# It's Dday month!



## daisygirl 41 (Aug 5, 2011)

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think a number of us are experiencing Dday anniversaries this next couple of weeks.

I had 2 Ddays, May 2011 and March 2012. By last March H and I were separated (coming up to 3 months) and at that time had NO proof that his A with 'skeletor' was still going on. On Friday March 3rd I received an email from xOWs H spewing me all the details. It was the day before Hs 40th Bday. And so followed 3 weeks of hell!
OWs H exposed the A to everyone and by the end of March H had finished it and we were talking about R.

So here we are. Nearly a year in and for the most part it's going well. I was just wondering for those of you who are about the same stage along as we are, what are the main issues you are still dealing with? What are the main things you are still struggling to overcome in your reconciliation?

For me;
Well obviously there's the trust issue H. He still works with the OW. H has had a lot of time of work over the last year for various reasons, and it has really helped us to reconnect. He went back to work about 6 weeks ago and I struggled for about 2 weeks, it brought back all the old feelings from last year and I could feel myself withdrawing from him, but thankfully H has done as much as he possibly can to ease my pain and help me with any difficulties I've had.

The lies; the realisation of how much H lied to me hits me every now and again and literally floors me. He was so good at it! We have talked about it in depth and it is something we are working through together.

The OW: It hurts to know that he thought he loved her. I can't seem to believe that was part of the A fog! Of course he tells me now that he never loved her, he just thought he did and it only took him 3 weeks of the A being exposed for him to realise that it was all a lie. But even so, it hurts. He says he has no feelings towards her, and when he sees her, he feels nothing! Can this really be true? Maybe some WSs could chip in here.

So please feel free to chip in, BSs and WSs, with just some thoughts on being a year in and how it's going for you.


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## BjornFree (Aug 16, 2012)

I don't know how you tolerate him working with her. The approach recommended on here is to establish no contact. I wouldn't believe, for a second, that the sparks would have magically disappeared after DDday. Good luck with your R if you can call it that.


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## daisygirl 41 (Aug 5, 2011)

BjornFree said:


> I don't know how you tolerate him working with her. The approach recommended on here is to establish no contact. I wouldn't believe, for a second, that the sparks would have magically disappeared after DDday. Good luck with your R if you can call it that.


I tolerate him working with her because at this moment in time we are unable to live on fresh air. We have a mortgage to pay and 3 children to look after. If and when a suitable job becomes available in the present climate then have no doubt he will be applying for it, but at the moment WE have decided as a couple that he is in no position to quit.

There are many approaches that are suggested her on TAM, and yes the NC rule isa biggy, but as with all approaches and recommendations there are always circumstances where the 'rules' can't, for whatever reason, be applied.

Please don't mock me, our R is true and real. You aren't living my life, you don't know how my H and I are dealing with our R. Instead of making snidey remarks, how about contributing something positive to the discussion?


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## margrace (Aug 12, 2012)

daisygirl 41 said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong but I think a number of us are experiencing Dday anniversaries this next couple of weeks.
> 
> I had 2 Ddays, May 2011 and March 2012. By last March H and I were separated (coming up to 3 months) and at that time had NO proof that his A with 'skeletor' was still going on. On Friday March 3rd I received an email from xOWs H spewing me all the details. It was the day before Hs 40th Bday. And so followed 3 weeks of hell!
> OWs H exposed the A to everyone and by the end of March H had finished it and we were talking about R.
> ...


i'm with you dg! for me, it is also dday month -- the anniversary of my first dday.

i knew something terrible was going on before march 19th. in fact, on the 18th, i sat across from WH in a diner and sobbed, asking him what was wrong and what i could do to make things better. "i don't know," was his answer. 

later that day, he was texting her. over his shoulder, i saw the text itself. he deleted the thread and tried to make me think it was never there, but i had seen it with my own eyes. finally, in the middle of the night, after a whole day of my insisting that he tell me, he lied to me about who it was to.

