SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Unconventional,

Perhaps you should sit with why placing so much value on a friendship, to the point that losing it could mean divorce or even death, might itself be unhealthy.

I understand that you're not suicidal now. But you've described a future in which losing this friendship could make life no longer worth living.

And I think you make an interesting point. It's not just the experts telling you that your thinking may be self-focused. Your dear friend, someone who supports you and knows you, is also reflecting a similar concern back to you.

I find it somewhat ironic that I'm saying this, given that I've experienced a similar perception from people on this forum myself. The difference is that the people in my own life have actually been in firm opposition to the opinions voiced here.

Do you think there might be a flaw in your reasoning if the people who actually know you are seeing something very different from what you're seeing?

With exceptions, humans are generally social animals. People need people for their lives to hold meaning. A person myself, I need people for my life to have meaning.

For the better part of 3 decades, I had "only" family and the woman who became both my wife and the very center of my family. And that…. was enough for me. Sure, I wanted other friends. At least another friend. But family was enough.

Then I met "my AP." Her friendship opened my eyes to what I had been missing, with no friend in my life. I saw colors I had never seen before—not because my wife was in the slightest lacking, but because—as vital and critical as is a spousal relationship—the spousal relationship isn’t supposed to be a person’s whole world.

Now without my friend, my experience is of a life decolorized. I don’t think that’s because my wife is lacking, and I don’t think that’s a sign of unhealth for me. On the contrary, I think it is a sign that I was changed for the better—for the healthier—through contact with my friend—and that my existence now is a shadow of what it was when my wife and friend were both in my life. I am no worse off than I was before I met my friend, but my experience of this state of being is entirely different. What was normal to me is now muted. There is no turning back for me.

As for my seeing things only through my own eyes, that was a criticism leveled at me by my friend only in her last letter to me—when she saw that I was apologizing but apparently not empathizing enough with my wife.

I have taken that criticism to heart. Once, I insisted on remaining in contact with "my AP." I have not attempted contact with her in months. I am trying to pay my dues. I am listening to audiobooks and reading books on the struggle of BSs in coping with affairs. I am being faithful. I am trying to cultivate greater empathy for my wife’s perspective and to accord her pain weight even though I don’t find her perspective to be reasonable. But I cannot be without "my AP" forever unless and until I try once more to contact her… to plead my case (if she will let me) that I have done the homework she gave me—that I have healed my marriage and regrown my integrity and am a new man, eager to rebuild a safer version of what my friend and I once had—and am still rebuffed.

Absolutely, there could be a flaw in my reasoning! I am far from infallible. That’s precisely why I have engaged here—to have my reasoning challenged.

If you see my reasoning as flawed, please tell me how?

My thinking has evolved at least a handful of times in just the days since my first post here. What hasn’t changed is my commitment to a return to my friend in properly-ordered friendship while any infinitesimally small chance to reestablish that remains.

I will close with this thought, for now:

I have gathered that the position others see when they see through my wife’s eyes is that my friend cannot—under any circumstances—ever return to my life. But that view isn’t rational or justifiable, and without excellent cause, I cannot honor that view, given its cost to me. I guess my love of my wife is just simply not enough.

Is that everyone’s point? My love for my spouse should be so great that I shouldn’t care whether her needs are reasonable or just, how much meeting her needs fully would cost me, or how much I could protect for myself while according her everything that she justifiably ought to require? That any want she expresses and labels as "a need," I should simply move heaven and earth—erasing my own needs—to achieve?

A problem with answering those questions in the affirmative is that a need I have is for my friend to be in my life. So, if what’s good for the gander is good for the goose, then my wife has just as much of an obligation to grant me my friend as I have to relinquish her.

NOTICE:

Premise 1) Marriage creates special obligations toward one’s spouse.

Premise 2) Those obligations sometimes require substantial personal sacrifice.

Premise 3) Preserving the marital relationship is more important than preserving the friendship.

Conclusion) Therefore, the friendship must be relinquished.

BUT ALSO:

Premise 1) Marriage creates special obligations toward one’s spouse.

Premise 2) Those obligations sometimes require substantial personal sacrifice.

Premise 3) Preserving the marital relationship is more important than purging "the AP" from Unconventional’s life.

Conclusion) Therefore, the friendship must be permitted.

Anyone who wants me to accept the first argument should be able to tell me why it carries priority over the second. If you can’t, then you need to climb off the "dump the friend bus" until you can give me a different argument that obliges me to accept my wife’s feelings as not only real and worth compassion, but also determinative.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 8:15 PM, Monday, September 28th]

Unconventional,

I don't normally write this type of response, but you specifically invited people to challenge your reasoning, so I'm going to take you up on that invitation.

What follows are some things I've observed that seem, at least to me, to be in tension with some of your stated beliefs and behavior. I'm not presenting them as definitive conclusions about you. I'm genuinely interested in how you reconcile them.

You say you're trying to give your wife's pain weight and cultivate empathy for her perspective, but you also say you don't find her position reasonable. How exactly do you give weight to an objection you've already decided is unreasonable?

And I think this brings me back to what I see as the larger question underneath everything you've written: what does putting your wife first actually require of you when what she needs is directly opposed to what you want?

Going no contact is certainly a sacrifice. But is it the same sacrifice when you believe that, once you've done the work, you will eventually deserve the opportunity to resume contact? In that case, you're giving something up while still expecting that you may eventually get something in return.

Perhaps the more meaningful sacrifice is giving up something you desperately want while accepting that you may never get it back. Isn't that where you find out whether your wife really is the priority?

Your latest post seems to frame the issue as though people need to establish that your wife's position is objectively correct before you have an obligation to accept it. But I'm not sure marriage necessarily works that way. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for our spouse even when we don't believe their preference is objectively necessary or reasonable.

Perhaps I have the same supposed character flaw as your wife in that if my husband cultivated a friendship—male or female, platonic or not—that became such a priority in his life that he would consider divorcing me or ending his life over losing it, I would also object to that individual remaining in his life.

I think that's worth separating from whether losing the friendship would be painful. Of course it would be. But losing a relationship is one kind of loss; making your continued willingness to live contingent on retaining that relationship is something else entirely.

