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My IC keeps telling me that she thinks if he cheats again, I won’t be as devastated the next time. It will still hurt but not as badly. Has this happened to anyone? If so, has that been your experience? My first husband cheated on me also, and I can say that the second husband cheating hurts more. That’s the closest I can get to a comparison.

I guess I would like to hear from some of the people hit a second time.

My feeling is that I would not be as devastated. I would be upset, but I believe I would simply pack up and divorce. It would definitely suck, but I wouldn't be riddled with waffling and uncertainty.

It’s worse the second time around.

It shows they really don’t care and maybe never did.

And you feel worse about yourself for giving them an opportunity to do it again.

So I have zero experience in this, but I have wondered this exact same question. While there is no doubt in my mind I would D if another A came to light … would it hurt less/same/more?

Honestly, my gut is telling me it would probably crush me harder then the first time because I took a chance at R, going "all in" and having been played a fool not once, but twice. In addition, I would be inclined to think that this is just who they are/have always been - this would probably vary in extremities if you have been with your WS for years and years (having your whole life feel like one big lie would be devastatingly unbearable).

THIS is probably my biggest fear of R … knowing I very well could be setting myself up for further and more extreme heartbreak. However, on the flip side if this were to happen a second time at least there is piece of mind knowing you’re walking away instead of wavering (that is unless you don’t stick to the boundary you’ve put in place under the circumstances).

I had multiple ddays. Same SOW. She reported to him-surprised-said no one ever.

I really didn’t care about much of anything for a long time.

I think I would liken it to death by very painful paper-cuts. I cared less each time. Thus the POLF. I honestly had no more f’s to give and truly stopped putting my all into R.

My tagline and profile spell it out in detail.

Sad. Really.

For me, he told me about his latest inappropriate contact while we were in MC. It didn't hurt as bad as the first time. I felt a release in that I'd done all I could and he was never going to be a safe partner, and it was time to D.

But, I'd spent time in IC and on SI. I could see that he wasn't doing the work and was getting ready to tell him I was done but he said his IC said MC would be good. I wanted to make sure I did everything I could.

Angered during the first affair but when it finally ended I allowed it to be rugswept.

15 years later it’s the mid life crisis affair and now I’m facing g a D.

Devastated is an understatement. However at dday2 (6 months from dday1) I was so angry since I was working my butt off to R, only to learn he was still cheating.

If there is a 3rd time I will be hurt but not devastated. I will make sure he’s moved out in 24 hours though.

Thank you all for your responses. It does sound like it just varies.

What is POLF?

Fuck - I would love to believe I would stick to my boundaries and kick him out, but I just don’t know if I would. I’m in IC and back in school, so hopefully I would.

The 1st Wife - holy shot yes- devastated doesn’t even begin to describe this.

Well for me it was not shocking like the first time. It honestly did not hurt as bad as the first time. I immediately went numb and knew without a doubt I fell out of love with my xWS in that instant. It was more fear that I needed to make a decision, that I feared breaking up my family.

In my case, i found out about the affair was told it was "only" emotional but it wasn’t an affair just they got too close. That became 6 months of hell and first false R. Dday2 was confession that it was full affair and then promises of NC and R. 2 years later and Dday3 was a few months ago, where I learned that she restarted the affair about 1 month after dday2.

No, it wasn’t as devastating as dday1 to me. After damn near 3 years of this crap I had learned a lot, focused on my own healing, and honestly wasn’t even that surprised. I also worked on my exit plan since dday2, and I knew how I was going to handle it if I had a 3rd. It definitely hurt, but I was more angry than anything else.

By attempting R I knew that I was risking another dday. My approach was accepting that it was likely, that i would find out if she was sooner or later, that I couldn’t prevent it from happening, and more importantly that I at least was keeping my side of the deal and putting all in to the marriage. She failed, not me.

And I think that might be why it was less painful for me, because dday1/2 i felt and was certainly gaslit into thinking that I had some how caused her to cheat. Unmet needs or
some other garbage. Now I don’t feel that at all, and it’s more of her lose than mine. Not sure what I’m doing at this point, but I am way better off than I was 3 years ago. I don’t care at all if she does it again, that will only solve my problems and make things easier for me.

