SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

After many months of crying, raging and other issues, I feel like I may be turning a corner. However I know that feeling may change tomorrow/ next week. I have had quite a lot of trauma in my life.

What do you think makes one person recover and another person decide to end the relationship? I understand the WS needs to do the work and prove they are safe. For this question I am assuming they have. But still some people cannot continue the relationship.

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this? Is it personality traits? Previous experiences?

I also have had a lot of trauma in my life. In many ways, I think that has made things harder for our recovery. Though, I know I've survived worse. I don't think the idea of moving past it as a static thing. It's a daily decision we both make to lean in toward each other. Some days that's easy. Some days, it's dang near impossible. I don't think it was a specific personality trait. I couldn't ignore my love for him, despite his terrible decision to have the A at all. I wish I could have. AP was a friend of mine. Our families traveled together on vacations. I still run into her around town and am just now getting past not wanting to verbally attack her. I think that is because she did nothing to help recover our relationship. She doesn't take responsibility for the A at all. And, has wound up divorced.

I think it would have been easier to leave than to go through the Herculean task of getting through it together. For us though, the work we did together has made how things are today so much better. FWH did a LOT of heavy lifting. I didn't make it easy for him. I wasn't easy for me to stay.

Recovering from this has informed how I've dealt with my past traumas with my family.

What do you think makes one person recover and another person decide to end the relationship?

Before discovering this website, I didn’t even know reconciliation was a possibility. All my life I thought the only reason someone goes outside of the marriage is only doing so because they don’t want to be married anymore. Sometimes that is true, but not every time.

Basically, I never thought I would even consider staying.

That said, I think people stay for a wide range of reasons. Some stay for their kids, some stay for financial security, etc.

For me, I could only stay if there was a path to rebuilding my M into something worthy of my time, and worthy of my wife’s time.

After two years of trying, I told my wife love wasn’t enough to prevent an A, and that love wasn’t going to be enough to save our M. We were resigned for a few weeks that it was all done. After knowing I would be fine solo — essentially letting go of the outcome — we kept on working on the M anyway.

I can safely say I will always hate the A, always hate that it happened.

I just focused on the positive changes I made, and my wife made, and we rebuilt this into something better.

I don’t have any magic personality traits, I just had to decide whether my partner was someone capable of change, and if she was more of a good person choosing bad, or a mostly bad person choosing bad.

I have great friends who chose D and great friends who chose to stay. As long as you find YOUR path, and your choice, you will eventually get to the other side of this.

For the record, I would've been willing to reconcile. But my ex wouldn't admit he'd done anything wrong and he wouldn't stop cheating me.

Infidelity rarely exists in a vacuum; it's usually one of many symptoms that a person is selfish, reckless, and morally compromised. Most of the time, we're able to compromise and make excuses for our spouses when we are convinced they love us and are otherwise good people and faithful spouses. But infidelity completely lifts the veil and forces you to confront your partner's true face. At that point, it's not even a question of whether a person can move on from infidelity... it's a question of whether you want to spend the rest of your life with this person, now that you know who they really are.

What do you think makes one person recover and another person decide to end the relationship?

The answer is "it depends". For me, the RvD decision came from a variety of variables. The first was very financial. The cost (both figuratively & literally) would have been way too high. I would have had to do things such as trade my business equity for home equity (to equalize marital assets). I would have had to give up mid-six figures in retirement accounts to equalize other assets.

Number 2 on that list was the emotional cost to my kids. Having been a teacher for 15+ years, I have seen up close and personal the emotional toll that D takes on kids, whether parents think they are "resilient" or not. Academically, socially, physically...the signs of how stressful it is on the kids are all there. I didn't want to do that to my kids, especially when Mrs. Cap's initial response (and part of her "why's" of her A) dealt with wanting to run away from all of us and start all over by herself. I wouldn't put my kids through being deserted by their mother.

Another "reason" for not walking through the D path for me was also my deep commitment to my faith. I actively sought the answer to whether or not I should R or D and felt that I was being called to the R side of things, even though I had a faith-based reason for D.

It hasn't been a straight, easy path. There have been a myriad of potholes and detours along the way. But for me, it has been worth it.

