SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

OK, just out of curiosity.....

How much of BS pain did you understand (in %'s )before you were cheated on ?

How much of BS pain did your WS understand ( in % 's) before the WS cheated ?

My score is I probably understood 3% of BS before I was cheated on.

The ex score is around 4% also before he cheated.

My ex and I didn't have close family and friends that had A's.

Both ex and I learned everything we both knew about A's and their aftermath from the entertainment we consumed. (songs, movies, tv shows etc)

ETA.

(I spent years of my life after Dday thinking that I've must've went crazy.

Had I had thread like this to read soon after Dday, I would've known what I was going through was normal.)

[This message edited by Dorothy123 at 5:40 PM, Tuesday, February 7th]

I’d say something less than 10%. The degree and longevity of the emotional pain was nothing I knew was possible, and I’ve never heard anything ever send a message that it is like this. This is easily 10 times worse than I would have guessed before going thru it myself.

I had absolutely no idea. I understood it would hurt, but the depth of the pain is indescribable.

I also don't think my WH could have ever imagined the damage his A did to our marriage, our family, his job, our finances and our social lives.

Devastation is an understatement.

I didn't have the slightest notion of the depths of pain, feelings of humiliation and worthlessness that come with the revelation that the person with whom I had shared such an intimate par of you life had betrayed me in the most primal way. Although the end month affair occurred just over fifty years ago, it still reverberates through my relationships with not only my WW but with others who knew but failed to inform me. Back in 1972 I would say I considered he pain might be 5% now it's still way off the graph..as for WW I feel sometimes she still doesn't appreciate the devastating paints full intensity.

I had no clue how deeply I would be hurt and devastated and how hard my reality and self image would be rocked.

I could never have conceived that my WH was capable of lying and cheating, to ME! There were so many ripples of realization and reality shifting that I really was lost for a while. Were it not for my children, I might have found a way to end my pain permanently and looking back at how low I let that trauma drag me is frightening.

I had watched several marriages unravel, including my sister's and felt sorry for the BS, and anger toward the WS, and confused that we were all so fooled by the charade of happily married they carried out for so long. We watched as a couple as more than half our social group divorced, and always were grateful we were so solid and talked about how lucky we were, with my WH cheating all the way through his late 40's and 50's with another married woman. I was blindsided.

I didn't understand a fraction of what betrayal reality felt like, or how grinding, relentless and debilitating it could be, or how much sleep and weight and hair I would lose to the nonstop churning through the facts and the lies and piecing together their story and mine. I am pretty sure this mess has shaved years off my life from the stress, and I am certain I am permanently changed in ways I did not want or need to change.

In percentages, maybe I got it by 10% before it happened to me. My WS barely gets it at all, still.

I’ve been a divorce lawyer for three decades. I thought I had some appreciation for the pain and trauma a betrayed spouse goes through. I’ve seen soooo many devastated people, I was sure I had a firm concept on the depth, scope, duration, and general impact of infidelity.

No. I did not. Not even close.

I can only hope my WW had as little idea about the trauma and pain she was inevitably inflicting upon me by her long term affair with my best friend. God forbid she had 1% awareness, because if she had more than that I just don’t think I could sustain the effort I’m making to reconcile with her.

Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread so far.

Prior to me being cheated on, I thought that A's were fun and harmless things that would take a BS around a week to heal from.

When I did get cheated on, I was shocked at my reaction to the A.

So, I thought I was going crazy.

This thread is meant to prove to the newly betrayed that what they are going through is , sadly, normal.

Hugs to all.

I thought I was prepared. I was wrong. Maybe 3%

Mine was doing things in 2009. I knew something happened. The phone hiding and other things.

I gave chase for a while to see what I found. After a while I got tired of coming up empty handed.

Yrs later I finally check things. Checked the sent folder. She forgot to delete all of that. The shock and awe. If I could bottle that up. I would make millions.

You follow the rabbit hole never knowing the monster that lurks in it. Once you find it. Be ready. It's a bitch.

I got maybe 5-8% of it. Like everyone else I did not know that pain like the A pain was even possible. It was horrific.

The more surprising thing for me was how I reacted to it though. Before the A, I always said that cheating was a deal-breaker, but on dday1 I couldn't even think of kicking him out. I am D'd now, and I know (should I be unlucky enough for this to happen to me again) that it IS a deal-breaker for me so I think I would be able to act more decisively in that scenario, but it still really surprised me that I wasn't able to drop him immediately on dday1.

Before and during my A, I thought it would be no big deal on either end. I believed much of what Hollywood shoves down our throats about A’s. That the BS must have done something wrong or at least not been special enough to stop me from having an A

Afterwards was a whole other story. Reading story after story was just awful. The pain literally radiates off of these pages. My pain grew the more I read and learned. If my pain was even half of what a BS experiences, well I cannot even imagine.

Duplicate post.

[This message edited by EllieKMAS at 2:13 AM, Thursday, February 9th]

I'm in the business of small numbers.

Something like 0.1% might be close. I've heard it said that people can't conceptualize one one thousandth of something. Conversely, if you don't understand the pain, maybe you can at most conceptualize the thousandth.

It's a deep, lasting pain, accompanied by permanent damage even after you heal.

Here's an example. I used to be happy when people announced and engagement or marriage. Now all I can think is they don't know the risk. They don't know it applies to them. Because until it applies to you, you can maintain the naive illusion that you are not affected by that problem.

I know affairs can happen in good marriages. I didn't think so before. That is painfully gained knowledge.

I would say as the ws that I didn’t think about it much at all because I believed he would never find out. But my impression was if he did that he would be upset.

I didn’t know anything about trauma, or that affairs gave PTSD to people.

When I became the bs, I would say I knew a lot of how damaging it was but you still could never be emotionally prepared. The shock of it alone took months to recover.

I knew.

I saw my mother destroyed by it. She has never been the same. And she revisited a fair bit of that devastation back on me and my older brother and sister.

I went many years with a bit of an invisible barrier between me and my life. Only 80% in. A little reticent. I got away with it because I have some natural advantages. Clever enough. Not bad looking. I carried myself well. Great general knowledge.

My redeeming thing was a handful of relationships, with my grandmothers most of all, also a few friends. I was decent and sincere in them.

I waited and waited until I could wait the storm out, take that thing, and that barrier between the world and me would go away. Eventually it did, almost.

So when I was betrayed, it was what I expected. It’s just so sad. Why do we do these things to each other? We should know better. I know better.

Probably 0%.

While I could imagine the anger I could never imagine how much devastation I'd feel from STBXWH and his continued affair. I could never imagine how the betrayal would continue and get even worse with new info coming out. The cherry on top was STBXWH's full lack of remorse for all he continued (and continues) to do with him throwing anything logical out the window.

STBXWH never understood the pain an affair could cause and looked down on others for HAVING affairs. He hated those who acted in an illogical manner. Now he still refuses to acknowledge any of the trauma or pain he's caused me/our child. He continues wanting the OW and can't wrap his head around me wanting a divorce for everything he's done.

I know I never had the idea of how much of a mindf@ck the WS pulls on the BS for all the blameshifting and gaslighting. It makes me feel like I'M the crazy one for wanting boundaries and respect. It's also crazy making seeing a person you've known for years doing all the things they hated others for/ranted often about.