SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

P122,

You wrote, Most of what my wife says I don't believe. I have this feeling in my gut.

Did she write out a timeline and take a polygraph?

The problem is you know there is more and it will come out years or decades from now and set you back to 0 again.

Still a wreck 18 months out, but I believed my W. Every day I got more confirmation that she was truthful.

You really need to examine what you're doing and figure out if you're on the right path for you. A lot of what you write says you aren't.

The first year I was a mess but I was working on myself. By 18 months I had lost 50lbs, hit my goal weight and got into decent shape.

18 months was a turning point for me. Shock had worn off, I had to reel my anger in. I had lost the comparisons to AP, my self esteem was much improved, and I believed my W. I questioned her forward and backwards about the A, making sure to point out how the AP used her and lied to her. I made sure she understood how devastating the A’s were and how it was all fantasy, not reality. Through IC and many many discussions, I’m positive she does not look back on the A fondly, it makes her sick.

It’s was also at 18 months that I had to start letting go of some baggage. I started looking at the things I believed and no longer worried about. I started processing triggers, instead of an anger response, I looked at what it was telling me. Those things have to be processed and discarded along the path.

Healing will not chase you down and find you, you have to decide to start moving. The journey takes a minimum of 3-5 years. You don’t want to get to the 5 year mark and still have all the questions and doubts those have to be front and center and dealt with. Once you have satisfied that question or doubt, stop carrying it, you aren’t rug sweeping, you are discarding.

I hope that helps. It has worked for me so far. I still have sad moments and triggers I just deal with them differently now.

All I have to add is dont be me. Your phrase about not being miserable enough to leave resonated with me. Its like having low grade nausea....not enough to put you off your feed completely,but certainly enough to keep you from fully enjoying a good meal as you had, especially your favorite foods.

Id like to think that, knowing what I now know, itd have been different and I would have divorced and moved on to build a new life with someone else (I did eventually do that very thing, but not through divorce).

Count the cost Brother, count the cost. Existing is not living.

Excelsior Excelsior sir.

ETA: I may have missed this but may I ask how old you two are?

[This message edited by DobleTraicion at 3:21 PM, Thursday, November 24th]

At 18 mos post Dday I was just leaving. My ex wife was still less mature than a child. There wasn’t anything she could say that I believed. While I’m certain she was no longer cheating, my existence with her was one of me healing by myself. She chose not to help me, she chose not to go down to the depths of hell with me and help carry me out. He actions made her just a person. Certainly not a wife. That was 2015. While I’ve largely moved on from this with a new life, not a single day has gone by in which I haven’t thought about her and how she treated me, especially during my divorce in 2017. I would’ve saved a ton of pain and frustration if I’d been done w her on Dday.

I’m at 20 months post D day. I still don’t sleep more than an average of 3-4 hours a night. I love my wife more than anything and will do whatever makes her happy with complete disregard for myself. (She lost her mother to cancer at age 10 and her father at age 23. She’s 50 now, I’m 55. I feel like she’s had so much loss that she deserves to be happy. As for recovery, I just don’t think she’s geared to being supportive. I don’t think emotionally she handles the pain. So she doesn’t, and hasn’t done any of the basics to helping me through any of this. We have a great time when we are together doing things, but her lack of empathy to me feels more like I/we just don’t matter enough for her to put in any work on recovery. I have been goi g to IC but it’s not helping much anymore. My personal physician had to cancel a wellness visit for me and they have been trying to reschedule but I’ve been ignoring the calls as I really don’t care what happens to me from here on out. Should a serious health issue pop up, at this point I will not fight it. I love being with my wife, but at the same time I don’t feel like I’m worth her effort to help. I just take life one day at a time anymore. I know this isn’t a positive response, but I’m in a wait and see status.

At 18 months out I was 4 months past D day #2. He had told me about 3 more As he'd had during our joke of a marriage.
From D day 1 I had been asking him if he'd done it before because he had always worked out of town. Perfect scenario for a lying cheater.
One of those 3 As lasted about 5 years. They were in an actual relationship. 🤢
There was non stop trickle truth before and after D day 2.
Basically now, I am just existing.

There's a lot missing. I even startle if he touches me without warning me first. Nothing will ever be the same.
No intimacy, don't even sit close to each other. He wants a good marriage but of course he would. He has been with multiple partners throughout our fake marriage, so he's gotten everything he wanted.
I just worked, took care of kids & the house, did an excellent job with the finances & he had me lookin stupid for 21 years. It was awesome for him.
He claims he's ashamed, he's sorry, he loves me, blah, blah...

He doesn't even look the same to me, he just looks like someone I live with that is a really good liar & isn't to be trusted.
I am at the 4 year mark & feel like a shell just trying to get through this life.