SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Dear people of SI,

who went through multiple affairs (2 and above)

Shear your positive stories of reconciliation.

God bless you!

[This message edited by MacandChees at 12:54 PM, Wednesday, September 2nd]

I already shared mine in a different thread.

Happily reconciled - but it took me 3 years to get to a place of happy.

Dear MacandChees, I read your post on the other thread and the part that I could most relate to is how maddening it is to not be able to understand the "partner" you thought you knew better. Having in some fashion "survived" 2 episodes of emotionless infidelity TWELVE YEARS APART, I also heard you wondering why people don't seem to ever grow out of their character flaws.

One only needs to spend time reading stories here to witness how widespread is that sad truth, both among men and women!

I am sorry you are experiencing this. Your exasperation with your WH came through to me loud and clear. It's pretty much standard for me to feel that way, too, on a regular basis!

My SAfWH apparently thinks that simply "controlling himself" and no longer looking at secret websites or trying to contact prostitutes means he is "All In" on the marriage, so we should be "good"! Yet he has never breached the gap between his superficial approach to R of "doing nice things for the wife" and thinking that should be sufficient while we live in In-House Separation for going on a quarter century now, versus him trying to offer the love and emotional depth I truly thought after D-Day 1 (2002) he might develop.

I suspect now that certain people just aren't capable of it, and I accidentally chose one of those people. I knew he was fairly restricted in his emotional expressions, but my family and I all assumed what we were seeing was just a cultural difference; he grew up in a country where people have a reputation for being "stiff upper lip," as my father used to surmise. Sadly, I have had to learn that in my H's case, restricted range of expression and deep thought is not at all superficial, it's a core aspect of his character and it has repeatedly led to him do unbelievable damage to our marriage and our life together.

I haven't found any professional so far who would know how to help me accept the M that I ended up in! Everyone basically thinks I should D him, if it's that lopsided. I just keep praying some event, some day, will help him to start to see there is another person in his life besides himself. Because if I saw a glimmer of such change, it would give me a lot of peace that I had decided to stay, despite feeling I'd made a huge mistake. But so far, I'm still waiting...

Your WH might or might not be anything like mine. Has he at least done any IC (individual counseling)? Have you been able to find some support for the trauma you have suffered?

Here.

Not likely to happen.

So, my ups and downs on this.

Married 51 years now.

Back in the mid 1970’s, I had a ONS (with a rationale that I now know was stupid, the whole thing was not normal). Then he had a revenge ONS.

We were okay for about a year or so. Then he had two PA’s that I didn’t know about, and he left me.

About three months later, he returned to the marriage, and immediately cheated again. I mean, that day.

We had a small child, I still loved him, and thought we could make it work.

And we did. For about 25 years, he was faithful and we recovered our marriage and love. Until he had another PA. And another. I found out about one, but the second remained secret.

Things around that betrayal became chaotic, because he was diagnosed with cancer about 3 weeks after that DDay in 2005. Our lives changed, and we rugswept.

And we did recover our love. Absolutely did. The marriage was working.

Then, his father died, and he hooked up with the one AP that wasn’t disclosed from 2005. I still was unaware.

Shortly after his mother died, in 2019, he and one of our old friends began talking. Her husband had Alzheimer’s, and was dying. He subsequently died of Covid in 2020.

That put the two of them into a different state of "friendship" and they began professing love, etc. They knew each other since 1976, and decided they had "always" loved each other, but for the fates they would have been together, blah blah blah.

It was all long distance, but they had made a plan to meet up. I found out before that could happen.

That DDay was in 2023. He finally came clean about all of the other women in 2024.

And we had a very difficult year of him not wanting to open up and talk about this. That changed when I left.

I left for about 3 weeks, he finally talked to his therapist about the issue of not talking to me about this. He realized a 50 year marriage was about to end. And he made changes.

That was in 2025. So we have a little over an ear of true reconciliation under our belts. I still have anger at times. I still am sad. I still am grieving. I still have trouble trusting that he ever wanted this marriage at all.

I am progressing because he is consistent in his changes.

But it isn’t easy. I figure it will be another 4 or 5byears before I can really trust anyone.