but in yesterday's moment. I gave myself grace and gave him grace.

And by grace I mean I ate and icecream sandwich and I didn't call him to tell him that he, OW and his mom, dad and brothers could suck donkey bowls will giving a circle jerk to a bunch of rabid monkeys.

But, the things she was looking for in the A are now the things she will never get from me. At least not fully. I can't tell my WW that she's a good woman and I'm lucky to have found her. I can't tell her I love her and respect her with all of my soul. I can't discuss, much less brag, about my marriage to my buddies. I can't look at photos and think I've got everything I always wanted from marriage.

That pretty much nailed it in my case. Everything I positively thought about her is long gone. The A's happened in the 90's and since then we've become roommates with occasional but rare benefits. There's no affection and no intimacy, All we have in common now is a child we raised to adulthood and many years of history.

There were counselors and pastors with "advice" galore but whatever we once had was burned to the ground, stomped on and kicked to the curb, never to return once she fired me as her husband but failed to inform me until she was caught.

The cautionary tale here for you, Buck, is this.

I'm 70 and you're 51. Do you really want to spend another 19 years in misery and find yourself posting on SI that you should have bailed while you had the chance?

WWTL and Thumos, I hate that you two got lumped in with the likes of me...

So how could D impact my relationship with my kids\grandkids?

Part of it is I'm fairly certain my daughters would be sympathetic to my wife. I have great relationships with both of them, but they are closer to my wife. My son would likely side with me for the same reason. I don't want to cause friction between them. Even though I'm not responsible for her actions, I hate to think of them seeing their parents differently and I'm not without fault either. I don't want to cause them any pain because of our bullshit. Also, our family is close and we have a bunch of holiday traditions and spend virtually every holiday together. We also go on vacations or extended weekend trips together. My mom and wife are very close. My parents divorced when I was 9 and losing those traditions was one of the shittiest parts of it.

And I don't want my wife to be miserable forever. That's part of the irony. The new and improved version of her is paying penance for the choices of the shitty early release. This has changed me too.

Sisoon, I don't feel the first "A" can be considered an A. I told her before it started. Months before it started actually. She agreed with what I said. I never once lied to her during or after. I never stole her agency or let her live a lie. I also did not gaslight her in any way. It simply was not cheating. Even though I had told her years before that I wouldn't be faithful, the second A I did conceal from her. I lied to her and the AP. I can see this being considered an A.

And this isn't front and center everyday in our day to day lives. We have shared interests, we do things together. I walk around the neighborhood lake with her every morning and we cook breakfast together. She goes out of her way to make my life easier and better. I do believe she's changed for the better. She's consistently been a good person for many years. My issues seem to mirror WWTL's. I just don't see her the same way. She seems tainted and not worthy. She seems like a dumb whore that tossed aside a good marriage, and a chance at a great life, to be used by a wife beating asshole. And that's where the sex issues start. I am damn sure not putting in more effort than her AP in this relationship. I feel like a fucking idiot just thinking about that. My wife made some fucker feel like he was worth her throwing her family away to fuck him. Please enlighten me, how does one heal from that?

You dont respect her...and as a result you don't respect yourself for staying with her.

You cant heal because it looks like she will never be able to untaint herself in your eyes...

when really its YOU who you can't untaint in your eyes.

Staying makes you a failure

Leaving makes you failure.

You are never going to heal because you set up a dynamic where no matter what you chose you will still not have the self-respect you crave.

We have shared interests, we do things together. I walk around the neighborhood lake with her every morning and we cook breakfast together. She goes out of her way to make my life easier and better.

Sounds familiar. And then I trigger and think about her bringing my friend over to my own home and violating it while I was out of town. All planned. Laughed about it together. I got to hear them laughing about it.

And her almost convincing me to get an SSRI prescription for my "unfounded paranoia."

I mean I look at her and just can't imaging ever doing something like that to her. It's quite sinister when you think about it.

For a short time after D-Day, I could not shake the weird memory of watching a 1970s TV miniseries as a child starring Bette Davis, in which a couple moves to a small New England town.

"The Dark Secret of Harvest Home."

