Remind myself every day that staying in this relationship was not a choice of weakness. It was a hard a courageous thing to do, and the only reason I have had the strength is because I love and I am loved.

Keep my eyes on the prize. I have a beautiful family and perfect life, they are worth any pain I have had to suffer.

If you want to know what really loving someone is, it is right here in the pain and forgiveness, in the long and hard roads we are all travelling. My wife had never known real love in her life until she saw me forgive her. Now she has seen it and knows it's power, she is changed forever.

Remind myself every day that staying in this relationship was not a choice of weakness. It was a hard a courageous thing to do, and the only reason I have had the strength is because I love and I am loved.

Keep my eyes on the prize. I have a beautiful family and perfect life, they are worth any pain I have had to suffer.

If you want to know what really loving someone is, it is right here in the pain and forgiveness, in the long and hard roads we are all travelling. My wife had never known real love in her life until she saw me forgive her. Now she has seen it and knows it's power, she is changed forever.

I'm not moving backwards. Those people we were before this happened are no longer allowed in my house. We have both "checked into hotel married".

I hear what all of you are saying. I know we are trying to 'psyche' ourselives into 'moving forward' and 'healing'. I want to ask one question. Don't you miss the JOY? The absolute joy you used to feel with your spouse? Do you even remember the feeling you had before D-Day? I don't. I don't remember HOW I felt. I just know that I miss it.

First of all, I'm not "psyching" myself into moving forward or healing. Either you do this or you don't and to a large extent it is your choice. Of course I miss the old feelings, the innocence, the security. But those are gone. He is doing what he promised to do the day I signed on to give this a shot. So I can either sit around boo whooing about what use to be or get on with making what will be, which in the long run may or may not include him. I have my bad days just like everyone else. I journal about them. But I don't cast out a wide net of doubt trying to catch others in it.

Like Beach says in point 5: . Remind myself that I can not undo the past and that continuing to embrace it keeps me from healing.

Wow that came out way harsher than I meant it too. I'm not implying that needhelp is sitting around on the pity pot. I'm just stating that if I let myself dwell in the what was as opposed to what is, things actually get worse.

I did feel need's post insinuated we are not really healing and just fooling ourselves. I even have days when I feel like that. But in all honesty I know things for me are getting better. It's slow and different but certainly not like where I was 6 months ago.

needhelp62...I understand you asking about missing the joy. But I have had some joyful moments since dday too. Joy washed over me when my entire family was together at Thanksgiving, because it could have been a totally different scenario this year. I have had joyful moments - in a hug, enjoying a beverage on my back porch with my husband, and even during our travels.

I do have to "psych" myself out some days but I find it much easier to do when focusing on current joys rather than looking wistfully back at what was.

Like stateofchaos said, the old couple that we used to be are locked forever out of our home. I have to love and appreciate the new us instead of spending time mourning what I lost. It's hard some days but I am determined to get past this episode and be a stronger, different and hopefully better person from it.

Sending you a hug.

We all miss it, just as we miss the innocence of childhood. We have been awakened with a terrible jolt, but if we live in spend our lives thinking about the past, then where would we be. I am moving forward without any quotation marks around it, because moving forward is the only way there is to move. Whatever path I decide, by innocence is broken, so I am going to make the best of it. I am not fooling my self. It has been nearly two years and I am 100 percent crystal clear about where I am going. I hate it sometimes, but I am going to make the best of it. There are positives in everyones life and even though there is a cloud over me sometimes, I am going to focus on the good bits and get as much as I can out of them.
I think if I travelled back in time to before the A, life would not be as Rosie as I sometimes remember it. We had our times of joy, but things fell apart somehow and my wife had an affair. There were plenty of times when I was not happy back then. There are people stuck in miserable relationships where no one has an affair, and couples who spend a lifetime together without ever communicating. I will make the most of what I have now and move on a little further every day.

Stateofchaos, yes it was way harsh..didn't mean you catch you in the net. ..and you did admit that some days you feel like that. That is all that i asked - that if someone feels that way too. You confirmed it. The posts afterwards confirm that also with

"I am 100 percent crystal clear about where I am going. I hate it sometimes, but I am going to make the best of it"
"I do have to "psych" myself out some days but I find it much easier to do when focusing on current joys rather than looking wistfully back at what was. "


I hope everyone has a better and brighter future.

Take care.

I think is was putting quotation marks around 'moving forward' and 'healing' gave the impression that those things are not real and we are fooling ourselves. I am not sure if you meant this, but that is how it came across.
No one here likes what has happened, but moving on and recovery is the important thing now. They are completely real a the most important thing in our lives. We do not need to be reminded about loss because we feel it every day, but right now we are trying to recover.
Moving on is not forgetting the past, it is rising above it.

Need help62- yes we all miss the absolute securtiy and certaintly we felt in our marraiage before Dday. Ive cried often for that loss. Its like my security blanket in this world was ripped off!! Sometimes the anger has overwhelmed me and I want to scream at him-"We were both unhappy with the lack of intimacy, but I didn't seek comfort at your expense with another man"! But that would serve no positive purpose. It has helped me to focus on knowing I am an emotionally stronger person than him and that is what caused him to connect with the OW instead of burying it in the way I did. Doesn't excuse him, just explains a little. So, I can dwell on it and let it destroy our chances of repairing our marriage, or I can just accept it and try to move on. That is what I am choosing to do.

My biggest change has been to remove "it's not fair" from my thoughts on this whole topic. It was my fall-back position for awhile but really served no purpose.

I'm bound and determined to make something positive come from all of this because otherwise the sadness of loss is too overwhelming. I'm very grateful that H is interested in saving our marriage and is still committed to figuring out how to make this work.

Several weeks ago our daughter was out of the house with friends and we got into one of those conversations that only happen after sharing a bottle of wine. He told me how much he loves me, how thrilled he is with our marriage now, and how he had fallen in love with me again. More importantly he told me that he knew that I wasn't to that stage yet. That's a hard thing to say, but he seems to know where I am in all of this.

At the very worst, I remember sleeping in separate beds and being too angry to even look at him, much less talk. I was hurting, he was hurting, and the best I could do was to slide in bed behind him for a few minutes each night and put my arm around him - no words or eye contact. I thought he was asleep and it was mostly for me, for comfort, but he later told me that he stayed up each night waiting for me to come in. He said he knew that it was all I could offer him at that point but he clung to those few brief minutes each night for reassurance. And then I'd go back to raging at him during the day.

Despite the EA, we have a lot of good history, feelings and caring for one another to fall back on, so I try to stay focused on that. We've been together 16 years and most of it has been pretty good. Do you throw all that away for one bad decision? Ii don't know.

The other thing I hold on to to is the knowledge that the best revenge on the OW is to keep my husband. It's petty, but some days it's all I have.