Torrivien

Please understand that this post is no way a rigid guidline for you to follow. I’m stating some major points that helped me get through this and I thought that it may help others or help me get a better hold on the matter by getting your feedback.

I thought I was back in a denial phase when I found out that I don’t feel the same amount of depression anymore, but I’m convinced it is not the case. I still get invaded by a strong anger from time to time, I still cry myself to sleep in some nights, and I still regret waking up some mornings. But I also realized that the periods of feeling liberated are getting superior to the down moments.
I don’t cry because I’m unable to understand why anymore, I cry because somehow my chest feels lighter afterwards.
I don’t regret that I wake up alive anymore, but I just regret that I have to wake up in a dimension where I was betrayed.

Anyway, here are important points that I’m aware of, I’ll add others as I think more about it:
1- Don’t think that you deserve better than being a cuckold.
This is the hardest possible thing that I could grasp. You can’t define someone’s future actions by your own. You can’t think for other people.
Understanding that I had no absolute insurance to not being cheated on lifted the weight of trying the hardest, often at my expense, to convince people that I don’t deserve being hurt. It’s their job to not hurt you, if they fail to do so, it only means that they suck and not that you didn’t make enough efforts.

2- Affairs define the cheaters not the betrayed.
There’s no possible way an affair can be put on the betrayed’s shoulders.
It happened because the wayward didn’t have the guts to express his/her feelings and confront the the aspects that poisoned her marital well being. You can’t blame somebody to be “stabbable”, you were the one who decided to pick the knife, instead of shielding your spouse.

3- It is unhealthy to not forsake the pain.
Most betrayed spouses compare being cheated on to being stabbed, and I find this comparison accurate. But would it be sane to keep the knife in the wound? Pulling out the knife from your heart can hurt more than the stab, but it sure beats running around like a decapitated chicken until you bleed to death.
It’s also very wrong to wear the betrayal as a proof of martyrdom. It can be a sign that you’re feeling guilty about something but don’t remember/don’t admit what it is.

4- Focusing on the irrelevant aspects of the betrayal can delay the healing process and even make it impossible.
This only concerns me, but the thing that made me accelerate on the healing path is that I focused only on what I deem important, not what seemed important to me, but what I really deemed important. I know that she cheated, I know that it was physical and that’s all the details I needed for me to move on without any regret.
I don’t care if it was once or twice because you can’t quantify a stab to the heart.
I don’t care if he was better than me, because I don’t rely on her ability to judge anymore.
I don’t care if he was the first one or the last because, and again this only concerns my situation, she failed to produce the proper remorse.

5- Refusing to be bitter and fighting the urge to go on a quest to make other cheaters pay for what your wayward did.
This can be blended into refusing to let the cheating define who you were/are/will be. Nothing can be more unappealing to people than a sad person moping around what has been done to him, and nothing can take away the merit of being hurt without hurting than someone that can’t understand that he didn’t marry every cheater out there. Let’s say that a cheater is 20 years old minimum, those twenty years were not the same for every cheater or even person in the world. This means that what made your wayward cheat on you doesn’t apply to other cheaters, can you risk to hurt someone just because you’ve been hurt by a different person? If you accept this than you really deserve pity.

There it is. I sure hope it is clear and helpful to other members as it was to me. I also want to add a couple of things. Finding sadder/more hurtful cases than mine really helped me to man up. Making a genuine effort to help people that are in the same situation than me forced me to practice what I preach.

I really do hope that a year from now we'll be high-fiving each other for escaping a lifetime of misery and I do hope that people who chose to stick with their spouses, without regretting it later, understand that this post only means that we didn't get the chance to be with someone as humane as their redeeming spouses are.

life.is.pain

Very good post. It all makes sense to me. I gotta bookmark this page to read everyday. Thnx.
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mahike

Number 5 is a problem for me right now. My sister is having affair with two guys both are divorced. My brother in law has filed for D but is living under the same roof with her right now for the kid. He says he cannot take much more

Also my parents have the hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil approach right now. It spins me up

Torrivien

Ouch, I'm sorry to hear that. Number 5 is no way call to go easy on cheaters. But being tough on them must be for their own good and as a respect and solidarity to the betrayed spouse.

