Trying

A long road….

Hello to all SI'rs,
I hope that you are all well and doing your best to have personal peace.
I think that this is the first time that I'm starting a post. WH and I are approaching three years in this journey of healing the wounds caused by this terrible situation.
In general, we are doing well. I still wake up in the morning from a nightmare or think, first thing in the morning, about something related to the affair, the AP or WH. Unfortunately, there are many times that my day starts like this. My husband is there, comforting, open, although sometimes he asks me not to start our day like this and to make an effort to keep it for a time that we have more time to discuss. Anyway, the truth is that I have explained to him and I think he understands, that it is not something I choose to do on purpose. A tragic and unfair situation was imposed on me and I am doing the best I can. However, we now talk openly about everything and that is why I think I have set my insurmountable limit: one more lie and we are done.
Today, in fact, I woke up with this thought: I saw myself living the hypothetical scenario in which I learn about one more lie. I thought about something as simple as that he had bought her flowers and he lied to me about that, even though I asked repeatedly. So I put myself in an imaginary scene where the AP comes to me and says "oh, and then, there was that time that he bought me flowers"….and I really saw that I don’t have it in me to continue……
So this is the limit I have set (I’m not even discussing the possibility of a new infidelity). Of course, I’m not referring to things that I didn’t want to ask wh (I tried to be careful about that), but about the things that I asked him and got an answer to.

Many times, even from the beginning of this shitshow, I thought about how unfair it is to subject someone to this thing…. To commit to be open to everything, mobile phones, emails, account passwords…. First of all, I considered it (and still do) unfair for me, as a person, to stoop this low. This is how I felt about these kinds of situations. Little did I know…. My partner dragged me into this subpar situation without my choice, and from that moment on he was forced to live in a relationship that everything was constantly under a magnifying glass. I did this for about a year, and he was completely cooperative . But I stopped it because it is not me. I can’t, I don’t want to do this anymore…enough. WH is not a child and he is certainly not stupid. If he wants to behave again like a stupid person, it is his problem. And he will have to apologize to those who will care enough to hear (if something new happens, I personally don’t feel that I will care anymore, but our kids…that’ s another story, but I won’t care about that either…I will know that I did my best).

I am very sorry for all of us who experience infidelity. I am also very sorry for the state of many relationships before infidelity. Like mine. Quite honestly, we were not ok. The element that exists in a romantic relationship was completely missing. But, on the other hand, the truth is that you never get back the trust that "if things are bad between us, he'll come and tell me, but he definitely won't fuck someone else." That's obviously long gone.

I don't know if it was naive of me to have blind trust. I also know that my husband didn't trust me blindly. He had told me so before all this, and he told me so after all this. Even that, could have been one of the reasons for him to cheat. Insecurities along with an inner certainty that...you can't be certain about anyone (and thus justifying your behavior) ...may lead to that.

My biggest fear?
Right now it's not loneliness. But because I'm afraid of all those clichés like "when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time", and because there's clearly some truth to all of them, I'm afraid of this happening again in 10 years...and then what? What will my chances be for companionship...? Will I be afraid of loneliness then? And then , will I cross again my unsurmountable limit that I mentioned above ? (Let’s not forget that cheating was definitely one of those limits in the first place)

My biggest fear comes up when I see people struggling with awful thoughts, images, and feelings years later. This!!! This is what I'm afraid of! I don't want to look back and say why? Why did I do this to myself. I don’t want to feel like this anymore…I want to be able, in one or two years from now, to wake up and go to bed without thinking about it, worrying about it, or whatever…..

Of course, the answer, at least a large part of it, is that, at this moment, I feel that my husband and I, are definitely not together conventionally. It feels like something new and, after a much needed personal healing period of almost 3 years, I just begin to set my minimum requirements for us to be together in the long run, that surprisingly align with his requirements. Funny thing is, and sad at the same time, that our relationship was more conventional before.

So….I don't know….. Is this the path to reconciliation? Do I want to call it reconciliation? I don’t even want to call it like that. There is nothing to reconcile. I am totally transformed by this experience and so is he, and we continue to tranform…. I feel like I am a new person that somehow knows this person’s past and although finds his deeds awful during that time period, chooses to give him a chance, to date him, because we are more compatible than what I ever thought or FELT before …..
I don’t have any great wisdom to share. Just know that I am thankful for all you SI’ers… Be patient. Be strong.

7 comments posted: Wednesday, April 16th, 2025

A story.....of reconciliation?

I am going to tell you the story of me... As a child.

I am the third child and only girl. My parents divorced when I was just 6 months old. You guessed right. My father met another woman, he was much richer than my mother, he thought he was inluuuuv, they divorced.

I never saw them together, I never experienced being in one family. We were coming and going from one house to the other. There were fights and "hatred". You had to take sides. Constantly. You had to choose where to go for Christmas or new years' or Easter or summer vacations. Who was the loneliest and to whom you had to be a good daughter or son.

My father's luuuuv lasted 6 months. I think it ended as soon as he got divorced. As his daughter, I would say that he met a lot of women, he even got married and divorced again, but his life was generally sad.

My mother, who was in general an angry woman, met my stepfather two - three years after the divorce and stayed with him for another 35. He was a good, gentle man. He died in 2021.

So my mother was alone and my father was alone. They call each other because my mother wanted to borrow something from my father. He invited her to stay with him for a little while. Because "he is alone and she is alone" . After some time, He gave her the ring of their wedding (she had lost hers). They are together the last 15 months. She is 78. My father is 82. I am 45.

Last Christmas I was kind of shocked that I managed to talk to wish to both of them merry Christmas in one call. I was shocked that I saw them sleeping together in the same bed. I am shocked that they seem to get along and my mother seems to manage his sad personality like nobody else did.

I Let them watch my children for a few days during summer for the first time. My dad was absolutely happy... Beyond words.... My mother too.

A friend of mine told me:"you know, actually your parents just gave you the finger". She is right. They divorced, they fought, they lived their lives, we suffered, all three of us, and, because of age differences, we suffered in different ways and in different degrees and NOW they got back together.

I just said to them, that now there is no going back. That's it. Our kids saw them together and they are not going to play with them too. "So put any minor problems aside".

My parents don't know about me and wh. I don't know what to do with that story, and I know it's a little flat... But I guess I have to present it as flat because for us, the kids, me and my brothers, this is a straight line from then to today....

7 comments posted: Thursday, September 12th, 2024