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I have a big ask of all of you BS’s, whether you have recently discovered (like myself), reconciling, divorced, etc - what impact did the betrayal have on you?

I’m working on writing a letter (an exercise recommended in therapy) to read to my WH. Essentially to capture what his betrayal has done to me, any personal learnings from this, hopes, loss/grief, struggles, etc.

I have a pretty solid "list" going currently, but would love to hear what some of you might say/have said to your WS if you wrote them a letter containing the impact of the betrayal and what it has done to you.

Boy oh boy do I want this letter to rock his core and hit him hard!

[This message edited by Heartbrokenwife23 at 3:02 AM, Sunday, January 21st]

The discovery of his affair has changed me forever.

I wonder how the words "I love you" could have so easily come from his lips to me as I left for work in the morning, and then again so easily to her once he knew I was gone and he was on the phone to her. And then again in the evening as he kissed me goodnight. How easily those words then meant "nothing" once he was caught, and he wanted to take back everything he said to her.

I wonder how much time he spent writing those love letters to her. If he had ever, even one time, thought that if he had just spent a moment writing just one sentence like that to me as often as he did for her - how different our marriage might have been.

I wonder if I will ever get a love letter like that.

I wonder if he will try to court me like he did her. Will he say those things to me, and mean them? He says he never loved her, he lied to her, but how do I know he’s not lying to me, too?

I wonder how long it will take until I can love him like I used to.

I wonder how long it will be until my heart and soul are not shattered into a million shards of glass, across what seems an endless darkened place of tears, where each piece is found and felt and painstakingly matched to another…in the wrong place a thousand times before it finds the right spot…and then the next piece is mended…ever so slowly being put back together but never the same and always so fragile that the slightest movement might render it dust.

I wonder if he will ever understand this place I am in.

I know. He will not.

[This message edited by 5Decades at 3:51 AM, Sunday, January 21st]

It's been some 15 years since my fWW's final confession of her sordid week. We are fully reconciled and have two wonderful children now. But yet I'm here. Why? Recently, I ran into someone who could've been the OM's clone, but 15 years younger and it brought it all back. Of course it wasn't the OM, because that scumbag absconded to his native land in the Middle East right after the A and didn't even try to come back to the US. I see a therapist just as a part of good emotional hygiene and talked to him about this. Here is an incomplete list of what my fWW's betrayal meant to me:

* fWW broke my safe space and forever shattered the belief that she was someone I could love and trust unconditionally. Both my parents are no more, so I don't think I'll ever have a person to love and trust unconditionally for the rest of my life.
* fWW was very close to my late mother. I'll never stop hurting from the knowledge that my last serious conversation with my mom was an outburst exposing fWW's betrayal that devastated her soul. Mom was close to dying but I still can't stop wondering whether my outburst hastened her passing.
* The A and fWW's TT brought out the worst in me. I used horrible racist words when lashing out at the OM and his scumbag buddies. I have striven to be better since then but I still can't stand that I said those things.
* The A broke my manhood and self-esteem. I'm in a much better place now but it's like a house with damaged, but repaired foundation. The damage is always under the surface, even if you pile on layers of reinforcement.

We have a thriving but different marital relationship now. It's neither stronger nor weaker compared to pre-A times. It's just different and both of us are at peace with it. I'll share my full story here one of these days but this is all I can say for now.

The impact was so much unnecessary damage, it blew up our marriage and caused major fractures within our family.

At first, I questioned myself for picking such a stupid, lying, cheating man. I felt so dumb for not knowing what was going on for years. Then I found this amazing group and started learning about infidelity and that all his cheating and lying. I have lost so much precious time that could have been spent in rewarding and positive ways.

When I am with friends who have long term, good marriages I feel profoundly sad and that I am the oddity. My self confidence took a big hit and I have had to work diligently to regain feeling good about myself.

My dreams of working towards a happy, healthy retirement with my husband have been completely shattered. I will survive and go on to live a terrific life alone, but won’t have the trustworthy partner I thought I would have.

Those are just a few ways that infidelity has impacted my life - it’s hard to wrap your mind around why your partner would deliberately choose to be unfaithful isn’t it?

I think it’s great you are writing a letter and I sincerely hope your WH will humbly acknowledge your feelings.

I saw my W's A as a betrayal of herself before she betrayed me, as a symptom of her self-hate, as a tremendous mistake*. I moved intellectually to 'sickness and health', and part of the reason I chose R was that I had vowed to stay through sickness. She went to work to get healthy on d-day; if she hadn't I'd probably have chosen D.

