SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Yesterday was the first anniversary of DDay. I spent today in reflection about the past year, and I wanted some space outside of my marriage to share my thoughts. Reconciliation is going well, which is not to say it is always easy. My WS is transformed, one year later, and still committed to doing the work ahead. Our relationship, and even our sex life, is better than it has been in years.

Here are the things that helped:

1) Recovery before reconciliation. I am so grateful to the people on this forum and the resources here. In the days after DDay, I laid out that line. No talk of reconciliation until we BOTH recovered. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

2) The concept of limerance. My spouse, after 20 years of marriage, used his affair to numb the pain of depression. Learning about limerance, its stages, gave us a vocabulary to talk about how the woman he felt was his soul-mate was really a wound-mate. It has helped me differentiate between the mature love of a long term relationship and the addictive state of his affair. It has helped him come to terms with what he was seeking and why his feelings were a fantasy.

3)writing, not speaking. Starting with the day after the affair, I turned to letters, not conversations. I would take the time to compose what I needed to say. I would leave the letters for him in his home office (where he slept before we chose reconciliation). I would text him to schedule a time to walk and talk. We still had one child living at home, so we had a strict rule for the safe spaces for talking about the affair. Letters gave me time to work through and revise the raw pain into something he was more able to hear, and it gave him time to process and prepare for discussion.

4) radical acceptance. Once we chose reconciliation—about 5 months in—we agreed to accept each other as we are, broken and damaged, and support each other’s healing.

5) patience. It’s such a long road. For both of us, but in different ways. He lost himself and has to incorporate his actions into his self-concept. We both now realize we had deep wounds we brought with us into the marriage that have to be healed. He wants to forget, but I can’t forget. It’s a journey, but one year out, we are (mostly) walking it together.

We both work every day to show each other we chose our marriage.

Are we done? No.

Am I healed? Nope.

Am I glad I stayed? Yes. Amazingly, I don’t really doubt that choice any more.

I forgot one more essential lesson:

6). Give up on fairness. It will never be fair. That was a hard one for me, but moving forward meant letting go of a scale in which he would ‘make it up to me.’ He can’t. He was broken, and so he broke our vows. There’s no ‘making it up.’ There is forgiveness (me) and regret and growth (him).

"Give up on fairness"

I think that's a great turn of phrase to describe what I have called "losing something integrity adjacent".

"Give up on fairness"

I think that's a great turn of phrase to describe what I have called "losing something integrity adjacent".

I can understand how you might interpret it this way, but for the record, that's not really what I meant.

We often think of staying and reconciling as a sign of weakness, but after spending the day rereading all my letters and texts to WS, I am very confident that I have not sacrificed my integrity in staying. I am proud of the level of resilience and strength I have found in myself. It is my WS who lost integrity and who has to rebuild it. There is a big imbalance there.

In choosing to reconcile and give him a chance to try to reclaim the parts of himself he lost or destroyed by his own self-destructive, I am choosing a path of forgiveness because it is what is most healing for me and for us. I am responding to his betrayal with compassion, and that makes the imbalance even greater. What could he do to 'balance that' out?

Nothing. So I let that idea go.

My healing is in my own hands, and his is in his.

It's not about fairness. It's about healing. In a very real way, the last year's work revealed to us both that he was far more broken by this affair than I was. I was betrayed, but he betrayed himself in a profound way that he has to process. It's not about fairness. It's about taking up the work of wading through that shame and regret to be a better man and find peace with himself.

In saying this, I recognize that every BS and WS have their own truth. This is mine. A man I loved for almost 30 years got lost in his own pain and broke himself and nearly broke our family. He did not break me. He's finding his way back to himself, but reclaiming integrity takes time. I am strong enough to give him that time. If he fails again, that failure is his, not mine. My healing is my own, and if we fail, I will take that new strength with me.

I don't know if that makes sense to others, but once I found my way to this framework, it was possible to start laying down a lot of the pain I was carrying.

I've been lazy on my posting recently. I think you'll find I agree with you.

I've used this term to discuss the mindset change to seeing flexibility and resilience in R as a strength rather than a failure of ethics by staying. Now if you already believe cheating isn't something you ought to end your relationship over, that's a different story. But most people have to recalibrate themselves to choose R and it isn't a minor change in mindset.

[This message edited by This0is0Fine at 4:39 PM, Sunday, February 4th]

Thank you for sharing, what a great way to look at it all.
We are not at the reconciliation stage yet but I love your mindset on the matter and your post gives me hope. I’m happy so happy you are where you are, such hard work. . Surviving the first couple of months is pure hell, choosing to lay the pain down is where I hope to get eventually , it’s so heavy.

