Infidelity Support Group
Any relationship in which one partner engages willfully in sexual relations with another outside of the partnership is considered to have experienced infidelity. This breach of trust is often traumatizing for the faithful partner as well as the relationship, and support is often needed to heal emotionally and to decide whether or not the relationship should continue after...
Hi everyone,
I have been a reader here for a few weeks and it has been helpful.
Before I tell my story, I am looking for encouragement and support, my only desire is to make things work wife my wife (she had a very short lived affair) and my family (2 year old twins). I will try to give a short version of my story to avoid writing a novel - what I am actually dealing with is obsessive thoughts about things that more than likely didn't happen.
Here you go.
July 23 - I discover a strange number on my wifes mobile phone bill. I confront her and she admits to having a friendship with her principal at work (she is an elementary teacher). Claims that it was a friendship that she didn't know how to share. That they had met 6 times from the end of the school year till the day I found out. Which I can confirm. So the entire relationship lastest roughtlyl 3 weeks.
Aug 8 - I discovered emails that they were sending each other - his were slightly longer - her short and to the point - she claims that she was trying to smooth things out because she knew that she needed to go back to work with him.
Aug 28 - she finally breaks down and admits that she did infact have intercourse with him. Once. She provided me all of the details - as terrible as they were to hear - this story has never changed - in fact only more details have been obtained that I really didn't want to have to work through. I believe that sex only happened once. I had actually contacted him and through my questioning I little reason to doubt that.
The unfortunate thing in this whole mess is the 6 weeks of lying trying to cover up what had happened - yes she was trying to keep the family together but man it has done a number on me.
We have been going to counselling. Which is helpful. I can say that I am over the 'act' as much as I am going to be. It is in the past - and the fact that it was in fact an unpleasant experience is making it somewhat easier (also need to state that he is 20 years her senior).
This is where I need help.
I have been stuck on what had happened prior to the sex (sex took place during their last visit). I keep picturing her giving him oral sex - maybe I sound crazy for even allowing that thought in my head but it is there). I have asked her about it several times over the last few days and I think it is making her crazy. 1 - because I can't believe her 2 - because I can't seem to let it go even for a short while.
She has sat down with me. Gave me details. Talked me through each visit. The whole time, even prior to finding everything out, she has stood by the fact that she didn't want it to get that far. She was enjoying the attention, felling good, getting out, blah blah blah - which seems to be what everyone else says as well.
She has told me that the lying was eating her up inside and that from the day she confessed everything she has promised to always be honest because she doesn't want to go down that road any longer.
Her text she sent me yesterday. "I have been completely honest with you. I am moving forward in honesty. We will make this work..."
I am concerned that I will push her too far - which would be a shame if this is truly over 'nothing'.
I hope this makes sense. I will fill in any blanks in the comments.
Thanks everyone.
I have been a reader here for a few weeks and it has been helpful.
Before I tell my story, I am looking for encouragement and support, my only desire is to make things work wife my wife (she had a very short lived affair) and my family (2 year old twins). I will try to give a short version of my story to avoid writing a novel - what I am actually dealing with is obsessive thoughts about things that more than likely didn't happen.
Here you go.
July 23 - I discover a strange number on my wifes mobile phone bill. I confront her and she admits to having a friendship with her principal at work (she is an elementary teacher). Claims that it was a friendship that she didn't know how to share. That they had met 6 times from the end of the school year till the day I found out. Which I can confirm. So the entire relationship lastest roughtlyl 3 weeks.
Aug 8 - I discovered emails that they were sending each other - his were slightly longer - her short and to the point - she claims that she was trying to smooth things out because she knew that she needed to go back to work with him.
Aug 28 - she finally breaks down and admits that she did infact have intercourse with him. Once. She provided me all of the details - as terrible as they were to hear - this story has never changed - in fact only more details have been obtained that I really didn't want to have to work through. I believe that sex only happened once. I had actually contacted him and through my questioning I little reason to doubt that.
The unfortunate thing in this whole mess is the 6 weeks of lying trying to cover up what had happened - yes she was trying to keep the family together but man it has done a number on me.
We have been going to counselling. Which is helpful. I can say that I am over the 'act' as much as I am going to be. It is in the past - and the fact that it was in fact an unpleasant experience is making it somewhat easier (also need to state that he is 20 years her senior).
This is where I need help.
I have been stuck on what had happened prior to the sex (sex took place during their last visit). I keep picturing her giving him oral sex - maybe I sound crazy for even allowing that thought in my head but it is there). I have asked her about it several times over the last few days and I think it is making her crazy. 1 - because I can't believe her 2 - because I can't seem to let it go even for a short while.
She has sat down with me. Gave me details. Talked me through each visit. The whole time, even prior to finding everything out, she has stood by the fact that she didn't want it to get that far. She was enjoying the attention, felling good, getting out, blah blah blah - which seems to be what everyone else says as well.
She has told me that the lying was eating her up inside and that from the day she confessed everything she has promised to always be honest because she doesn't want to go down that road any longer.
Her text she sent me yesterday. "I have been completely honest with you. I am moving forward in honesty. We will make this work..."
I am concerned that I will push her too far - which would be a shame if this is truly over 'nothing'.
I hope this makes sense. I will fill in any blanks in the comments.
Thanks everyone.
