SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

The essential paradox of reconciliation is that the person with whom you need to work to obtain healing, is the person who hurt you.

I have a fantasy of leaving my current relationship, and starting a new romantic and sexual relationship from scratch. We wouldn't be two perfect people, but the hurts we'd suffered, and the hurts we may have inflicted on others, would not involve each other.

Trying to heal a relationship from within is the very archetype of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.

Exactly right. And an unspoken assumption in a romantic relationship is that there is some equality and balance. Infidelity destroys that assumption. One partner intentionally chose to poison the roots of the relationship in pursuit of their own selfish pleasure, causing intense, enduring pain and harm in the other innocent lover. This is the reality that must be faced and overcome to R. Anything less is rugsweeping and a one way ticket to infidelity purgatory. And even facing it may not be enough.
A friend of mine recently summed it up perfectly.

Infidelity sucks ass.

So true Eric, what you fantasize about is the clean cut severance that leads to the place where you can begin a new relationship unencumbered by the pain of the betrayal.A simple but not easy solution to a very complex problem, that I too day dreamed about soon after my wife's confession, but I made the eyes wide open decision to stay because of the very long shared history Ay there,s the rub)and the changes I saw in my wife's attitude and behaviours. When she initiated a series of things I needed to begin to heal with little guidance from.me, I knew I wasn't going to end it all just because of my hurt feelings. And what she did in her several instances of infidelity was off the charts in disrespect and complete contempt for me. But I sure understand how the hurt and frustration can generate escapism thoughts.

The essential paradox of reconciliation is that the person with whom you need to work to obtain healing, is the person who hurt you.

Not much logic in it. Or much logic in relationships in general and really no logic at all when the word ‘love’ gets thrown around.

As for pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps, I think that has to happen regardless of the path chosen to move forward.

And the kicker is on starting a new relationship, there are zero guarantees of a pain free, happy landing. My brother has started over twice and he is unable to find a happy ending, and yet, he remains an optimistic, whole human still investing in his new relationship.

Or a worse fate in my mind, some folks remain with an unhealed WS who continues to be unsafe.

But, back to picking one self up, that really had to happen for me before I could decide what I wanted.

Finding our self worth, finding our value is a critical first step.

All that said, offering grace to the person who burned the M to the ground, as noted above, is not easy.

My R really became about the actions my wife took to show why we should make another run at it.

Until the last few days, I had leaned into the marriage 2.0 concept regarding my R, but some recent posts here have changed my perspective.

While our day-today operations have changed immensely, and how we treat each other has evolved a great deal, I’m in the same marriage. There really is a bridge for me that goes from the innocent beginnings, to our early struggles to the infidelity itself (and the years it was kept a secret) to dday and a pair of healed people happy to have made it this far.

I really did want to see if offering a final chance would change things. It was as much about curiosity as love in the early days after dday.

I couldn’t have imagined we could overcome it all.

I am happily surprised, and proud of how hard we worked to conquer all the damage done.