HellIsNotHalfFull

Not sure what I’m doing at this point, but I am way better off than I was 3 years ago. I don’t care at all if she does it again, that will only solve my problems and make things easier for me.

Not to threadjack, but does this mean you're not getting the divorce? She's getting another chance?

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 5:34 PM, Tuesday, October 8th]

Blue-

As I’ve been guilty of thread Jack myself, I’ll keep this short. I’ll post an update later on.

There's an article in the Healing Library on the Plain of Lethal Flatness:

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/documents/library/articles/recovery/plain-of-lethal-flatness/

[This message edited by leafields at 9:27 PM, Tuesday, October 8th]

My ex-husband had an exit affair. That didn’t even bother me, kind of made sense in an unfortunate way as his now wife and him were much better suited. It was the sharing custody of our son that broke my heart.

But this affair of my new husband has shook me to the core. Honestly the worst emotional pain I think I have ever experienced. I actually worry for his safety if he ever does this to me again. So I am unsure if I will be more hurt or just more angry? Either way if it does happen again their won’t even be a second I will consider staying.

When my WH had his first affairs in the 1970s I was devastated. We had a young child and we’re in a supposedly committed relationship. He chose to cheat anyway and we separated for more than 2 years. He wanted to come back and start over and I gave him the gift of my forgiveness. We moved away and married and had over 40 years of a good marriage and I regained all my trust in him only to have it dashed to the floor and spit on in 2023. He went behind my back and contacted one of his APs and tried to hide it. I was more devastated than all those years ago and still am. He flaunted it texting with her thousands of times for 9 weeks. My heart and my life are irretrievably broken this time and I feel like I have nothing left. Yes, the second "awakening" was worse for me.

My ex had multiple As. I am not sure the pain was much different. However, you now have tools you did not have then. Meaning, the first time it happens, we are spiraling in a dark hole that feels like you are all alone

Now you have this site. You can outline your boundaries now and make your plan, etc. You know what to do if you discover a new A and not to do.

Not that it does not hurt like heck. But you have a network now to help you navigate (IC, etc) and that is priceless for the wounded soul.

EDIT: I would say the year I had after I discovered the A and the discovery that he was doing it again was the worst. The aftermath of that - the decision to leave and how much better I felt, was not as bad. Maybe I needed to be kicked again to leave? IDK...but that year of false-R was the absolute worst thing I have ever experienced in my life.

False Reconciliation is MUCH MUCH WORSE in my opinion. If your partner now knows the damage they have done, what it did to you, and they do it again (or keep doing it) the mental mind____ of that experience was for me so much worse than the A.

Here were some of my personal highlights:

- I felt horrible about myself for giving him an opportunity to do it again.

- I now KNEW my partner is someone willing to lie to my face KNOWING that it will wreck me - understanding the emotional toll it takes and still doing it.

- I felt lost like I really didn't know my partner at all...and maybe never did.

- I felt like a fool to anyone I had told about the A to begin with and knew I had stayed.

- I felt embarrassed (even on this site where I was wholly anonymous) to admit that I had trusted anything he had ever said.

- Finding out the person who watched me cry, telling me I was crazy for worrying that something was happening, was shoving the knife in deeper at the same time.

- I felt hopeless and overwhelmed and very very very alone. My WH was not going to change and I had to realistically think and reassess my plans going forward, without him, which I had not wanted to do. I had gambled so big on our relationship - I'd moved, taking a huge step back in my career path, for less money, I had no friends who were not WH's friends nearby for support.

But, for me at least I think the period after d-day 1 and d-day 2 when I discovered it was all a lie and the A had started back up - that year, that year was the absolute WORST. THE LIES. The wondering. The pit in my stomach. The fights. The accusations and his denials. The crying. The anger. The thinking all of this is the hard work that R is, when it's really not nearly as hard as dealing with someone who has resurrected their A but will not admit it and is trying to make you think you are working things out.

The only thing I can say for having gone through that is it took me a lot less time to realize that our marriage was over and to actually TAKE ACTION MYSELF and to put down the hopium pipe. One year after d-day 2 I felt a LOT better about myself and my situation as I had a plan to leave (and would have acted on it sooner but-for COVID) whereas one year after d-day 1 I had just ended my year of false-R hell. And I made that comparison a lot in my mind at that time - that at least separating is better than false-r as all of false-r was just a big lie.

