Hello, Fret. Welcome to SI from a fellow madhatter.
Your story resonates for me because I also had a "years later" D-Day for an affair that happened when I was 19. In my case, it started out above board; my then-BF (now BH) and I were in a long distance relationship, and we had agreed that I could date the OM very casually. Unknown to me, BF only consented to this because he was hiding a drunken make out session with his sister's BFF. He was hoping this would lessen the impact when he finally came clean, while I thought it meant he was one foot out the door. I gradually escalated the emotional and physical intensity to cheating level, making no mention of that progression to BF, who thought things with OM had fizzled. I finally broke it off and confessed about the sex, but I minimized the full intensity of the A. I also refused to go no contact because I had promised OM we would always be friends. My BF was devastated, and in response to my clinging to the "friendship" with OM, he openly had an ONS with a girl at his college -- more for self-validation than for revenge, I believe. He also came clean about the BFF, but in his mind, what I had done was so much worse that his initial transgression was irrelevant. There is a strong argument that we should have cut our losses at this point. Instead, we rugswept the whole mess and got married.
Over the years, I believed we had put our respective infidelities in the past. Unknown to me, he was still having depression and mind movies. Every time there was other stress in his life, the memories of the affair would pop up, triggering what he thought were irrational fears that he didn't know the whole story. He started asking more detailed questions, and I went into a blind, lying panic. If I had just come fully clean all those years ago and gone NC, I could have avoided so much damage, but I held on to the idea that my lies were protecting him. Really, they were protecting me. All his worst nightmares turned out to be true: the emotional and physical specifics were more extensive, more intense, and more frequent than I had let on.
Anyway, this is a long winded way of explaining that I have seen the years-later side of affairs and understand the nature of the damage they do. The BS can find it hard to get support. "It was so long ago," people say. "Why does it still matter? Are you really going to throw your marriage away for something that happened years in the past?" They don't grasp the impact of discovering that your life was a lie. The length of time can actually make things worse. For all those years, the BS was unaware of the reality of their marriage and was deliberately denied the agency to respond to that reality. My BH didn't understand that he had untreated PTSD from the months that I stayed in contact with OM. He blamed himself for not being able to let it go.
I also understand that none of that would have made it ok for my BH to cheat on me after D-Day 2. He knew the impact that it would have. He knew where the door was and that he could walk through and slam it behind him, whether I told the truth or not. You don't have to reconcile with your WH. You also do not have to walk away. All you need to do is behave ethically and in what you believe is the best interest of your own future health and happiness.
It's a good thing, IMO, if you can use your own experience to help build empathy and compassion for your husband. It's not so good if you use it to let yourself off the hook, entitle yourself to behave badly, or stay in a toxic situation out of obligation and guilt. Unfortunately, I've seen a fair number of people in those latter situations lately, but that doesn't sound like where you are.
I can give you hope. Four years out from D-Day 2, my husband and I are in a really good place. We love each other -- really love each other, with both passion and compassion -- and we have some wonderful plans for the next stage of our lives. There is another member whose husband had an almost two year affair while she was here on SI doing the work of a WS. She isn't posting much anymore, but that's because she and her H worked through it and are living their best life together. She would have been within her rights to decide on D, and it was absolutely on the table if he hadn't done his own work to her satisfaction. But he did. I hope you'll get to hear from her, too.
I'm glad you found us here and that we can be a valuable sounding board. Only you and your H can decide whether you'll be able to heal from mutual betrayal. At two months from D-Day, it's probably too early to even guess. But from what you describe, I believe it is a viable path for you.
[This message edited by BraveSirRobin at 12:15 AM, Sunday, March 12th]