Despite knowing the A occurred because she was unhealthy, the A was devastating. Not only did it destroy my view of our M and of my W, it destroyed my view of myself. I felt unable to present myself in public. I was unable to function except for requirements for months. I gave up on my business, and our retirement is shakier than it might have been. I'm 13+ years out, and I keep discovering new ways in which my approach to life got fucked up by the A.

We've R'ed, and there have been some immensely positive changes because of the work we've done since d-day. We address issues. Some of the issues are decades old, since they have come up again, and we rug-swept when they came up earlier in our M. I think we're happier now than we would have been if we had just continued as we did before the A - the A was a big wake up call for my W and a smaller one for me, and we heeded the calls.

On d-day I realized and confirmed that I was a small part, at worst, of her decision to cheat. She admitted our M was good to very good. And whether she thought she cheated because of the M or not, I knew instinctively that I did not cause her to cheat. The only blame I bore, if any, was that I respected and liked and loved her enough that she had the freedom to choose. Even so I was devastated.

* I think most As are both mistakes and choices. I mistrust any WS who says their A was a 'mistake' because it strikes me as minimizing at best, and my W never used the term about her A. If she had, we'd have a heavy discussion. In any case, from some POVs, As fit into the class call 'mistakes', IMO. Again, any WS who uses the term, even silently, is minimizing, and that does not bode well for healing.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:09 PM, Sunday, January 21st]

You never look at that person in the same way ever again.

You don’t love them the way you did pre-affair.

You certainly don’t have the same blind faith you did.

Since my H was going to D me (b/c the OW did not want to be the OW) I have a sense of always being on a less than firm foundation.

Financially I have everything separate. His name is on the mortgage alone. We gave separate credit card accounts. I have my vehicle in my name alone. I control the $ and all the investment accounts.

Even though it’s been 10 years, I have an exit strategy just in case. I can pick up my krys and know exactly what my next move is.

That’s what his cheating and plan to D me for a much younger did to me.

My letter….

Dear WH

Loving you was easy. I fell fast and hard. I really don’t remember much about myself before you. You have shaped me into who I am today. Your strength, love and support have always been my compass. You have always been my biggest fan, supporter and when I look at you I see home. Home, to me, is anywhere you are. I loved you with everything I had and tried to be the best wife I could possibly be. By giving you free rein, trusting you completely and love/supporting you in all your endeavours.

Learning of your affair is an earth shattering stab to my insides. Learning of the lies and deception have destroyed me to the core. I am completely lost, broken, confused and feel dead inside..everything I thought we stood for is in question. It has taken my security, moral compass and most importantly my family. It has turned my world upside down and made me question my worth.

What you chose to do is beyond comprehension. Not prioritizing or valuing your wife or family ahead of yourself for instant gratification and validation is disgusting. Learning how you spoke to her, what you shared with her all while pretending to live a happily married life to me is something I’ll never fully understand and I’m unsure I’ll ever be able to completely forgive.

You stood in a church full of our family and friends and promised to be faithful to me and me alone. We exchanged vows of honour and trust. I can hold my head high knowing I have always followed my vows. My love made that incredibly easy. I don’t even know what marriage is anymore. It is forever tainted because of your actions. It doesn’t mean too much does it?

I was told to write a letter to you about what this affair has done to me and this is it. Not much else to say

Emptyglass

I am no longer married but it had a series of impacts.

The trauma that he caused impacted me to the point that I could not read books. Something I loved my entire life. I’ve only read 3 books in 6 years. I’d do that a month previously.

Lost my confidence, I have to work hard to think I deserve someone to care for me.

I am no longer the sweet person I was.

I don’t trust people and I don’t open up the way I used too.

He broke my family, we are still recovering.

I can talk to him but I prefer text so I don’t hear his voice. It is a bit upsetting even now.

I will never be his friend. He still calls me a shortened version of my name, but he isn’t my friend. Never will be.

Lasting impact.

Mine was the first time I ever felt shame. I was told but only that person knew. I never told anyone. We were young with very young children. I had dropped out of college to follow him so I had no way to financially care for my children. I felt absolute terror. Both my parents were fighting bad illnesses and my mother died while I was trying to just breathe. The grief from that was on top of pretending to my husband that I didn’t know. I got so good at lying to myself that I rug swept and decided what I knew couldn’t be that bad because he never left. He had no idea I knew until much later when I had a job and my own income. Out of the blue I confronted him and he didn’t have time to lie. He admitted it. By then both of us had matured and have a business together so we moved, changed jobs, settled down, and he has been a better husband. I like the life we have. Our children will never know because it is in the past. The only thing we both lost is my deep admiration for him. It has built back up but I see him in an entirely different light now. I know he has feet of clay.