Hopefully, you get a variety of responses that cover all the different reasons that folks choose R or D.

I don't know as though it's a specific personality type. Some stay because and yet never reconcile because the whole thing is rugswept but don't have it in themselves to leave. Others have a personality where they demand better and can be part of a process to rebuild.

In my case, I've had trauma. I had a sibling die as well as had a baby die. Perhaps those experiences have hardened me. Perhaps they made it harder because it beats me down into a "why is life always hard" scenario. I don't know. What I do know is I still love my WH and the steps I have seen him take and the growth he is undergoing is keeping me going forward.

My XWH wouldn't put in the work to be a safe partner and change. He had treated me terribly for years (narc discard). It took me awhile to realize he wasn't changing. He then crossed a hard boundary I'd set, so I went the D route. I wasn't willing to stay in an emotionally abusive relationship any longer.

I didn't "move past" it and that phrase strikes me as an urge to rugsweep, especially shortly after DDay.

My wife's A is part of our relationship history now. It's not gone and forgotten. If it is relevant to some current decision or behavior, I don't ignore that it happened.

Personally I had to shed a core belief about cheating being a deal breaker. I have called this the loss of something integrity adjacent. I don't think all BS's can do this. It was and is a deal breaker for them. No amount of IC or posting on forums changes that for them. They cannot make an internal mental shift that says, "I can be resilient and flexible, that I didn't understand how and why cheating happens or what it means about the cheater. It's not a deal breaker in this instance, but it will be in the future now that we both know more." This isn't a defect. It's just a difference.

Edit: Since faith has come up, I'll also throw out there that I'm not a man of faith.

[This message edited by This0is0Fine at 6:12 PM, Monday, March 20th]

I dd the "math."

I don’t care about tangible assets, I have plenty and half of that would be plenty still. I earn a good living and will inherit never work again money. That’s not the math to which I refer.

The math to which I refer is this: reconcile with improved version of WW vs divorce and go out into the wild

My analysis is: reconciling > divorce FOR ME.

My WW has become, mostly, a model wife if a less than perfect WW. On a purely transactional checklist of what I would seek in a partner were I "in the wild" my wife checks all the boxes, regularly and well. Her deficiencies are in consistently addressing affair related issues, but in no way is there any threat of relapse into infidelity. Add to this "day to day what’s in it for me" crude, transactional checklist is the nearly forty years our lives have been intertwined, since we were teenagers. We know one another in a way that can exist only after decades together. Marriages, births, deaths, sickness, success, all of that. That is priceless, irreplaceable.

Were I to go out in the wild, I would have a great time with a bunch of age appropriate other people’s exwives, and that would last for six-twelve months before I tired of it, I expect. It would be a lot of fun to seduce and be seduced, to have that new relationship energy sex, to fall for or become infatuated with someone. But I know myself, I would ultimately find that untenable. I liken it to this: you go to the theme park for maybe the weekend, you do not move into the theme park.

In the end, I’d settle down with another woman, probably different than the wife I have now. And over time perhaps we’d grow to have connections like the ones I have with my wife now, but I’d have to live to be over 90 to have just the time together my wife and I have clocked since 1986. And it could be great, or not.

My analysis would be very different, probably, if I’d discovered the affair during the affair, or if my WW hadn’t reinvented herself in the five years after the affair and before I learned of it. Change either of those things, my math changes.

So I don’t take credit for having some personality trait or skill that made this ongoing reconciliation possible. It’s just math.

For me it was all about the actions of my WH - everything that he did to show me he was all in, ready to recommit, ready to do the heavy lifting. I wasn't demanding - but I had demands, I had the deal-breaker things that would end it all and I'd walk away. And what I requested - they weren't impossible things - I asked for NC, he did that. I asked him to cut off all relationships and friendships of anyone who had anything to do w/ his A - anyone who facilitated, helped, encouraged it; anyone who lied for him, took part in lying to me, deceived me - they had to go. I didn't care if that a friend or a family member - they could not be a part of our future. He cut off those relationships with no issues. He had to get a new phone AND change his phone number, close out his email account, delete his social media accounts. He had to go to IC and do the work. He did ALL of those things and more. It was totally HIS effort that made me believe and have hope that we were well on our way to R. I sure didn't make it easy on him. I was hurting and he did all the things to reconcile the M to something better - yes there have been bumps along the way. It's a journey that's for sure and after 11 years - I would say we are still reconciling. We get into ruts just like any couple does - I'm back in IC and so is he. I think there are things that are so unforgivable that the BS cannot get over - that wasn't the case in our situation. But I have seen instances where some BS's just could not forgive, and therefore could not move forward, so the only viable option was D.

