SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

BS should think twice before asking a question for once an answer is heard it can not be unheard.

WS must not confuse being brutal when answering their BS’s questions with being honest.

When the BS asks did you have sex with the AP the only answer is yes or no. Do not tell how good the sex was, how many times, etc, etc.

Because the BS did not ask for that level of detail. The WS job is to let the BS determine how much detail they want to hear.

Sorry you are facing the fall out of her treason. 6 weeks since the revelation is nothing. I was a walking zombie barely keeping it together just 6 weeks out. Sad to say that when the marriage ended some 10 years later, the images still lived in my mind as they do for many betrayeds.

One of the phenomenons I experienced was the extreme desire to get past all of it as fast as possible. To hit the time accelerator and get far, far down the road due to the agony of the present. Even dreamt of it, but woke every day to the same reality and honestly, the pain compounded daily for a long while. Learning details was definitely a contributor to that compounding.

Now, I knew nothing of emdr therapy nor of a lot of the resources readily available here and elsewhere and they may have helped had I been able to avail myself of them, but maybe not and I still suspect that the agony would have remained acute for a long, long while.

Part of the pain was not just the betrayal, but the shattering of a dream. I grieved the loss of what I thought we had like a death in the family and something in me died along with it.

Im sharing this with you in the hopes that you can and will be realistic about your expectations of yourself. You need a lot of time and space to truly come to grips with what you have been blindsided with. Try not to rush anything because, believe me when I tell you, you dont know where you will land when the dust settles.

When you posted this:

Our 27th anniversary is this coming Friday. We casually made plans a couple of weeks weeks ago to go out and celebrate as normal, but as we get closer to it, it's hitting me like a ton of bricks. What exactly are we celebrating this time..?

I winced for you. Celebrate? Now?? I didnt celebrate our anniversary ever again. Not once following her betrayal. Literally could not bring myself to do it. My advice to you is that if you are not ready, you are not ready and need to speak the truth about your unreadiness. You will do a huge disservice to her and yourself if you just go through the motions while your emotions roil inside.

Peace and healing to you in the days ahead.

I'm so fucking confused. The person I love most in the world is the same person who's caused me to have the worst experience I've ever gone through. This anniversary thing is weighing heavily on me and I told her so. She wants to focus on the time we've been together and I told her it just represent broken promises and broken vows to me, which makes her feel like shit, but then she should feel like shit. This really is the worst thing I've ever experienced.

Sisoon is right. I'm still in shock. Still just trying to process wtf actually happened. Still trying to come to terms that it even did happen. This was a complete blindside. Our marriage wasn't in the best shape, but things were starting to look up, and I really thought she was the most loyal, most faithful person I'd ever met. We were together for over 27 years before this happened, and there was never even a hint that something like this would happen for that entire time. It really did shatter my whole world.

So sorry you are going through this. You are still in the early days of hell and eventually you will come out the other side. I agree with DobleTraicion that you will not really KNOW until the dust has settled. I would just try to keep focusing on yourself and getting yourself healthy not put too much weight into R for another year or two at least, but I do hope your WW continues to heal herself and put her all into the M and support your healing.

I always found out a little too much on my own my xWS was never forthcoming with info. So I understand how finding out new info, no matter how, is such a gut punch. It always set me back. This is the worst thing you will ever go through but you will survive and eventually the pain will dull.

[This message edited by crazyblindsided at 5:48 PM, Wednesday, June 4th]

I do hope your WW continues to heal herself and put her all into the M and support your healing.

This is the only thing really keeping me afloat right now. She's doing everything I ask of her. She's reading the books, showing a lot of remorse and basically love bombing me right now. Dealing with my mood swings and seems really dedicated to helping me through this. Really looking at herself and how this happened to begin with. She's really down on herself right now and knows she fucked up bad. Really bad. I'm just having trouble drumming up any sympathy for her tho. She should feel bad, damnit. I've yet to even come close to uttering the words "I forgive you."

I would not worry how she feels about it. People do not change in comfort, and there are natural consequences to infidelity. You will have a better chance for your recovery if you are just authentic and true to yourself.

Our marriage wasn't in the best shape, but things were starting to look up,

I hear you. Our marriage was stale for years then all of a sudden things took a turn and while I thought we were catching our second wind and things were looking like an awesome second half of marriage, it turned out to be the absolute worst point in our (umm, my) life. That’s the biggest blindside, thinking things are getting better when in actuality they are getting far worse.

As we all say here, you own 50% of the marriage before the A. After, 1000% is hers to figure out how to heal herself. She somehow managed to conduct her affair, she needs to figure out how to conduct R.

I didn’t celebrate a birthday, holiday or anniversary for probably 3 years. So weeks after dday, I can’t even imagine.

And yes, you are still very much in shock.