Hugs to you Heartbrokenwife23,

It’s unimaginable pain and my heart breaks for each person who is forced to feel it.

DDAY1 was shattering for me. We had a beautiful one year old son and beautiful 2 month old daughter, an adorable puppy, had been married for two years, were first time homeowners and I had just been promoted to my dream job.

After years of combat deployments and funerals, the sun had finally come out and now this.

I didn’t just love him, he was everything to me, my reason for breathing.

I had been betrayed before by a serious boyfriend and "knew" WH would never hurt me like that.

In the US Army, they call them a "Jody"——-it was despicable——he had been having sex with one of his friend’s wives while he was deployed…..a person I considered a close friend. I felt betrayed and disgusted by both. I felt ashamed and like a fool.

We started peeling away the layers of trauma and childhood experiences that impacted his choices and my reactions.

We worked on becoming healthier on our own and built a new relationship together. It took years. We had a happy marriage, two more kids, two more dogs and life was as it should be. I was no longer codependent with him and I very much loved him differently but I chose to forge ahead with him. He had done the work after all.

That was 2009-2013.

Then it all began again culminating in DDAY 2 in September 2022.

We are separated and I am detached. I just don’t care at all if he heals or not. I am on a new healing journey because this was never about me.

It was all his brokenness. I was always good enough and he had no business harming me the way he did.

He chose to be a monster. I’ll continue to work on being a better version of myself.

What impact did the betrayal have on me? It changed my life. I was broken into tiny pieces of myself and I grew strong rebuilding.

I’m working on writing a letter (an exercise recommended in therapy) to read to my WH. Essentially to capture what his betrayal has done to me, any personal learnings from this, hopes, loss/grief, struggles, etc.

I have a pretty solid "list" going currently, but would love to hear what some of you might say/have said to your WS if you wrote them a letter containing the impact of the betrayal and what it has done to you.

Boy oh boy do I want this letter to rock his core and hit him hard!

My WW and I bought a workbook from Amazon to help us structure our Infidelity work 5 months after D-Day (about 19 months ago). Part of the work was for the WW to write a disclosure letter and for the BS (me) to respond with an "Impact Letter".

For a little background, my WW struggles with empathy and has extreme shame from her Infidelities. At the time, it was "feast or famine" in talking through them and trying to come to "one consistent story" without devolving into a sobbing mess. We felt the workbook would help with structure. Her disclosure letter was her first attempt at the time of writing out a timeline. Before, all disclosures had been me asking specific questions and dragging details out of her. The Disclosure was extremely disappointing. Her 11 affairs in 20 years were 2 pages. It lacked detail and didn’t broach her feelings at the time or much of anything beyond "I met OM, we flirted, we had sex".

My Impact Letter was 25 pages long and covered our marriage basically in chronological order. It covered how I felt, how she treated me and the General state of the marriage overlayed with the timeline of her affairs. I went into detail on how I felt at the time and how I felt after D-Day. All of the impacts were sprinkled within the narrative. But knowing my wife isn’t quick on processing feelings and impacts, I summarized them at the latter part of the letter and laid them out in clear terms. Here are my impacts with a blurb with each (the actual text was several paragraphs long for each impact but this will give you the gist):

- I am extremely hurt and in extreme pain

This is the worst pain I have ever been in. Worse than losing Grandparents, parents, in-laws, pets, jobs, etc. This makes me feel worthless and stupid.

- I don’t know who you are

I’m flabbergasted at the scope and length and awfulness of the cheating. It’s WAY more than I would have thought you capable of. The lying and selfishness just compounds all this. Who are you? Who does this shit?

- Our marriage is a sham, 20 years is tainted, you stole my life.

This has basically ruined the first 20 years of our marriage for me. There are no good memories for me from that time. Getting married, having kids, where we lived, where we worked, kid’s sports….all tainted now. I was robbed of the opportunity to make decisions. I could have left and met a true life partner OR we could have repaired things and had a better life. You never seemed to even WANT that by not working to solve our problems and reconcile in real time. I regret working so hard to stay faithful when you not only didn’t try, you pursued that and made it your "life’s work"! I regret let you come back home when you left. I regret getting married at all. Right now, I wish I had never even met you.