As for the fog I will have to maintain that there is no way that she would have willingly put her kids in harm way. I intercepted an email the day after first discovery that kind of make me feel like the fog exists - simply because of the wording. But in the end, unless we go through it ourselves we may never know.
About the talking. It is the type of discussions I guess. The still digging for dirt questions, which in the end I guess could be, and is proving to be counter productive. This has been going on now for two months, unfortunately it was a trickle truth, but two months never the less. If I could take one thing back it would have been weeks 4-present. I'm not saying I should be over it. But I have made the decision to work it out. Once she admitted everything, and the initial shock was over, I needed to take steps towards rebuilding.
The one piece of advice I would give would be to start rebuilding as soon as possible. She doesn't want to relive what happen. If she did she would be living it now. instead she has left her school, taken a leave of absence, and has refocused on the family. The piece of advice is for people to just come out with the truth and to not use the trickle truth method. It just wastes time.
So we can continue to communicate about the past which will only give me the same responses at this point or we can communicate about the present and the future.
I am fighting bitterness. I don't want to be bitter. Sh!t happens. If it happens again we can talk. But life is long, and I am learning more and more that life likes to kick you in the gut more often than not.
"Get busy living, or get busy dying" something I often think about, and often fail to live by.
I too was tortured by the same two things you are struggling with, the images in my head and the talking about it. So, for me I felt the same way, how do I stop them?!
First, I think it is important to let yourself see the images and to talk. You don't want to short-circuit this. It needs to be incorporated into your system. For me, I needed to re-write the history of my relationship to include the new information... until I could re-write my relationship's narrative I was unstable. I had to let the images and the talking wash through me until they were done with me.
However, it was important for me to try to do this as much as possible without involving my H, because it was killing him, and creating more pain and disharmony in my life... making me more in pain and more depressed. So I looked for support elsewhere, like this website and other places, and by writing instead of talking. I still involved my H, I just tried not to overwhelm him for MY benefit.
I worked really hard to actively do this for ME so that I didn't have to feel miserable all the time. It didn't happen on a dime, and there was a period of back-and-forth for me where I was feeling strong-ish one day and totally depressed and obsessed the next. But after 3 months I reached a breakthrough where the images were less and the need to talk was less. I believe the breakthrough occurred because of both my efforts to conquer it and also the sheer fact that time does heal IF YOU WANT IT TO. However, patience is not optional, you need to be GENTLE with yourself. It is totally natural to obsess with images and to need to talk a lot. Don't beat yourself up about it, in fact, it's important to let it happen in order to move on and to release it.
What I did is:
I re-framed what happened. I changed my perspective. This was incredibly difficult, but I made it my project... I could conquer myself, it was about me and my emotions and I could do it. And I remembered to be patient with myself and gentle with myself. I took the liberty of having some very bad days where I stayed in bed and just cried and felt extremely depressed. It was ok to collapse like that. You need to do it in order to be strong later.
The re-framing I was able to do was go from feeling that something happened "to me" to seeing it as what happened is actually a somewhat common pitfall of long term relationships. I by no means justify infidelity, nor do I minimise it, nor do I minimise how devastated it made me. It's the worst thing I've ever been through.
What I've learned is that long-term relationships often proceed on auto-pilot and humans have tendencies to follow certain "scripted" pathways... natural behaviours, thoughts, interpretations, emotions, mistakes, etc. If left on auto-pilot, relationships have a tendency to flow down various common pathways. These pathways unfortunately seem to lead to the deterioration of relationships. Everything in nature slowly deteriorates unless energy is put in. So, unless I water the plant, it will die of neglect. So, really what happened is that neither my H nor myself watered our relationship... and it followed a common pathway of human nature.
This re-framing helped me from feeling victimised and traumatised and weak, to feeling like I could take control and improve my relationship. The mistake he made was a wake-up call, like a neglected vehicle that you did not service and then the tyre blows out and you have an accident. You probably should have been pro-active and maintained your vehicle. Both of us, we both neglected our M. He made the transgression, but I need to be involved in the solution because it can't happen through him alone.
The shift in perspective gave me a project and a goal. And most importantly it gave me a fantasy to focus on instead of obsessing about the A. That fantasy is imagining all the details and all the fun, excitement, and fulfillment that me and my H are going to have in the future because we aim to rebuild our marriage and we aim to make lemonade out of lemons, so not just repair our M but improve it and make it better than it was before the A. I am using my mind to create ideas about what I want to do in the future. It feels kind of like dating again, when you come up with ideas for fun stuff. My energy is going into me and my relationship... there is no energy left for the OW. The less energy I spend on the OW, the less important she becomes.
My fantasies keep my mind busy in a positive way, and it's exciting being creative and making plans!
This is what worked for me. Good luck and be gentle with yourself.
Stand tall, d
I read you're comments on this, and I can understand not needing anymore details. However, further communication about it doesn't need to be digging for more dirt, but letting each other know where you are in the healing process and supporting one another. I think we regularly talked about the affair for months during that first year. At first all the time, then gradually it grew less. We still talk about it.
One of the things Gabi was really good about was always being willing to talk about it, even when it was painful for her to do so. Point being, if you need to discuss something, a trigger, etc., you shouldn't have a no-talk-about it rule. But I defer to your counselor and your own judgment. Each person is different. But part of transparency is being free to let each other know what is going on with them, even if it is about the affair.
In large part, it was seeing Gabi doing the hard things to come back from this that confirmed to me how much she loved me.