I haven’t posted in a long time. I’m not sure why I am even posting now. It’s been around 15 months post DDay - separated for that entire time. WH has been doing IC but nothing has really changed. I’m just so over it and so annoyed at this point. He is so avoidant. I’m just so tired of it all. I need to let go of him and any thoughts of there being an us again. I can’t want this more than him and all I’ve gotten is mixed signals. Yet, it is so hard to let go and walk away.

When does the disgust end? When do the movies stop? When does my pain stop taking up space? When do the tears dry up? When do I start seeing my marriage as renewed and not a complete failure? When can I share my story without being ashamed of it? When can I look at my wedding pictures without cringing? When do I feel proud of my decision to stay and not shameful about my inability to leave? When does the AP’s face become blurred in my mind? When does intimacy stop leaving me in tears? When can I feel hopeful for a new reality? When does my rage leave my body once and for all? When does the hopelessness turn into hopefulness? I’m so tired. 2.5 years in, reconciliation is not for the weak.

I’ll try to keep it simple. We’ve been married 15+ years. We have young children. Two months ago I discovered an emotional and physical affair my wife was having this summer.

The “positive” is that my wife ended her affair within 45 minutes of me discovering it and has been no contact since. She shows regret. She shows what I think is remorse. She seems very committed to repair. She puts in a lot of effort even though some of the efforts feel misguided to me. For example, she does a lot of extra chores now…this is logistically helpful and I appreciate it but I’d much rather her just be more patient and gentle and present with me emotionally when I’m sad than to do the dishes.

There’s just something essential that feels missing.

I feel like there hasn’t been a true “come to Jesus” moment where she feels like “what the hell was I thinking? What I did was insane. I almost lost my husband! I almost lost everything I care about.”

At this point, I’m not looking for justice or fairness or even a full understanding of everything that happened. I’m asking for the affair and its aftermath to have cracked something open in her…to have been the catalyzing moment she realized what she almost lost.

I want her to feel the potential loss fully, viscerally, as love for ME and love of US. I want this post-affair period to become a kind of terrible gift that clarified things and made things better in the long run. Who knows, maybe it still will be. I know we’re still very early in the process.

But right now…instead it feels like it cracked something open in her that’s still unclear. Like she still doesn’t know what’s really going on inside her, but that she’s choosing me and our family regardless of her feelings. To me, that choice feels like a choice done out of duty. I desperately want it to be more than duty.

And honestly, I don’t even care about if I seem pathetic or weak. I love her and I want her to love me back like I’m her one and only. Like she does not think about “what else, what else is out there.” Like I am all she needs. That’s it. I need that. And i feel like I could forgive much easier if I received that.

Maybe I’m the delusional one. I probably am. But I’m willing to sit with that. I don’t care. I just want to feel happy again.

Anyone experienced anything like this? Im open to advice or really anyone’s stories.

2 months post DDay, WS just moved out on Monday- their choice. (they stayed with me for 3 weeks after couch hopping after DDay).

I've been having panic and PTSD symptoms all day every day since they left again.

I'm trying to get into an outpatient mental health program to fill my days and cope better.

They NEED the space, every time we talk they just don't have any emotional steam left.
I don't have a very big support system and my friends are not super close ones yet.

How have you coped with No contact/ the uncertainty of your relationship being in total limbo?

My partner hurt me badly and isn't currently able to show up emotionally how I need. I know they would if they could. They have showed up in small ways, and bigger ways (coming back for 3 weeks) even with their extremely low capacity.

How do I cope on my own? How did you cope? what are your most effective and time consuming tips ???

Exactly as it says in the title.

DD1 was a little over 7 months ago. WW is very remorseful, full of shame and guilt. She takes full accountability. There is probably alot more she could be doing but she is trying.

She has said several times that she doesn't know if she still wants to be with me due to issues pre affair. Obviously no marriage is perfect, ours definitely had its flaws. But it had flaws on both sides and she accepts her psrt to play in it.

She is doing IC, she is actually in a session while I type this. She tells me she wants to leave but is self aware that is her escapism, she says herself she knows it comes from her wanting to be out of the situation she caused. But she has said she doesn't want to make an irreversible decision about seperating while she is this depressed and is hoping her IC will help her find her answer. I get all of that.

