These are the links to the posts in 2 previous forum sections so that they have context of the current publication:
https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums/?tid=666885&HL=87276
https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums/?tid=666883&HL=87276
Several months ago I posted in this forum, probably during the worst emotional crisis of my entire life. Today I went back and reread that message, and honestly, I feel it was written by a very different person from who I am now.
At that time I had just confessed an affair to my wife, with whom I'd been in a relationship for almost 12 years and married for almost 3. I was completely overwhelmed by guilt, fear, anxiety, and a very intense obsession with the woman I'd been unfaithful with. What occupied my mind the most was the idea of seeking her out again "one last time," convinced that maybe it would give me some kind of closure or resolve the conflict I felt inside.
I received many responses. Some were very harsh, and being completely honest, at the time they upset me. I felt judged and misunderstood. However, as the months passed, I reread that same thread and realized something I'd been incapable of seeing before: many of those people weren't trying to attack me, they were trying to keep me from making, in the middle of a crisis, a decision that probably would have made my life even worse. And many were even empathetic and reasonable about a lot of what I was expressing, thinking, and feeling in that moment of acute crisis.
That's why I wanted to come back and write this update. Not because I now have all the answers, nor because I can say everything ended well, but because I feel I've walked a very long and complicated road on many personal levels since that moment, and maybe my experience can be of use to someone who is going through something similar today.
The most important lesson I've learned is that you should not make major decisions while you're in the middle of an emotional crisis.
Back then I wanted to resolve everything immediately. I wanted to know whether I should stay in my marriage, separate, seek out the other person again, or try to forget everything all at once. I needed an immediate answer because I couldn't tolerate the uncertainty.
Today I understand that my mind wasn't working clearly. It was mixing guilt, anxiety, desire, fear, emotional withdrawal, fantasies, loss, shame, and an enormous need to find relief. From that state it was practically impossible to make good decisions. And there's something I want to say clearly, because I hope someone reads it in time: that question I asked this forum, whether I should see her "one last time," was not a trustworthy question. Not because I was a bad person, but because it came from a mind completely flooded by the crisis, dominated by the impulse and by the state I was in. A mind like that isn't looking for clarity, it's looking for immediate relief, and those are very different things. It wasn't my real voice; it was the voice of the crisis.
With all of this, I decided to take professional help very seriously. Over these months I've continued in psychological therapy, and a couple of weeks ago I also received psychiatric support to treat and manage an anxiety disorder that was diagnosed for the first time in my life, which was finally identified and treated with proper guidance, and I still have follow-up clinical appointments pending. It's something that has helped me a lot, and this clinical and therapeutic support is something I'm continuing and intend to maintain over time.
Over time I came to understand that the affair wasn't really the underlying problem. It was the symptom and the trigger of many things I'd gone years without recognizing in myself.
I discovered important patterns: a strong need for external validation, a constant tendency toward self-punishment and demanding too much of myself, difficulty tolerating uncertainty, the habit of overanalyzing absolutely everything, obsessive thoughts, constant rumination, and the use of fantasy and certain compulsive sexual behaviors to regulate difficult emotions.
I also understood something I used to constantly confuse: emotional intensity is not the same as compatibility.
For a long time I idealized the person I'd been unfaithful with. My mind filled enormous voids with assumptions about what that relationship "could have been," when in reality I barely knew her. Much of that story existed more in my imagination than in reality. Today I see it with total clarity: that impulse was never really about her, but about what she represented, the validation, the novelty, feeling desired, the adrenaline, the fantasy. The possibility of escaping, even for a moment, from problems I'd gone years without facing. My brain confused all of that with a need to see her again. It was a symptom of my wounds, not a real desire for that person. Because of my work and the area where I live, I saw her a couple of times from a distance, and even two months after confessing the affair we ran into each other at a shared location, and she wrote to me again trying to return to some new contact or encounter with me, based on the nostalgia and the experience we had shared. I did not respond to that invitation, and that day I blocked her completely and never contacted her again. And my behavior, sustained over months, has shown me who I really am far more than those intrusive thoughts ever did.
Regarding my marriage, we decided not to make hasty decisions.
We're still working on the relationship. We've had very difficult conversations on several occasions, moments of great pain, setbacks, and also important progress. Our communication has improved considerably. Intimacy has changed in several ways, and for the first time we're honestly talking about needs that stayed hidden for years. And, as with everything else in this process, there are good days and bad days; a scale of grays.