And what about the cost to your wife? She has already experienced having her marriage dishonored by this relationship. If, after everything that happened, she is again told that her needs and sense of safety ultimately cannot outweigh your desire to have this particular person back in your life, how does that feel different from being told that your wants and this relationship take precedence over hers?

I also find it interesting that you describe wanting to show your friend that you've done the work, healed your marriage, and regained your integrity. Your wife is the person you harmed. Shouldn't rebuilding your integrity place greater emphasis on repairing what you damaged with her, rather than demonstrating your growth to the person you hope to have back in your life?

I'm curious how this fits with your Catholic understanding of marriage. I'm not well versed in Catholicism so take this with the understanding of my ignorance to the nuances. You've emphasized that what happened wasn't technically adultery under your understanding of Catholic teaching, yet you're contemplating divorce if you cannot resume the friendship. How do those positions fit together with your understanding of marriage as a one-flesh union?

And then there's your friend's choice. She seems to recognize the precarious position the two of you have been placed in and was ultimately willing to step away and respect your marriage. If she decided that maintaining that distance is what is best, wouldn't it be healthier to cultivate yourself and your capacity for friendship without making your future happiness contingent on either her return or your wife's eventual agreement?

You also previously said that if she hadn't rejected your romantic feelings, you probably wouldn't have ended the relationship yourself. I wonder whether your current claims about your fidelity would look the same if she hadn't made that choice for you.

I assume your wife isn't forbidding you from making other friends. It may be difficult to build meaningful friendships, particularly after having experienced one that felt uniquely important to you, but it isn't impossible. Sometimes we create our own self-fulfilling prophecies.

Ultimately, I have no skin in the game. What you choose to do with your marriage and your friendship is yours to decide.

I do find it interesting, though, that you keep returning here to explain and examine your position while simultaneously maintaining that you don't really belong among "us."

I find myself doing the same. I don't necessarily agree with everything taught in these forums, but I do see wisdom in considering perspectives outside my own. Perhaps this thread has become an invitation for you to do the same.

[This message edited by NotMyIdentity at 8:56 PM, Monday, September 28th]

If you see my reasoning as flawed, please tell me how?

You say you're trying to give your wife's pain weight and cultivate empathy for her perspective, but you also say you don't find her position reasonable. How exactly do you give weight to an objection you've already decided is unreasonable?

I believe it was on the last page before this one that I presented two homebuying examples. Under some deadlines, rather than reproduce the argument, I will have to point you to that.

And I think this brings me back to what I see as the larger question underneath everything you've written: what does putting your wife first actually require of you when what she needs is directly opposed to what you want?

I believe marriage obliges each spouse to be willing to make some sacrifices. I believe the answer to your question is it applies in this specific case is highly unclear. I would advocate for a reframing of the question: your question frames my wife’s need for my friend’s exit as a need, but frames my need for my friend’s return as a want. That introduces a subtle bias that is unfair.

Going no contact is certainly a sacrifice. But is it the same sacrifice when you believe that, once you've done the work, you will eventually deserve the opportunity to resume contact? In that case, you're giving something up while still expecting that you may eventually get something in return.

I don’t think I understand what you were asking there.

Perhaps the more meaningful sacrifice is giving up something you desperately want while accepting that you may never get it back. Isn't that where you find out whether your wife really is the priority?

In an important sense, I have already done that. my friend is out of my life. I cannot text her… Call her… Play my video game with her… See her… I have made the sacrifice even though I know my friend was about to quit her job, after which she would need to look for a new job, and that might mean, changing her phone number, her mailing address, and even her email address. It is possible that, in one and 1/2 years, if I go to look for her, I will never again be able to find her.

My question would be: why should I be the only one to sacrifice? I know… I know… I was the one who had the disordered friendship, but what I’m saying is: (a) I’m also offering to commit to not restoring the friendship under its original, unsupervised terms; (2) I know I’m gonna take a lot of flack for this, but I continue to believe that my wife’s unwillingness to work on our marriage years before I ever met my friend means that my wife has a measure of guilt to carry also.

Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for our spouse even when we don't believe their preference is objectively necessary or reasonable.

I agree, but not all sacrifices are equally core. The other night, we went out to dinner. I gave my wife some of my steak because I could see she was eyeing it. I’m not suggesting that that’s remotely in the same league. My whole point is, in fact, the opposite: that was an easy sacrifice. Giving up permanently the only good friend I have had (besides my wife) in 30 years? That’d be a monumental sacrifice. Since everyone seems to think sacrifices of even that magnitude are obligatory, how about I propose a sacrifice my wife could make for me: she could let me have the friendship under the governance of safeguards and transparency.

…if my husband cultivated a friendship—male or female, platonic or not—that became such a priority in his life that he would consider divorcing me or ending his life over losing it, I would also object to that individual remaining in his life.

Then you would have a dead husband.

And what about the cost to your wife? She has already experienced having her marriage dishonored by this relationship. If, after everything that happened, she is again told that her needs and sense of safety ultimately cannot outweigh your desire to have this particular person back in your life, how does that feel different from being told that your wants and this relationship take precedence over hers?

It’s not "my wife’s marriage" that was harmed; it was our marriage and we who were harmed. Still, point taken: It was predominantly my fault.

We can go back and forth over your 2nd point 1000 times. For me, the bottom line is that I have offered a compromise. Not a demand of: I insist on full & unrestricted & private access to my friend. More than "willing," I am enthusiastic to meet my wife’s rational security needs over the friendship, given its history. Marriage is about compromise. We have competing claims: I want my friend and my wife wants security. Why must I accept my wife insisting on treating this impasse as a zero-sum-game? Why not: I get my friend under safeguards and my wife gets security?

I also find it interesting that you describe wanting to show your friend that you've done the work, healed your marriage, and regained your integrity. Your wife is the person you harmed. Shouldn't rebuilding your integrity place greater emphasis on repairing what you damaged with her, rather than demonstrating your growth to the person you hope to have back in your life?

Absolutely!

yet you're contemplating divorce if you cannot resume the friendship. How do those positions fit together with your understanding of marriage as a one-flesh union?

You’re correct on that criticism, but what I’m really contemplating isn’t divorce, but effecting my own death. Now… there’s a thorn there, too—Catholics aren’t supposed to undertake suicide. But there is… a "grey zone" on that one.