on the 19th, i looked at his email account and saw them -- all those emails, telling her how important, beautiful, and intelligent she was, how he was living for her, etc. 

i can't un-see those emails. i see them in front of me now. i can remember them almost verbatim.

after that, our false R began, and continued through... hmmmm, i would say, the end of 2012. other little ddays were sprinkled in between april 16th and november 6th. 

on january 7th, 2013, WH went back to therapy. a new chapter of R began then. 

what's the hardest? just like you, dg, it's coming to terms with the lies. the face-to-face lies, the half-truths, the omissions, the pretenses of transparency that were really just covers for more lies. 

those lies changed the world for me.

now we are trying to get the world back, or maybe create a new one for ourselves 

it's going to be a tough month but maybe a great one, too. thanks for bringing this up, dg -- i know i need to go through this with my eyes and my heart open to *all *of it, and your post is helping me do that!


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## BjornFree (Aug 16, 2012)

You can choose to take it anyway you want. Is he sending his resume across to other companies? I'm only trying to see your situation as its been described. Your husband might be an exception but most other men in his position would take the A deeper underground. Why? Because the opportunity exists. Have you exposed it to the HR dept. at his work place? Are you actively verifying the facts ? Even if your husband isn't the one instigating, would you expect the other woman to keep her claws off him? She's no angel of virtue. And its easy to coax someone back into bed if they were sexually attracted to you in the first place.


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## daisygirl 41 (Aug 5, 2011)

BjornFree said:


> You can choose to take it anyway you want. Is he sending his resume across to other companies? I'm only trying to see your situation as its been described. Your husband might be an exception but most other men in his position would take the A deeper underground. Why? Because the opportunity exists. Have you exposed it to the HR dept. at his work place? Are you actively verifying the facts ?


Yes I am verifying the facts. Nothing is taken for granted after going through an A.
I appreciate your concerns and believe me I know they are real.
The A was exposed to all his co workers and HR and management are also aware of it. We both work in the public sector, H has asked to be informed if any positions arise elsewhere that he is suited to. I have a number of friends who now work in Hs dept and they also verify there has been no contact apart from minimal work related things. Ow is also R with her H and I have checked in with him a few times regarding the status of their R.

I trust but verify in all Instances and H readily offers me any verification that I need. 
Of course no one can be 100% positive that their spouse isn't cheating but I'd like to think I know the signs to look out for this time.
We have been married 20 years this year, I believe in forgiveness, but only once, and he knows it!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## daisygirl 41 (Aug 5, 2011)

margrace said:


> i'm with you dg! for me, it is also dday month -- the anniversary of my first dday.
> 
> i knew something terrible was going on before march 19th. in fact, on the 18th, i sat across from WH in a diner and sobbed, asking him what was wrong and what i could do to make things better. "i don't know," was his answer.
> 
> ...


Thanks for contributing MG.
I can't imagine how you must have felt seeing those emails. Thankfully I never saw any correspondence between them, I can only speculate.

I'm planning on dealing with this in a positive way. Take back this time for us and make some happy memories in place of the old. It's Hs birthday Monday so we will celebrate on Sunday (Dday) and move forward. Time to let to of some of that pain I think and start living for today and not the past.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## Grey Goose (Aug 23, 2012)

My one year Dday anniversary was Dec 21 and I knew she would contact him (even if he had left his job and he had told her that he wanted nothing to do with her) and she did, but I did not find out until the end of January. 

They just do not understand do they? I guess when they see that they had left their families and had made plans and everything who blames them? How do you as a spouse believe that they went from not being in love with you, being head over hills in love with them and now the world cannot function if you are not with them? I struggle to believe this. We are in R after almost a year separated and all the lies and things, but I sometimes think I am now the one in false R bc like MG stated, I cannot erase form my mind the messages that I saw and the mental images I have of them and even if at times I feel better, i go back to closing up again. And the difference when you have been separated for almost a year is that you realize life DOES go on and you CAN move on without them, but yet you wonder about R? A lot of rambling on my end huh? Sorry, your thread made me trigger!


