Rebuilding Marriage After Infidelity Community Group
A community for those who have been through the heartbreak of infidelity and decided to stay with their partner and try to re-build the relationship.
There may already be a board dealing with this but it's hard to tell from titles and I get so sad reading through everything. Anyway, it has been about 6 months since I found out and 7 months since his affair ended. I spent the first month of the affair just trying to hold onto him and trying to convince him that he should be with me and that I loved him. (His reason for the affair was that he thought I didn't really love him anymore) I then spent the next few months blaming myself and the OW. I have recently turned the blame to him (where I honestly think it belongs) and it's been difficult for me to deal with my emotions now. I feel like I'm getting to the place where I am no longer distorted by blame and desperation. I acknowledge that I played a part in the breaking of our relationship but I also realize that he never talked to me about it until he had already started his affair. At that point nothing I did was good enough and he already had a negative reaction towards me because he saw her as everything I wasn't. I feel like I really struggle to not let my anger and pain hamper the progress he and I have made. Once he broke things off with her and spent more time reconnecting with me he rediscovered the love we have for one another. I'm worried that it's too late. I get so upset and hurt and I can't look at him and I don't want to speak to him. Even when things seem to be going okay it only takes a second to remember that he slept with someone else. He was with someone else. He spent 2 1/2 months texting her non stop and sharing nude photos and finally consumating their relationship in the front of her truck in a parking lot. I guess none of that really matters but now I just hurt and cry nearly every time I think about it which seems to be daily unless I just get angry which leads to the silent treatment or mean snarky sarcastic remarks. I don't want him to touch me and I just can't believe he did this to me. Will this get easier? I told him I'm glad I graduate with my degree in a year because then I will have the means and freesom to leave. It's not that I'm only waiting for that day but right now I feel like I don't have a choice because here is no way I could support my children and myself on my own. I've shared this with him because if I still feel this bad in a year I don't see how I can make it through. So I suppose what I'm really asking is for those of you who have been in my position, did you get over this? I want to save my marriage and I love him but I don't know if I love him enough to stay knowing what he did. Did anyone feel this way and go on to have a great marriage? And can I really love him when I say such mean and hurtful things to him when I let my anger take hold?
http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/healing-infidelity-through-faith/news/view/3869850
So, yes, you can move past it eventually. You can also get stuck there. Suggested reading:
http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/healing-infidelity-through-faith/news
"Getting Past the Affair" by Douglas K. Snyder (among others)
"Not 'Just Friends'" by Shirley Glass
And humbly my own book:
"Healing Infidelity" by Rick and Lenita Copple
(which contains most all the articles in the link above)
As Cole mentioned - your process sounds pretty darned normal. There's a rollercoaster of emotions and the more I see people trying to deny, cover up, excuse, or hide those emotions, the longer it takes for them to work through the grief and loss. Even when a couple stays together and works things out, there is loss and there is grief. Feel what you feel - it's valid and it's real and it's OK. This is YOUR journey, and no one else has a right to tell you you're traveling it "wrong" or too fast or too slow or... no. It's yours. You do it your way.
That said... :)
1) Will this get easier?
Yes! Absolutely. Easier. And harder. And then easier again. For us, it helped to actually commit to an actual recovery plan instead of just saying, "OK let's stay together." I needed to determine exactly what I needed from him, learn how to ask for it, and he needed to learn how to provide it. (And reverse roles, too.) Once we actually were actively working on the marriage and we started to see progress, I felt much better about staying and the anger toward him started to release its grasp on my heart more and more.
2) Did anyone feel this way and go on to have a great marriage?
We're still learning to have a "great marriage". We're still learning what that looks like. We did NOT have a "great marriage" before. We DID have great moments, though, and we've learned through reading and counseling how to identify what made those moments great and how to build our lives and relationship choices based around the things that made those moments great. In short: we're not 100% where we'd like to be, but things are SO much better than they were before the affair.
3) And can I really love him when I say such mean and hurtful things to him when I let my anger take hold?
While it would be Utopian to never, EVER hurt the ones we love, let's face it - we hurt the ones we love. Sometimes unintentionally, or sometimes intentionally. For me, reading Dr. Harley's "Love Busters" book helped me to understand my own angry. You can actually read the basics on marriagebuilders.com - but the chapter on Anger Outbursts really helped my husband and I a LOT. Basically, I was using my anger to punish my husband for his bad behavior. I felt like he should suffer for making the choices he did.
Something that helped alleviate a LOT of the anger was my husband reading this: http://survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=324250 - Prior to reading that, he wasn't giving me what I needed. I needed him to show remorse and I needed him to understand just how absolutely devastating his choice to have an affair was for me. It really helped him to sort of have a "to do" list - a guide, if you will, to be the best he could to help me in my healing.
When I do catch myself getting angry about the past, I find that taking a time out, taking deep breaths, and getting to the pith of what I want/need in that moment and then conveying it to my husband really has helped us. Now that I know where my anger comes from (usually, it's me punishing him) I can stop and say, "I love him. I want to treat him with love just like I want him to treat ME with love..." It helps.
It has taken practice, though. :)
So does it get better? It can. But it doesn't just magically get better. I really do think that a lot of thought/work/changes had to be implemented for us to get to a better place.
Some of the work has been a lot of fun and very enlightening, so hey... I won't complain TOO much.
But I don't easily anger, thankfully for her. But I know she's hurt, a lot. She has to live the rest of her life knowing what she did to me. It makes her very sad. Even if your husband is stoically ignoring his pain, he has it.
But you're early in the game. It is normal to be angry at this point. At some point, however, to avoid hate eating you up, and if you want to rebuild, you'll have to come to a place of acceptance. if not, at some point you may have to decide to move on without him. But that is a decision for a later day.
Kajohu, I know what you mean about it's like he isn't the same person who betrayed me. In my anger, all I wanted to do eas hurt him as badly as he hurt me. I threatened over and over that I may have an affair myself. I could have, easily. BUT, what stopped me from making those destructive choices was that the man I would be hurting was no longer the same man who hurt me. I am stil angry, but I can feel it starting to dull.
Up until now, I have merely allowed him to try. It was all I had left. Passive acceptance of his efforts, waiting for him to stray again, mess up. Then the decision would b easy.
But, in this stage of anger, I am not 'working' at all. And that's ok, for now. And, I think it's ok for you, too. But, if you are struggling with triggers or things you need him to do ti help you thru this time, I suggest you start your list like I made. I wrote down this list of what I believed to be 25 or so unattainable things he had to do to even stay in the house. Some were one time actions like 'close down your personal cell pjone account and join mine where I have full access with no security lock and kepp 24/7 GPS on'. He did it, and it was done. Others were things like 'Always answer your phone, Tell me you love me every day, You must keep trying even when I give you no reason to believe there is hope.' And on and on....
Then I told him I won't give him any more guidance. If it is going to work, he has to come up with the rest.
I don't know if that helps, but it gave him somewhere concrete to start.
And, now, I glance at this list(which he keeps on his bedside table) every once in a while and can't believe he has kept up his end of the bargain. It is a measurement stick for me, of sorts. I was so worried when I wrote it that it would be the measueement of our failure. But it has been quite the opposite.