And so that was my name on DS. I joined in July of 2010 and left in Sept of 2011. For those months this board was my lifeline.


Today I want to give back a little, especially for anyone here just starting the rebuilding process.


I’m not going to drudge through the affair story indepth again. He cheated with a coworker when our youngest was just 5 weeks old. I caught him within the first month. I filed for divorce, he begged for a second chance, we had a 8 week old and an 18 month old….I decided to give it a chance. If you knew me in person prior to this you would have thought I would be the last person on earth to stay.


It’s been 2.5 years. I won’t blow smoke up anyone’s a** and say we have a better marriage. We don’t have a less than marriage either. We have a completely different marriage. Which makes sense because we are not the same people. So anyone who starts with the idea “people can’t change”, I will argue yes they can because I am certainly not the same person I was prior to this. In some ways I have become more conservative in my views. In other ways I have become more liberal.


My H is and was the gold star standard for the remorseful CS. He did it all right. To this day I can access anything I want, pick up his phone at any given moment, email whatever. But more than that he stuck it out through my rage and anger which lasted for quite some time.


If you are going to rebuild, settle for nothing less than this. If your CS is not willing to stand against the storm of their making then move on.  Sure there might be hiccups along the way. But know where your line is and hold to it.


The other thing that was hard for me was the whole love thing. So much energy is putting into getting the love back. I see it all the time on boards like these. For me it came down to this:


Screw love. This is about respect. Get the respect back. Build the marriage based on respect. Love will follow or return or get unstuck or whatever you want to call it after that point.


That was just me however. I know others will take issue with that idea. That’s fine. Do what works for you.


So here I am two and a half years later. I can say I am happy. Our kids are thriving. We have a game plan for the next 5, 10 and 15 years that we are both on board with. When my H finally realized the world doesn’t revolve around him and started acting with something other than selfish intentions he found new avenues began to open up for him. There are still some triggers but not often and usually they pass pretty quickly. There are still moments when my pride hurts a little. Pride was a huge issue for me and still rears its ugly face once in a while.


This whole thing was of his making. I still own no part of it and frankly never will. He knows that. But I made the decision to stay and with that came certain responsibilities for me. I didn’t stay to be judge and warden. It took a while to get over the self righteous thing I had going on. In staying I agreed to move forward. It’s hard. It is so easy to get stuck somewhere in the process and just stay there. And it is a process. There is much work ahead still.


I will never trust blindly. I will never be that person who thinks “oh, not my husband.” For a while I was sad about that. Not so much anymore. If it happens again I have my contingency plan ready to go. I think we should all have a contingency plan. It’s like life insurance for unexpected life instead of death.


Life is still kind of a state of chaos but now it’s because of preschools and crazy jobs and crazier family members and through all this I made the leap into starting a personal side business. With his help I might add. It’s controlled chaos if there is such a thing.


Regardless of what path you take, focus on how you are going to grow as a person through this and I swear it will get better.