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## Acabado (May 13, 2012)

Chiming in just to send you strength to endure the dates to come.
Hang in there.


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## Hope1964 (Sep 26, 2011)

March 13 2010 is mine  I have to think about it now - it isn't on the tip of my tongue like it was for the first year and a bit.


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## EI (Jun 12, 2012)

BjornFree said:


> You can choose to take it anyway you want. Is he sending his resume across to other companies? I'm only trying to see your situation as its been described. Your husband might be an exception but most other men in his position would take the A deeper underground. Why? Because the opportunity exists. Have you exposed it to the HR dept. at his work place? Are you actively verifying the facts ? Even if your husband isn't the one instigating, would you expect the other woman to keep her claws off him? She's no angel of virtue. And its easy to coax someone back into bed if they were sexually attracted to you in the first place.


If you think you are telling daisygirl anything that she doesn't already know then you're giving yourself waaaaaay too much credit.  Just look at the "join date" and you can clearly see that she has been on TAM for a full year longer than you have!  I seriously doubt that there are any words of wisdom that you can offer that she doesn't already know. 

She wasn't here reporting any "new" suspicious behavior from her husband or asking for opinions, on the risk of reconciliation, from the peanut gallery. What she does need and did ask for was a little encouragement to get through the going through stages because of some difficult dates coming up. 

There are a few TAMers who seem incapable of reading a post and doing anything other than spewing the same canned answers for every single story they read. It gets old........

And the last sentence of your comment was meant to accomplish what? :scratchhead: It would seem that it was meant to reopen a wound that she and her husband have been working for nearly a year to heal. I know that you are no fan of TAM's resident WS's (like me.) But, what is your motivation for being needlessly cruel to a BS who is trying so hard to heal? I struggle to understand your reasoning or purpose on this thread.

~EI


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## EI (Jun 12, 2012)

Hope1964 said:


> March 13 2010 is mine  I have to think about it now - it isn't on the tip of my tongue like it was for the first year and a bit.


Hope, hearing that comment from a BS gives me so much hope that one day, in the not too distant future, that certain dates will no longer be associated with anything other than the life that B1 and I are rebuilding, together. Thanks for sharing that!


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## Gabriel (May 10, 2011)

daisygirl 41 said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong but I think a number of us are experiencing Dday anniversaries this next couple of weeks.
> 
> I had 2 Ddays, May 2011 and March 2012. By last March H and I were separated (coming up to 3 months) and at that time had NO proof that his A with 'skeletor' was still going on. On Friday March 3rd I received an email from xOWs H spewing me all the details. It was the day before Hs 40th Bday. And so followed 3 weeks of hell!
> OWs H exposed the A to everyone and by the end of March H had finished it and we were talking about R.
> ...


May 2011 was also my DDay 1. We've been dealing with this for the exact same amount of time. We had a DDay2 in September of 2012. That one ended in 3 days of me ignoring my wife existed. She eventually crawled back begging and crying. I decided three strikes and you're out. She has two.

Pushing 2 years, and in some ways I am doing better than I expected. In other ways it's taking me a long time to heal.


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## EI (Jun 12, 2012)

daisygirl 41 said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong but I think a number of us are experiencing Dday anniversaries this next couple of weeks.
> 
> I had 2 Ddays, May 2011 and March 2012.............
> 
> ...


daisy girl,

I'll (try) to be brief as B1 just got home from work, but I wanted to expand on a couple of your comments. For starters, yes, many of us in reconciliation have fairly close "anniversary dates" and they are coming up soon.  Like your husband, I put B1 through two D-Days, as well. I hate saying that, typing that, acknowledging it...... I hate "knowing" it. But, unfortunately, it's the truth. 