And then there's your friend's choice…. If she decided that maintaining that distance is what is best, wouldn't it be healthier to cultivate yourself and your capacity for friendship without making your future happiness contingent on either her return or your wife's eventual agreement?

Yes. It would help me out here greatly if human beings were fungible goods. It would be just grand if all I needed that I got from the friendship was a commodity. Let’s just pretend that what I really had was a sexual affair—because it makes the example so much simpler. That all I really "needed and got" out of the relationship was… idk… anal sex. Well… maybe my wife wouldn’t be all that keen on the idea, but maybe she’d "have a go" from time-to-time to keep me faithful. Throw me a boner, as it were. Well, gosh! That’d make this whole conundrum into a blessedly "easy fix," wouldn’t it? Only… what I, in fact, obtained from the relationship that was so vitally precious to me wasn’t ass. That’s not how I value people. To be honest, I would hate to be the sort of person who values relationships transactionally. I honestly feel offended when people treat my friend like a shopping list. I almost want to respond—rhetorically: Well, how about I kidnap your child? It’ll be ok; just tell me what you got out of your relationship with your child and I’ll just get you another child to replace the one I stole! My friend was, and is, an whole person!!!! What I want most isn’t really reducible to praise… or emotional support or being seen or any other set of qualities or goods. What I want is "my AP."

There’s another layer to my vehement objection to this sort of thought. The issue here is far more subtle and so arguably less egregious. I love my wife for the person that she used to be. Speaking of "asses," what an ass I would be if I tried to impose on my wife a responsibility of being like someone else. Imagine: Well, gosh, Honey! If you could maybe just dress more like my friend did... Or maybe: Would you be willing to laugh like "my AP," sometimes? You know, she had this kinda… sexy little laugh that... just made my pulse quicken!

No. Just... no. I would never do that to my wife. I never wanted to turn "my AP" into my wife, and my wife was perfect, just as she used to be. When I give my wife any asks to change, they won’t be to change into "my AP." My asks will be to become again in character who my wife used to be.

I must go. More later if I can find the time.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 12:20 AM, Tuesday, September 29th]

To be fair, I feel no need to debate you on your objections to my questions.

I think at this point, one of the kindest things you could do is be honest with your wife that restoring this friendship is a condition of your continued commitment to reconciliation.

That would give her the freedom to decide whether she wants to invest another eighteen months in the marriage or not.

Honestly, given how clearly you've articulated your position here, perhaps having her read what you've written would be more appropriate than a twenty-page letter. At least then she'd have the opportunity to make that decision with the full picture.

Believe it or not, I’ve previously considered that idea also. Because I have to heat up dinner anyhow, I can respond to your latest suggestion, very succinctly. The reason that I do not want to tell my wife about my plan yet is that there actually is a legitimate need—empirically supported (though I won’t say "proven")—for my wife to have "my AP" out of our lives in order for us to heal together as a married couple. The current arrangement gives us an ability to heal together that we would not have if my wife knew about my "countdown clock." I have received advice that, when my wife said things like: "You can have her back when I am dead, but no sooner" that she may have been speaking from a place of acute pain and rage, rather than from the soothing calm of a secure marriage. I’m hoping the landscape will look different to my wife in 18 months.

I have to react to this (2nd post down): https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/profile/blog/?UserID=86894 .

I don't want to react; I have to...

GotTheMorbs wrote (my bolding):

I think what is important to consider is the WS's relationship to the boundary of NC over time. Initially they may feel like their spouse is policing them, and they're only maintaining NC because their BS won't "let" them. Then it may become that maintaining NC can be difficult at times, but they know it's important because they don't want to hurt their BS any further. Then maybe it becomes, "I don't even want contact with AP because s/he isn't someone I want in my life, even if I'm perfectly capable of behaving appropriately around them," in which case NC doesn't even feel like a restriction anymore.

Just so it's "out there": if I ever talk like that bolded line of text...

...I beg of you--PLEASE SHOOT ME. For real.

I may literally vomit .

Sincerely,

Unconventional

[This message edited by Unconventional at 12:10 AM, Tuesday, September 29th]

Would you like me to respond or not? I've been trying very very hard to be respectful of the boundary you've stated here, but I feel like if you're going to cite me directly and don't want a response, that's for sure rage bait territory. So I figure I'd ask directly.

[This message edited by GotTheMorbs at 12:23 AM, Tuesday, September 29th]

Unconventional,

I think this is potentially dangerous territory. I find many betrayed spouses need their autonomy back, and I worry that withholding this information from her now in the hope that she will feel more secure later could backfire dramatically.

Who’s to say that her current position is purely emotional or that she’s incapable of making this decision for herself? Perhaps she could say the same about you—that your attachment to this friendship is influencing your judgment.

I’d encourage you to do some further reading about betrayed spouses, particularly around autonomy and agency during reconciliation. She deserves the opportunity to make an informed decision now, rather than having you decide that she might make a different decision later if given enough time to feel secure.

GotTheMorbs,

Respond or don't. It's your choice. I only asked you not to reply because I didn't want to raise your blood pressure & you seemed to be getting angry. I didn't understand the photo you posted, but that's ok. Photo aside, I thought your replies had been interesting, though. I discovered a place where your posts are compiled. I saw the 2nd one down was about NC. I've clearly been thinking about little else. I read your post. I don't judge your choice(s); I don't know your AP(s). But... the thought of the progression you described happening to me made me viscerally sick. I almost tried to contact "my AP" tonight after seeing your post--purely because I couldn't stomach the notion of the deep ache I feel for "my AP" even lessening--let alone morphing into some kind of twisted: the permanent forsaking of "my AP" was sad--but it was the right choice. Even worse: developing negative feelings toward "my AP."

I wasn't rage bating or whatever. At least not intentionally. I apologize for that happening anyhow.

