SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hey guys,

A year ago, I was in a dead marriage and had been for years. Her affair was 1998. Only one I know of. I did everything wrong upon discovery in 1999. Pick me dance, marriage counseling immediately, going to the church for help-all wrong.

Then one morning, December 10, 2022, day after wife retired, she reached under the covers and it was unmistakable what she wanted. I still stunk from the gym the night before (why bother showering before bed). Sex restarted-it had been 6 months since prior sex. A true WTF moment if there ever was one.

My friends at SI said to go for it, and I did. Scared shitless. Been thru false R, so I did not want to be fooled again. I kept waiting for the ice to break underneath me at any minute, but it has not so far.

Anyway-sex is great. (Yes, I now shower at the gym). We are spending time together. We talk, cuddle, laugh together. It is easy. She has done many things to help build trust. She has gotten an inheritance (nice sized), and when she dies 25% goes to our sons, 75% to me (I was stunned). She said she needs to make sure I am taken care of. FWW is making a huge effort, and so am I. This may not work, and I know that, but I owe it to ME to try, and be all in.

I am in love with her again. But she is not my soulmate anymore.

My problem-the woman I fell in love with in 1989, the one who had sex with me on the first date, the one who I have never gotten over-my soulmate-is gone. I am desperately in love with her on a level that is so deep, it’s like it is imprinted on my soul. Before you guys think I romanticize this, I still have every card and letter she wrote me-so it was real.

I have grieved over this, and even wrote her a goodbye letter, like a grieving husband would write to a dead wife. It sucks big time. I am glad I had a love like that, because it was so special and wonderful. But, God, I miss her the way she was.

IC thinks I should try to merge my wife (current version) with my soulmate (original version). I have tried, without success. I see my wife as somewhat "damaged goods". It really was not the A that did her in, it was the way she treated me afterwards (I stuck it out of my two kids, not her. Then circumstances and finances kept me locked in place. Add to that a poor self image). I love her now, but I know the shit that exists inside her. I keep the original version of her locked in place in my memory , and that is unfair to my W now. The original version cannot do anything wrong, as she is frozen in my memories. She is perfect in my memory. No living woman could compete.

Hopefully, someone else sees their spouse as two people, and has somehow reconciled the two. How do I merge these two versions of my W?

A touching post. Reminded me of what widows struggle with, the memorialized person of their late dear wife, with which no later girlfriend can ever compete.

Yet I soured on the idea of the man I 'thought' my SAWH was, since clearly he hid tons of himself from revelations that might have changed the course of our dating relationship. But still, on D-Day 1, I collapsed on the floor, sobbing in grief for the loss of that dearly beloved man I 'thought' I had found, that 'one in a million guy I had to look all over the world to find.' (He is from the far Southern part of the globe and I'd never dated someone from a far-off country. I thought he was sent just for ME...) 12 years later on D-Day 2, no tears were shed.

I truly hope your WW has done the work to get to the bottom of her issues and for her to be able to share that intelligently with you.

How do I merge these two versions of my W?

The truth is that you don't.

Both versions are the same person. You can't merge them...you have to accept that they are one in the same.

The person in the version you held on to, had the broken characteristics that led to the affair inside them all along.

This is why it is soooo very important for the wayward to understand the why. What was it that allowed the crappy person to take over. Some people can not control that side of them and they are not safe partners. Others when they dig and confront how much of an delusional asshole they can be, work to confront that asshole side of them and do the work to become better people.

This hit me when I was watching an episode of the original Star Trek when a transporter malfunction split Captain Kirk into two....an evil one and a good one.

The good Kirk was kind and soft spoken but could not make a decision. The evil Kirk was capable of rape and violence but was cunning and resourceful.

This is the dichotomy of ALL people but especially waywards. In certain situations they are capable of giving in to that side of them that lies, cheats, compartmentalizes and so on where a faithful spouse has the boundaries that will keep them from doing so.

You have the 2 versions of your wife reversed.

The perfect soul mate is the one that cheated on you and treated you cruelly.

The "damaged goods" is the woman that is now loving, kind, and engaged in the marriage.

