SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I feel like I am supposed to be a success story. My FWW blindsided me with this on our anniversary in 1989. I had been deployed while in the service, and she was having an affair with her boss at the time. We were only 22.

Years went by after that - which I chose to suppress at first - and then we moved back to that same neck of the woods, about 20 years ago, and I can't shake it away anymore. Every year around December I can't manage life. It is less so at other times of the year but never gone. We have so much, including more kids otherwise. I can't talk about it or she threatens divorce. I've gone to therapists, and she gets angered and says I am NOT the "victim".

When it happened, she confessed it was her idea, and that she wanted it. Now (in the rare case it comes up argumentatively) she says it wasn't and she was part of "me too". I asked this explicitly when it happened, and it weighs heavily on me). She wanted it and I still wanted to pretend it never happened - what a loser.

I go through this over and over. I'm not even sure why I am writing this. I am a bit drunk right now. Maybe I am just reaching out for support, IDK. I feel like a first-prize chump: my wife says she has been cheating, that she wanted to, but wanted to come back (because she had nowhere else to go), and I just folded and say yes. Later, as I try to actually process, the story changes, and I am not a victim, I can't seek treatment, and this really is in the past.

Now it seems like she hates me for it. Like I am responsible. The whole historical thing keeps being mitigated, and I feel like the same chump year after year. I think at this point it is all fiction. I get more and more deeply depressed.

I hate Christmastime. I hate my anniversary. I hate myself. I hate a lot of things now.

Sorry to vent in an otherwise happy time. Thanks for reading.

I also triggered when moving back to the place it occured, also many years later. My concern for you is that she threatens divorce and is threatened by your seeking therapy? What is behind all of that? Do you think she is personally afraid to take accountability now even though she seemed to all those years ago? Perhaps her own issues were never dealt with and are thus too painful to stir up?

Either way, you need what you need to heal. It is incredibly selfish and cruel to threaten divorce like she has. Have you pointed this out to her? Have you told her your memory of events is very different than the one she presents today? Or are you avoiding this conversation?

I would not want to stick with someone who threatened divorce for such an issue. That would be a dealbreaker. I would explain it calmly to her, how you see it and what you need. If she is still threatening I would tell her then ok, if you can't be supportive, let's look at divorce optoons if that's what you prefer.

Whenever I bring up the differences in memory or events, I am asked to get an MRI (seriously). Like this shit isn't burned into my memory at this point.

The rare times I insist we talk, she gets stress medicine out. this leads me to believe there is way more to the story, which I am not sure I am prepared to bare. Honestly, I would just like to be understood, and my feelings should be considered even now. Instead, I get the "you're not the victim" speech. If I suggest I might need anti-depressants, this leads to a "trust" discussion.

It would be nice for her to just say "I understand this is hard. What can do?" But instead, I get "If you are not over this by now, we should get divorced." Doesn't sound like someone who thinks of themself as a victim to me. I also hear that she is so sorry that she told me rather than sorry she did it in the first place.

I feel like such an idiot that I still feel hurt after all these years. But these little subtleties always seem to jab me in the face. Any attempt by me to find relief in meds like anti-depressants, sleeping pills, or anything start serious arguments. The few times things get distanced to the point where we have sex, I am hurried through it to the point that I am literally given a time limit. How relaxing.

I think when she did the affair it was partially to punish me for being gone (this happened within about 6 weeks of being gone ), and now she hates me for it. I feel like our life now is so bipolar I just can't keep up. I assume she relives the holidays the same as me because she treats me like shit. Throughout the years, she has occasionally even accused me of having an affair with work colleagues which was completely baseless (always around Christmas). I doubt anyone that's been through this would ever do that. She's actually the only person I've had sex with in my life, so that really hurts when she is on that page.

