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.
Hi folks. Been a while since I've been on here, but thought I would check in. Been seven years since DDay (almost, will be seven on May 11). We are doing well. Actually, life has pretty much by this point gone back to "normal". Though not totally, as some of the changes we've made in the beginning are still in place. But she recently had a milestone. After seven years, she was finally released from her pentence that she'd been under. Actually, 7 years is the canonically prescribed time for a pentence for adultry.
Anyway, we are doing well. We still love each other, and feel pretty sure, as sure as can be had, that the ordeal is over and in the past. She remains on guard, and she's been tested. As recently as this past week. Out of the blue, after almost 6 years of silence, the AP calls her up. He actually gave her the line that he wanted her to come clean his house (she does that for a living). She simply said, "You know I can't do that." That's pretty much all she said. We both think he was doing a check, hoping things had changed. He found out it hadn't, and that she had no desire to be with him. Truth be told, if I was to die tomorrow, I don't think she would seriously conside him. She is at the point where she looks back on those days in disbelief. She doesn't even recognize that person she was back then. Strange, as that is what I thought at the time, that I didn't know her.
At any rate, thought you might appreciate knowing how we are doing for those still on here who knew us, and where we are today.
On my Parkinson's situation, I've had DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation) surgery back in Sept. 29, and it was largely successful. Which is why I can still type well at this point. (Yay!) So on that front, things are pretty good. I've actually expanded her house cleaning service by starting a window washing "divison" of the company. Which has slowly been growing.
Hope all here are doing well. Though I know not all will be, otherwise, most of us wouldn't be here, now would we? But it is satisfying to look back on those first days and realize just how far we've come in seven years. Where we are today looked so far away from that end of the journey. I'm thankful that in my case, at least, it turned out well. I only wish I could wave a magic wand and give everyone here the same blessing.
You helped me very much in the early days (4 or so years ago) and I don't think i ever properly thanked you, so thank you :).
Due to you, I was "present" during the hardest time of my life - i LIVED every painful day and maintained a composure that still impresses me to this day lol. In the end, the marriage was lost but I know that I did everything I could to save it and am damn proud with how I conducted myself - again - thank you. I now look back on that period of my life with pride.
It was impossible for me to believe that life would keep on moving forward seven and a half years ago, but here we are. :)
In that room is all of us in various stages of involvement. Some stew wandering aimlessly through the room, bloodied ants in shock, others are bandaged and helping others get bandaged, still others running in a pannick, ripping through the ruins searching for shreds of what once was.
The amazing thing is, that we all eventually walk out of the wreckage and into the sun. We dust ourselves off, assess the damage, and rebuild. Sometimes that rebuilding is with our spouses, and sometimes without.
It is wonderfully comforting to drop in and find 2 dear friends here.
Cole, I'm happy to hear about the Parkinson's success. I would love to hear more. My father is 85 and 3 years into his diagnosis.
Yep. We did indeed go forward and rebuild. In my case, with my wife. :)
Anyway, as it involves DBS, it is a surgical procedure where they put two thin wires down into your brain at certain spots, and hook up a "generator" much like a pacemaker's. It sends small bursts of electrical pulses into the brain which blocks the signals of the brain to the muscles to tremor. It also helps with Dystonia and other symptoms of PD. It usually doesn't help non-motor symptoms. Like, I have to struggle and force myself to talk loud.
I was diagnosed in 2013, so it has been about 6 years after that that I had the surgery. Of course, the older one "gets it" the faster it progresses. I was about 50 when my first symptoms appeared. Anyway, most people get their medication reduced. A few, like me, totally get off of medication. I understand that one feels pretty normal with DBS for about 5 years, then generally the disease starts showing up as it progresses. But for now, it has given me back a lot of quality of life. The biggest difference is before DBS, I felt "normal" about 1 out of every 4 hours each day I was awake. The other 3 hours I would either be tremoring or having dyskinesia (involuntary movements due to the medication). But after DBS, I'm normal all day long, just like right before getting PD. That has been a real blessing.
Of course, they run memory test due to the fact that DBS can affect one's memory, and you also have to have decent balance as DBS will affect that as well. Usually if a patient has any dementia, they won't do it. Though I know of one case where they did due to the fact that they hoped he would be more active with his grandkids, which did indeed happen. They figured the loss of his memory was a decent trade off.
I suppose if you have any questions, you can always PM me. I'll be glad to help.
But the reason I did indeed write that book was to show everyone that a couple, if they both did the right things, could recover and continue to live together. Unfortunately, not everyone is so cooperative.
Thank you.
For us, it wasn’t so much about penitence as much as recompense. I felt like my husband owed me - not money or material goods - but rather he owed me that which he stole from me. He owed me 100 truths for every lie he told. He owed me time lost with the OW. He owed me compassion and affection and attention that he gave to someone else.
Mostly, he owed me transparency and honesty.
I think when a betrayed spouse can feel like their partner is actually remorseful and trying to make things right, it’s easier to reinvest in the relationship.
Seven years is the amount of time prescribed by the Church cannons for infidelity and our priest followed that, pretty much to the letter. There is good reasons for that as well. Because that is how long it takes to determine whether or not a spouse will correct course and do the right thing. Which thankfully for me and her, she did the right thing. I believe it was sometime around the fourth to fifth years after that she started coming out of her affair mindset and stopped caring about what the OM was doing or feeling all the time. She gradually from that point began to return to her old self in little ways I had noticed that she had changed when the affairs started.
It wasn't a matter of punishing her, but a matter of her healing. It takes that long, if not longer, to heal from infidelity in one's mind. If one is doing all that is required to heal. I knew when we started down this road in May 11, 2011, that that we had a long road to travel. I didn't even realize fully at the time how long it would take. We just took it one day at a time.