I too view my WW as two different people. I know they are both one in the same, but the one I loved pre affair is now more like a friend with benefits. She is broken and not yet interested in fixing who she is. For that reason, while I work on myself, she will be nothing more than a FWB. In time, as I heal and figure out what I want in a partner, she will have to work on herself because I'm not interested in spending the rest of my life with a friend, I'd much rather have a life partner.

No merger required for me — my wife is both the best and worst versions of her own self.

It sounds to me like you’re mourning the loss of that sense of ‘special’ or innocence lost when the monogamous bond (two people against the world) is broken. Thus, the before and after versions of your wife.

It is loss, and I certainly grieved for several years.

And I think it is okay to reflect on those letters your wife wrote back in the day, the feelings expressed were real. I have similar stack of amazing things my wife wrote to me pre-A, and I showed those to her after dday to ask how those feelings for me could evaporate so quickly during and after the A.

In my case, my wife kept her A a secret for many years, so I also experienced the distance she kept from me, I just didn’t know why all that time, until she chose to confess.

So, I know the sadness you are describing. I lived it too.

Ultimately, I mourned what our marriage was, I processed that grief.

What we celebrate now is that we choose each other every day, and have built something new and have endured trauma most relationships don’t survive.

My wife was never all good and perfect and neither is she evil to core — she betrayed her own standards at a low, difficult time in her life.

Being all in is brave and getting to vulnerable again is a step a lot of us never make.

Roll with that for a while, focus on who your wife is today.

Our pain changes us too, we’re not who we were. For me, I am a far stronger, and a little wiser soul than who my wife first met.

Now take my post as as my opinion only. I am somewhat of an outlier in my positions, but that is the beauty of this site, the varied points of view.

After Dday, my view of my W was shattered. Yes, she had problems, but I though that at the core, she was a good and decent person. I would have given my life for her. Dday destroyed that feeling of special and it was never coming back.

I felt guilty not being able to "get over" the cheating, as I am a person of faith and commanded to forgive. But how I felt was very unforgiving. What helped me were two books. The first was How Can I Forgive You. It counters the traditionally binary choice of forgiveness with the third option of integration. This helped me immensely.

The second book, Cheating in a Nutshell, helped me put labels and definitions on what I was feeling and why. They take an evolutionary psychology approach that is very refreshing.

The reason I feel like an outlier is that I think that very few couples survive infidelity in the true sense of what we romanticize as survival. They may stay together for practical or impractical reasons, but the scar is perminant and irrevocably alters the relationship on a quantum level. CIAN addresses this issue. I gave my WW 6 months to get her shit together and demonstrate to me that she was a good partner. She didn't. But during that 6 months, I realized that I saw her as damaged and soiled from her cheating, and there was no way I would ever see her as clean again,no matter what she did. I may pack that idea down, into the recesses of my psyche, but it would always be there. I had reached the contempt stage of the relationship. Some people arecwired to forgive infidelity, I'm not. It is a Rubicon for me.

Good luck on your journey.

I think I read your sitch this way: R started a little over a year ago. You've started integrating your view of your W from 2 people into 1, but it takes a LOT longer than a year. My bet is that you'll come to see your W as one person. You don't have to work on it consciously - it's organic, in my experience. Until then, I agree with Bluer.

IMO, there's a possibility you'll come down where Justsomeguy did. That's OK - what counts is being authentic and true to yourself. If D is what you want, my reco would be to not force yourself to stay.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 3:20 PM, Wednesday, January 10th]

I’m sorry, I don’t know your story, other than what you have posted here but I think sharing a part of mine could be relevant in terms of duplicity.

We had an amazing MC. One session I tried to minimize and threw out that I felt like someone else had had the affair…not me.

I will never forget this. After I said that, he rolled over in his chair, leaned forward, looked me directly in the eyes, and said "but it was you." Those words "but it was you" have never left over 13 years later. It was a big aha moment for me and my husband too. I had to figure out how the person everyone thought I was (including myself) could do the things I did.

The process of digging deep and evaluating every dark thought is a long and arduous process. It is my belief that when done with a souse while trying to reconcile, it will become a very intimate time. It is one where the two of you feel raw and vulnerable, together. It is a sharing of things about ourselves that we are ashamed of and don’t want people to see. It is a tearing down and building back up again. It is consistency and remorse.