At the same time, I've also learned to be honest with myself. There are important open questions about our long-term compatibility that I'm still exploring alongside my therapeutic process. I no longer try to force myself to find an immediate answer just to reduce my anxiety. And I try to hold onto that honesty while also taking care of my partner, because on the other side there's a person who is also suffering, who is also making an effort, and who deserves consideration while I go through this process, and for whom, regardless of what happened with the affair, I have deep affection and profound feelings because of everything we've lived through together.
Another very important change is that I stopped focusing all my energy on "saving the marriage" and began working on becoming a better person, regardless of the final outcome of the relationship.
I've built much healthier habits. I took up exercise and the gym with a discipline and consistency I had never had before in my life, I improved my nutrition, I returned to activities I'd abandoned, like playing guitar and reading, and I quit alcohol and cannabis completely, which I used to numb myself, sustaining that even in social situations with a lot of pressure. I've also kept working on a long history of compulsive pornography use, understanding the role it played in my constant search for novelty and in regulating my emotions.
But if I had to name the most important work of all, it would be this: self-compassion and self-love, learning to treat myself with compassion instead of punishing myself, and learning to be my own companion instead of abandoning myself. For years I abandoned myself. For years I thought that improving meant demanding more of myself, criticizing myself more, and punishing myself more; I discovered that this is precisely part of and at the root of the problem. I've learned to treat myself with more humanity, to recognize my emotions before trying to solve them, to return to my body and to the present moment when my mind starts to get lost in thought and rumination which, though it still exists, weighs much less over time, and I identify it sooner, and it no longer drives my decisions, and to accept that I don't need all the answers today. For the first time in a long time I've learned to take care of myself. Today, my central goal is to not abandon myself again, neither in the good moments nor in the bad ones, and it's something I actively work on every day.
Does this mean everything is resolved? No.
There are still difficult days. Intrusive thoughts still appear. There's still uncertainty. I'm still working in therapy. Recovery hasn't been a straight line, and it never will be.
But the difference compared to that man who wrote here months ago is enormous. Back then I was looking for someone to tell me that contacting the other person again "one last time" was a good idea. Today that question has completely lost its meaning. Not because the attraction disappeared overnight, but because I finally understood that no additional encounter would have resolved the real conflict that existed within me. It would only have prolonged the problem and caused even more damage.
If someone happens to read this post while in a situation similar to mine, I'd like to tell them something I wish I had understood earlier.
Don't fully trust every thought that appears during the first weeks or months after an affair comes to light. Your mind is going through a state very much like a crisis. There are too many emotions mixed together at the same time to think clearly.
Seek professional help. Lean on your loved ones as long as they allow it, without burdening them with your burdens. Give yourself time. Don't try to resolve your entire life in a few days or weeks. Devote more energy to understanding yourself than to trying to understand only the affair. Regardless of whether your relationship survives or ends, that personal work is completely worth it, and it's what will endure in any situation for the rest of your life.
Finally, I want to thank those who responded to my original post. At the time I wasn't ready to hear many of the things they told me. Today I can recognize that several of those responses held far more clarity than I was capable of having in the middle of the crisis, and in the most honest and sincere way possible, I thank them from the bottom of my heart and soul.
I hope this message can give a bit of hope to someone who today feels trapped in the same place where I was.
I can't promise the pain disappears quickly. I can't promise that every relationship is saved. What I can say is that, if you're willing to seek help, face your own problems with honesty, and tolerate uncertainty for long enough, it's possible to recover clarity, grow as a person, and make far more conscious decisions than the ones you would have made in the middle of desperation.
Even if it seems impossible right now, things can get better. You need time, you need help, but above all you need the courage to face yourself with honesty and to commit to steady work on your mind, your emotions, your behaviors, and your decisions. It doesn't happen overnight, but over time you start to realize that you no longer react the same way, you no longer think the same way, and, little by little, you also start to live in a different way. That, so far, has been the greatest lesson of this whole process. And I'm still walking it, one day at a time.
That, so far, has been the greatest lesson of this whole process, and I'm still walking and moving forward through it with time and patience.
I'll be attentive and grateful to read any responses this post may generate. Thank you very much to everyone who takes the time to read me.
M.P.
