SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’m going to be completely straight with you because you’ve been fed enough sweet-tasting lies to last a lifetime. This isn't just a "rough patch" or a mistake. This is one of the most disgusting, calculated stories of betrayal I have ever heard. To have the man she was sleeping with stand at your wedding and watch you dance with your wife is a level of depravity that most people can't even wrap their heads around. She didn’t just cheat; she curated a fifteen-year performance and invited her audience to watch you play the fool. It is sick, and you need to stop waiting for her to suddenly develop a soul.

You need to realize that the woman you think you’re fighting for never existed. She is a phantom. The person who laughs while you’re breaking at a football game is a predator who feeds on your stability while mocking your heart. I truly hope you find the will to leave her, because I cannot see it being good for any person looking to reconcile after this. To stay would be to volunteer for more humiliation. She has proven that she doesn't just lack love for you—she lacks basic human empathy. You cannot "TEAM G" with a person who is passing notes to her lover about your pain in real time.

Stop breaking your back for someone who would use your own truck to drive to another man’s bed. You’ve been a sacrificial lamb for a decade and a half, and it’s time to stop. Being a "good man" doesn't mean being a play thing for a narcissist. Your kids don't need a father who accepts being treated like garbage; they need a father who shows them what it looks like to have boundaries. You are an incredible father and a man of immense value, but you are currently pouring your life-blood into a black hole.

Get your's, Gemmy. Get a lawyer, get your finances locked down, and get her out of your life. The "Future You" who wrote that letter is begging you to stop the bleeding. You are a lighthouse, but even a lighthouse is useless if it’s trying to guide a ship that is intentionally trying to crash into the rocks. You deserve a life that is founded on truth, not a fifteen-year con job.

How are the kids holding up in this house, and do you have a lawyer in Ontario who is ready to play as dirty as she has?

Brutal to read. It resonates deeply. I’m going to copy something I wrote a while back that I think is on topic. This is all a huge mind fuck, yours as thorough as it gets, sadly.

I am a changed man from the betrayal. I’m harder. I’m almost 4 years past D-day, and I think I’m a better person in important ways. You can be too, there is hope.

I believe that when we are in relationship people, we don’t truly and fully see the other person. We have a mental model of that person stored in our brain, and what we mostly experience is an overlay of that model with the real person. And once we know someone well, have observed them for a long time, our model fits and even predicts the other person quite well. When the person does something that surprises us, we update our model (ie get to know them better), and the cycle continues.

Enter a betrayal into this. For me, the incongruence between my model of my wife and the objective reality of my wife completely fractured. My model, my inner understanding of her, could never have predicted what she did. I believe this is a huge source of the mental anguish that betrayed spouses undergo. It’s like a bomb went off in their brain. Now the most important model, the one of their beloved, is obviously wrong, the new information proves that, but we don’t know where to go next. We’re shocked and paralyzed. I just could not take the new information about the affair and use it to update my model about my wife. I wrote endless pages about believing she must have been tricked. Honestly it’s embarrassing to look back at how hard I argued with these good people to try to convince myself that there must have been some circumstances that excused her. And what I was doing was trying to preserve the mental model of the woman I loved and the woman that all my dreams of the future were tied up with.

So then all I could do was watch her. And she absolutely fucking sucked at reconciliation. For all the reasons I’ve listed. And each time she played the victim and lied and failed to have basic human empathy in the face of the pain she caused me, she forced me to keep nudging my mental model in a worse and worse direction. And now after two years of abysmal behavior, I know think very very poorly of her. And from that vantage point, I am now reinterpreting our life together. I think she has always been mostly like this. She might have taken a turn for the worse after a traumatic event, but it wasn’t a day and night shift.

Post #20:

Wife,

I am pretty sure she is here and trying to get help to make amends for the situation she caused.

At least she takes accountability, that’s a first step.

But, we *don't* know that she takes accountability. We absolutely do not, not even close. And so I think it is really destructive to tell the OP that his WS is on here trying to make amends.