It has been a learning process on both our parts about each other. I have learned so much about my husband and myself. Sometimes we have 2 dimensional images of who we think people are. We have to let ourselves see the whole picture.

So my question is, what changed that day your wife reached under the covers? Intimacy is not just sex. Is she showing you how she got where she is today? Or did you just jump tracks and land there?

I think if she is able to reconcile the two images, you will have an easier time with that too.

This post and the responses all ring loudly in my ears. Never ever would I have believed my deeply faithful wife would get naked and crawl into another man’s bed, plan a future together, lie, deceive and jeopardize our marriage and our family for a narcissistic lying AP who merely used her as a cum dump. Yet, it happened 13 years into what I believed was a perfect union and lasted 4 years.
Try as I may, 30+ years later I still struggle with who she was then, and who she is now. By the Grace of God, the marriage survived but we will never be the same as before innocence was destroyed. For me, it’s the indifference I feel toward her that’s the hardest obstacle to overcome. I love her but cannot truly say "I’m in love with her." I stayed for many reasons, but mostly because my vows meant something to me and my children were innocent victims of a situation they had nothing to do with. Reconciliation does not equal restoration. Some things are just irreversible and irrevocably broken.

My problem-the woman I fell in love with in 1989, the one who had sex with me on the first date, the one who I have never gotten over-my soulmate-is gone.

You weren't in love with your wife, you were in love with who you thought she was. That woman never existed. You were, and apparently still are, in love with a dreamy fantasy of her with which no person can compete. That person had a horrible flaw that you never noticed until dday which allowed her to betray you and your family. Our understanding of the people we love evolves over time. Generally, their flaws and foibles are slowly discovered and merged into our view of them so our love for them doesn't wane. I'm not a big proponent of "soul mates" , but really she wasn't. The woman you have now, while banged and tarnished by life and her own poor choices, is so much more a potential soul mate for you now then she was pre-dday.

[This message edited by grubs at 5:28 PM, Wednesday, January 10th]

I really like what walking on eggshells said, and old wounds. That is reflective of my own experience. We are all light and darkness in some form or fashion to varying severity.

While I would take the affair back in a heartbeat if I was allowed, we don’t live in a work where it works that way. The aftermath of those damaging, painful and irresponsible decisions launched me forward to understand my darkness and repair and heal as much of it as possible. It’s taken years. I will never be perfect but I am awake and far more self aware.

I learned to speak up. To be reliable, vulnerable, trustworthy. To love and be loved. To protect my energy and my connections with others. To be responsible for my own happiness.

The woman my husband was married to for the first two decades was often well meaning, but a people pleaser who expected a return on my investments. Our marriage was good but it was limited to whatever capacity I could give it.

Today my capacity is bigger, much bigger. As a result our emotional intimacy has grown, in fact intimacy of all levels is deeper.

I wish I hadn’t had the affair. I wish I had chosen to just get therapy or talk to my husband or anything else. Even if it had been ask for a divorce.

What we have had to appreciate is it’s sacred in new ways. We survived something we shouldn’t have. I have been given opportunities that I didn’t deserve; otherwise known as grace. We have made a lot of new and beautiful memories that sparkle a little brighter. It was like a near death experience with a new appreciation of life. We both came to the realization we could be fine apart on our own, but we do not want that. We are choosing each other with intention and focus.

I didn’t say all that to brag. I said it because what you focus on expands. If you choose to remain married you may have to challenge your thoughts, beliefs, and focus. I do not deny you lost something worth grieving, I merely suggest that you have a set narrative that may not align with your true desires.

I don’t believe we have soul mates. I think every relationship teaches us about ourselves, and we are compatible with hundreds if not thousands of people out there. It’s romanticizing and putting someone on a pedestal when they are a mere human the same as you.

For me, the person I was when I cheated was cumulative of who I always was. There were many things present inside me that made it possible. I fixed those things, it would not be possible moving forward. I don’t think that makes me two people. It makes me more conscious and responsible today and moving forward. He married the one that was capable of it, he remained married to someone better who appreciates the opportunity to be by his side far better than that prior version of me.