I, too, am an anniversary victim. I struggle every October. Mine has been since 2020. The morning of my anniversary, I woke up to him on his phone. Thinking he was looking for gift ideas, I thought it was so nice he was up early. When I pieced together through seeing text messages later on his phone, my WH had been sexting and they were so giddy at getting each other to undress and send pictures. When I kissed him goodbye to go to work and said [Happy Anniversary] his reply was [Oh yeah, Happy Anniversary!] Then back to his phone…I was so naive not to ask why he was on his phone so early. Three days later, he paid his girlfriend $ to not publish their sexting of 6 months. He wanted to rugsweep. When I attempted to talk, he said so many lies and wanted to excuse himself as having done nothing wrong because he didn’t touch her or even talk to her to hear her voice. We are at reconciliation because being married is a habit when you have been married for 38 years. But, since that day, he had more attempts at making friends, as he says, until I asked for a divorce. He is 6 months clean. This has left me having a love/hate relationship with a man who was in a great marriage with me until he found WWF, the scrabble game turned dating site. A pretty good day for me means I only thought about his 2 1/2 years of drawn out online affairs for 20 minutes of the day. Otherwise, it occupies my thoughts because there are triggers every time I see someone with a knowing look and smile as they stare at their phone. I still think of the way I found out about his actions through his phone and what a coward he was at blaming his secretary for things that didn’t make sense. We have been seeing a MC since July 2022 and it helps a couple of weeks after we see her. Then I’m back to the love/hate phase. My guess is that a betrayed spouse who is at reconciliation will recall memories daily for the rest of our lives and we are the only ones who can control the degree of happiness we bestow on ourselves. I guess I don’t have a question but rather wanting to reply to someone also hurt on his anniversary date.

The love/hate bipolar nature really screws with me. Sometimes, many times there are days that are fine, fun, or at least normal. But other times she is borderline mean for no reason, and it sends me into a spiral that can last days. Or some trigger will do the same. Hard to have control, and I can't work or focus in a spiral. I use to dive into work so deep I would eventually normalize, but that is harder and harder to pull off.

I've considered divorce, but there are so many parts of my life wound up in this, including 6 kids. Then, when I am not deep in triggerland, and in the now, things are not so bad, good even. Just never know when things will crash again. Guaranteed December will see high anxiety though.

The first occurrence (with a different partner or partners, honestly I struggle now since I don't have so many facts) was while we were engaged. I wasn't strong enough then to just call it quits. I often wonder what my life would be like if I had walked away... Today if that happened, it would be over instantly. 38 years for me too. It would very be hard, but I'd take it and move on. That's where I am now.

The love/hate bipolar nature really screws with me. Sometimes, many times there are days that are fine, fun, or at least normal. But other times she is borderline mean for no reason, and it sends me into a spiral that can last days. Or some trigger will do the same. Hard to have control, and I can't work or focus in a spiral. I use to dive into work so deep I would eventually normalize, but that is harder and harder to pull off.

I've considered divorce, but there are so many parts of my life wound up in this, including 6 kids. Then, when I am not deep in triggerland, and in the now, things are not so bad, good even. Just never know when things will crash again. Guaranteed December will see high anxiety though.

The first occurrence (with a different partner or partners, honestly I struggle now since I don't have so many facts) was while we were engaged. I wasn't strong enough then to just call it quits. I often wonder what my life would be like if I had walked away... Today if that happened, it would be over instantly. 38 years for me too. It would very be hard, but I'd take it and move on. That's where I am now.

titanfour

You are where you are by your own choice

One observation - your wife has little or no respect for you. Chew on that for awhile -

I'm very sorry you're experiencing this. I'm glad that you're doing something about it, and I think you'll benefit from doing more for yourself.

Like you, I don't understand why you folded so long ago, but you can't change what you did then. You can change your future.

You know, I think, that your way out is to unfold yourself and not fold again. Your way out is to try out the paths that look good to you - therapy, asking the questions you have, deciding what you'll do if your W does not comply with your desire to get answer and imposing those consequences if she won;t talk.

IMO, you ARE a victim of both her A(ffairs) and of her demand that you sweep them under the rug. You'll need to risk your M to save it. You've tried to suppress some needs for over 20 years, and it's not working. It's time to do something different.

You really can heal yourself. If you do, you'll be a lot happier than you are now.

It's over when you take action to end your unhappiness.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:13 PM, Sunday, December 25th]

You should be your #1 priority. Not her. Not your marriage.

I am glad you have some days of normalcy and happiness. She’s just expecting you to sweep this under the rug. Whether due to her Shame or embarrassment— it doesn’t matter.

She cannot or will not provide you with the answers or support you need. Once you accept that, your satisfaction with your marriage may improve. Or your healing will begging b/c you will stop trying to get answers from her.

You deserve answers and honest conversations and transparency. She just is not able to provide it.

What you do from there is your call.

My theory is that it’s not the affair that kills the marriage. It’s the behavior by the cheater after the affair that often is the reason for the D.

[This message edited by The1stWife at 11:06 PM, Sunday, December 25th]

We tell all new members 2 things. Don't rugsweep. You can't heal if you rugsweep. And you can not reconcile with an unremorseful WS.

And here you are. You rugswept, and your ws has zero remorse.

She also.has no respect,or empathy for you. And not much love,if any.