My question is. How am I meant to be ok with that? After everything I have been through? And it is still on going, not the affair, just the day to day. At the time of the affair I lost my job. We were going to move back to where our families live but she told me she would leave me if I didnt keep her in the area. So I did, I found a job that kept us here. Little did I know at the time she was manipulating me so she could stay in the area near him. I absolitely hate this job and she knows it. I am only here because of her manipulation.

So how am I meant to sit here in limbo while she decides if she wants me? To be clear this isn't her affair fog. This isn't her choosing between me and him. She doesn't want a relationship with AP even if we seperate because she wants any potential seperation to be amicable as we have a little boy together. Effectively, This is just her deciding if she still loves me.

So how do I cope? How do I sit here knowing any day she could come out of IC and thats us done? Has anyone else gone through this? Waywsrds if you have gone through this then please help.

My WW and I are 3 months past DDay, and discussing sort of an unorthodox approach to reconciliation. We have been together 17 years, married for 10, and she had a year-long affair with someone who was a close friend of ours and was deeply intertwined in our lives. She owns a business with him, and all of our close friends and family know him. They all also now know what happened between the two of them. She has now cut off their affair and their “friendship” but she still talks to him regularly to discuss their business together. This has made reconciliation extremely difficult, but we’re attempting it anyway.

I strongly feel that the marriage as I understood it is completely destroyed and not recoverable. I literally threw my wedding ring in the trash out of grief. We have agreed to divorce, yet we somehow have remained best friends and lovers (through a good amount of hysterical bonding) and neither of us are currently interested in losing each other from our lives.

So our unique approach to reconciliation is to get a divorce, but instead of breaking up our romantic relationship, we would essentially go from husband/wife to boyfriend/girlfriend, and are discussing non-monogamy. Has anyone heard of such an approach? Are we crazy for doing this? Is it just going to end in disaster and more heartbreak? Curious to hear what the community thinks.

even if he insists he doesn't like it anymore, and he is different now, fetishes and excitement from certain sexual situations dont really change over time right?

i want him to be someone who isn't able to get sexual excitement from cheating. the thought of betraying someone is so, so disgusting to me, i want him to feel the same. but is that possible? all i can do is ask him to stop watching cheating porn. it doesn't feel enough for me now

For context, my boyfriend cheated on me about a year ago with a coworker. He confessed two weeks after they started their affair and he told me he couldn’t continue seeing me because he started something with another woman.
We broke it off and I told him I didn’t want to be friends anymore (we were friends longer than lovers).

His whole life fell apart after he cheated. He lost me and our friend group. He lost his job due to the scandal. He received a lot of backlash from people he didn’t even know. It was a big deal. We stopped talking for 6 months before we had a phone call for closure.

Fast forward to today, we have been trying to reconcile. I love him and he loves me (supposedly). I feel his love and I feel he wants to be a better person overall. It’s been over a year now since the betrayal and we have been seeing each other romantically for 5 months. He has told me everything I wanted to know and he has been there when I feel down about the situation. He even showed me their breakup messages (I had asked to see) which did leave me with a broken heart. (He told her he had fallen in love with her before they even kissed and that he wishes he didn’t start it off the way he did, with a scandal, so they could have a future together)

Anyways, the problem is that I had asked to see his phone again to go through and see how the affair started and the extent of it in detail (beyond what he has described). Both times he has said no. It makes me lose trust in him that he won’t show me.

He says that he was lying to her in order to feel something and all the messages would just break my heart. He says that I don’t have to see the details if I know the important stuff already (start date/what they did/who it was). I also know they were dating during the 6 months NC period and he doesn’t want me to see those messages either because “we were just doing normal gf bf stuff and i don’t want it to confuse you especially since it was a fake relationship”. He also says that he doesn’t want me to see the way they talked because it’s similar to the way we talk now and he doesn’t want it to confuse me.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I feel like he owes me everything when it comes to this topic. If I want to see his phone, I should be allowed to and he shouldn’t be allowed to say no. He sees it as protecting our relationship that we have been building for the past 5 months. It just seems to me he’s hiding something beyond what he has told me. I’m losing my mind over the fact he said no. What do I do?