If she's in the fog and seeks validation, your parents aren't no help at all. It's great that you're able to see what's right and not siding with your sister because she's your blood.
How long has it been going on ? And what did your brother in law do to prevent it ?
Also, when you try talking to her, do you feel like you're bringing the subject, indirectly or not, to your story ?

Gabriel

To me #4 is probably the one most people miss, including myself. It's so easy to obsess over everything that was said, done, little things discovered later that were in the heat of the moment and no longer mean anything, etc, etc.

A BS often makes it a personal quest to "solve" everything and to control it. "If I know absolutely every detail I can process them and control them". No you can't. You'll just keep obsessing while it controls you.

Unfortunately, #4 is also the most difficult for me to overcome.

Torrivien

I hear you very well. I can understand that one would want to have as much of details as possible if he's considering reconciliation but if you decided to drop the whole relationship it is better to save what I consider as useless efforts.

In my case, it was in great due to her not getting/not admitting the seriousness and gravity of what she did. On the other hand, details of the intercourse would just enlarge the wound.
We owe it to ourselves to avoid adding more fuel to the fire burning us alive.

Gabriel

And you can break this down into two categories. Physical and non-physical. My W didn't have a physical affair. The "irrelevant aspects of the betrayal" in my case were words spoken, # of texts, what was said, my wife's fantasies, etc, etc. All of that can be chalked up to being in the heat of it, the fog, whatever. Knowing all of those things is irrelevant indeed, especially now that we are working on staying together.

Torrivien

I wrote a post somewhere (can't remember on which thread) where I said (so stupidly) that I consider emotional affairs less serious or hurtful than phyical ones. Now I know better.

I am glad that you agree with me that this kind of information is irrelevant.
That being said, I think I wouldn't be this strong on not seeking to find out the details if I had the ability to find it written and preserved somewhere. I'd still consider it as just a masochistic way to feel more anger, more betrayed, more wounded but the curiosity would be greater if I was convinced that what I would find would be the truth.
I wish you to be strong, dude.

The term fog indeed calls for the term whatever, I'm not keen on people considering it as some extenuating circumstance, or talking about it as if it was an entity by itself. Some potent entity that invaded the cheater's brain, then again I never experienced it and my point of view couldn't be more biased.

ToriTorrey

I gotta bookmark this page to read everyday

arbitrator

Torrivien: You are totally "spot-on" with this analysis. I'm taking the liberty of printing this post and placing it in the psychology section of my personal library!

An absolutely great assessment on your part!

__________________
"To love another person is to see the face of God!" - Jean Valjean from Les Miserables

http://talkaboutmarriage.com/going-t...andonment.html

forlorn99

I completely disagree, EA are difficult I am sure and it might be hard to trust them etc etc.. but believe me knowing your wife was loving it while some lose was pumping away at her is far worse. I would LOVE to find out that the PAs were just a bad dream and all she did was text and talk dirty to someone!!

So Sad Lady

I see your point, but as I just somewhat just stated on another thread...

Finding a text/picture of your "normal, professional HUSBAND's" midsection...in which he's standing up, with a fully erect organ, and the words "Wish you were here" underneath it... Really doesn't feel much better. In fact, if they would've slept together it would've been more "normal" to me. This was perverted and disgusting, and I see it in my mind's eye every single day.

But I get your point.

Torrivien

Sorry for the late reply.
I see your point. I think it's more about people wired to think their pain is the worst. You can't qualify pain and hurt anyway and as Lady said, finding the one whose supposed to love you talk this way to someone else must be heart crushing.
A phyical affair is excrutiating but so is the knowledge of your spouse spending time, time he should have been spending on you, loving someone else.