# Starting over



## alisha_j (9 mo ago)

Where do ppl get the strength to leave a relationship permanently and start over?


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## farsidejunky (Mar 19, 2014)

It is like many other things in life...when the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the same.

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk


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## TXTrini (Oct 2, 2013)

alisha_j said:


> Where do ppl get the strength to leave a relationship permanently and start over?


For me, it was when I realized I'd hate myself for not living the principles I held dear for my entire life.

Change is hard, especially when you don't want it, but you have to decide what you can live with without compromising yourself.


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## TexasMom1216 (Nov 3, 2021)

alisha_j said:


> Where do ppl get the strength to leave a relationship permanently and start over?


When staying is worse than leaving.


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## BeyondRepair007 (Nov 4, 2021)

TexasMom1216 said:


> When staying is worse than leaving.


Or… when the love/limerance for another overcomes the morality to stay.


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## TexasMom1216 (Nov 3, 2021)

BeyondRepair007 said:


> Or… when the love/limerance for another overcomes the morality to stay.


That’s a totally different situation. I got the impression the OP meant how to leave and be on your own because your spouse no longer cares. If you’re leaving for someone else, there’s a safety net and very little risk for the cheater.


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## BeyondRepair007 (Nov 4, 2021)

TexasMom1216 said:


> That’s a totally different situation. I got the impression the OP meant how to leave and be on your own because your spouse no longer cares. If you’re leaving for someone else, there’s a safety net and very little risk for the cheater.


Maybe. I’m just keeping an open mind and answering the question.

The question was about strength to leave… it can be a ‘push’ because things are bad, or a ‘pull’ because things might be better elsewhere. I remain neutral on OPs motivation at this point.


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## A18S37K14H18 (Dec 14, 2021)

alisha_j said:


> Where do ppl get the strength to leave a relationship permanently and start over?


It was always within me. It's who and what I am. I've always had self-respect, confidence etc.

Also, like many, cheating was always a deal breaker for me. Sadly, many say that, but when it happens to them it no longer becomes a deal breaker.

I'm in my mid-50's now, this happened in my mid to late 30's.

I gave up A LOT by divorcing my cheating first husband.

I had not worked in just under a decade, since we began having our children and we have three children.

We were living in a new house, well new to us and we'd been in it just under 5 years. It was a nice subdivision, small, just one way in and out, like 52 homes, a pool up front for those of us who lived in the subdivision, all utilities were underground so no wires anywhere etc.

Our backyard was a dream. Immediately behind our backyard was a big field on one side and a small "woods". Horses were back there and they'd still their heads over the small fence into our backyard and we'd feed them apples and carrots (with permission).

We had many good friends, we had good friends in our subdivision, wonderful neighbors. We had a fire pit in our backyard and neighbors would come and have drinks with us, the kids would play, make smores etc.

I was involved in my children's school, I was a room mother for them. I went to the gym with girlfriends and put the kids in the play place when they were too young for school. I went to breakfast with women in my subdivision every Saturday. I played Bunco with 15 other women in my subdivision so it was the 16 of us. We rotated holding it in each other's houses. Twice a year hubby's were invited, once in the summer and once around Xmas time and lots of food and drinks accompanied those times.

My husband was involved in church with us, he taught bible class for kids with me. He worked with the homeless for over two years through our church. He coached little league and youth soccer for our children. He went on Cub Scout camping trips with our oldest.

We went on nice vacations, to the ocean, to lakes, to Disney, Sea World, Universal Studios, to the mountains etc.

We had seasons passes to a large amusement park nearby, to a water park near by.

My husband helped my parents out a lot due to their age and poor health. My older brother's oldest son needed help in school when he was 12 years old so he came to live with us for a year and my brother lived over 1,500 miles away so our nephew lived with us and my husband was great with him, an instant child of 12 years old.

My parent's lived with us for 3.5 months when my dad retired. Why? We gave them 2 of our 40 acres to build a home on the back of our land, they used the same builder who built our home (this was an earlier home from the small subdivision we lived in later on).

My husband helped a ton around the house, with the kids (he bathed all 3 of them every night). He put the kids to bed with me every night, it was a whole family affair, the dogs were in there too as we read, talked about their day, listened to them, scratched their backs and then said prayers. It took about 30 mins each night and it was wonderful.