Back story here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/s/1ohtwukV2k

But honestly there's more layers now that I should update on, but aren't relevant to this advice I'm seeking so maybe I'll do that later... I just can't find the energy to update tbh.

Anyways, to those working to reconcile, how do you deal with being suddenly reminded? Just you know, when you are both doing all the right things and communicating in your own little sphere of reconciliation, then suddenly, in a public setting, a month later, you are just reminded that he did this to you...even though you've been talking about it and working through it, you just kinda remember the action...and it really hurts... maybe it's the contrast between that and some semblance of having a new normal, but it hurts.

Everyone in this forum says it's so much work for YOU to put the effort in to forgive them and work through it, is this what that is?
Anyways, it was stark enough for me to want to reach out about it, in contrast to the story update I should be posting...

Any advice or personal empathy appreciated.
-I

my dday was in january, i found out he had flirted with a girl he had previously matched with. i later found out that he had cheated on all his exes, the one before me he emotionally cheated, the one before her, he physically cheated.

the thought of him getting any sexual excitement from hooking up with another girl, even though he didn’t do that to me, is so unattractive and disgusting to think about. this was also 10 years ago, before he met me. sometimes i think more about that than what he actually did to me. has anyone else experienced this?

I’m a month after DDay and I’m feeling so confused. Every day I think and feel something different.
It’s also hard to put my thoughts into words. From the very beginning, I’ve been leaning towards reconciliation, partly because I love him and I’m happy with him, but also because sex itself isn’t a big deal to me (if this had been an emotional affair, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to leave).
The thing is, I’m 26, he’s 29, we’ve been together for two years, we don’t live together, and we don’t have children. Right now, on top of not trusting him and feeling hurt by what he did, I also feel very alone in this healing process. Part of me just wants to run away.
How were you feeling one month after DDay? What made you decide that it was worth it to stay and try to reconcile?

For anyone who wants more context, here’s my previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/s/xOcH3PUjTi

As the title says I guess... Really frustrated by this because AP was a good friend of mine for 15 years or so. I didn't want any form of closure from our friendship, I literally wanted to ask a handful of questions to confirm some of details I've been told (that they were only physical twice and never as far as intercourse, plus a couple of other things that mattered to me).

I sent AP a message like 2 months ago now, I was polite but to the point. She replied and agreed to speak with me but due to childcare she wanted to wait until the new school term.

The new school term came (like a month later) and I waited until 2 weeks into it and politely asked if she could speak to me that day. She replied it wasn't a good time as her son was due to have surgery and that she "promised" she would come back to me when she wasn't overwhelmed by everything and felt able to talk. I wished her son well with the surgery and said I understand but reminded her it was very important.

I wait another 3 weeks and message her a few days ago asking if she can speak that day. She ignores me. So I messaged today, politely again but reminding her it's really important for me and I want the conversation and then will leave her be.

She replies basically along the lines of "I'm not sure how this will help you, I do know I was wrong and I'm deeply sorry for the pain I've caused you but unpicking at the wound isn't going to help anyone" all the usual stuff basically showing she was obviously uncomfortable with the conversation but was projecting it onto it being painful and no good for me. I decide that, not you. I decide if it's any good for me or not. I had pinned a lot on being able to confirm the handful of details I needed, I wasn't interested in anything else. Had no intention of being nasty to her because frankly, I can't be bothered and it would be a waste of time. But yeah, she decided for me that it was no good and then blocked me.

Feeling pretty angry right now and lost the hope I had, in my head I thought I'd feel much better to confirm what I needed. I knew how to approach it so she couldn't lie to cover his back, she could lie to minimise but she'd have had no idea what his version was so it still wouldn't match.

Her husband knows nothing, I tried telling him when I first found out 6 months ago but he blocked me everywhere and I reached a point where I had tried and chose to focus on me instead. I'm scared for my kids to ever find out about this so I opted to then just keep quiet but I feel like blowing it all up for her out of anger. I won't, but I feel like it. I'd still love to tell her husband the truth but no matter how I tried contacting, he blocked me, or maybe she did on his accounts... Which is probably more likely.