From my experience reading on this forum, I've seen these 3 reasons repeatedly pop up when it comes to why a BS may lean towards a willingness to reconcile:

Children

Finances

Age

Other reasons tend to be:

Religion

Fear

Love and nostalgia for the pre-A version of the relationship and the WS

Infidelity rarely exists in a vacuum; it's usually one of many symptoms that a person is selfish, reckless, and morally compromised. Most of the time, we're able to compromise and make excuses for our spouses when we are convinced they love us and are otherwise good people and faithful spouses. But infidelity completely lifts the veil and forces you to confront your partner's true face. At that point, it's not even a question of whether a person can move on from infidelity... it's a question of whether you want to spend the rest of your life with this person, now that you know who they really are.

I agree with @BluerThanBlue here.

In my case, even if my WS became a model partner and never cheated again it wouldn't be enough for me. The trust is gone, completely. I never cheated on him and never could. I believe I can find a man who has the same morals and values as me.

[This message edited by WonderingGhost at 7:48 PM, Monday, March 20th]

I successfully reconciled first and foremost because my husband took full responsibility and dropped his AP instantly. He never blamed me at all. He went into counseling immediately. So, I made a pros and cons list. There were a lot of pros for staying but other than the ability to find some fairy tale future true love or to satisfy my revenge desires, the cons list was empty. Pros had financial security, lifestyle stayed intact, family stayed whole, and ironically I got to keep the husband who treated me well to my face. (Weird I know), but he always spoiled me and treated me well when I was looking . 🤷‍♀️🤮 I was also lucky in the sense that my self esteem never took a hit. At all. I inherently knew that his affair had nothing to do with me or the marriage and that his AP was physically, mentally, and emotionally less than I was. The only shame I felt at all was being married to a man who was behaving as such a pathetic loser. I eventually let that go and realized he was a good actor with two personalities. It remained to be seen which personality was his true self.
I guess had some dream of finding a "soulmate" of endless romantic passionate love was a priority to me (maybe had i been younger it would have been) not really sure, I may have left. Who knows. At my age, I just don’t really prioritize that sort of love nor do I believe it truly exists. It’s just not a need of mine. Therefore, my con list to staying married was empty. Also I always did and I do still love him and enjoy his company. Many have said we don’t know our cheating spouses therefore who we love isn’t real. I have always disagreed with that. I knew and know my husband. I just didn’t know all of him. He hid the really bad shit, but that doesn’t mean the good was a lie. I’ve also heard that cheaters can’t be good parents. I disagree with that too. Cheaters aren’t perfect parents, but they can be good and loving and he was. So now, He provides all that I need or want from a marriage without the cheating. In fact, if he ever decided to cheat again, our relationship would definitely change, but legally I’d have no inventive to divorce. He does well financially. Why give that up? 😂 I’d likely just get my own home and keep doing my thing.

Straight up - it is and always was a dealbreaker for me. Yet here I am, reconciling with WH.

I've had several DDays [same LTAP] and we had to have a Cease and Desist sent to her for cyberstalking and trying to duplicate our lives. And I still think she's creeping around - just being more savvy about it.

I will say, that things are going well in the Land of Chaos.

But I'll also say, had my circumstances been different at the time - I'd have walked on DDay 1.

I will also say that I don't regret my decision to stay and give WH the time to pull his head out of his ass.

Should the God Forbid happen, I'll know I did everything in my power.

It was the way I was brought up . My kids were a big part of the decision. People just didn’t divorce in my first family. I wasn’t going to have my kids pay for the affair. I also don’t believe you move past but learn to live with. Completely changes the relationship. The elephant is always in the room. I find years later thst now I don’t want to remember it. But I know it’s always there.