I just... I got sick. So... I went to MS Copilot, paraphrased your post, and it was like: Oh--yeah, lots of WSs end up with that thought progression. So, congratulations, I guess--you're probably right on the mark in terms of what often happens. However, that has pushed me into something of a tailspin over how I can stop that from becoming my destiny. I am going to fight that progression tooth and nail with every last ounce of strength I can muster. Ultimately, you just gave me a little agita and put another item on my watch list. That's all.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 4:32 AM, Tuesday, September 29th]

I haven't been angry. I cuss a lot, as a side effect of my profession, so I hope it doesn't offend you too badly. I've been alternating between sad and frustrated and hopeful and disappointed... The meme I posted was originally captioned "When you're sitting beside a cute girl and holding in a fart." It's meant to be about exerting massive effort to restrain one's natural tendency, function, or inclination... Mine is to argue, over-explain, clarify, etc. until mutual understanding is produced. It was very hard for me to sit on my hands and watch this thread progress, and you can see that I eventually caved.

As I mentioned before, I don't think my AP was being a good person by enabling me to have an affair with him. He knew I was married with children. He confessed to taking some sort of sick pleasure in "stealing" me from my H. I suspected him of bullshitting me about several things. I had thought numerous times that I was going to break it off with him before my BH found out about the "relationship;" I just couldn't cut myself off from the validation and dopamine hits he gave me. I knew deep down that we were using each other, and how profoundly wrong it was. But I was lonely in my marriage, and I didn't like myself very much, and so AP's attention and desire was a shitty substitute for my husband's. I feel fortunate that all these factors were in my favor, and that it was relatively easy for me to go NC and to turn back to my marriage. I genuinely do not feel that it was "costly" for me to excise him from my life; rather, I felt that the cost of having him there in the first place was regretfully, ruinously, expensive. I had destroyed my marriage and devastated my husband for what? A month of intermittent compliments and thirst from some skinny, mediocre, 35 yo alcoholic with a big mouth and a southern accent? How I wish I could go back in time and violently shake the delusion out of myself...! But I digress.

I recognize that your OW was different. You have no qualms about her. She was good to you, and helped you. She did the honorable thing and backed away from your marriage, and from hurting your wife further. I can see why that would be a lot harder, and much more painful, to let go of... Like we said before, you don't have to go back and re-write history to make her mean and dull and ugly. You can keep the positive ways she changed you. You just can't keep her, at least not if you value your marriage. (I'm not even convinced she would have you back either way. I don't say that to rub salt in the wound; I'm just trying to be realistic here.) You have to accept that she's gone in order to grieve her properly, to make the pain stop eventually. And that may seem permanent and absolutely unbearable for you. But I assure you, it's not painful forever, and you are a lot more durable than you think.

I understand that she isn't "fungible." I understand how hard it can be to make friends as someone who has AuDHD. I too struggle a lot with making friends-- every attempt I've ever made to go out and intentionally seek new friendships has failed. I have only ever acquired friendship incidentally, when I wasn't looking for it, and I just so happened to "click" with someone else on my weird-ass frequency. Many of those friendship turned into sexual relationships, and a couple turned into infidelity within my marriage. It took me a long time to figure it out, but I wanted two things from them: to be liked, and to feel powerful.

You see, I had horrible self-esteem, a childhood marred by emotional abuse, abandonment, and constantly being rendered powerless, and an adolescence marked by romantic and sexual rejection. So when I finally figured out that seducing men is actually ridiculously easy, it made me feel like I was likable, desirable, in control... My self-esteem became externalized. And whenever I felt like a relationship was on the brink of ending, well, I'd go ahead and fix myself up with the next one. By making relationships transient and easily replaceable, I never had to feel sad or rejected with their termination. It was onto the next adventure! Onto the next round of seeing the best in someone new and enjoying learning about them and appreciating them as individuals. A wonderful distraction. So whenever I felt like my marriage was on the rocks, that I was at risk of losing this person to whom I was so deeply attached and reliant on to feel good about myself, that was when I was most at risk of cheating. And I did, multiple times. And somehow I still convinced myself that that wasn't me, that I wasn't "a cheater," that it was safe to walk right up to the line, because I would never cross it and hurt my husband like that...! Again, delusional.

I'm sharing this with you not because I think you have the exact same problems as I have, but rather an example of exactly how deep our "whys" can go, and the kind of internal Work we have to do to genuinely become safe, from the outside in. Being able to recognize the external conditions that increased your likelihood of cheating is good (provided you don't shift the blame onto the person you hurt.. which you are doing, btw.) Being able to verbalize what happened when the infidelity occurred-- what values you had, what alarms went off when you violated them, when exactly you crossed the line and what you were feeling in that moment-- that's good. Being able to set new boundaries that should keep you safe (as long as you maintain them!!!) is good... But like I said, you had boundaries before, and something inside you went wrong enough that you crossed them. What are you going to change about yourself, at your deep core, to make it so that no matter what's going on in your marriage, no matter who you meet, no matter what you could do and get away with or rationalize away or justify... Your choice still won't be infidelity ever again?

And look. You asked for flaws in your reasoning. Let's start with your murder house examples. The difference that I saw between the scenarios you illustrated was how badly you wanted the house-- what it meant to you. When it meant a lot, you made it so that your W's feelings were "irrational" and ranked them as less than yours. It didn't matter to you that she wouldn't have felt at ease in her own home-- the place one should feel most at ease-- because you put her comfort beneath your desires. That's selfish.

It's the same way with you wanting to resume contact with OW at the expense of your W's safety. You present it as if your want for OW specifically is on the same footing as your BW's need for safety, and ask why you should be the one who has to make the sacrifice. It's not on the same footing at all. You have a need for social interaction, sure, but that's not something that has to be (and definitely shouldn't be) satisfied by one particular person. You've created a false binary in your head, where your choices are "friendship with OW" or "crushing eternal loneliness." But I assure you, even with your neurodivergence, you can make other friends that don't threaten your marriage or trigger your wife. You may just have to expose yourself to a greater number, or a more specific type, of people, and eventually you'll feel that "click" with someone.

You hurt your wife. She didn't make you hurt her, no matter how lonely you felt in your marriage, because you had other choices. You chose badly, and now OW's presence in your lives would be intolerable for her. (As I have said to myself many times on my recovery journey: Behold, the consequences of your actions!)She didn't ask to have to choose between allowing a threat back into her marriage, a sullen, dysfunctional, suicidal husband pining for someone else, or divorce. You are making her choose, and you are twisting yourself into a pretzel rationalizing why, if she chooses "wrong" according to you, if she wants a marriage where she isn't constantly wondering whether her husband is sneaking around falling in love with someone else, if she wants better than that for herself... She has a "character defect."