This will never be better for you. Never. She's not worried about divorce, because she's used that threat many times,and you stayed.

You need to become firm. Stop tolerating this abuse. Tell her either she gets on board with healing the damage SHE caused, or finally file divorce and free yourself from a loveless marriage, to a woman who doesn't care about you.

I’m sorry you are going through this but infidelity has to be dealt with head on, if you don’t do it early you will do it later. It seems it more difficult to do it later because memory gets fuzzy and a WS doesn’t get it, they believe you should be over it by now.

The journey towards R is a path both of you have to head down. You can’t wait for healing to find you, you have to go get it. Your W needs to understand this is like day one for you and she needs to be on board. All other short cuts or paths lead to a dead end. I wish you the best.

Find the book "How to help your spouse heal from your affair" and read it yourself. Then ask her to read it. If she does then give her a chance to absorb it and start to take the right steps.

If she won’t, then if I were in your shoes I’d go explore things with a divorce attorney to get an idea what that step might look like.

Good luck.

Titan, I suffer from past betrayals as well, my wife made out with a guy at a Christmas party 28 years ago and then fessed up to a bunch of ONS before marriage. Tough time of year for me and I totally feel like a schmuck, while I was out buying her christmas presents she was kissing another man. Read my post called relapsing, the advice the contributors gave me might apply to you. Good luck.

This is not R.
This is rugsweeping with a side of manipulation and shut the hell up.
There is no empathy or understanding. She is a bully and expects that you will follow her marching orders.

R takes both partners being 150% in. It takes hard work being painfully honest and time to rebuild and regain trust. You have not had any of that.

She expects you to just shut up and get on with it. Which if you want to rugsweep you can. However do not expect to have a healthy happy relationship. You can however work to heal yourself. You can get therapy. You can take meds to help with the anxiety. She does not need to know that you choose to do these things. Stop sharing any feelings you have about her your relationship or your pain. She clearly weaponizes that to continue to manipulate and silence you.

Your healing is just that. Yours. Give yourself 6 months of therapy meds and focusing on finding yourself and your strength. Then reconsider where you are. You may find you feel a lot stronger and be ready to take action.

This is not a healthy M. This is not R. That doesn't mean you can't be healthy and healed though. You should absolutely be your number one priority.

Thanks for all the support and objective insight. This is really a hard time of year for me. Every year I just hope I get through it, and I seem to always manage. I do worry about how my kids might interpret my irregular behavior though.

What works in between is burying myself in projects, but now it is getting harder to even start one.

I made a conscious choice to rug-sweep when this happened. That was all I could do to just survive it felt like. But I can't keep beating myself up about that now. Unfortunately, today the problem is even more complex to deal with. Or, maybe it's actually simpler, IDK. This has just screwed me up and my emotions just run the spectrum and from the outside, it must look pretty damn random.

The help I find here does help to ground me though. The objective replies to this reality validate what I am feeling, so thanks.

For many years after pushing this out of my mind, I think things were pretty good - never a thought toward the past. But one day -maybe 14 years ago now - my daughter moved out. Right into that apartment complex my W lived in when all this took place. I drove in, had this horrible feeling of anxiety, and lost it. I was borderline catatonic, and could hardly move or even make sentences. It took about 15 minutes before I even knew why.

Since then, random memories come to me. From times before, during, and since which all are little things that tie into this. Ignorance was such bliss and is certainly never to return. I could write volumes here.

A few years later the company I worked at moved me to a new office across the street from that very office building where more action took place. I could not focus, my heart was always racing for no reason. So one lunch I went back into that place, walking around like a zombie with tears streaming down my face. Finally, I sort of calmed down. I remember taking a deep breath and saying (probably out loud, unfortunately) and saying FUCK YOU and walking straight out. (I also remember considering pissing in the garden, but hey, it's not the building I was angry with.) That really helped me. I hated that driving by that building had such a hold on me. Never since - although I did leave them within a year ;)

Not every non-December day sucks. But on those that do, I know I am the only one in my M there for me. In the grand scheme of things, I know there are far worse stories and places to be in life. I just don't want to go through life feeling sorry for myself. I know people here reading this understand and for that small solace, I thank everyone here.

Mr Titanfour

You are where you are by your choice.

Life goes on and wife/ex-to-be-wife/ex-wife daughter/sons will on living as well as all the other family members.
Your mini-evens of your relationships will be just a memory not-to-often coming forth to conscientiousness as they work through their lives.

When you find yourself with a thorn or a Holly-Tree leaf needle in your foot - (normal) you stop and remove it.
Life goes on.

