SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Even though it has been over 3 decades sense D-day and I consider our marriage has been restored to even better than pre disclosure, needling questions still linger.

For many years all enquiries I held concerning the "how’s, "when’s" and "why’s, whether voiced or internalized, were extraordinary painful. Those were dreary, dark days where I was prone to spiraling downward questioning my value. Back then, pre home computers and internet, I had nowhere to turn for people like here to advise me that I was looking at this all ass-backwards.

I was disoriented, a rudderless craft desperately trying to stay afloat amidst a tempest, where her explanations struck like lightning, repeatedly electrifying the mast, shredding the sails that once guided me. There were no clear skies or solid land with safe harbor. I felt like I was left with nothing but jagged reefs looming below to blindly navigate.

Eventually, after many years adrift, I did find dock and began to right the ship and do the repairs needed to safely head back out to sea. However, I was not trained or naturally skilled for this kind of effort, but I persisted, mistakes and all. Interestingly, reading posts and wise comments here at SI really point out just how unskilled I was. That lack of experience drug out the repairs for far too long.

The good news is, anymore, questions are more like a puzzlement with only a slight, but still painful sting. I find myself saying without a word spoken, "I just don’t get it!" I’ve listened to my wife intensely over the years trying to be open and fair to her explanations. I did so because, despite her terrible decision to cheat, I believed then, and I maintain now, she deserved both my anger and my compassion. I concede that empathy for the betrayer should never be at the expense of the betrayed’s wellbeing. However, I could see my wife was suffering from deep shame for betraying not only me but herself as well. I believe that she was more in shock to realize that she was capable of betrayal than I was, and I was stunned to the core. We were adrift in a briny sea of endless pain.

Not that I have any great wisdom to offer, just lots of water bailed, but I wish to convey for those who are early in the process of reconciliation that no matter the outcome, stay or go, happy or sad, successful or failing, stalemated or moving forward, you may find that many questions are unanswerable leaving betrays, like me, in a state of "I don’t get it!" and the fact that I will never understand is what I find most difficult to reconcile.

You can never make sense out of situations where emotions are at play and why people do what they do.

FWIW I have seen grown up adults still act like children when it comes to decisions and behavior. It’s like they revert bs k to the spoiled toddler and believe "they deserve to be happy" and "I want it!" Type mentality.

I figured out a few things regarding my H. It helps me UNDERSTAND but certainly does not excuse his lying and cheating.

I think we struggle to understand things we wouldn't do. I can't understand why people do negative things like take drugs, or steal, or are cruel to animals but I also don't understand risk taking behaviour like free climbing or extreme parkour.

I guess everyone is wired differently and I'm definitely the sort of person who likes a stress free, simple life so I can't imagine ever finding sneaking around and lying to have an affair appealing in any way!

Hello again The1stWife,

It is true that infidelity is an extremely selfish act. I will not attempt to say anything differently. However, my wife is one of the least selfish person I know, which makes her decision to cheat that more disorienting.

There is another angle though. She has one older brother and two sisters, one younger one older. Her parents, for as long as she can recall, had a silent, stay in your corner, relationship. She has said here and there, one of the things that drew her to me was how she witnessed my parents’ relationship. For as long as I can remember and right up to their passing, they were deeply affectionate with each other. Their love for each other is all I knew and kind of thought it was typical.

What I hadn’t really put together until now is that in a way, I might have been a means to an end. Not that it was intentional on her part, but she has, in the distant past, made the statement that she didn’t really want to marry me. (That would have been nice to know before we got married.) Of course, starting out that way would, more than likely, leave a person feeling unhappy. And for the 1st 16 years (breaks my heart) she was deeply unhappy. She never told me of her unhappiness until after the affair came to the forefront of our relationship. At the time of disclosure, she was, or at least she says she was, deeply in love with me. Try making that hat fit! Uggg!

To add to this equation, every one of her siblings had affairs, some multiple. All are divorced, all several times. I submit that there is more to her decision to betray me than she was selfish.

I do gain insight from your comments. Thank you.

Asterisk

Hello Evio,

I think we struggle to understand things we wouldn't do. I can't understand why people do negative things like take drugs, or steal, or are cruel to animals but I also don't understand risk taking behaviour like free climbing or extreme parkour.

So very true Evio, it is extremely difficult to grasp. On a side note....I free climbed for nearly 2 decades. So I get why a person would take the risk. :) I will admit, after my wife's disclosure, I climbed risker climbs and didn't really care about the outcome.

Thanks for your thoughts and support.

Asterisk

Asterisk—

However, I was not trained or naturally skilled for this kind of effort, but I persisted, mistakes and all. Interestingly, reading posts and wise comments here at SI really point out just how unskilled I was. That lack of experience drug out the repairs for far too long.

It sounds to me like you’re still being a bit harsh with yourself.

I think all any of us can do is act with the best information we have in the moment and go from there.

You got hit by emotional trauma the size of a bus, and you walked it off on your own —- even it took longer than anticipated to find some level of peace.

That’s bad ass.