The lies, the deception, the betrayal, it's all mind numbing, isn't it? I know....... because it's mind numbing for me looking back on it 9 months after the fact. Although, I have never had any type of addiction problem in my entire life; like alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc., I think, based on what I have read, that infidelity produces feelings in the brain that are similar to the high that an addict gets when he is getting a fix from his addiction. I think that not only does the WS have to have a period of time to withdraw from the addiction, but that he also has to have the willingness, the necessary time, the tools and the resources, to replace unhealthy addictions with healthy and appropriate behaviors. I believe that affairs are most often nothing more than inappropriate and unhealthy responses to mask/medicate some other void in the WS's life. The affair, itself, is never a reflection on the BS...... it is a reflection on the WS's inability to properly cope with whatever void they are trying to fill.

When someone makes a decision to be unfaithful to their spouse, they have already crossed so many boundaries that the lying and deceiving seem like nothing more than additional collateral damage. I don't think most people plan or set out to become adulterers. I didn't..... until just before I did. But, when they do they have to learn to compartmentalize to the point of living two completely separate lives. 

About your husband thinking that he loved her and you having a hard time thinking that it was the fog........ I can only plead guilty to that, myself. I knew that there were many troubling things that I, blatantly, chose to overlook about the xOM. They were staring me right in the face, but I refused to think about them, acknowledge them or even address them with the xOM for fear that it might throw a monkey wrench into this very carefully crafted "bandaid" for all the ailed me. I thought that I would just continue to enjoy the relationship as it was, at the time, ....... then, I rationalized that I would "fix" him later!  I am, literally, only admitting this to myself, this very moment, as I type it and I'm shaking my head from side to side.  Of course, the xOM had to have done his own share of rationalizing, because had he not, he would have had to have been honest with himself that "some" of what I told him was, at the very least, misleading! 

So, yes, we were "in love." We were "in love" with the way the relationship made us feel. Because, it wasn't based on any kind of reality, it was based on all kinds of lies and rationalizations that we're necessary to make the "future" relationship we were planning with our AP's, as picture perfect as we imagined it "could" be. For whatever reason, us WS's have this absurd idea, that although we couldn't fix what was wrong in our own marriages and/or lives, we just "know" that we'll get it right with our AP's..... even knowing all of the lies and deceptions going into the relationship. Geeeez...... No wonder relationships that start as affairs have less than a 3% chance of survival........ And the fog just continues to lift as I type.................. 

So, dg, this reconciliation business is hard....... And I've experienced plenty of difficult challenges in my life. This is absolutely the biggest. But, 9 months out, I see things far differently than I did last spring. I think the time that your husband was off from work was a huge blessing and very beneficial to your marriage.

I think you have every reason to be hopeful. Please know that there are many of us TAMers, BS's and WS's, alike, who are pulling for you. I have no choice but to believe that not every WS is beyond redemption. I have to believe that some of us are worthy of another chance. I believe that your husband, based on what you have shared with us, could be one of them. ((((Hugs))))

~EI

Yet another BRIEF post by EI......... 

***EI makes a brief post...... The biggest Unicorn on TAM, yet!


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## SomedayDig (Jul 17, 2012)

March 6th is our 1 year Dday date. I won't call it an anniversary, though as those are happy and joyous times. It's just gonna be a date.

They started texting a year ago yesterday for their final meet up. I've been a bit skittish. Regret has just sat here and put a comforting hand on mine or my shoulder. She asked me if there's anything she can do for me.

The honest answer is "no". She has worked hard at reconciliation. Heck, I'm even contemplating going down to Florida a couple months ahead of her and the kids if I get my job now instead of later.

For now I just stay in the moment.


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## BjornFree (Aug 16, 2012)

EI said:


> If you think you are telling daisygirl anything that she doesn't already know then you're giving yourself waaaaaay too much credit.  Just look at the "join date" and you can clearly see that she has been on TAM for a full year longer than you have!  I seriously doubt that there are any words of wisdom that you can offer that she doesn't already know.
> 
> She wasn't here reporting any "new" suspicious behavior from her husband or asking for opinions, on the risk of reconciliation, from the peanut gallery. What she does need and did ask for was a little encouragement to get through the going through stages because of some difficult dates coming up.
> 
> ...