My husband did all the laundry, he began doing mine when we were both freshman in college and he kept doing it until I divorced him, including the children's. He took care of all the floors, vacuuming, cleaning the hard floors. He cleaned the tubs and showers. He took care of the garbage, cut the grass etc. He cleaned up dinner because I made it and after he cleaned up dinner, that's when he took the kids upstairs to begin their baths.

Family and friends were telling me to give my husband another chance.

I couldn't. Cheating was and is and will always be a deal breaker to me.

I had to leave our nice new home, our nice subdivision, our friends etc.

I moved into a 2 bedroom apartment. My daughter and I had to share a bedroom and my 2 boys shared the other bedroom. I had to go back to work of course. My kids had to go to a different school. We went to a different church.

My kids had to give up many activities as I couldn't get all 3 to all of the things they had been in.

I wasn't able to go and see my kids and be their room mother anymore as I was working again.

I wasn't able to hang out with my friends during the day, go to the gym with them. I wasn't in my Bunco group with the women in my old subdivision after I divorced my husband either.

I wasn't going on nice vacations anymore to the ocean/beach, to nice attractions, renting condos on the ocean like at Folly Island or on North Myrtle Beach or in Charleston or in Savanna, GA anymore.

I never had a thought that I couldn't leave. I never had a thought about trying to reconcile. Cheating was, is and will always be a deal breaker for me and it broke the deal.

The fact that I hadn't worked in 9.5 years didn't matter to me.

The fact that I'd have to give up a lot of nice creature comforts, friends, church, school for my kids, many of their activities and such didn't matter.

Cheating is vile, it's evil, it breaks the deal.

I could NEVER have had the strength to stay and try and reconcile, it would have killed me. It's so far against who and what I am.

Leaving was easy, staying would have been a death sentence. I would have been forever unhappy.



I mean, look at what the cheaters get.

They get to have all the feel good feelings while in their affair and not just the hot affair sex either.

After their affair, many cheaters get to understand themselves more after working on themselves and figuring out their why's etc.

Many cheaters (I said many, not all) become better people after the affair.


What do the betrayed spouses get?

Before the affair they had no crippling fear, pain or trauma.

After the affair, they have crippling fear, pain and trauma. 

They have constant fear of something bad happening.

They lost trust in their partner.

They don't know who their partner was or is anymore after finding out their partner cheated.

Betrayed spouses don't trust themselves anymore, they don't know reality anymore.

They are humiliated, face doubt, have self-doubt etc.


And betrayed spouses have to take a leap of faith (how'd that faith work out for them when their partner cheated?) that their wayward spouse will actually do the work and be remorseful.

And if their wayward spouse does do the work, it doesn't ever change what happened.

It is, literally, impossible for a WS to grasp more than about 5% of what BS go thru. The rip tide of emotions that rage back & forth that are uncontrollable. The mind movies that never seem to end, making one feel so worthless that it's a wonder more BS don't commit suicide. And time does not heal. It just builds up painful scar tissue. 

The marriage and life a betrayed spouse had is gone, never to return even if they reconcile. It was cruelly taken away from them by their abusive cheating spouse (cheating is abuse).

I find waywards who are offered R and have their marriages survive are just elated over the moon. But with few exceptions, the BS's who offer R live a lifetime of loss to varying extents.

There is an eternal injustice that can and will never go away when a spouse cheats on their partner.

How does one calculate the value of what was destroyed and the value of all the added excitement and pleasure the cheater obtained at the BS expense? It can NEVER be made up, repaid etc. It. Just. Can't. Full stop.

Bottom line, the cheater did get away with something. The cheater banked immeasurable pleasure and excitement at a huge expense to the BS and kids. These are experiences that the BS will never get to have and which the BS, unknowingly, subsidized.

The affair was at the expense of the faithful spouse and children.

Many cheaters lose their love for their spouse during their affair. I couldn't ever trust a person who did that to me again. It's not in my makeup, it's not how I'm wired, it isn't possible for me to do.

To me the injustice is a fact that can't be changed. It will always remain no matter what the WS does or if the BS decides to D or R.

The idea of a WS making atonement or amends for betraying their spouse seems insulting. It. Can't. Be. Done. It happened, it's never going away, the bell can never be un-rung.