You need to screw up the courage to remove the "needles" in your life.

In the grand scheme of our existence (in the Universe) we are less significant than the eye blink e of a gnat

So why spend your short time of existence in extreme discomfort?

If/when/after you shuck the emotional burdens and some time passes (with work on your part) you will/can find life can be good again. You have to choose that path. Dragging the dregs of past experiences will not help.

Your bonds are your conceptions and attitudes. You are where you are by your choice.

BTW, gnats don't have eyelids.

Stevesn's book suggestion makes a lot of sense. It's clear your wife is rugsweeping too and probably rationalizing what she did. But a lot of waywards don't understand how a betrayed spouse can have these issues resurface. And they also don't understand how painful the betrayal is, particularly when oyunrugswept it initially and they thought you were over it.

The book might help her understand some of this. She won't want to read it but perhaps you could pick out one or two pages that really describe your pain and just have her read those to start. Or you could find an article that describes this.

If she refuses or reads it and is still in denial, then you need to consider how to get her attention. There are lots of ways you might try:

"You are not the victim". Listen, I understand that perhaps you now realize that he was your boss and that created a dynamic of sexual harrassment. You originally told me that you initiated the affair, but maybe sexual harrassment and the power dynamic was part of it even though you never mentioned it back then. Either way, I have been injured. You were not raped, you went along with the A and that betrayed our marriage and hurt me. I rugswept this and now it has emerged as significant pain. The book I asked you to read talks about this, it is common. I am not bringing this up to shame you. We have a family I love and have had many good times together. But I need to work through this to be happy and I need you to be supportive while I do.

If she threatens divorce, tell her that yes, because you have no empathy for what I am going through I think we should explore divorce. I will schedule an appointment with a divorce attorney to start the process. Then actually do it. Call her bluff.

What else could you do to get through to her?

Titanfour, so she wants You to get an MRI?

Man. That's some powerfully unsubtle nasty gaslighting.

Be careful with this one.

I know I am the only one in my M there for me. In the grand scheme of things, I know there are far worse stories and places to be in life

There are many lines you wrote that stand out, but maybe this one the most, at least for me. Just before I pulled the plug on my M, I told my best friend that I was terrified of being alone after 27 years of M. He responded, JSG, you've been alone for years. He was right. After I filed and moved out, I began to detox and see things as they were and not as I had hoped they were. I began to realize just how imbalanced our M was, as I had always done the majority of the work. My Ww could not handle the responsibilities of life and when she could or eould not, I stepped up and made things happen. The details are irrelevant, but suffice to say,it wore me out and thrust me into a parental role with her. I grew silently contemptuous at her inability to step up.

Once I removed myself fully from our M, I could see things clearly, or more clearly. It was a real world experiment and I saw her age before my eyes and she grew haggard at the constant responsibilities she now had to face. There was no one there to magically pick up the slack, to do the dishes that overwhelmed her, to pack the kid's lunches or cook dinner after he got home from work, and most importantly, to watch the weather and get up an hourcrarly to shovel tge driveway so everyong could get to work and school. She was and is miserable as she just doesn't adult well.

For me, once I had pulled the thorn of her constant presence from my foot, I began to heal almost immediately. I discovered a sense of peace amidst the grief and sadness, and it was intoxicating. It felt like collapsing into a soft comfortable chair after an exhausting journey. I also felt something I was unaccustomed to feeling...boredom. I was actually bored. It was like I was an elastic stretched too far for too long, and now without the tension, I had to learn to live all over again. It was exciting and fresh and new. Like I said, she found her new life overwhelming and even had that gall to ask me if I had any idea how difficult itvwas being a single parent was. This despite sharing the kids 50/50.

Sufficient time has passed that I now see my EXWW with clearer eyes. I feel sorry for her in a way as she has wasted her one precious life. What compounds the sadness is that she destroyed so many others along the way. But what is really enlightening is that I look at her and realize that if we had met now, knowing her history with infidelity and her incurious nature, I would not date her. She isn't a high quality partner.

So here I am, 4 years away from the source of my trauma. I just moved into a new place and am ready for the next chapter of my life. Things are good far better than I thought they could be at the beginning. Had I stayed with my WW, I would have resigned myself to a slow death of the soul, for the remainder of my days. So yes, there are things worse than leaving and being alone. Sometimes it's staying and being alone.

Titan,

What did you do about the OM it's not too late to expose him to his BW or SO.

Heck expose him to everyone in his life.

Does he still live anywhere near you?

Does your WW still carry a torch for him could be why she never showed real remorse or understanding of what she did to you?