You don't get to define what safety means to her. You don't get to define how she "should" feel or what boundaries she decides to maintain. You are not her superior, you are not her keeper, and your desires are not inherently more important.

GotTheMorbs,

Cuss all you want! It doesn't bother me. But... if your now-2nd-to-last textual reply in this chain was written with you in a cool state of mind.... you should know that your habit of cussing makes it that much harder to parse your emotional temperature from your prose. The written word offers scant clues to that effect under the best of conditions.

You just can't keep her, at least not if you value your marriage. (I'm not even convinced she would have you back either way. I don't say that to rub salt in the wound; I'm just trying to be realistic here.) You have to accept that she's gone in order to grieve her properly, to make the pain stop eventually. And that may seem permanent and absolutely unbearable for you. But I assure you, it's not painful forever, and you are a lot more durable than you think.

I hope your beliefs are wrong there. Being painfully honest, I'm also not certain my friend would take me back--even if my wife freely allows it. We really did mean sooooo much to each other. She even said so in her "Dear John" letter! But, after 2 years of NC with me and all we suffered through together over the last half of our relationship, she might decide the benefits of the relationship wouldn't be worth the drama! If my wife withholds her blessing to reform the relationship, the odds of a refusal from "my AP" rocket even higher. Objectively, the smart play by me would be: I should commit purely to my wife, mine for alternative friendships wherever I have a chance, & live a long & blissful life, gracefully freeing "my AP" to live her own life without me on her own continent. Did I mention that--despite my respect for philosophy and reason--I'm not actually Vulcan?

The pain of loss that you describe as transient? It hits me sometimes uninvited, but you should understand that I literally call-up the pain of "my AP's" absence every night as I drift off to sleep as a kind of twisted security blanket. Long after my wife has gone to sleep each night, I cry myself quietly to sleep thinking of "my AP" and hugging the pain like a pillow. It's been 5+ months. And I literally searched tonight for tips on how to hang onto that pain. No, I am not a masochist. I just simply still love my former friend. (I get it: that doesn't sound amiable; it is, though.) The pain of her absence isn't at all a "good" feeling, but it's the closest thing to tangible I have left toward her after having been made to delete my old Discord chats with her, etc.. In that sense, it's pathetically comforting to me to have at least the pain. So... supporting and comforting as I'm sure you meant to be by your assurance of the pain of loss tapering terminally, the notion of losing that pain is actually terror-inducing.

My plan is still to spend the next 19 months completely all-in on rebuilding my marriage. At the 2-year mark, I'll seek my wife's permission to try to resume a properly ordered friendship with "my AP" under strict safeguards and transparency. If my wife withholds her consent, I'll execute the contact anyway under unilateral transparency, relying on my wife's Catholic vows (and on the friendship safeguards and transparency I'd still uphold) to keep the marriage intact. However, if "my AP" rejects the overture (as I suspect she will do, absent a blessing from my wife), I'll respect that "no" immediately, cleanly, and for all time. Finally, if I clear neither gate and end-up entirely empty-handed, I'll try to get myself killed.

So when I finally figured out that seducing men is actually ridiculously easy...

I suspect you meant that observation as wry humor (we are, after all, absurdly simple), but I want to pause momentarily to recognize that I detect both authenticity and pain in that clause. I'm sorry you're still hurting.

Being able to recognize the external conditions that increased your likelihood of cheating is good (provided you don't shift the blame onto the person you hurt.. which you are doing, btw.)

I call balls and strikes as I see 'em. I own overwhelming culpability--just not 100% of the blame.

What are you going to change about yourself, at your deep core, to make it so that no matter what's going on in your marriage, no matter who you meet, no matter what you could do and get away with or rationalize away or justify... Your choice still won't be infidelity ever again?

Wisdom. I will learn the routes by which friendships become affairs.

Self-distrust. I will police my thoughts, words, actions, and feelings for signs of moral slippage.

Vigilance. I will not allow my friendships to go unmonitored in complacency.

Emotionality. I won't accept "no" as an answer when I try to share.

Romance. I will allocate time to build and keep romance with my wife.

Sex. I will press to attend to my wife regularly. I will keep myself ready in case beckoned.

Willingness to embrace an affair. I will seek an affair openly in the future if my marital concerns are not addressed. (As a technique to discourage marital complacency.)

It's the same way with you wanting to resume contact with OW at the expense of your W's safety. You present it as if your want for OW specifically is on the same footing as your BW's need for safety, and ask why you should be the one who has to make the sacrifice. It's not on the same footing at all. ...even with your neurodivergence, you can make other friends that don't threaten your marriage....

Thanks for your perspective. I disagree with every claim you've made in the above.

You hurt your wife. ...you had other choices. You chose badly, and now OW's presence in your lives would be intolerable for her.... if she [Unconventional's wife] wants a marriage where she isn't constantly wondering whether her husband is sneaking around falling in love with someone else... She has a "character defect."

Here's what I regret: (1) letting the friendship become disordered emotionally; (2) I could've and should've brought to my wife a final last-ditch appeal for system improvement before moving to elevate my friendship to spousal levels of emotional disclosure. That's it, though. Given the robust safeguards and transparency I will accept and honor... yes, in the instance you specify, my wife would reveal herself to have a "character defect."

You don't get to define what safety means to her. You don't get to define how she "should" feel or what boundaries she decides to maintain. You are not her superior, you are not her keeper, and your desires are not inherently more important.

On those points alone, we agree. But: (1) I do get to set what level of safety I am willing to pledge; and (2) neither are my wife's desires more important than mine. My perspective is that reason is the only proper way to adjudicate between conflicting priorities.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 10:35 AM, Tuesday, September 29th]

Unconventional,

I truly mean this with as much kindness and respect as I can, but your latest posts make it difficult to see how reason is prevailing in your own perspective. You're describing a willingness to end your life if you ultimately lose this relationship and your marriage. How is that consistent with the reason and objectivity you've repeatedly insisted should guide this situation?