A betrayed spouse has no choice but to accept the pain of what has been done to them. 
You really have no choice. It exists, it happened and the BS knows it.

Resolving it? Well, what exactly does that mean? Not thinking about what happened? Pretending you still have as much access to your kids? Pretending your finances were not impacted or your standard of living diminished? Pretending that ignorant folks do not blame you, question your abilities as a partner such that you caused or contributed to the cheating?



That it really doesn't matter how much amends were made, the damage is done.
I have felt love and connection with someone ELSE. I have willingly taken all my cards and went all in, with my betrayed partner's chips.
*Doesn't matter how I feel now, because the betrayal stems from what I did.*
I feel like he/she wants to forgive me, but the gulf of injustice is just too much.
I don't know how to remedy that.

It CAN'T be remedied.

A wayward can't really "remedy" that - no one but the BS can do that work.


A betrayed spouse is the collateral damage from their wayward partner's choices. It's beyond unfair. It can't ever be undone, taken away, made whole etc. It happened and it's never going away.

Guess what? If a wayward has a betrayed partner who offers them the gift of reconciliation, then the wayward spouse gets the following: The WS reaps collateral rewards from the BS doing the healing work to get to forgiveness. It's still unjust AF. But there's not a damn thing any BS can do about that.


I always had the strength to leave, I don't know where I would have gotten the strength to choose to stay and to give my lying, cheating first husband a chance at reconciliation. I couldn't have, it was never within me, regardless of whether I was married to him or someone else. 

I would have been bending over too far backwards to stay. I would have been living a lie, not being myself by choosing to stay. I would have had to suppress who I really was in order to stay. I would have ceased to really be living had I chosen to stay.

Oh, my children were 3, 5 and 8 when this went down and they were just 4, 6 and 9 when our divorce was finalized.

Cheating is abuse and on one should remain in an abusive relationship, ever. There are many different kinds of abuse and none of them should be tolerated. Just as folks need to get out of infidelity, they also need to get out of abuse too.

Cut it out of their lives, permanently.


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## Young at Heart (Jan 6, 2015)

alisha_j said:


> Where do ppl get the strength to leave a relationship permanently and start over?


I can only answer from my own experience. When I was in a sex starved marriage. It got to the point that I could no longer take it. So I made a promise to myself. My promise was that I was going to try to fix my marriage and fix myself so that by certain birthday (about a year and a half away) that I would be in a loving sexual relationship with or without my wife. If she couldn't provide me the loving sexual relationship I needed, I would divorce her and find someone who could give me what I needed to be happy.

My first goal was to work on myself. That was a long process. Once I started to figure out my issues and change them, I started to work on changing the problems in our marriage. It was at that point I offered my wife the opportunity to start marriage counseling with a sex therapist. 

I didn't beg. I didn't threaten her with divorce. She actually had no idea, I had made my promise to myself and that I was absolutely going to keep it. All she knew was that I was changing myself and the way I treated her for the better. It was only after a few months of sex therapy that the ST asked my wife what she thought would happen if the two of us never had sex again. My wife really didn't want to answer that question and avoided answering, but the ST kept asking. Eventually my wife said that we would probably divorce. The ST congratulated my wife on her insight and said that is what she as an ST had witnessed so many times. The ST then asked me if I had ever thought about getting a divorce. 

It was at that point that I explained the promise I had made to myself, my time line and the fact that I had researched the divorce laws in our state and knew exactly by when I would need to file for divorce so I could keep my promise that I had made to myself. I was not sure who was more stunned my wife or the ST. The ST was the first to gain composure and say that my approach was reasonable and gave my wife sufficient time to figure out what she wanted to do and make or not make changes. My wife could then decide if she wanted a divorce and if so prepare herself for the consequences of her decisions.

The point of my story is that you need to figure out what you want in your life for you. You need to fix yourself before you leave your existing relationship, otherwise you may just fail at your next relationship. If you are married to someone, you should probably allow them a chance at rebuilding your marriage, but if they reject that opportunity, then you need to be true to yourself. Preparing yourself for change, making a commitment to change your life for the better allows you to be in a place where you can find the strength to do the hard things. You can also visualize what you want your life to be like.

Good luck.


