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I don’t think I’m giving us a fair chance at R as I’m holding back any love toward him.

Our relationship currently is that of good friends which is a good starting point but I’m not sure how to let my guard down to give/receive love. I’m holding onto a lot of embarrassment and shame about staying together and friends and some family don’t want to be around him so that means we’re not back to being a team.

(Although I guess we weren’t on the same team anyway if he had an affair for so long).

I know this post is more of the same with regards to my limbo and one day I hope to have a more productive post but we are where we are.

We're in a better place than we have been previously as I do feel that I’m softening around him, but as much as it feels right and we can have a family, I feel like it’s wrong to stay and I’m letting myself down. But the human part of me understands people make mistakes and get into situations that spiral out of control but then I’m gaslighting myself into minimising the severity of what he’s done. When I hear other peoples cheating stories which are less severe and they left, I think why am I still here. But I don’t feel strong enough to leave so maybe that means I’m on the right path.

Therapy just doesn’t seem to work I’ve even tried someone else but nothing helps.

Anyway sorry I’m waffling but essentially how do you let go of the pain, shame and embarrassment and rebuild a better relationship? How can I allow myself to fully love him again and be intimate again? How can I stop feeling like I’m missing out by staying?

Why can’t I make a clear decision to fully engage in R or to leave? In theory and what society tells you, I should leave (and have left already). Some days staying seems more painful than leaving and other days leaving seems more painful than staying.

Just want this pain to end and my mind to be clear and have peace in my life and starting living again and making plans and not being embarrassed about my choices and feel empowered. But I don’t feel empowered right now.

It makes 3-5 years to heal... be easy on yourself.

I’m 10 years out from DD and it’s an ongoing healing process for me that will probably continue for the rest of my life on some level. One thing that has really helped me is EMDR therapy. Look into it when you’re sure you’re ready to really dig in, it helps process a lot of the pain and trauma. But just a warning - it’s very hard reliving everything as you process it and that’s why I said to make sure you’re ready. It’s a commitment. It helped me out of a deep, deep hole though. I had to take breaks from it a couple of times, to decompress and build up my resolve again but it was worth it. I’m not completely healed by any means, but it helped me get so much farther in recovery.

Best of luck to you, stay strong and keep fighting to find peace. 💗💗💗

Eventually (and this took a long time) I just got sick of it. So I tried to find healthful ways to find my way back to peace - even if just for a few minutes at a time.

It wasn't easy. It was trial and error.

To start - I started focusing on me. Not the relationship - but me.

Once that happened, the rest very s...l...o...l...y fell into place.

Healing is not linear. Be gentle to yourself. And in that gentleness, may you find a moment of that peace.

Little Red Robin,

I feel very similarly to you. My whole family know as do some friends and this is such a source of embarrassment for both of us. I had a bit of a breakdown after finding out.

I am a lot better now though. I just try and ground myself in the here and now and occasionally I get waves of embarrassment and shame and I just allow that happen for a while and then move on. I remind myself we are all messy humans who make terrible mistakes

As Brené Brown says, "Shame is a liar."

Shame causes people to lie. Shame causes you to lie to yourself. It makes us look for reasons to avoid looking at the real truth around us, in our lives, and makes us concerned about things we can’t control or don’t need to worry about (like what others think, for one example).

When it comes to "what everyone else thinks", if there’s one thing I have learned over the course of my life, it’s that other people don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about me or what I’m doing. If they do think about me, it’s almost always in one of two contexts - either that saw me do something good and they are "amazed" I could do it, or they saw me do something stupid and they are saying "well, that’s predictable".

Other than that, other people are generally wrapped up in their own worlds and don’t spend a lot of time thinking about mine. Do they judge me? Sure. Briefly, and probably negatively in most cases. That’s probably because it makes them believe, however briefly, that they are better than I am. You know what? They probably ARE better than I am. Okay, whatever. In the entire world, there are 8,000,000,000 people alive. I figure I fall somewhere in the middle of average on some things.

That means I am still "better than" about 4 billion folk at "something". I’m probably above average in other stuff, so maybe better than 6 billion on those things. I’ll take it. AND SO ARE YOU.

When we can get past that shame stuff, we can get into the growing stuff. That’s when we can heal. That’s when the better adjectives begin, like "resilience, strength, fortitude, worth, self-reliance" stuff like that begin to emerge.

If you haven’t read Brown’s books on shame or looked at her podcasts, I encourage you to do it. Rising Strong is a good one. Her TEDtalk on shame and vulnerability is really enlightening. It helped to get past that hurdle.

I don’t think I’m giving us a fair chance at R as I’m holding back any love toward him.

Wait! You're the prize. He's damaged goods. He needs to show you that he's worthy of your love. Sure, you choose to give love or not, but ... make sure you have good reasons for giving your love to him.

One way a WS gets love back is by being patient.

If you're talking about sex, one way that's worked for some of us is to use sex for your own pleasure. IMO, sex at its best includes lots of giving and lots of taking. After being betrayed, it's not out of line to just take.

I have no insight because I'm struggling with the same problem, but today I'm choosing to love me. I can't do anything about him or even our relationship, but I can cherish the parts of me that I like. Therapy has been sort of helpful on this front but less than I had hoped for. I think the biggest part is accepting that none of the shame is yours to carry though WS will happily dump their shame on you. Again, sympathies as I'm in the same position and it's awful.