Harvest Home seems like a sunlit bucolic paradise. But as they live there, the husband begins to realize a pagan cult is at the center of the town's activities (with Bette Davis as the sinister matriarch of the cult, natch).

By the end of the show, his wife is fully immersed in the fertility cult and has betrayed him by wantonly copulating in front of him with the pagan cult's "Harvest Lord". Then after the husband/protagonist has been ritually cuckolded, Bette Davis cuts out the protagonist's eyes and tongue out to silence him.

I know it sounds dramatic, but my brain wouldn't let go of this after D-Day for several days, and I had dreams about it in which I was the husband in that plot and my WW was scheming against me with the freaky New England Puritan cult.

This was probably my brain's way of processing the massive double betrayal and her willingness to see me medicated with a brain-altering drug in service of her adultery.

The cognitive dissonance of knowing all of this and at the same time having a WW who is trying to do "everything" right now is really shattering on so many levels.

And that's situational irony, friends.

[This message edited by Thumos at 7:26 PM, July 28th (Wednesday)]

And her almost convincing me to get an SSRI prescription for my "unfounded paranoia."

I mean I look at her and just can't imaging ever doing something like that to her. It's quite sinister when you think about it.

Same thing happened to me while she was in one of her A's. "Go to a shrink and get on meds or I will divorce you and take our son away from you." Guess what, I did exactly what she told me to do.

"Sinister" is not a strong enough word imo. "Evil" is more like it.

Buck:

"I find it ironic that my WW began her A because of the ego boost/validation/attention from some dipshit blowing smoke up her ass by telling her how wonderful she was and how hot she looked. I can understand that it feels good to have someone find you attractive. I get that people want to feel desired, appreciated, respected, loved, etc.

But, the things she was looking for in the A are now the things she will never get from me. At least not fully. I can't tell my WW that she's a good woman and I'm lucky to have found her. I can't tell her I love her and respect her with all of my soul. I can't discuss, much less brag, about my marriage to my buddies. I can't look at photos and think I've got everything I always wanted from marriage.

These things she needs for her ego are things I can't give because I don't feel or believe them. I can respect her efforts to improve herself and make amends, she's made enormous strides in those areas too. I can appreciate certain things. I can be somewhat content with our lives now and I can enjoy our family as a whole. But the damage is pretty damn deep and I view her entirely differently now."

This seems to be similar to what my betrayed husband feels. And it is completely justified. The rest of Buck's story is completely different.

Reading further in this thread, several contributors recognize that many WW's feel a lack of self-worth and self-esteem and little sense of strong identity. This was true of me. We constantly seek to please others and thus gain validation. I think that no person, spouse or AP, can provide this to another person. We have to find it in ourselves. What I need for my ego is not something my husband can give me. I have to develop this in myself. Part of that is becoming a decent, moral, caring, empathic person. I have to develop my own sense of self-respect and self-worth.

Reading further in this thread, several contributors recognize that many WW's feel a lack of self-worth and self-esteem and little sense of strong identity.

Eesh, this sounds very Esther Perel-esque.

I posted this is in another thread, and I think it's relevant here:

I've also talked in the past about how I believe most people adopt a persona, for good or ill, in their teens and twenties. It's like putting on a costume. There's nothing wrong with this. It's part of adapting to adult life.

But over a few decades, the psychic drain of this persona means the costume starts to wear thin and grow shabby.

For some people, this is a positive liberating experience and they can allow more and more of their authentic self to just be as the costume falls apart. For others, this is a terrifying experience and part of what I believe precipitates a midlife crisis. They don't really like who they are under that deteriorating costume. And they worry no one else will like who they are.

Esther Perel thinks adultery is a form of empowerment in "rediscovering" your true self, or a part of your self you have lost.

I think it's the opposite. I think it's running away in horror from the process of your carefully curated persona falling apart because at midlife you don't have the psychic energy to sustain it anymore. So in response adulterers seek to "patch up" the shabby costume in a form of playacting with another person.

Some people embrace the inevitable existential crisis of midlife. Some people plunge into the adventure of liminality.

Some people are glad to shed that old costume they donned in younger life.

Some people, however ... well, some people don't want anyone to see who they really are.