For me... in my thinking... it is a matter of "Survival". Mental Survival, especially.

I could never feel safe again around a Wayward. Never. To me, not feeling safe means that I need to avoid danger in order to survive. A Wayward, to my way of thinking, could always hurt me again really bad.

Naturally someone will say that new partner could do the same and that is true. However, a new partner has not hurt "Me" Yet and maybe never will. The woman I met and married after the ex has never hurt me. We celebrated our 62nd anniversary a couple of months ago. She has been my lobster all these years. She shows her respect for me each and every day. So, I lucked out and I am thankful every day for her.

My Ex hurt me badly and already showed to me that she could do it again... maybe with more ease the next time if we stayed together.

A child is admonished to stay away from a hot stove. Yet some children just have to touch one and find out for themselves. The amygdala part of brain creates an extremely strong emotion and sends an extremely strong memory to their brain neocortex. This emotion and memory is so strong that they will probably stay away from touching hot stoves for the rest of their lives.

When I was betrayed the hurt was almost like I had been severely burned... just not physically.. just a burning personal hell inside my brain. My ex was my own personal hot stove. Maybe the fire went out inside her... maybe not. I sure as hell wasn't going to find out and touch that particular hot stove again.

Also, some people evidently have the capacity to continue loving their betrayer with the same intensity as before they learned they had been betrayed. Not me. My love actually and physically turned to Disgust. It died on the spot. I remember repeatedly vomiting even when my stomach was empty when I learned what she had done. They say that the opposite of love is hate, or even indifference. I say the opposite of love is Disgust. You can not love something or someone who Disgusts you.

Plus, my ex showed by her betrayal that she did not respect me and the commitment we had made. No respect = No relationship.

So, Acd89, to answer your question, because of my personal experience and how my feelings toward my ex changed, I would never try to attempt reconciliation, no matter the current circumstances around us... children, finances, etc. My hats off to those who reconcile successfully. Reconciliation is just not in my nature because of the strong emotions and memories stored in my brain and I know I could never do it successfully. I think that one has to "Know Thyself".

[This message edited by lrpprl at 3:14 PM, Sunday, March 26th]

Ontheothersideofhell mentioned something interesting here that I have been pondering in another thread on SI. Some combination of her personality, confidence and the way she viewed the A allowed her to not be ashamed or or overwhelmed by thinking the affair was due to her own shortcoming. There is a saying that no one can humiliate you without your permission. But that is hard to realize after an A. She is in the minority who have been able to do this but I think it helps quite a lot. I have seen it before and I think it helped me too. But my situation was not as painful as many of the long term, deep betrayals we see here at SI.

I also think seeing my own flaws helped me. That doesn't mean I caused it but honestly assessing our own flaws and sins helped me realize I am in the same flawed boat, although we may be in a very different section of that boat. This relates to faith for many people, take the log out of your own eye before removing the speck from someone elses. With infidelity it may be WS has the log and you have the speck but the idea is still relevant and helpful to R.

I received a confession even though I would likely never have known and that weighed in big time for me too. And I loved her. I wasn't married yet and that also helped me as the boundaries in commitment maybe weren't as clear. That might have been a rationalization but it still is something I thought through. We did marry and are successfully married.

Another issue I see here at SI and on other boards is specific aspects of the betrayal that some people can't get over but others can. There are many of these and people react very differently to them. The WS saying I love you to the AP is the death knell for some BS and others get past it quickly. Trickle truth absolutely will crush trust forever for some BS but others work through it. Sex in the home with AP is the same way. Talking about the BS in messages to the AP too. Sometimes these things just push the BS past the point of no return.

I tried R after Dday#2, but I really didn't have much to work with. Like a previous poster wrote, my love for my W turned to disgust after she was forced to confess or be outed. Although I tried for the kids sake, every day was agony. I remember the mornings were particularly bad. I would wake up, and just for a split second, I would not remember the reality of my situation. Then, like a scene coming into focus, my reality would resolve itself in my mind and my heart would break once again. It was slowly killing me.