Have you considered whether your intense longing to hold onto the meaning you associate with this relationship is also helping you cope with the possibility that you blew up your marriage for something that ultimately wasn't as important as you believed it was?

I don't mean that to diminish what the relationship meant to you at the time. But perhaps letting go of the friendship would force you to confront a much more painful possibility: that something that felt profoundly meaningful to you still wasn't worth the cost it ultimately imposed on your marriage.

I also hope you'll consider individual counseling to help sort through your thoughts and feelings, and perhaps rely a little less on Copilot. I don't think AI programs necessarily challenge us enough as individuals. They can sometimes reinforce our existing beliefs and help us rationalize decisions that deserve much more scrutiny.

Look... I'm not sad... I'm not depressed.... I have no self-harm intention. I just believe there are outcomes worse than death--loss of everyone dear to me being among the scenarios--probably chief among them, actually--that would warrant such handling. I will be doing all I can to avoid the worst outcome.

I was in actual professional counseling, yes. I didn't find it helpful. When I have something in my head that needs to come out, it needs to come out... like... yesterday. When I have seen a counselor in real life, she or he is available... you know... like every 2nd Tuesday of the month at noon. That's not helpful.

You know what's really helpful in a situation like that? A spouse, a friend, or maybe--rarely--a parent. (My mother is still alive.) The trouble for me these days is: I'm not going to bring my distress over my friend's absence to my wife or mother--and the only friend I would trust to help me with this heavy of a burden is the one whose absence from my life is primarily driving the craziness in my head!

So, I ain't really got an overabundance of options these days. That's literally why I have done so much processing with AI LLMs. But... you may rest assured that I am not following an AI LLM's lead on my final destination.

Have you considered whether your intense longing to hold onto the meaning you associate with this relationship is also helping you cope with the possibility that you blew up your marriage for something that ultimately wasn't as important as you believed it was?

I don't mean that to diminish what the relationship meant to you at the time. But perhaps letting go of the friendship would force you to confront a much more painful possibility: that something that felt profoundly meaningful to you still wasn't worth the cost it ultimately imposed on your marriage.

If it were either of those explanations, I would tell you so. Nope. My friend was the best thing for my marriage to have happened in a decade. Maybe longer. I'm sure that reads as odd, but before my friendship, my marriage was dying a slow anguished death. My wife showed apathy toward working with me on our issues. And... my marriage hasn't blown up. It's mildly, but noticeably stronger! Now, there's at least interest in making things better--and small, but concrete, progress.

If you haven't already inferred this about my marriage, I'm the husband--but the more expressive and outwardly emotional of the two of us. I show my pain. I like to talk through my stresses; to process externally. My wife stifles hers. She stews--a behavior that has made gaining insight and empathy into her perspective challenging. She is a woman of few words--and a nontrivial share of those are cuss words. She's misanthropic--and (ironically) bears considerable antipathy toward physicians. I'm way more gregarious online than in real life, where I'm socially awkward and innately shy--but I do honestly like being around them. A great day for my wife is sitting on a couch and either watching Southeastern Asian dramas or listening to true crime podcasts and nobody talking to her all day long. A great day for me is going somewhere fun with my family. Being around people. We're both cisgendered and heterosexual, but I'm the pediatric physician... and she's the internist.

Here's something I'm not supposed to say, but I'm going to say it anyhow: I love my wife and don't love that I hurt her through this disordered friendship. I friend-love my friend and don't love that I hurt her through this disordered friendship. But I would totally do it all over again. I'm a more realized / fulfilled human being for having known my friend. My friend lifted me from despair into hope.

My wife used to show love for my shameful parts (for instance, my verbosity and tangentiality and complexity and the fact I tear-up at movies, but she hadn't been willing to give me 5 minutes to tell whatever story I needed to tell for many years. She was always too busy; too exhausted; too impatient. My wife's messages "of love" to me supposedly were telling me to eat healthier. (From my vantage point, if the words she uses are words she would tell a patient, they're not words of love.) We had zero "love life;" sex lost its relational function and got restricted to its procreative purpose the moment we exchanged our wedding vows. We didn't share a bed; our kids took my spot on the Queen mattress beside my wife. My wife wouldn't touch me intimately... didn't really accept my intimate touches... wouldn't hug me... wouldn't kiss me. Prompted--practically begged, really---she probably told me with words that she loved me a handful of times in 10 years. She's forever claimed it's hard for her to say she loved me--yet she has been quite free in telling our kids that she loves them. We almost never went on dates. We lived in the same house, but I hardly saw her. She was always busy with our two kids. She was obsessed with her aging and her weight. I would tell her she was beautiful and she would shrug her shoulders and look annoyed; I can't tell you how emasculating it has been to have my wife not give a damn what I say or think about her appearance. She would criticize what I did and what I didn't do. I would shop for our family's groceries. When I finally got everything inside... there was never any positive acknowledgement. It was just: you forgot X. Or you bought the wrong kind of bacon. I thought of myself as her junior partner in the business of parenting. I was bossed around and treated with disrespect as incapable. Chronically exhausted by my own work as a physician, I felt unloved and increasingly unlovable. That was the environment that motivated me to see marriage counseling the first time. Counseling to which my wife showed great ambivalence.

Enter my friend.* For starters, my friend made me believe I wasn't unlovable after all. She gave me back a modicum of self-esteem. She heard me. She called my verbosity "clarity." She found my complexity guilelessness, forthcoming, and endearing. She found my tangentiality amusing.

When my wife recognized my friend and I had gone too far, that was a lousy day for all of us. And I know my wife still hurts. It can be hard to see the hurt because she tends to bottle up her hurt. But, of late, things are a little better in our home. My wife's occasionally been telling me, "I love you." Meekly. Uncomfortably. But audibly. She has a little more patience with me than she did. She's treating me with a little more grown-up respect. I'm trying to help more around the house and with the kids with chauffeuring them around. We've begun dating again--at least a little. We've discovered I need to go see a Urologist! And... maybe most significantly, my wife told me about something traumatic that happened to her as a child--something she told me she's never before felt comfortable telling anyone. (I'm more than a little hurt not to have been told about this at some point in the first 25 years of our relationship... but, I realize these things sometimes take their own sweet time to get disclosed and trying to be accommodating on that front. Actually, what disturbs me more is that one ramification of what my wife told me might be that we're not actually married Sacramentally after all--and what disturbs me most is that my wife still needs to process the wound that finally bubbled up--but she is refusing to see the therapist I spent half the night after my wife's disclosure to me finding for my wife.)

