SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I'm pathetic aren't I?

Not at all, in any way.

You’re dealing with the fallout of something you neither expected or asked for.

I still appreciate the car wreck metaphor my IC offered up. If you were blindsided in a car wreck, that’s none of your fault, you are still going to spend months and years recovering from the physical injuries. Infidelity is the emotional trauma equivalent of the blind sided car wreck. In that sense, you are simply assessing ALL options, as you should, and you’re trying to heal a tiny bit each day at the SAME time.

Two years into my R, I looked at my wife and told her love or loyalty or whatever it was I clinging to wasn’t going to be enough to save the M. The weird thing is, after I decided I didn’t need my M, that’s when I tried to see what it would look like if I chose to stay.

Infidelity is always a dealbreaker, every time.

It’s what we decide we want and need after the deal is broken.

I picked a new deal and got what I wanted. However, in another thread in the forum, titled ‘when you know, you know’ regarding another member moving on from M. It’s a healthy step and not a failure.

If you are done, there is zero shame in that.

I think the key for me was knowing for sure I wouldn’t have any regrets, regardless of my choice.

I generally don’t ever suggest people stay or go, because only you know you and your situation best.

I can say, since you mentioned the potential of future resentment — as in, if you will only ever resent him for his poor choices (and again, none of that is on you) — then it really sounds like you are moving toward being done.

I think resentment eventually kills any relationship and especially after infidelity.

The only way I see R working is if the WS owns their choices, owns their self-repair AND the BS is able to still see and focus on the good in the person.

And that’s a tall order, since you live with the biggest trigger who caused this trauma.

I also struggled looking at old photos for a while, but then I realized I loved my family the best I could with the information I had at the time.

Ultimately, in response to your first post, I would say your primary mission is to heal. That’s the mission you do not want to fail.

You have no responsibility to save what you did NOT break. Blindsided, emotional car wreck of infidelity is on the person who wrecked it.

Find the best way to heal, and that’s your path forward.

The rest of life will work itself out around what will offer you the greatest chance to be happier.

First off you are not emotionally immature if you decide not to reconcile. It just means that the acts of your WS caused too much damage and oftentimes it is too little too late even if they do change their behavior. Even if my xWS had been remorseful or not a raving narcissist, what he did over the term of our M was too much for me to overcome and was a complete dealbreaker. I knew in my heart of hearts that I would never love him or respect him again and I was hanging onto a M that I wasn't going to put more work into. I knew I no longer wanted to be with my xWS and when you know you know. There is no shame in that. He caused the situation, you do not own any part of this. Not even a D if that's what you decide. A divorce is just a business decision to end a M and it's done when you feel done and that is ok.

BSR - how did you manage the guilt? I have been so triggered by our kids birthdays, fathers day and looking at photos knowing he was betraying me then and in the years following by lying.

At first the guilt was debilitating. I was raised in an environment where you either deflected responsibility for your transgressions or hated yourself for your failures. My father would throw dramatic temper tantrums directed at himself if he lost his keys. Woe betide you if there was a way for him to blame *you* for the lost keys. I developed a strong ability to rewrite history and shut down if my narrative was challenged. I don't mean "shut down" as in I became sullen and uncommunicative; I mean I'd fall asleep mid-conversation as my subconscious tried to take me out of the path of danger. As you can imagine, that came across as a lack of effort.

As I started to let go of control, and recognized the level of damage that trickle truth was doing to my husband, guilt became useful. It helped me to remain patient and recognize the massive lift my husband was making on his end. Guilt in this phase subsidized my efforts to repay a debt that's not repayable. BTW, I think guilt is different from shame. Shame turns the blade in your own hand, and it's hard to support your spouse if you're bleeding out yourself. Guilt allows you to focus on your partner instead of wallowing in self hate.

Eventually, I moved past the sense of guilt as a dominant factor in how I viewed myself and my marriage. I don't believe it's healthy for either partner to live in that state forever. In some ways, I will never forgive myself, but in others, I have self compassion. I'll also point out that I'm a madhatter, and my BH was the one who cheated first. His infraction was far less dramatic and extensive than mine, but he did literally the same thing I had done: tried to confess, chickened out, and minimized. He was prepared to let me spend my entire college career in a long distance relationship with him, not knowing he had cheated. When I made my initial confession, he came fully clean in the belief that my greater offense cancelled out his. It doesn't really work that way, though. Eventually, I needed my time in the betrayed spouse role, with him supporting my right to understand and process.

BSR - my WH has literally fallen asleep when I've spoke to him! It has set my rage on fire! He says he gets all panicky and needs to escape and whilst he can talk about it calmly if I bring up stuff that shames him he has to get out the room it's like it just has to run which just makes me furious! I never thought falling asleep was a kind of coping strategy

I thought it was just me until one time I posted about it, and another WW wrote back in passionate relief that someone else had had the same experience. It's like being drugged. The cornered brain just turns down the lights.

Of course, it's extremely challenging because there are always opportunists who will read something like that and add it to their bag of tricks and lies. The same is true of my memory. I had to fight against a subconscious that desperately wanted to protect me by "helping" me block out things I didn't want to confront or admit. There have been a few WS here whose claims of poor memory had a ring of authenticity, but I'm as aware as anyone that it can be awfully convenient to forget incriminating details.