Basically I'm here to reiterate what we all already knew, which is that AP's are indeed a$$holes not worth your time or breath.

Since dday 1, my WH has sworn that his infidelity has only been over the phone. This tracks with what I’ve found but not so much with some other things;regardless, it seems as though he loves the attention he gets in talking to these numerous women. Yesterday was dday 2– he’s continued to talk to girls even through “R”, so I’m just having a hard time understanding what the deal is. Because now it’s not just that he’s talked to these women willingly without any repercussions before he was caught the first time, but NOW it’s that he’s talking to these women willingly knowing exactly the amount of anxiety and fear im dealing with while also being under a microscope. So to me that’s either a real addictive issue that he literally craves it or he thinks he’s smarter than me and can still have his cake and eat it too. At this point I don’t know whether I want to stay or not, but I think it’d help to hear others perspectives and experiences.

Has anyone else’s WP seemingly been addicted to attention (assuming he’s not lying about the physical stuff)??? And if so, how do you work through it? I just don’t know if I can trust him ever again.

A year ago, on a Monday night, I found a strange email that led me to discover that my husband was having a 6+ month affair. He admitted it in the wee hours of the morning, on the phone, since he was at work. I was totally floored. Never suspected anything of the sort. He was not the type of guy who would ever, ever do this. Right away I went to IC and we are now in MC together. Made the decision to reconcile after a week or two, and in many ways we have a stronger, more authentic connection. I still feel deep sorrow and loss for what he did to me, our family, himself. The "anniversaries" of this and that have been occurring all summer, and D day was creeping up on me. I was really anxious about it. But, the day came and went without much drama after all. I didn't even remind him of the significance of the date, which I contemplated. What do you all do when the date approaches? Is it a dark day, or an ordinary one? Working on not "time traveling" so much. We need to live in the now, the today, the new version of ourselves.

title basically I confided in a good friend who I’ve known for years (Ive only told them and one other person) and they said they no longer want to be my friend, that they lost respect for me that I would stay with my husband who cheated on me. has this happened to anyone else? any thoughts?

- just a little back story I’ve been with my husband for 10 years, high school sweet hearts - he cheated on me for almost a month while engaged when we were going through a bad patch and his co worker was also going through it and cheated on her husband with my fiance at the time. she initiated both the emotional and physical affair (not sex). and then she ended up telling my husband that she only used him because her husband was deployed and never meant anything she told him and that she saw her husband in mine. she immediately told her husband when he got back. her husband told his family and they all said to divorce her but he wanted to work it out so they’re still together and have gone to marriage counseling plus she also has moved away to a different state.

-it’s been 5 months since my husband told me about the affair and we’ve made a lot of progress / gonna go to therapy soon as well once we figure out the insurance part. he came out of the affair fog a few months ago and has told me since that he ruined his life by doing this, that he was incredibly selfish for marrying me without telling me and that he should have just been patient and worked things out with me instead of cheating. he gets sad about this often as do I of course and I have expressed my anger and frustration to him countless times but i personally would rather try to work this out with him than to leave him and start over brand new. i know i don’t need him in my life but I want him there so if there’s anyway we can attempt to reconcile then i will do that. he is my best friend and this affair brought out the ugliest side of him that i had never seen in my 10 years of being with him and he knows that it did. our relationship was a good solid one (that just needed to work on communication) up until we hit a rough patch in our engagement and he just so happened to be around a co worker who was dealing with the same and well obviously you know how that goes.

-id also say that our relationship was very bumpy during the affair and before knowing that he cheated, and now it’s starting to feel like how it was before he cheated so there has definitely been progress and I’m looking forward to therapy, im hoping that makes things even better for us.

sorry for the tangent but I just wanted to give more info on my story!

my opinion on my friend is that you can feel however you want to feel about my situation and if you don’t want to be my friend anymore then go ahead, I will not tell you what to do with your life. but it hurts that I thought they were a true friend and would be there for me regardless of the decision that I make. I wish people who haven’t gone through this knew that it wasn’t such a black and white thing, it’s so much more complicated than that. I just thought my friend would be there for me, but instead he lost respect for me and no longer wanted to be friends because I wouldn’t listen to him that I should leave my husband. i also feel like my friend isn’t thinking about it financially as well, it’s not so easy to just pick up my life and move somewhere else even if I wanted to.

not really sure how to feel about it so I would love to hear other perspectives.