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## Coloratura (Sep 28, 2021)

A18S37K14H18 said:


> It was always within me. It's who and what I am. I've always had self-respect, confidence etc.
> 
> Also, like many, cheating was always a deal breaker for me. Sadly, many say that, but when it happens to them it no longer becomes a deal breaker.
> 
> ...


Thank you so much for this post. I am about to divorce my serial cheater husband of 27 years and it has taken me a long time to understand that the marriage I have had with him is abusive on so many levels. His self-absorption is unbelievable, and he is unrepentant and cruel. I have struggled for so many years to make it work, but he never stopped cheating and now I know there were others besides the one I knew about. And he still chooses to blame me. 

To the OP - I don’t know how you find the strength to start over, but I do know I will have to find the strength from somewhere, because I only have one life and I can’t waste any more time with my husband if I want to keep my soul intact.

I find so much strength and encouragement and honesty on this forum.


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## colingrant (Nov 6, 2017)

alisha_j said:


> Where do ppl get the strength to leave a relationship permanently and start over?


It's a number of things depending on what you're going through, but if you can focus entirely on the start of a new life and less on leaving a relationship, it'll help. 

This includes starting a new relationship with yourself by the way. I'm not assuming you are the root of your relationship issues, but it's fair to assume you have some part in it. No?

Conduct a self-audit and identify what part you may have negatively contributed in your previous relationship, remedy it and become a better version of yourself so that your new life also includes a better Alesha. A better and happier you Alesha will make you attractive to others. 

People are attractive to people that are happy in their own life, regardless of their relationship status. Be that person, see where it takes you and embrace the experience as a new lease on life where you are gaining something and not losing it.


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## Wolfman1968 (Jun 9, 2011)

alisha_j said:


> Where do ppl get the strength to leave a relationship permanently and start over?


That hesitation is part of human nature. The fear of the uncertain causes people to freeze up.

Shakespeare said it well:

*"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."*


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## oldshirt (Apr 1, 2017)

alisha_j said:


> Where do ppl get the strength to leave a relationship permanently and start over?


When the pain of staying outweighs the fear and hassle of leaving.


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## kh4OffRoad (9 mo ago)

Young at Heart said:


> I can only answer from my own experience. When I was in a sex starved marriage. It got to the point that I could no longer take it. So I made a promise to myself. My promise was that I was going to try to fix my marriage and fix myself so that by certain birthday (about a year and a half away) that I would be in a loving sexual relationship with or without my wife. If she couldn't provide me the loving sexual relationship I needed, I would divorce her and find someone who could give me what I needed to be happy.
> 
> My first goal was to work on myself. That was a long process. Once I started to figure out my issues and change them, I started to work on changing the problems in our marriage. It was at that point I offered my wife the opportunity to start marriage counseling with a sex therapist.
> 
> ...





Young at Heart said:


> I can only answer from my own experience. When I was in a sex starved marriage. It got to the point that I could no longer take it. So I made a promise to myself. My promise was that I was going to try to fix my marriage and fix myself so that by certain birthday (about a year and a half away) that I would be in a loving sexual relationship with or without my wife. If she couldn't provide me the loving sexual relationship I needed, I would divorce her and find someone who could give me what I needed to be happy.
> 
> My first goal was to work on myself. That was a long process. Once I started to figure out my issues and change them, I started to work on changing the problems in our marriage. It was at that point I offered my wife the opportunity to start marriage counseling with a sex therapist.
> 
> ...


Man, that was spot on. I think for someone to reject their spouse time after time again is very wrong and is a form of abandonment. i hope you found greener pastures!


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## Young at Heart (Jan 6, 2015)

kh4OffRoad said:


> Man, that was spot on. I think for someone to reject their spouse time after time again is very wrong and is a form of abandonment. i hope you found greener pastures!


The greener pasture I found was the woman I had married all those years before. She changed into someone who no longer loved me or respected me. By changing myself and fighting for our marriage, she changed into a woman that I could remain married to. 

Had she not changed, I would have divorced her and then started to look for a loving sexual relationship with a woman capable of loving a good man. Sometimes it is worth investing some effort in trying to save a marriage.


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## kh4OffRoad (9 mo ago)

So no divorce and she is a loving partner now? Wow. That is probably the best story I have herd on here, ever!!!


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