Great points. 'No fairness' is worth its own post.

You've used the year very well. Time in itself heals at least some wounds, but figuring out what you need to do accelerates the healing process and makes it more complete, IMO.

I recently started watching Michelle Mays on YouTube. She does a talk about shame and I think it aligns with your thoughts about fairness. Thank you for posting.

I was deeply moved by your post. Thank you for your hopeful words. I am 14 months out from DD and was hoping to be where you seem to be now, but am not.

A man I loved for almost 30 years got lost in his own pain and broke himself and nearly broke our family. He did not break me.

This line actually made me cry Because I so deeply feel that he did break me. I was in no way equipped to handle a betrayal like this in a good way (whatever that means). I was so severely traumatised from before, and my marriage was like my only bastion of safety. My husband was the only person I trusted to not hurt me as I have been hurt by everyone else close to me in my life (bar my kids). And then he hurt me more than anyone has ever hurt me before. And I broke. Completely. I wish so deeply to be able to rebuild myself and to stop feeling so broken. Having read your post I feel hope that that is possible also for me, whether we R or D.

radical acceptance. Once we chose reconciliation—about 5 months in—we agreed to accept each other as we are, broken and damaged, and support each other’s healing.

Would you be willing to explain this further, I found this spoke to me very much. How did you go about doing that?

Hey RecklessForgiver --

I don't know if that makes sense to others, but once I found my way to this framework, it was possible to start laying down a lot of the pain I was carrying.

It makes perfect sense -- this was my path back, both for healing myself and then helping my wife to rebuild the M.

We often think of staying and reconciling as a sign of weakness, but after spending the day rereading all my letters and texts to WS, I am very confident that I have not sacrificed my integrity in staying.

Nothing weak about it.

I think whether people R or D, we need a great deal of strength to heal properly.

And we agree exactly about personal integrity.

I held up my end of the deal, I kept my vows, I know I can look at myself in the mirror and KNOW I did my best, regardless of the outcome.

As to This0is0Fine's point:

But most people have to recalibrate themselves to choose R and it isn't a minor change in mindset.

That's also a big part of moving forward. Honestly, I never knew R was an option before finding this forum. Someone cheats, you move on, period, end of story.

Which gets me back to recognizing another of your points RF:

In choosing to reconcile and give him a chance to try to reclaim the parts of himself he lost or destroyed by his own self-destructive, I am choosing a path of forgiveness because it is what is most healing for me and for us. I am responding to his betrayal with compassion, and that makes the imbalance even greater.

This is the part so few of us ever find.

Infidelity is as unfair as it gets, even if we have little or nothing to do with the broken bits of our spouses. Forgiving what is understandably 'unforgivable' for so many people is a very powerful thing.

Some WS can sense that 'true' forgiveness and in turn, be grateful for the opportunity to rebuild themselves and the relationship. At least that's the short version of what happened with my R.

That said, I guess I may not understand the extra word "radical" to the word acceptance. Maybe I'm an old school linguist or an old fashioned romantic, but acceptance IS acceptance, you either do or you don't accept your partner as they are. I find most healthy relationships are built on acceptance.

Acceptance doesn't mean infidelity is okay by me, it means I understand what my wife did and yet, I still found a way back to love her.

I will always hate the A. No reason for me to be happy about the destruction it caused. I find I can also be proud of the adversity we have overcome at the same time.

6). Give up on fairness. It will never be fair. That was a hard one for me, but moving forward meant letting go of a scale in which he would ‘make it up to me.’ He can’t. He was broken, and so he broke our vows. There’s no ‘making it up.’ There is forgiveness (me) and regret and growth (him).

RecklessForgiver. What a beautiful post.

My H's A was short lived and a long time ago. DD 42 yrs later. Hurts like it was yesterday. His decades late confession opened the doors of communication in our M. I had always felt that there was something broken in him, but could never figure it out. Our M is finally starting to feel authentic. He swam in guilt and shame and it manifested itself into anger, avoidance and a need for control. I enabled. We both have work to do. It doesn't excuse him. Not sure which came first the chicken or the egg, but it helps me to understand us better. We can't rewrite history, but we can choose how we want to go forward.

The foundation is cracked, but we are working to build our home back stronger than ever.

Best of luck and very happy for you!

In choosing to reconcile and give him a chance to try to reclaim the parts of himself he lost or destroyed by his own self-destructive, I am choosing a path of forgiveness because it is what is most healing for me and for us. I am responding to his betrayal with compassion, and that makes the imbalance even greater.

Love this!