Some people run screaming away from the crisis and into the arms of another.

[This message edited by Thumos at 7:12 PM, July 28th (Wednesday)]

My wife made some fucker feel like he was worth her throwing her family away to fuck him. Please enlighten me, how does one heal from that?

Well, I think you can start by challenging the statement. Let's put aside for a moment how you might KNOW how the AP felt. Let's assume you've hit the mark and he did indeed "feel like he was worth her throwing her family away to fuck him". Is that true??? Was he worth throwing her family away? Demonstrably, the answer is 'no'... because she still wanted to be with you and she still wanted to keep her family. Feelings aren't facts. The AP might feel whatever he feels, but that doesn't make it true. He was NOT worth your WW throwing away her family, because when the smoke cleared and the chips were down, her priority was her marriage and her family.

But let's throw that answer away and say that "yes, the AP was worth throwing the family away". Your WW left you years ago, ran off with the OM, and you haven't seen her since. Does that change your worth in any way? Does it make you less valuable as a human being? Do you make less money than your peers? Do you not have a full vote as a citizen? Are you shunned in public?

Do you see what I'm saying? Your WW isn't an extension of you. She's a separate person. She did those things because her mind was fucked up at the time and her character needed work. She didn't have appropriate boundaries surrounding her core values. But all of that is about her, and none of it defines YOU.

This is a story you told yourself.

But let's throw that answer away and say that "yes, the AP was worth throwing the family away". Your WW left you years ago, ran off with the OM, and you haven't seen her since. Does that change your worth in any way? Does it make you less valuable as a human being? Do you make less money than your peers? Do you not have a full vote as a citizen? Are you shunned in public?

Do you see what I'm saying? Your WW isn't an extension of you. She's a separate person. She did those things because her mind was fucked up at the time and her character needed work. She didn't have appropriate boundaries surrounding her core values. But all of that is about her, and none of it defines YOU.

Good stuff right there.

[This message edited by Thumos at 9:17 PM, July 28th (Wednesday)]

It sounds like you are punishing yourself by punishing your wife.

If it’s truly a dealbreaker then let her go and free yourself.

Life is very short to waste.

Life is a lot more important than stuff.

You can’t fix your life until you fix yourself. You had seven or eight years of mistreating your wife basically. So did paying her back make you any happier? I truly think you need very intense therapy.

I don't feel the first "A" can be considered an A.

But you've chosen to be a member of SI, in which you would be classified as both BS and WS on the basis of your revenge A alone.

And every time you say 'I don't consider the first A to be an A,' you are minimizing, if only for yourself, your behavior, which includes your Long Term Affair.

*****

It's like a hit-and-run driver showing up in the ICU and yelling at the victim to figure out to heal themselves.

No, it's not, for most of us. Most BSes do not need ICU or ER or even urgent care as a result of being betrayed.

Further, the care we need is almost never for broken skin or broken bones. The care we need is more for broken illusions and broken emotions - excruciatingly painful, but almost never life-threatening.

(I don't mean to discount the physical effects of being betrayed - most of us take big hits to our eating, sleeping, drinking, moving, and self-talk habits.)

And tell me, what is the alternative to self-healing? Exactly how does one person heal another? One person can intervene in another's body with cutting or substances or both, but the actual healing is done by the person who receives the intervention. People can intervene with acupuncture, therapeutic massage, etc., too, but any good practitioner of those techniques already knows all they can do is bolster the body's abillity to heal itself.

Really ... tell us all ... what can the WS do to actually heal the BS? In formulating your answer, remember all the posts that say, 'My WS is doing everything they should be doing, but I'm still in pain after 2 years.' And remember the posts that say, 'I gave up trying to control the outcome. I focused on doing what I needed to do.'

T/J -

Like nails on a chalkboard to use a a phrase. ... Really flawed thinking. It seems to represent some mid-century therapeutic cliches. Next we'll be talking about warm fuzzies and cold pricklies.

But so many of us reject most strongly exactly what we need to hear. I read many of your posts, and I can't help thinking about protesting too much.

End T/J

[This message edited by sisoon at 9:26 AM, July 29th (Thursday)]