There is no real guide book or handbook for any of this stuff — I think that’s why I appreciate this website so much. The members here are real folks going through it all trying to figure it out.

In the last decade, besides some IC, MC and countless stories I’ve read here, I read nearly three dozen relationship books, from how to build a healthy relationship to many different ideas what a healthy relationship actually is. In my case, we rebuilt a healthy relationship from the ground up. it took a while here as well, to know what it was and what it looks like.

My wife’s A was in a different state and was over by the time we relocated back home. Our original group of friends don’t know about the A, and her nickname with them is still Ms. Goody Two-Shoes. Perfect attendance, perfect grades, business leader, and all of my old friends hit on her at some point, but she turned them all away. Her drive, her perfection was all based on a very unpleasant childhood, and ultimately she had never seen or experienced a healthy relationship. She followed all the rules until she didn’t — the lowest day of her life and then doubled down on her fall from grace and it got worse from there.

No handbook for her type of childhood either and nothing I deserved from the fallout from her worst days and horrible choices.

No one is owed a last chance either, but I’m glad I offered my wife some grace and a shot at being her best imperfect self.

I did waste a few years trying to make sense of it, and I don’t think I ever will, because I didn’t make that choice.

I have better days now realizing the M survived adversity neither of us signed up for and we found a way back to proper love and care of each other.

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 9:39 PM, Tuesday, September 16th]

My old manager had a saying
"You can’t fix stupid" Didn’t Doctor Phil say "You can’t make sense out of nonsense." I learned that some questions don’t get the answers we want. And we don’t like that. They don’t fit in our sense of what the world is or should be. And we want the answers to simply "make sense" We’ll spend a day with an addict and tell me if they make sense. People in affairs are just like addicts.

"The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."

- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I'd add that people are under no obligation to make sense to you as well, only because many of us fail to make sense to ourselves.

Unless you've been there and done that, you'll never "get it." What's important, I believe, is understanding that infidelity is simply a part of human nature.

Some hypotheses:

When I was wondering what was going on with my W (she wasn't eating o r sleeping during her A), one of my thoughts was that she couldn't be cheating because she was so morally correct. My very 1st evaluation of her (60 years ago this week) was 'attractive but prissy.' I realized she toed the moral line out of fear of being caught. I thought that applied to cheating, but I was wrong. I wished she implemented her values because she wanted to, not because she feared the consequences of not implementing them.

As for being 'least selfish', a lifetime of placing other people first can get to be too much. A person can decide to throw off the chains of serving others, even at great cost to themself, sort of, 'This looks interesting enough for me to do it even though my partner won't like it.'

Self-hate and/or self-disgust can also lead to cheating. An A could be a WS's way of saying, 'You just don't understand how rotten a person I am, so I have to show you....'

Co-dependence can result in a build up of resentment and/or misunderstandings. A lot of our MC consisted of my W saying something about what she thought I thought. Our MC would ask me what I really thought, and she'd test and confront me if she thought I was not being truthful or aware of my real thoughts. My W was usually way, way off her reading of me, and that fed into the unhappiness that enabled her A.

*****

Bro, You need to give yourself a break! No one is trained well on how to deal with an A!

My reco is to celebrate your strength, ingenuity, perceptiveness, courage, and more in finding a path through this mess.

Think about this: as angry as you were, you found energy to have compassion for the person who hurt you, even while you were looking for ways to heal yourself. Not everybody does that.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 6:23 PM, Wednesday, September 17th]

Oldwounds

Your point is well taken.

Thank you for sharing some of your story. Sharing with each other makes it easier to stop living life on the edge, thinking we are alone with "the event" and the deep grief that follows.

And yes, it is important for both the wayward and the betrayed to understand that grace or some might word as forgiveness is not owed to anyone. In fact, I’d argue that in some, if not many, it is not healthy for either party.

Asterisk

Well said, jailedmind,

Trying to make sense of nonsense (weak word) is a waste of a fool’s errand. I tend to be a personality that counts the cost of most any decision I make, and I just didn’t understand that there are those that make a decision and then do work arounds with the cost.

ASterisk

Unhinged

I’ve heard Neil say this and of course human’s need for control of our environment smacks painfully into the idea that we may never know. And yes, it is an unfortunate truth that "infidelity is simply a part of human nature." So is the grief that follows.

Asterisk

Sisoon,

As for being 'least selfish', a lifetime of placing other people first can get to be too much. A person can decide to throw off the chains of serving others, even at great cost to themself, sort of, 'This looks interesting enough for me to do it even though my partner won't like it.'

This category best fits my wife. She expressed, years later, that the pressure of being forced into a certain, pre-ordained female/wife mold led to her exploding everything in her. It was a push back, not so much at me, but at the prescribed life we were living. She doesn’t justify her affair, nor do I, but I recognize that it did play an important role in her self-detonation.

My reco is to celebrate your strength, ingenuity, perceptiveness, courage, and more in finding a path through this mess.
Think about this: as angry as you were, you found energy to have compassion for the person who hurt you, even while you were looking for ways to heal yourself. Not everybody does that.

You are very kind. It is a thought that is very hard to hold onto.

Asterisk