* = I wish I could tell you about her; she's such a remarkable human being! Maybe some other time.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 3:52 PM, Tuesday, September 29th]

You are free to do whatever you like, but there are consequences to our actions.

I agree friendships and hobbies and getting our needs met beyond what our spouse can provide is healthy. 100 percent. I think this is why my affair was so powerful to me, and I became insanely limerant.

But by having an affair with said friend, the natural consequences are either you lose your marriage or you lose your friend. No amount of bargaining will make this untrue.

Choosing that friend over your spouse will cause her increased pain until the day she decides she can no longer take it. Then divorce will be the consequence.

I think the issue is when you are in as much pain as you are in right now, it’s difficult to make it past the moment you are in much less think of that for the future.

So my recommendations this:

Work on yourself fervently. Expand your friendships and work on meeting your own needs. I know it’s hard to imagine but over time you will see you heal the void you imagine she fully fills. She fills it because you have neglected it and it makes her value seem disporportionqte. Been there, done that.

But by having an affair with said friend, the natural consequences are either you lose your marriage or you lose your friend. No amount of bargaining will make this untrue.

I appreciate you speaking your truth. I will continue to push back--firmly, but (I hope) gently--on the quoted claim. I am quite certain that what you've stated is true for some--perhaps many--marriages. Whole schools of marriage counseling have been built on the foundation you have advanced. However, it is important for the noob discovering this site to hear also that--while I cannot point to so much as a case report of a marriage that has threaded the needle and healed alongside and harmonious with a friendship between the WS and the AP--the premise I've quoted from hikingout is unproven rigorously. In spite of that uncomfortable truth, it has become quite challenging to find a professional marriage counselor who does not advance professionally precisely what hikingout has stated. That truth may be understood in 2 ways: (1) Because there is no reported instance of any WS successfully keeping both a BS in a healed marriage and an AP in a parallel friendship, it might be supposed that the model of: Pick both: BS as spouse and AP as friend -- really does fail universally; or (2) Because virtually all WSs are essentially strongarmed into the model of: "Pick one and only one -- BS or AP," hardly anyone tests the more accommodating model, which therefore remains largely untested in modern times.

I am dead-set on trying to keep both. It may succeed beautifully, fail spectacularly, or something in-between.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 4:55 PM, Tuesday, September 29th]

The minute you suggest this to your wife she will be extremely triggered, and it will erase any relationship healing. The reason this is basically comes down to this is trauma. Infidelity trauma is something people learn to manage but it’s always going to be there now. Reintroducing the relationship that caused the trauma is not only cruel, it’s untenable. No bs I have ever met on this site in the almost ten years I have been here would agree to this.

But I think you are focusing on the wrong part of my post. The reason you are in this state is you have ignored a lot of your needs, and having awakened to them, but filling them with just another person will create the wrong cycle for you. Because if you do not learn how to be fulfilled from many sources, the one source will always have more power. So work on yourself and this may really work itself out in time.

Not telling your wife is really just a way to prolong this fantasy you are having- and that is the best case scenario. At worst, and more than likely, it’s cruel and deceptive to let her think things are healing only to find out that you saved space for this other woman all along. There is no quelling that. Telling her you want to save the marriage and then not following through with the most basic request is setting her up for greater devastation. The only basis of a true reconciliation is full honesty at all times.

[This message edited by hikingout at 5:46 PM, Tuesday, September 29th]

Reintroducing the relationship that caused the trauma is not only cruel, it’s untenable. No bs I have ever met on this site in the almost ten years I have been here would agree to this.

No, hikingout, I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Reintroducing the relationship that caused the trauma is not only compassionate, it’s ethically mandatory. And guess what? There's a whole lotta bs on this website, but my wife ain't here.

"My AP" was no succubus, but a Heaven-sent angel. She never once messed up--I messed up. (I remind you: there was no sex or romance between my friend and me.) I may not be as wise as y'all here, but I know this much: when God sends you a gift, you don't eschew it. You don't benefit your soul by casting Heaven's mana into the trash in blind obedience to the golden calf of an overly broad "policy." I will embrace--not abandon--my dear friend.

I believe those of you who are trying to tell me what my wife can and cannot abide don't know my blessed wife. She... is extraordinary! Neither will I forsake my beloved wife--the other half of my soul and my Queen on Earth. I will shower her with soothing and healing love.

Character can be manifest in sacrifice--but also in discretion--who a person won't sacrifice to get ahead--and sometimes in laying oneself down for the sacrifice. Again: head and shoulders above anyone else, I am guilty of wounding my wife. If someone must be laid to rest over my insistence upon keeping both ladies--rightly ordered, relationally--in my life while I suck air... well, at least I'll go down knowing this was a hill worth dying for.

[This message edited by Unconventional at 8:47 PM, Tuesday, September 29th]

I'm going to try to go line by line here and detangle this.

I hope your beliefs are wrong there.

Why?

If my wife withholds her blessing to reform the relationship, the odds of a refusal from "my AP" rocket even higher. Objectively, the smart play by me would be: I should commit purely to my wife, mine for alternative friendships wherever I have a chance, & live a long & blissful life, gracefully freeing "my AP" to live her own life without me on her own continent.

Yes. Now say that again but a little more straightforwardly, with less dramatic flair (or possibly sarcasm?) Objectively the best thing you could do would be to commit yourself fully, heart and mind, back to your wife and marriage, get your need for social interaction met by people with whom you haven't historically fallen in love, and let OW go.

Maybe it would be of some comfort to you to turn back to your faith. You talk about the grief and anxiety you feel thinking about her moving through the world, not knowing whether she's okay or what she's going through, not knowing her joys or sorrows... But is she not also God's child? Do you doubt that our Heavenly Father has a Divine Plan for her? Lift that anxiety up to Him, so that it may burden you less, and see what He does with it... I do this quite often, and while sometimes I get unexpected answers, He always hears me and takes care of me. The Book of Psalms contains something like 65 psalms of lament, which I think my pastor calculated to be like 40% of the psalms, IIRC. God endorses lamentation!

