SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I have been lurking for a while, but today I need to post.

Brief background. 2020-2021 I had an online affair, I thought I fell in love, in retrospective, it was limerence. I gave the AP the better part of me, while my BW continued to love me and put up with it. In a virtual world, the EA was all but the physical act. I think it's under-selling that it was an EA. We virtually had sex, but didn't physically. Early last year I broke off with the EA to try and repair the marriage my way, but continued with virtual hookups. A month or two later (timeline is fuzzy) BW confronted me and asked me point blank (she has a few times before) and I admitted to the affair. This began the road of healing. There is much more to this story, but I will save that for another day.

Today BW stumbled across a video that someone had taken of the virtual world. The video was September 2020, and there was a live performer. Yes, BW was searching for something, but not expecting to find this. I was unaware of the video, when BW showed me, I perceived there was nothing new to disclose, just a video that only served to re-open wounds. At first she played it with no audio. I tried to hold her while she continued to watch it, asking her to stop. She perceived me holding her as me wanting to watch my old self. Far from it, I'm filled with disgust at what I did, and could only imagine the hurt she was feeling watching it.

Later I went to get dinner, and BW decided to re-watch with audio turned on. When I got back, she insisted on playing the audio and me listening - I requested a dedication to the AP, it was announced, "Love me tender" - she slammed the laptop down. Deep wound. She had heard a dedication from me to AP. Apparently there was a mismatch with timeline - I don't recall when I first professed love - I still don't recall. I don't recall when I said I thought I fell in love, BW says end of the year, but here in the video is me dedicating a love song - who can argue with that?

What is more, I dedicated a song - BW recalls that was something special I had done for her - and now another thing I had given away to the AP.

I detest what I did, I detest everything that happened with AP. I wish I could erase all that has happened. I have been so thankful of the forgiveness BW has shown me, and the progress we have made. But now this.

I'm not sure really if there's anything I'm asking, but a rant at myself for all I've done and all the hurt I've caused.

Thanks for listening.

Sorry song was "I can't help falling in love"

Hello, s2bh. Welcome to SI.

As I gather you're learning, we WS are champions at minimizing the importance of timelines and details. I'm glad to see that you're not trying to downplay the overall extent of your affair (I sometimes think we need a new term for online affairs, since they can have a sexual component, and indeed are sometimes entirely sexual in nature). The next step is embracing the reality that if your BS wants to know everything, then everything matters. Every song, every endearment, every inside joke, every dream shared, every disclosure you made about BW and your life with her, every last gory detail of the cyber sex... if she wants to know, she gets to know. And especially, ESPECIALLY if she thought something you shared with AP was "just hers," you have to find the guts to tell her rather than hoping she doesn't ask. She needs to know what she's forgiving.

Now, as a WW whose BH was very heavily focused on what was still "just ours," I will add a qualifier. Eventually, if your BW decides she is all in on R, she will have to move on from that framing of your affair. My BH eventually concluded that his territorial fences around "just ours" were ways of distracting himself from the big picture. He had to either accept that I had given myself to someone else, emotionally and physically, and decide whether he could rebuild with someone who had done that, or he had to move on. It is not something that either of us can change. But until he was satisfied (or as satisfied as any BS can ever be) that he knew everything, then the detective work and rumination took up all the space in his head. This is normal. He couldn't have skipped over it; he had to work through it. He tried, in fact, for many years to rugsweep and avoid that processing stage, and it was very damaging.

It is an act of supreme cruelty to deprive your BS of the full and unedited truth. The details of your affair are crucial tools that only you can provide. It's cruel to leave them ruminating, and it's even worse to allow them to move into the next phase of healing when you know that it's secretly a minefield of unexploded details. I did not understand this, and I trickle-truthed my BH, and it left scars that he's still working years later to heal.

I'm sad you're here, too, but I'm glad we both understand that it's necessary. There is no better place for a remorseful WS to do the work.