SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Lately I've been struggling with self confidence, and feeling bad about how hard core I did the pick me dance in the beginning. I know I wasn't in my right mind, and its completely normal, but I'm still having a hard time with it.

Maybe I am just processing everything. I don't know.

The other day I was thinking through the affair and her lying to me, and why she did it. Obviously if she had come to me and said "I've been flirting with this guy I know and Im considering having sex with him" I would have had agency and I could have objected. If it had gone down like that, and she still went for it, I would have left the relationship in response to her leaving it by having sex woth another against my objections.

Im pretty confident in how things would have gone down in that situation.

Why then am I with her now?

Just because she took the "don't ask for permission ask for forgiveness" path instead of being open about it?

Why does that make it right to try and reconcile but the first option would not?

Because its in the past and she is not currently "acting out"?

It seems like I allowed boundary crossing, or bending, simply because she told me about doing the wrong thing. For example: she continued viewing her AP's social media 6 months after D-day, and I only found out about it because she told me. So when I got upset she was like "I didn't have to tell you" implying that if I didn't react in a muted way she wouldn't tell me next time. This has happened many times in the last two years. It's not happening any longer, but it still bothers me.

Im having a hard time Reconciling these feelings.

What am I missing, and how can regain self esteem after taking her back when I clearly told her our relationship would be over if she cheated on me? How could I have held harder lines when she bent boundaries with things that aren't "lets destroy the relationship" worthy?

[This message edited by Theevent at 4:43 AM, Monday, May 25th]

Not much logic involved with infidelity or deciding to hang around after.

At least none that I have found.

I thought the same, if cheated on, then leave.

End of story.

That is what I thought would happen.

I didn’t even know R was a possible outcome until I tripped over this place in a web search.

As to my esteem, my wife’s horrible choices are no reflection on me.

Infidelity was a reset button to go forward however I wanted.

Choosing grace, choosing forgiveness, offering a final chance are potentially positive actions — provided I don’t enable any more ill treatment.

I will always understand why people walk away, and if you’re done, you’re done. I get that.

I just took a step back to see what I wanted from life, from an M and aimed for that.

The front door works, and there is some empowerment knowing I can leave anytime I want.

I chose the last chance and my wife earned it.

Hopefully, your wife is doing more than simply no longer ‘acting out’.

I don’t know that you are missing anything, maybe you haven’t seen enough work from your WS for R to seem like a possiblity.

IDK ... if you can forgive yourself based on response you get to your threads on SI, maybe you don't need the help of an IC.

IMO, though, there's more going on with the way you are beating yourself up than your feelings about taking your W back. My reco is to continue to work with a good IC with one goal being learning to love yourself despite your flaws.

And taking your W back is not a flaw, if you want to take her back.

IMO, getting through infidelity requires taking oneself apart and putting oneself back together the way one wants to be. A good IC can help. Good ICs at various times in my life were essential for me because of foo and brain chemistry (ADD) issues.

My guess, based on your posts, is that you don't assert yourself as much as you'd like or need to do. If that's accurate, your best bet is to find the barriers to asserting yourself within you and take them apart. That's very hard to do on your own.

The decision to dump a cheater is often made by reflex. When one is faced with being betrayed, however, it's only after the BS is (often rightfully) enmeshed in all sorts of bonds with the WS. At that point, the healthiest thing to do is to think and feel a lot before acting. IMO, you owe it to yourself to make the best of your remaining years, and you probably have a lot of them left. You owe it to yourself to maximize the joy of those years - but since we can't predict very far into the future, it usually takes time - more time than we'd like - to make the best guess about how to do that.

I get your frustration. We had a boundary that we believed was rock solid, but when tested, it turned out to be so flimsy that we can't reconcile the two. How can our perceived and actual boundaries be polar opposites? That was one of my largest struggles. If I have any regrets revolving around the discovery of my wife's cheating....and i do....the NUMBER ONE issue is that I didn't file for divorce.

Now mind you, I'm many years out, reconciled, and glad I did, but I'm not happy of the path it took. Sure, lessons are learned, and boundaries are firmer, but sometimes giving oneself grace can be an extremely difficult process. But that is really the only way I see to reconcile an internal conflict like this. We simply had no idea how much impact infidelity can have on a person....especially ourselves.

This is one of my biggest struggles, as well.

As far as your question: "How could I have held harder lines?" Buddy I've replayed the years around my DDays a billion times. Every single interaction, discovery, sobbing conversation... You just can't get em back. You can't change how you handled it and you can't hold your past self to a standard of response that you didn't understand at the time.

I think one of the hardest parts of a man being a victim of infidelity (and this does not mean it is worse for a man to experience; just pointing out how it hits the genders differently), is that questioning of yourself as a protector of your wife, your marriage. The idea we have of a man never letting this happen because we're vigilant and brave. And then you find yourself doing two years of "pick me." It's devastating to look back on. But you have to keep moving forward and learning from those mistakes. I had never been on this site until 6 months post our last DDay. You don't know what you don't know.

...how can regain self esteem after taking her back when I clearly told her our relationship would be over if she cheated on me?