The pain of loss that you describe as transient? It hits me sometimes uninvited, but you should understand that I literally call-up the pain of "my AP's" absence every night as I drift off to sleep as a kind of twisted security blanket. Long after my wife has gone to sleep each night, I cry myself quietly to sleep thinking of "my AP" and hugging the pain like a pillow. It's been 5+ months. And I literally searched tonight for tips on how to hang onto that pain. No, I am not a masochist. I just simply still love my former friend. (I get it: that doesn't sound amiable; it is, though.) The pain of her absence isn't at all a "good" feeling, but it's the closest thing to tangible I have left toward her after having been made to delete my old Discord chats with her, etc.. In that sense, it's pathetically comforting to me to have at least the pain. So... supporting and comforting as I'm sure you meant to be by your assurance of the pain of loss tapering terminally, the notion of losing that pain is actually terror-inducing.

Do you think you might be stuck in a mutually reinforcing cycle where having to go NC has caused you grief, pain, and loss... But if you hold on to the hope that you might someday get OW back, then you don't have to accept the loss... And then because you don't accept the loss, you decide to cling to the grief and the pain, so that you don't forget her... But of course that keeps you stuck with the feelings of grief, pain, and unprocessed loss, still...and you reason that the only thing that will stop the grief and the pain is getting OW back... So you cling to the hope... round and round you go.

The place you interrupt that cycle, if you agree it exists, is the refusal to accept and process the loss. Like I said, you don’t have to forget her or rewrite the story so that she's a villain. You can lie in bed at night and think, "The relationship with this person was wonderful. I miss her. It hurts that she's gone from my life... But, she isn't coming back, and that's for the best." That would be consciously deciding to move out of the denial and bargaining phases of grief and into acceptance.

My plan is still to spend the next 19 months completely all-in on rebuilding my marriage.

You say "completely all-in" but you very much are 99% out, making the marriage, your fidelity, and even the continuation of your life contingent upon whether you are "permitted" by your BW to resume contact with OW. You also reject the idea that your wife should be granted full knowledge on the conditions under which she is making decisions about and participating in the marriage. Imagine if somebody profoundly hurt you, and you spend two years healing, trying to forgive them, rebuilding trust and remaining in the relationship with them, only to find out that the entire time they were still planning on doing something hurtful again two years later? Would you not feel doubly betrayed, and disgusted by how they wasted two years of your life, because they couldn't just be decent and forthcoming? That's the furthest thing from "transparency." That's lying by omission and manipulation.

However, if "my AP" rejects the overture (as I suspect she will do, absent a blessing from my wife), I'll respect that "no" immediately, cleanly, and for all time.

It also strikes me as odd that you can so readily accept OW's agency if she declines to resume the friendship, but you don't grant the same acceptance of agency to your wife if she doesn't want OW in your lives.

I suspect you meant that observation as wry humor (we are, after all, absurdly simple), but I want to pause momentarily to recognize that I detect both authenticity and pain in that clause. I'm sorry you're still hurting.

Here's the thing. Being sexually and romantically rejected in adolescence made me somewhat of a "hoarder of men" and sexual partners as a young adult, and the multiple instances where I chose infidelity are probably the biggest regrets of all 30 years of my life. At the same time, without the infidelity recovery process, I don't think I would have ever been motivated to examine that mechanism and address what was broken inside me... And now, while I can look back and recall the pain and the desperation I felt back then, I don't actively feel it anymore. I'm the happiest and most whole I've ever been in my life right now. That's the unexpected beauty of this, at times, grueling, ugly, incredibly difficult, deeply introspective journey. Like a little diamond sparkling in a steaming pile of shit That's what I'm encouraging you to undertake.

I own overwhelming culpability--just not 100% of the blame.

You need to own ALL of it. You're a grown ass adult. Your choices were, and remain, your own. Nobody made you catch feelings for someone who wasn't your wife and then continue the relationship behind her back. Nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to do that. I don't care how bad your marriage was; you had other choices, and you didn't take them. It's nobody else's fault but your own, as hard as that is to accept.

2) I could've and should've brought to my wife a final last-ditch appeal for system improvement before moving to elevate my friendship to spousal levels of emotional disclosure.

That would still be INFIDELITY. You COULD HAVE just ENDED YOUR MARRIAGE. I wouldn't have been easy or comfortable or, I'm sure, looked upon favorably by your religious community, but that would have been the honorable thing to do if you couldn't tolerate the conditions and restrictions of your monogamous marital arrangement. You didn't do that, because you wanted to have your cake and eat it too. And that hurt your wife.

Wisdom. I will learn the routes by which friendships become affairs.

That's a start, but it's still not looking inside yourself for what made you go down those routes.

Self-distrust. I will police my thoughts, words, actions, and feelings for signs of moral slippage.

You noticed moral slippage last time, and it didn't stop you.

Vigilance. I will not allow my friendships to go unmonitored in complacency.

Same thing. Your monitoring system wasn't what failed you. It flagged the inappropriate closeness like it was supposed to. You rationalized it away.

Emotionality. I won't accept "no" as an answer when I try to share.

What does that mean?

Romance. I will allocate time to build and keep romance with my wife.

Sex. I will press to attend to my wife regularly. I will keep myself ready in case beckoned.

Those are external conditions, not internal ones. You don't have full control over the quality of your marriage because a marriage takes two people to build and maintain. You only control yourself, and you allowed yourself to make bad decisions. What will you change *inside you* to ensure your choice is different next time the marriage is in a bad place? When sex and romance are at a low point?

Willingness to embrace an affair. I will seek an affair openly in the future if my marital concerns are not addressed. (As a technique to discourage marital complacency.)

As long as infidelity remains a morally acceptable option for you, whether you openly punish your wife with it or do it in secret, as long as you are WILLING to do it again, you. are. not. a. safe. partner.

You must drop these "logical" defenses and do the internal Work.

I second the idea of showing your wife this thread and allow her to make her own decision about your likelihood of becoming safe enough to remain married to you.