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 3:24 PM, Wednesday, October 9th]

I think this issue recycles to what I think is a key misunderstanding in this Infidelity-survival community:
Remaining in the relationship after discovering an affair does NOT equate to reconciliation.

It’s "reconciling" only in one of the three normal definitions of the term "reconcile": To bring oneself to accept. It doesn’t meet the other two usual definitions like: To reestablish a close relationship between or to settle or resolve.
Note how only one of the three definitions are self-directed (to bring ONESELF to accept) whereas the other two require the work of two.

What tends to kill reconciliation the fastest is discovering new falsehood. It’s when you are given hope, only to have it smashed; to be given a sense of progress, only to have it deleted. It’s when you are made abundantly clear by your WS that THEIR definition of reconciliation is more akin to you following that least-applicable and least-appropriate definition while their two definitions of reconciliation are "move on", "get over it", and "rugsweep".

So does the second time hurt more or less? Well... I guess it’s dependent on how the WS behaved during the period after the initial d-day. If there was no effort to reconcile other than you trying to bring yourself to accept he cheated, then maybe it hurst slightly less because of the inevitability of a repeat.

To quickly respond to Bigger's post - the thing about R versus false R is that while we can sit in the cheap seats and say "this is R" or "this isn't R" most times the WS is doing at least some of the things you would expect from someone trying to R. My WH participated and did some of the things you would expect from someone trying to R. We talked endlessly about what had happened - and I mean many many many hours. He read several books about affairs, he went to IC. He played the role of someone attempting to R just enough it was hard to tell he was not really doing it (and the reality was in his mind that somehow he was going to help me heal and keep his A - having "us" the way it was before and having his fun too - cake eating at its finest). Which is why I felt like a basketcase most days - I felt something was off, but also felt like he was invested in working it out - I felt like I was losing my mind.

He acted loving and caring on some days - cold as ice on others. He had a staggering amount of guilt and shame about the A...the fact that it was ongoing just exacerbated those feelings so he was moody - moodier than usual...and as someone who had never experienced it before, I could not tell the difference. Not really. Not for awhile, and really only because he gave up being so committed to the ruse because it was taking too long for things to go back to normal. Which is when I figured either I was being lied to or this shitty moody person was who I had ended up with. The realization that "we" were not going to be the same and this new version of us sucked was what got me back into detective mode...and then it didn't take long.

R means you are going to have to try to trust this person, or try to rebuild trust for them. There were little things that happened during that year that let me know he was not trustworthy....ugh, it was really terrible to live through.

Which is why in hindsight I say I should have started my plans to leave after about 2-4 weeks after d-day 1. IDK what would have happened with his A had I done that...but I would have been better off emotionally (but not financially).

[This message edited by ThisIsSoLonely at 3:36 PM, Wednesday, October 9th]

Definitely this is what it felt like after False R

- I felt horrible about myself for giving him an opportunity to do it again.

- I now KNEW my partner is someone willing to lie to my face KNOWING that it will wreck me - understanding the emotional toll it takes and still doing it.

- I felt lost like I really didn't know my partner at all...and maybe never did.

- I felt like a fool to anyone I had told about the A to begin with and knew I had stayed.

- I felt embarrassed (even on this site where I was wholly anonymous) to admit that I had trusted anything he had ever said.

- Finding out the person who watched me cry, telling me I was crazy for worrying that something was happening, was shoving the knife in deeper at the same time.

- I felt hopeless and overwhelmed and very very very alone. My WH was not going to change and I had to realistically think and reassess my plans going forward, without him, which I had not wanted to do. I had gambled so big on our relationship - I'd moved, taking a huge step back in my career path, for less money, I had no friends who were not WH's friends nearby for support.

Those are all great points. I think I became so numb and in shock that I had been put through False R for 2 more years thinking we were reconciling that I completely shut down. My feelings never came back for xWS and I had no desire to save the M at that point. I actually became more toxic to my xWS after that. I just didn't care.

One thing I knew for sure after False R was that his A's had NOTHING to do with me whereas after D-Day 1 I questioned if I was the cause. I knew without a doubt my xWS was a messed up person.