SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I see some people on this forum say they have reconciled and that their spouse has been "amazing" ever since, but what have they been doing to make you feel safe and secure in your relationship with them again?

I'd say my W meets my high expectations. I never said she's amazing that I can remember.

I learned how she lied during her A, and she's different now. That goes a long way to letting me choose to feel safe.

I expect I'd be devastated if she betrays me again, but I know I can recover, and that above all allows me to feel safe.

How do you not play their transgressions over and over in your head every minute of every day, especially when you are alone with them? How do you not be suspicious of them all of the time?

The A is in the past. The key to self-protection is being in the present, noticing signs of betrayal/commitment, asking questions, raising issues. I don't see any signs of betrayal by my W in the present, so it's easy to stay calm about her.

When things aren't going exactly as I'd like, my brain - like pretty much everybody else's - throws up past experiences in the hope of protecting me. Bad memories don't protect me, and I know it, so I treat memories of the A as, basically, annoyances. They have very little force or energy. They're easy to brush aside.

I doubt I could ever go on a romantic night out or be intimate with her ever again. The thought of her with another man is just too much. And the thought of all of the times we have been together and that her affair was going on behind my back the whole time is something I may not get over.

Yeah, I get it. Remember: you don't have to offer R as a possibility. You can dump her. If you really don't want to have sex with her any more, my reco is to dump her.

But you're less than 6 months out from d-day. You won't always think or feel the way you do now. The trouble is that no one can predict what you will feel and think in the future.

*****

Have you considered finding a good IC to work with? Right now, anger, grief, fear, shame, desire, love are probably all roaming around in your body sending your brain in one direction for a while, then in another, then in another, then in still another ... you probably know what I'm talking about. It's impossible to make good decisions in that state. A good IC can help you sort your thoughts and feelings.

Do you know what you want yet, other than separation? Do you see separation leading to D or R or just to enough peace and quiet to figure out what you want?

[This message edited by SI Staff at 8:10 PM, Tuesday, April 28th]

@gr8tful post #60:

Yes, that has happened. What you won’t see described here, unless you really look hard, is that such "amazing" reconciliations are EXCEPTIONALLY RARE. There are some in this community who romanticize reconciliation and advise "It’s right there for you to have - you simply need to choose it".

From your words, your wife is not even a candidate for reconciliation yet, and may never be. You’ve been well-advised to get a written timeline from your wife followed up with a polygraph, yet you are not responding to that critical course of action. Again, without the full truth, you have ZERO CHANCE at anything other than limbo for the rest of your life with her. You don’t owe me anything, but you owe it to yourself to explore what’s going on with you with your therapist.

Yep. ALL of this.

If I only had a dollar for every sad sad tale of a BH years out from D-Day, living with a WW who does not respect him!
This goes double for the OP as his WW has shown basically NO indication that she is a candidate for R. It's heart wrenching.

I was watching something online a few months ago, and it was a courtroom where the judge read out pages of misdemeanors and felonies, and the guy almost never did much time because he was still out making a mess of his life and wrecking a few others. Your wife’s behavior reminds me of this. If you had a written timeline, like the judge, you would be reading 16 years worth of pretty bad behavior with absolutely no consequences. I think you have to look at patterns here and from what I’m thinking, you don’t have one that makes any sense.