Add to this that I had lost all respect for my WW and despite the fact that she was still fairly attractive, I saw her as disgusting. People told me to "fake it, till you make it", in hopes the attraction might return, but it never did. Without being graphic, in order to touch her, I had to have a profoundly robust imagination. Sadly, this woman I once adored became nothing more that a masturbatory object, a thing. The sad thing I have realized looking back is that she may have enjoyed it, conflating poor treatment with actual love. Her comments to the effect further revolted me.

In the end, her infidelity was and always would be a deal breaker. Maybe, just maybe if she was a higher quality person at the core, things might have gone differently, but she just didn't have the raw materials in her personality and character.

Had we stayed together, I might have reconciled my feelings in some fashion, but I would never be capable of loving her the way a husband ought to love his wife, or maybe even "loving" her at all. Looking at the situation 5 years later, I know I made the right call. I still see my EXWW more often that I'd like (smaller town), and I marvel at the fact that I have no attraction to her. In fact, if I didn't know her and we went on a forst date, she wouldn't get a second from me. She just doesn't possess the character and personality traits that would make her a valuable or desirable partner.

I guess that's what indifference looks like...

What do you mean by 'move past'?

Since you posted in the R forum, my guess is that you mean R, but that's not the only way to get survive and thrive. People take many different paths after d-day - R, D, stick around for one or more of a number of different reasons.

I think 2 differences between the people who R and those who don't have come out in this thread.

First, it looks like a BS who sees the A(s) as the WS's responsibility is more likely to R than a BS who can't or doesn't adopt that POV. That's a difference in outlook, IMO, not in character or morality - it's 2 valid ways of looking at infidelity. The key to success, I think, is that the BS figure out what they really think and feel about their choice - too many people act on their preconceptions instead of their true thoughts and feelings.

Second, it looks like a WS who takes responsibility for the A is necessary for R.

But almost all of us 'move past an A' one way or another. You've got to remember, though, that the outcome (R, D, M of convenience, etc.) does not define success or failure. Rather, it's the path each person took to get there. Some ways are just a lot healthier than others.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:01 PM, Sunday, March 26th]

What made the biggest difference for me was realizing that cheating is about the cheater. My fWH cheated for his own reasons, and despite the rationalizations pouring through his mind to the contrary, it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with him. He wanted.. needed.. that kind of external validation and there was nothing in his internal values system strong enough to stop him. He was a guy standing on a ledge who gave himself permission to jump off into the deep end of adultery.

For the longest time after dday, I had this internal sense of duality going on. On the one hand, I could step back from the hurt and examine my WH and his choices with clinical detachment, and I would feel a certain amount of emotional relief while doing so. On the other, was my own trauma, the pain of self-doubt and rejection, the fear of abandonment, floods of tears like I could literally drown. feelings that were so hard to sit with. It's awful, as you know. I did end up pretty badly depressed for a couple of years, stuck in this back and forth. The longer I sat with it though, the more it seemed right to me that this was about HIM.

We might be part of the same marriage, but we are NOT the same person. He is a unique and separate human being with his own strengths and weaknesses, and this was him at his weakest, where his character was revealed to be not as either he or I thought it was. I do believe that people are capable of change though. He was willing to do the work and I was willing to take the risk. At some point, I realized that I didn't have to trust him so much as I needed to trust ME. I needed to be my own friend, hold my own coat, provide my own plan. I needed to know that no matter what the outcome of the marriage was, that I would be okay because I could, and would, take care of myself.

For me, it was past experience.

My HS GF cheated with one of my best friends. She was my first love, lost my virginity to her. I forgave them both, chalked it up to being teenagers and moved on (lying to myself).

I swore that I would never tolerate infidelity again.

My son was only 4yo on d-day. As much as I wanted a divorce, to ghost my WW, I simply couldn't pull the trigger. I couldn't blow up his world. So, I decided to take the hit and try to reconcile (lying to myself, again).

Six years later, I'd had enough of an inauthentic life. I was done.

I will never tolerate infidelity, from anyone, for any reason. Life's too fucking short to waste it lying to myself.