That doesn’t mean that’s what has happened with your wife, but that’s what you have to come to terms with. Has she evolved from the situation in a way that you can test the waters towards trust and vulnerability now? If so then expand your focus. If not, consider a different path. You deserve to have the full marriage, don’t accept anything less.

I also just read that it’s only been a year for you.

It takes a long time to recover and a long time for the ws to change. Be patient with yourself. It’s been almost 7 years for us, with improvements moving through from then until now.

At this point I would not put too much pressure on yourself to feel any certain way. You must allow the process to evolve. I still think it’s good people have described it here, but it’s perfectly natural for you to feel a lot of conflict this early in the game.

I have known my W for 35 years. She has always been the most honest, caring, giving person I know. I know her better than anyone. After Dday it was shocking what she had done and completely out of her character.

I can no longer see the purity and innocence, she took that and threw it away. But, she is still the person with the kindest heart I know. She is still a person of integrity and a beautiful soul.

I don’t see her as a dishonest cheater, I see her as someone that is capable of doing those things.

For me, the person I was when I cheated was cumulative of who I always was.

True, but easy to forget. That means we are cumulative results of our experiences now, and we keep accumulating experience as we live.

What we have had to appreciate is it’s sacred in new ways.

I haven't seen post-d-day M described this way before, but it resonates deeply with me. I think it's important to remember that the post-d-day M can be sacred in new ways only if the partners make it so - and we can make it so.

2 cents.

The person that betrayed you is the same person who now says they will move heaven and earth to return. All that has changed is time, experiences and the conditions of that person and others. Whatever the person was or is or whatever, if they had the same exact scenario occur and they were that same person in that same time, they would do the exact same thing again.

The WS may learned something or many things, but people are not two people, they are one person. I would have difficulty seeing the relationship as any less conditional.

I apologize in advance if this sounds harsh. I promise it comes from a place of wanting to be encouraging. I would not write this to someone whose A or d-day was recent.

Human beings and human lives are dynamic; for relationships to endure they must also be dynamic. You are likely not the person that you were in 1989 (or at least I hope not) - some part of that person still exists but you have also learned and grown and been shaped by your experiences over the past 35 years. Your wife is no different. She is not the same person she was in 1989 and, I hope, that she is not the same person she was in 1998 either. 10 years from now, she will likely be a different person than she is today. Expecting a person (or a relationship) to remain the same over time, is unrealistic and immature. Getting people to believe in fairytales, and "They all lived happily ever after" has done a lot of us a disservice. It sets people up for disappointment and unhappiness. There is no static, perpetual state of bliss. For real love to endure, each person must be willing to flex, change, and grow with the other as their needs and desires change.

I keep the original version of her locked in place in my memory , and that is unfair to my W now. The original version cannot do anything wrong, as she is frozen in my memories. She is perfect in my memory. No living woman could compete.

Hard agree with the part I bolded. No person is perfect - and despite your rose-tinted memory, your wife never was. The fact that you EVER held her up to that standard may sound or feel romantic, but it was not fair or healthy for either of you. It set you both up for lives of perpetual disappointment. You with her, and her with her inability to ever be her actual imperfect self. That was NEVER fair to her OR you. Can you imagine the pressure it must be like to live with someone who is constantly comparing you to some unrealistic standard of perfection? With that in mind, I actually don't think you should merge the two versions of your wife in your brain. I think you should do your best to try to revise your recollection of the "perfect" person you "remember" her being. THAT was the inaccurate part and THAT is what you are getting hung up on. The person you believe is your "soulmate" doesn't exist and never did. It is a caricature of a fantasy.

I promise I'm not trying to be dismissive of your feelings or discount the harm she did in the A or the aftermath, but you get ONE life and it sounds like yours is pretty great right now. We always say that an A is a dealbreaker, and it absolutely was.... BUT... you have made certain choices, and you need to take ownership for your choices and for your future happiness. Life is too short to spend being disappointed that a fairytale that never existed, did not come true. Your wife only gets one life too. If you really believe that she is not your soulmate and the person you want to spend the latter chapters of your life with, you should let her know so she can make the appropriate decisions and adjustments. You both deserve to be happy.