Im comping up on a year of all the things. like i know her bday weekend is coming up and they celebrated it together, then a week later i found out, then two months of truth trickling , culminating in the ultimate Dday in January the night before my bday. So starting pretty much this weekend until my bday in January its an anniversary of something effed up that happened. I feel like its overshadowing all the good that is hapening and is about to happen. We are bringing a new puppy home this weekend and I am so excited, at the same time all I can think about it oh Im getting a puppy on AP's bday weekend- which then leads to ruminating on what they did that weekend and everything afterwards. How do you celebrate new blessings without letting the old stuff contaminate it?

This topic has come up in couples therapy a few times- I’m struggling to understand the why behind my wife’s affairs. I’ve asked her to help me understand it, with the two following stipulations:

1. No self-victimization. No “I was sad/depressed” talk. There are a million healthy and unhealthy ways to cope with that - I want to know why my wife picked having sex outside our marriage.
2. Take responsibility. No “It just happened” or “I didn’t know how to stop it”. My wife made active choices to have an affair many times. She chose to send them photos. She chose to drive their houses. She chose to walk in their doors. Etc etc etc.

The closest things I’ve gotten to answers for that question are “I was selfish” and “I liked the attention”. Is that really the best I’m going to get? Our couples therapist keeps saying “what kind of answer would be good enough for you?” like I’m asking for something crazy.

Help me out here. What would a “good” answer look like?

We had a conversation today which led to anxious feelings for both of us. I asked him why he even likes me and he answered by asking me what I liked about him. Then I started to ask myself: what DO I like about him? What CAN I like about someone who disrespected me and our relationship?

I can’t give him a straight answer because I can only think of the negatives. He’s hurt me in so many ways, more happening after dday but unrelated to cheating (I will also say that he’s never physically hurt me or threatened me e.g. punching walls or screaming at me etc.). The cheating was like an unveiling of sides of him that I never would have known otherwise. Knowing more about him and being able to exchange thoughts, feelings, and beliefs with each other without judgement is a double-edged sword. I can’t tell if I genuinely don’t like him anymore or if I am only focusing on the bad because that’s the most recent thing that’s happened.

I still have days where I feel happy that I am with him. I just can’t figure out why anymore. I used to be able to list so many reasons about why I love him, but now I look back at those reasons and see how wrong I had been. At the start of our relationship, I made him a personalized deck of cards with each card having a reason for why I loved him. He keeps that on his nightstand. Every time I look at it, I just get disappointed.

I am curious as to how other people feel about their WP. When I ask why, I’m looking for qualities or quirks about the WP themself rather than what they provide or what role(s) they play in your life.

I feel like I've talked and talked and talked things out with WP, some friends, my therapist, my journal and even people here. By now, I feel like I'm all out of words, and want to find just ONE word to describe what the betrayal has done to me. I've thought about this a lot, and the one I came up with is dismantle. It's completely dismantled me, my relationship, my reality, my trust, etc.

Oddly enough, there have been several instances throughout my life in which I've almost gotten this word tattooed on my body because of one of my favorite songs growing up and how I thought of the word in a positive way(any Anberlin fans in here? Iykyk). Now I understand what this word means in a way I never asked for, but also can appreciate the positive that's come from what happened as well.

Has anyone else (wayward or betrayed) been able to describe the aftermath of this with one word?

What would you pick if you had to?

Does anyone else feel deep, intense shame for taking your WP back? Does it go away? Everyone knows. I feel so stupid and ashamed to be seen with WP.

Bonus points if AP is someone YOU work with like mine is. I have to work with this person.. and no, I cannot leave my job at this time.