Yes, I'll leave all the encouragement to one as wise as yourself. 
My post was meant to highlight one important thing, the fact that the A could restart at any instant as long as the husband works with the OW. And daisygirl won't be able to breathe easy till he finds a new job and as such should be extra vigilant. FTR, I wasn't bening cruel to her. Its sad that she chose to look at it that way. If so, daisygirl, you have my sincere apologies. I really do hope you have a successful R like EI. But at the same time I'd also not stop checking on him.

I'm sorry if I can't offer you the emotional support you need, having never been in that position I don't think I would be able to understand the degree of pain, hence any support I give would come across as forced. And I don't think I can do that.
But don't let your emotions blind you. You will need to keep cool, at least until your H and the OW are separated permanently.

EI, yes I'm not a fan of wS's, even remorseful ones. If anything, I'm a fan of people like your husband and daisygirl for trying. But I suppose he would be better served if you would just cut back on your 'holier than thou because I'm a remorseful WS' attitude. 

daisygirl, once again, I apologize for being needlessly cruel.


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## daisygirl 41 (Aug 5, 2011)

PureLove said:


> Uh only once?? Your husband took it underground after your first Dday, continued lying to your face and seeing the OW until 2nd Dday which means a whopping 10 months of taking the affair underground. Double betrayal, no consideration for your feelings and the PAIN he had caused you the first time around...
> 
> How bad does it have to get for you to understand that your husband's choices are based only on what's most convenient for HIM? Here you are all hopeful for a successful R, meanwhile I guarantee your H is in R only because it's the most convenient option for him now.
> I mean no disrespect, I just hate seeing LS settling for a relationship that requires both people to pretend to still love each other when codependency and insecurities are really the glue that keeps them together.


Would you care to share your story with us PureLove?


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## daisygirl 41 (Aug 5, 2011)

I did write a rather long response to you PureLove, but do you know what, I can't be bothered. I don't need to justify myself to you or anyone else. Have you even bothered to read any of my threads before commenting here? I doubt it.

There are many reason people chose to R with their WSs. We are not all codependent, insecure, psychologically flawed individuals as you chose to believe.

I don't know your story, would you like to share. Maybe it would give us a better understanding of where your thoughts come from?


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## daisygirl 41 (Aug 5, 2011)

BjornFree, thank you for the apology. Your words only hurt because I suppose they are true, and it's a reminder of how, for some people the thought of reconciling with a WS is so alien to them. Believe me, before this happened to me I probably would have felt the same.

Your points are valid, and of course the work situation is not ideal, but it's something H and I are dealing with. 

It's difficult to explain the difference between a false R and a real one if you have never experienced it, but there is an absolutely remarkable difference, but be reassured my heart HAS been hardened from the A and I am thinking more clearly now than I have for a long time.

The OW is currently on a temp contract at work and we have just learnt her job is being put out to tenure, so there is a chance she will not get the permanent position and will be gone! 
I'm going to post that job advertisement from every lamppost in the county


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## Grey Goose (Aug 23, 2012)

DG I so hope you can move past this month - do what you feel is right for you knowing YOU are the most important person in your marriage and don't you forget that!


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## naga75 (Jul 5, 2012)

my first dday one year is coming up in 3 or 4 days.
second is april 8th.
i am progressing ok.
still got some anger, still hurts.
but i decided that i wont let the past depress me, or dictate my marriage or my life.
that was a great decision, to finally stand up to myself, say that, and mean it. like a sense of personal empowerment.
as a matter of fact, it just happened yesterday.
my wife has put in A LOT of work.


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## SomedayDig (Jul 17, 2012)

naga75 said:


> my first dday one year is coming up in 3 or 4 days.
> second is april 8th.
> i am progressing ok.
> still got some anger, still hurts.
> ...


SUC...(standing up clapping)... Just made that up.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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