- I’m not living up to my own morals and commitments

I made a promise to myself on that bridge in the Keys "this is it, no more I don’t love yous or cheating and I’m out". I haven’t lived up to that. I don’t want to live up to that. I always thought cheating was a deal-breaker now multiple cheats over many years and I’m still here. I’ve always been proud that I never cheated. Now I REALLY wish I had. I feel like I’m "letting you get away with cheating" by staying.

- You have betrayed me

To me, this is the ultimate betrayal. So many men, for so many years. Cheating while pregnant.giving me an STD. Not being invested in recovery when we had issues and attempted to reconcile. Shifting blame to me. Never coming clean. Lying when you did come clean. Not caring or trusting me enough to tell the truth. Like I said, the betrayal cover the entire marriage, not just when you were actively cheating.

- I blamed myself

I was obsessed with timelines because I wanted to see "where we were" in the marriage while you were cheating. What was I doing? Why didn’t I suspect? When I did suspect, why didn’t I confront or push you harder for answers? Did I "cause" you to cheat? I’m at a better place now, but this is all part of "how could you do this to me"?

- I don’t trust you

I always suspected there was more cheating that what you had admitted to. I ALWAYS aligned the "I don’t think I love you" declarations to cheating. I believed (or at least told myself) what you said. I always trusted you to be where you said, with whom you said and doing what you said you were doing. The cheating broke that trust. This has been compounded by the recent lying. You looked me in the eye and lied repeatedly to me. It comes easily to you. It came naturally to you. Even, small unimportant details. What else have you lied about? Are you a good enough liar to have beaten the polygraph? You said yourself "don’t believe anything I say. It is all unreliable information". How do we rebuild trust? Being open, honest and vulnerable. You still struggle with that.

- My love for you is diminished

I was in love with you when we dated and got married. Every time you were cheating and said "I don’t think I love you anymore", my love for you diminished. When you treated me as your last priority, my love diminished. When you withheld sex, my love diminished. Then D-Day changed everything. My love for you "broke" that day. The subsequent lying, minimizing, lack of empathy and apathetic approach to recovery diminished it further. It was reduced to the bare minimum. The love that I will always have for you based on history, familiarity and being the mother of my children was all that was left. There was literally nothing left to destroy. We still had a "roof and 4 walls" but barley. There are times through all this I hate you for all this betrayal. It’s fleeting, but there.

- I question your character

I have always known you were selfish. I have joked about you being all about "me,me,me" over the years. There are many character issues revealed that are concerning to me. Are you selfish or a full blown narcissist? How bad is the lying? Is it pathological? Are you a sociopath? Do you have feelings for anyone but yourself? Can you be empathetic? Can you "own your shit"? There are concerns for me that you are a "dry drunk". Though not actively cheating, are all the character issues that allowed you to cheat still present?

- I’m "stuck" on details

My whole reason for asking you about your cheating was to reveal the truth, forgive and move on. That has been impossible. Due to lying, withholding, trickle truth and memory issues, the story has changed several times. Dates shift, number of instances shift, there are no answers about some aspects (when and how they started, how long, how many times, when and how it ended). Regardless of "why", I don’t have the information I need to move on. That is beyond frustrating for me.

- This is eating away at me

The hurt hasn’t eased at all. A continual loop of "how could you do this" plays in my mind. I have intrusive thoughts and images. It affects me during sex. I want to move on but I can’t with all the gaps. I want to focus on the future but I have trouble even thinking about the future. I want to be "one" with you and have a great life. I have to be able to "get out of my head". That’s a struggle. I continue to lose weight and find no joy in life. Things I used to care about are "meh". I have an attitude of "why bother, my life is all bullshit"

I also had my wife read this aloud to me and we discussed it as we walked through it. I would say it met the OP’s goal of "rockin her core and hitting her hard"

[This message edited by ImaChump at 3:44 AM, Tuesday, January 23rd]

Tell him the pain, the anger, the humiliation will never leave you. The first of many DD’s was over 50 years ago, and I still remember each one of them in excruciating detail. You can reconcile. You can forgive. But you’ll never forget and you’ll never trust again!

It’s meant
That everything I believed in and held so dear was untrue. For 25 years I thought we had a love story. We were different. Solid. Unshakeable. And he shook us 😢 and put me and my children at risk.

I feel I will never recover