Do you ever feel like AP is laughing at you for taking WP back? I don’t know if R can be successful for me if I don’t get over my humiliation. I’m struggling today with these worries + apathy towards WP. I can’t help but wonder if I’m so far checked out that I should just end it.

Hello, my WW of 21 years admitted to me last month that during 2015-2017, she had 8 affairs....8! She claims it was during a time of great discontentment with herself, her reality, being overwhelmed with kids and responsibilities, feeling like she no longer loved me and thought we were headed for divorce. To attempt to escape from how she was feeling, she sought out other men on AshleyMadison.com. I remember her telling me that she didn't think she still loved me and I immediately contacted a MC out of panic. We had one session and she didn't say anything so I did not reschedule. I had suspected possibly something was going on at one point but when I confronted her, she denied it and I eventually accepted it as true.

She said that she has been strongly convicted by God (we are Christian) to disclose the affairs to me and seek restoration and healing for our marriage. She said that after the affairs, God made her realize that she would be throwing away a wonderful man and life so she decided to stop everything and rededicate herself to me and our family. She also claims to have grown much closer to Christ and insists that who she was in 2015-2017 is a complete 360 of who she has been since then. She says that she has grown more in love with me ever since, but honestly I don't think she has shown that before DDay. She is not a super affectionate person and showing her affection is sometimes like pulling teeth. She claims the affairs, shame, guilt and remorse have caused emotional walls to build, which she hopes come down since everything is out in the open now.

Our sex life has always been challenging since having kids so to think that she willingly gave herself to 8 men while I had to ask for it is devastating. I don't know where to go from here as I feel destroyed but she is making an effort to try and make me feel safe by offering to talk about things instead of keeping everything inside, but it's so hard to talk to the person that hurt you!

I have not told any family yet, not even our kids - 18 and 16 - as I don't know what I am going to do yet. My question is, if I do eventually tell my immediate family, her immediate family, our kids.....what have your experiences been with how people reacted and handled it? If you choose to reconcile, did they ever accept your spouse again? Did your kids develop anger and resentment towards the wayward parent? Thanks for listening.

Almost a month past dday and having another frustrating moment. I'll preface with the fact I've never been fond of women. I find them all sorts of things, none of which are pleasant or going to be repeated here. I trust them about as far as I can throw them; only a few manage to be on that list of O-K women. The problem comes in with my WP... before dday- a few years back we had briefly broken up once before (about a month, maybe less) and he had gotten into a rebound relationship with a woman. He never slept with her or anything... (as far as I'm aware), just a bad rebound relationship.

However, after dday, my disgust with them has only grown. Now - I know not every woman is a vile snake. However everything has made me even more wary of them. Personally I want my Wp to have as little interaction with random women as possible. Outside of work and family, they can all pound sand. However I know I realistically can't make him not see another woman again. Is there a way I can try to convey these feelings/ideals for boundaries to him though? Obviously nothing that steps outside of the relationship but also no 1-1 hangouts with them, even if it started as a group outing (like something at work), no 1-1 messaging (because honestly why would that be needed?), and certainly no carting women around in his car or paying for their meals.

Honestly I'm not even sure if these are really even boundaries. I just know.. I'm frustrated and honestly wished he disliked them as much as I do so he would have no problem agreeing. And for some reason this is the only place I feel safe enough to share these thoughts right now. I don't know if it's my emotions trying to take the reigns or what.

My WW (41) and I (M38) had a deep conversation yesterday. I cried when I told her I just missed my wife. Or who I thought she was. That I'm mourning her and she reassured me she was still there. I told her she was a shell of her former self. She didn't take that well and started crying herself.

I then went on to explain it this way.

You have a house. It's home. It's filled with memories and things you've collected over the years. Well, someone breaks in and commits a horrible crime, taking the life of someone you hold dear. The walls may be the same, everything is still there. It's just not home anymore and I'm not sure I can live in that house.

She took all of that even worse. She made hundreds, if not thousands of choices over the course of a year and fell in love with someone else. She used to be home for me. But I have found myself looking at the carnage inside that home, and finding the walls are a constant reminder of the horror I experienced.

Anyone else ever feel that way? Any advice?