[This message edited by AnnieOakley at 11:13 PM, Wednesday, June 4th]

I went through some shit. Had a breakdown and quit a good job. Went from the primary earner in the house to now she is. I withdrew from everyone, including her. Pushed all of my friends away. I was a very heavy drinker for years, but ironically stopped drinking right before I went to that dark place and entered a deep depression. I stopped taking care of myself. I lost 30 lbs and was thin to begin with. 6 feet tall and dropped to 125 lbs. It went on for years. She stuck with me through all of it. A lot of women would have given up and left, but she stayed. We've been through hell and back. I haven't had a drink for almost a decade now, and have no desire to go back to it. I suspect that's partly why I lost so much weight and went bonkers. My brain was so used to being soaked in alcohol all the time, and stopping like that was a shock. Plus it's where I was getting a lot of my calories. I've since gained a little weight. I now weigh around 135 to 140 lbs. Still thin and could use another 15 or so lbs, but better than before.

She had a bad seizure in bed one night about 2 years ago, and it scared me pretty bad. She stopped breathing for (what felt like) a couple of minutes and I called 911. By the time the ambulance showed up she started breathing again, but it was like a snore and very labored. Then she just kind of came to and didn't even realize she'd had one. She was able to answer all of the paramedics' questions and seemed to pull right out of it. It scared the shit out of me tho. I really thought I was going to lose her that night.

She's had a handful of seizures over the last couple of decades, but never anything like that. I realized that night that I still love her. Very, very much. She's had 2 or 3 more since then, but they were very mild in comparison. She would just blank out and become unresponsive for 20 or 30 seconds. Still scary, but not like the grand mal she had in bed that night. She's since had extensive testing done, her neurologist added another medication, and she's been seizure free for about 9 months, but she's driving restricted so I do all of the driving now. I started climbing out of my depression and showing her more affection after that bad one, tho our sex life was still nonexistent. She stopped sleeping in bed after that night of the seizure. She would start out in bed, then get up in the middle of the night and sleep on the couch. Said she was afraid to sleep in the bed after that bad seizure. Tho I wonder if there was more to it than that, she still maintains it was fear from having that bad one.

Before I had my breakdown we had a very active sex life. Several times a week for many, many years. We had a great sex life, and it wasn't a boring one. We're both very enthusiastic and not afraid to try new things. Then I lost my shit, got on antidepressants, and it just killed my drive. That went on for years. I weaned myself off of the SSRI I was on a year or 2 ago, and started caring again. Started working again, tho not making a lot of money. She's still the primary earner. We're doing okay, but we'd be in so much better shape had I not lost my mind and quit that job. I know now she's pretty angry about that. More than I'd realized. We've opened up to each other a lot in the last several weeks. Nothing is off the table, and she's opened up to me about everything. We weren't communicating well at all before, and now we're both open books. She's started sleeping in bed through the night again and I've been holding her.

That's just some backstory. We started out pretty strong and had a mostly good relationship. Tho I've always been plagued by major depression, anxiety, and PTSD from a tumultuous childhood and teen years, I was able to keep it together for the most part up until I just broke down. For all of the time we we've been together tho, almost 28 years all told, even those dark times, she was always there. Loyal and faithful. She's never done anything like this. She's never been flirty, and when someone else would flirt with her she'd shut it down immediately and cling to me. She's always exuded this aura of sweetness and innocence. Always only had eyes for me. It's part of what attracted me to her to begin with (well that, and she really is a pretty girl who caught my eye right off the bat). She's not very outgoing and never slept around, even before we met. I was the wild one growing up. Did a lot of partying. She never even drank. Up until this happened, I'm the only guy she's ever been with. That's why this is such a shock. NO ONE saw this coming.

Despite all of that, I know, and she knows what she did was wrong. So very wrong. If she was that pissed off, that unhappy, divorce papers would have been better. At least then we could have tried to address our issues without the betrayal and heartbreak. She really didn't think this through at all. Her condition was caused by head trauma when she was an infant, and while you would never know it until you really got to know her, it does affect her judgement, and I don't think she realized just how bad this would impact me. Impact us. I know she's genuinely remorseful now. I know she feels horrible. She's done a lot of crying and asking for forgiveness. She's doing everything she can to try to make up for it and salvage our relationship. She's been reading the books, and I've been reading to her from the articles here and showing her the threads. I've been showing her a lot of affection (in between my bouts of trauma dumping and drilling her about wtf actually happened and why), and she's soaking it up like a sponge. We've been hysterically bonding for almost 7 weeks now, and there's no sign of it slowing down. I truly believe she only has eyes for me again. I truly believe that's all she's ever wanted, but holy shit this has done a number on us.

So much more to say, but... phew. I hope that wall of text is somewhat intelligible. I haven't really had anyone to talk to about this aside from her for a long time.

[This message edited by Pogre at 12:38 AM, Thursday, June 5th]