Do you feel you're betraying yourself?

[This message edited by Unhinged at 2:11 PM, Tuesday, May 26th]

Do you feel you're betraying yourself?

This is actually the question I'm trying to answer. Am I betraying myself by staying? How does it align with my values to stay with someone who betrayed me so hard core, when if they were doing that in the present I would leave?

It's related to my comments about her asking for forgiveness instead of permission. Is the betrayal less bad because she didn't ask for permission, went and did it, then asked for forgiveness? If she had asked for permission, and I said "no", and she did it any way, that very likely would have ended the relationship back then as it would today. But because she did it and is asking for forgiveness, I didn't end the relationship. Why is this different? This is the logic trap I feel stuck in.

If you are doing something you have to ask forgiveness for later, you already know what you are doing is wrong. Yet you do it any way hoping to get forgiveness. If someone does something they know you would never give permission for, why should you then give forgiveness?

To be clear this is not because of lack of effort on her part, or me wanting to leave now. I think it's more of me needing to process and come to terms with this aspect of her affair, and my actions in response. I have to feel like me staying is the right choice even if she is doing everything she can do to address her bad choices. I really don't want to wake up ten years from now realizing that I lived the previous decade feeling stressed or uncertain about my choice to stay.

I don’t know if this will help you or not, but you do need to believe you can divorce over this anytime you want to. Deciding to stay and R doesn’t mean total forever commitment. You would be absolutely fine to wake up each day and decide if you want to stay in this marriage for another day or not.

This is actually the question I'm trying to answer. Am I betraying myself by staying? How does it align with my values to stay with someone who betrayed me so hard core, when if they were doing that in the present I would leave?

Here are my thoughts but know I do not know what the correct outcome for you should be, so don’t read this as I am talking you out of divorce. That’s always a valid option.

First, you e always think we know what we would do. Whatever holds you there would likely hold you there in the other scenario, because logic and emotions rarely line up. You are putting a hypothetical test to prove a real result and I am not sure that’s helpful.

Secondly, I think when people stop feeling like they are betraying themselves by staying is after the marriage has been rebuilt to an extent that you no longer question why you are there. That is not always attainable.

The first year is almost always totally recovery for both people. And a large majority of people stay married that first year. I don’t like unreliable stats but I have read anything from 80-92%. So first thing- it makes you normal. There are many things to value about a marriage outside of sexual fidelity and no one can just switch their love off in a flash. So for that, do not beat yourself up.

Get the sexual betrayal is also the thing that calls that all into question, but when the smoke clears it’s more like taking down one of a few important pillars, the rest can still be there and hold it for some time. If that trust and safety isn’t rebuilt the whole thing will collapse.

Secondly, the majority still follow it through. People often don’t just divorce from the infidelity. They divorce from the exhausted efforts afterwards. And a lot of the exhaustion comes from pressuring themselves to decide the outcome and the way the ws shows up. The longer the bs has to hold it together with that pressure instead of the ws taking a fair amount of weight, again comes the collapse.

You may be more ready for the divorce, and if so, just pull the trigger and the rest of you will catch up. I don’t think anyone is 100 percent ready when they start the process.

However, if you aren’t ready, it would help greatly to start paying attention to your self talk:

Let go of the outcome. Tell yourself that you are free to do whatever it is you want. Understand you may have very good reasons you would like to see your marriage be rebuilt, and you have been patient in making sure she is ready for that step too.

Tell yourself this has been the hardest shit you have gotten through so far in your life. This shows how strong your character and values are. You are not responsible that your wife may not have that same character. That’s not a statement or reflection of you. It’s her flaw, and you have chosen to try and live her anyway. That’s a testimony of a strong man’s love.

Maybe go get the papers and file them out. Have it agreed on so you have it. I think this helped my husband with clarity and knowing he could stop any time. It also conveyed the seriousness of the situation to me.

When we chose not to execute it, we vaguely started to chose something else—-and that was each other.

Not everyone has a ws they can rebuild with. I have not followed you closely enough to have an opinion of you have one or not. It’s equally strong to say this is not going to go in a direction that suits me.

A lot of what I am trying to say is find a way to build yourself up, rather than tear yourself down. Reconciliation to me means you have built a marriage that it’s easy for the two of you to choose each other each day. It’s not usually something that happens in two years following. But I would say it should seem like it’s moving in one direction or another. But it doesn’t make you less of a man either way. Either this will be something that grows into something you never would have imagined despite the infidelity and the pain, or you will decide that you are ready to call it one day.

You are not the one who broke it, it wasn’t broken because you weren’t enough, this is completely on her. There will never be justice for it, but if she helps you build something so worthwhile you don’t want to leave it, you will find the grace needed to tip the scales towards balance.

Beating yourself up is a pressure tactic you are putting on yourself because living with uncertainty and cognitive dissonance is not an easy thing for most of us to master. The best thing you can do is work on accepting the uncertainty and not feeling guilty for not giving her certainty that she is also wanting. You do not owe that part of it and I think if you can do that you will feel the freedom you truly have towards whatever ends up being the answer.

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:37 PM, Tuesday, May 26th]