Thanks for the replies on this thread, folks sorry I’ve not responded sooner and been quiet on here!! I had a good therapy session recently but still no further along.

I think at this point I just need to flip coin and make a firm decision and move on. I know no decision is technically a decision so right now by not doing anything I’m choosing to stay. But to stay and let go of the shame that I’m with someone who betrayed me is a ball game I wasn’t prepared for. To fall off my high horse at how special I thought our relationship was has been tough for the ego to swallow and I think I’m struggling with that as well. I honestly thought we were it. My whole life was planned with him. And even now I can’t imagine not being with him and not having him as the father of my kids. Although I did enjoy independent living when he was kicked out the house previously. I’m plagued by this daily and probably keeping myself in this pain loop but I don’t know how to just let it all go and accept the situation for what it is and move on together to better things. If that’s even possible. Also why do I even want to stay after betrayal. Codependency, fear, wanting a family, but also shared history, love. I just can’t seem to let go and BE in this relationship always holding everything at arms length. At this rate I’m surprised he hasn’t cheated again 🫠 at least before it was shock as we were very loving to each other.

I just don’t know how to get over it but I feel like I want to (although scared it’s the wrong decision and I’ll feel like a shell of myself by the time I’m 70). I feel like I’m betraying myself by staying but to leave is just doing what society tells me to do and I’m stubborn and won’t be told what to do.

I feel like I’d always regret leaving but how can I be with someone for so long with no marriage or kids maybe I’ve been wasting my time this whole time even though he’s always talked about these things loosely. Everything annoys me at the moment but I feel like he’s my person and maybe that’s why I’ve not been able to leave.

Sorry not much point to this waffle but to get it out my head. But if you did stay how did you let go of it all and just be and be content with your partner and relationship again where you could open up the softness and love?

But if you did stay how did you let go of it all and just be and be content with your partner and relationship again where you could open up the softness and love?

I didn't "let go of it all". That's IMHO a form of rugsweeping. We deal with it and go through it together.

I'm years out of any DDay. WH and I were talking earlier this year about something infidelity related. I mentioned that it was a "me" problem WH looked at me and said "no Chaos - it a "we" problem. And we dealt with it together.

This is a trauma. To you and the relationship. Reconciliation takes a metric shit ton of time, hard work, IC, self love/care, and forgiving myself for what I didn't know when I didn't know it. It will forever be a work in progress.

You have to get through this shit. And it isn't easy. Only you can decide which path is right for you - and know you reserve the right to change your mind at any time if that changes.

The thoughts you've written down are common to many (most?) of us. Most of us do OK eventually, so you can be confident you'll be OK, too.

I read a preference to split in your last post. It's OK to split even though you like to rebel against being told what to do. And remember: lots of common wisdom says you need to forgive and R, so either way, you'll be doing what (some part of) society tells you to do. (Oh, yeah ... when I met W2b, very few couples lived together before M, so what the hell are you doing? )

Your best bet by far is to put aside fear of making the wrong choice. You simply can't predict the future. That's why I think it's a good idea to first figure out what you want, assuming you can get it. Then, once you know what you want, you can figure out if it's attainable with your WS or not.

There is only one reason I stayed with my H after his 2nd affair where he planned to D me (fit the much younger OW).

He changed. He made amends. He was remorseful. And he changed.

And those changes have been around for 11 years. Changes he made on his own. He made it known I was his top priority. I still am.

I have NO shame in staying married to my H. I don’t care what people think. I used to put too much stock in everyone’s opinion. Since his affair I don’t.

But that is me. It may not be you.

There are no guarantees. You can remain married and be unhappy long term. You could D and find a great new partner— and be very happy. Or you could D and find no one for a long time.

You can D and years later think it was the best decision you could have made. The point is you make a decision knowing there are no guarantees.

When I planned to D my H after his 2nd affair, I knew I would be happy. Because that would be my focus - to be happy. When I decided to R, it was only going to work if I could be happy w/ him.

It doesn’t sound like you are happy with your decision to R or try to R. Maybe cheating is a dealbreaker for you.

Maybe you have guilt by D a cheating spouse. But you should not — you did not cause the issue. The cheater did. They just didn’t think of the consequences.

I feel you and wish I knew how to do it. There is a huge difference between knowing how it can be done and doing it. You deserve more than you are letting yourself have in life, that much I know and identify with as well.

I really would suggest telling him where you are at....truthfully and openly. What you said here is so genuine and vulnerable. I know this ....if I had cheated and wanted to stay with my wife and heard exactly what you said here ...I would become broken even more than I hope would have been already. I would then proceed to do absolutely everything to help her heart heal. This would involve true change...and intentional work to bind the wounds of her heart. And make no mistake....there ARE things a person can do to help someone heal from their actions. One of which is to utterly repudiate the person they were, and the actions they took. Utterly admit their disrespect and deceit ....and hate that they hurt the person they should have been cherishing and protecting. Justify every last feeling of the betrayed and sit with it.

Anyway ....i drone on. My point being....maybe show him or tell him exactly what you said here and see how he handles HIS MESS.

May the Lord bless and comfort you.

[This message edited by WoodThrush2 at 1:11 AM, Tuesday, December 17th]