You weren't in love with your wife, you were in love with who you thought she was. That woman never existed.

So true

Here’s something to contemplate…you aren’t the person she thought you were either. Her mental model of you was not accurate either. No one is a complete open book, everyone fills the gaps with their beliefs.

If you are attuned to it, you are always learning about who the other person is.

A lot of people (most!) are not attuned to it.

It's like wanting to go back to believing in Santa Claus--innocence is magical but not necessarily real. You wanted Santa Claus to be real but he's not. He never was.

We cannot stop getting older and wiser, and unfortunately, trauma is the cruelest teacher of all. If you are able to avoid being educated by violence, crime, catastrophe, betrayal, or illness, then you are very lucky. But if you are not that lucky, you must survive by finding beauty in the world again--this world, the real world, where bad things happen to good people--even you. And if you want to enjoy life to its fullest while you are here on this earth, then the beauty you are able to see in your life now--post-innocence and post-trauma--is what you need to value and appreciate. And in this case, that seems to be the R you have now.

I don't believe in settling or avoiding, but I do believe that learning to appreciate what we do have rather than dwelling on what we lack or lost or used to have DOES seem to be the recipe for happiness.

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 3:16 PM, Friday, January 12th]

Thanks to everyone who replied.

The person I fell in love with may not exist.

I only had one other girl I was in love with (a college GF).

My FWW bowled me over. I fell hard for her. I thought we had a good marriage, and were happy. I had 8 1/2 years of that. Then the A. Then the aftermath where everything was my fault.
(That last sentence was bullshit-very little of the marriage problems were my fault, 50% at most, and the A is 100% hers).

I know she is one person, and the one I fell in love with hurt me. I said the same thing to IC. But for some reason, it does not feel that way.

I don’t think I can love her like I used to. She was my number one. Now, my sons are number one. My sister is number two, I am number 3, and she is number 4. I don’t think I can push her up, I’ve tried, but my sons and sister never betrayed me.

I know D is open to me. I am not afraid to go there if necessary. But I am not ready to give up forever yet.

Also, I am working on R, but she is not. She is "let’s pick up from here and be happy." She will not go to IC, and will not talk about A. I understand why, but I think it is unhealthy for her. All the guilt she is carrying. I can’t fix her.

I think back to the way we were. We talked about anything. She is different, as noted by E8. And I am too. The guy who believed living as an honest person, and everything would work out is gone.

We have sex and some level of intimacy. I am open with her (even though this could be dangerous for me). She knows my fears, my insecurities, and how I have felt over the past 25 years. I have opened up to her about hurts, why I shut down, how I hope OM has died, and I hope it was long and painful for him. I have opened up about how I was bullied in High School, and the trama I endured when my best friends dad died in a plane crash. She knows the best and the worst about me. She knows my hopes for us.

I think I know mostly about her. But I don’t know for sure. Pre A, I thought I knew everything about her, (obviously I did not). I thought I was special to her. It’s that feeling I miss. I was special. It still hurts, and always will hurt, how I was replaced in her heart and her bed so quickly. EA started in spring of 98, and she was fucking him by June 98. The A was 6 months, and she thought she was in love. Then, even in my horrible pain, I agreed to try to work this out, and I was the asshole. He did this for her, he did that for her, she did not want to betray him, I called it fucking because I was minimizing what they had. Nothing different than any BS experienced.

Add to that, my poor choice to not discuss it with her after first year, to not throw in her face, and to not talk to anyone about the A. It became my shame, but it really wasn’t. I was so lonely. My friends that knew about A in the beginning were great for the first year. Then they stopped asking me how I was. I wanted to talk about how I was feeling, but they either assumed I was "over it", or were afraid to open a can of worms. My newer friends (post A friends), I never told them. So I could not get close to anyone-what would they think of me ? The guys would laugh behind my back, think I was inadequate. But I have found a few buddies-long term friends-who I have told about the A. These guys have hugged me, prayed with me, and told me I don’t have to be alone anymore. They said they wish they had known sooner.

Any additional advice is welcome!