There in fact have been waywards whose betrayed spouses are on here that is, who've seem to have used SI as a sort of public relations tour. As in they come on here and say how much they want to make amends, but then accounts from the betrayed spouse say in fact only much less work has been done by WS. Whether they the WS are really taking amends will be in whether they take the advice given on here, and even much more so than this, from the accounts of the betrayed spouse.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 11:36 PM, Thursday, April 30th]

Gemmy, we never outgrow our belief in fairy tales. Up to age 9/10 we believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, even the ridiculous Easter bunny. Once that magical thinking looks over it simply morphs into crushes on the prettiest girl, the football player, the genius geek. None of them can live up to our expectations but we hang on to the need to worship something or someone. (This is not referencing religion)so look at the politicians who looked to be perfect, or the good looking movie star who has fake teeth, noses, hair, etc.
What I read is your absolute belief that, contrary to the clear evidence, your wife will become a different person. How? How does someone who has lived, and thought, a certain way become a completely different human being? I guess it has been done. I don’t know a single one who has had an altered personality.
What you need to do is look at how to live with who and what she is. She might be able to change how she acts, and I hope she does, but don’t set yourself up for disappointment. It might be, instead of 100% change, you get 50% change. It might be that occasionally you can see 70 or 80% change, but can it be sustained? That’s what you need to be realistic about. I wish you the best.

But, we *don't* know that she takes accountability. We absolutely do not, not even close. And so I think it is really destructive to tell the OP that his WS is on here trying to make amends.

The OP informed about his wife joining here.

They agreed not to read each other posts and to find their own healing separately.
I thought I will be mindful not to link what I reply to one to the other to respect Gemmy’s desire.

We don’t know how another person feel. Sometimes we don’t even know what exactly we do feel, so no one is assuming that it the truth.

We can only observe facts.

She telling the bad stuff she did to her husband is a step in the right direction, even if it is just that for now, is taking accountability for her actions.

We’ll see what follows, it’s on her to change and it’s on him to see if those changes will be enough.
All I can offer is feedback and empathy but NOT my emotions, because I’m am not into their relationship.

Sure they are elicited by stories, but I’m keeping those to my self.
The man needs to get out of his suffering, that’s always the goal, the rest is irrelevant

She is in IC but I think they are working more on her childhood and the why then how to help me. Makes sense as I should help myself I suppose.

My W signed a release allowing her IC to talk with me. In our case, W's IC became our MC, and the release allowed anything my W said in IC to be brought into MC sessions, at the C's discretion. You can't do that, but you can ask for the release and ask for periodic joint sessions to keep you up to date.

What help do you want from your W? What will you do if she doesn't or can't provide that help?

You aren't doomed if your W doesn't help you. Healing is something you do on your own behalf. You don't have to do it - healing is necessary for thriving after being betrayed, but you don't have to do it. Your W can't make the pain go away.

Do not count on your W to help. The best she can do is change from betrayer to good partner. That's her work to do, and she's the only one who can do it.

What you do now is for your future. Bringing an ap - and spouse - to your wedding is an egregious boundary violation. Revealing an A after you revealed something deeply personal is a terrible violation. Texting a current ap while talking about a previous ap is a terrible boundary violation. They're in the past, though. Now your best bet is to exorcise the residual thoughts and feelings. You can do that, and you'll be glad you did. But you don't need your W's help to do it. A good IC, yes; your W, no.

You heal you.
Your WS heals themself.
Together, you heal your M, if you both ant to.

*****

Your W may be in the process of becoming a good partner. Time will tell.

*****

I urge you to avoid living in the past. Yes, your W's As have brought immense pain into your life. She victimized you. But you don't have to take on a Victim role in life. It takes work to stop ruminating about what she did, but her As are about her and her issues, not about you or any issue with what you did or did not do.

Even if she thinks she cheated out of anger at you, her A's are not about the real you - they're about her image of you.

*****

IMO, the people who do best after infidelity are those who take responsibility for themselves and take advantage of the options open to them. It's the people who say to themselves something like, 'I'm not going to let this ruin the rest of my life. I'll do _____ instead.'

It looks like that's what you're doing, so you've made a good start on healing, IMO.

@sisoon

I am healing myself and trying to help her heal as limited as my tank is for that. I am encouraging when I notice her changing and honestly doing my very best to hold the family together. I just do not know as of yet, if the insane behavior over so long a period, I am able to look forward without resentment.
I told her about sexual abuse in my childhood when she decided to tell me the affair happened, so I feel i am suited to not play the victim as she was the first person I have ever told. Her added sexual deviance certainly did not help with this but I will be fine. I know it's not my fault, I have not lost self esteem nor self worth.