SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Lord knows that my wife and I made many amateur mistakes while navigating our new, decades-long journey down the prickly road of infidelity. We made many missteps and even now, 43 years later, we find ourselves still stumbling and bumbling our way along this dimly lit corridor.

Though many of us might describe it differently I believe most of us will attest that infidelity places something like an asterisk, with a footnote, on almost every aspect of the teetering relationship. Things that prior to the collapse seemed natural and flowed easily were now strained and forced.

For instance, before my wife’s discloser I never hesitated to wrap my arms around her slender frame, pull her in close and give her a long passionate kiss. However, for over a decade after D-day, drawing her up next to me so I might touch her lips to mine was a mixture of connectiveness and revulsion. I found myself completely conflicted and the immense pain of that new, internal quarrel was immeasurable. Even now, hugs and kisses are sometimes followed by that stubborn asterisk.

I didn’t want it to be like that but there it was, that damn (*) hanging over every intimate moment like a blunt guillotine in wait of its final drop.

One of the few things that I did do early on that proved to be very important to my ongoing recovery, and I believe our success thus far at reconciliation, was to ask myself a simple question every time and in every situation, when I felt the pain was finally subsiding.

Am I healing or am I hardening?

What I came to understand is that healing and hardening can feel similar, maybe even interchangeable, and both are very effective at reducing pain but with vastly different price tags and outcomes.

I’m not stating any of this as a "truth". I am only sharing that for me I found I could successfully reduce my pain either by healing my heart or hardening my heart.

Looking back, I am stunned at how many times I was, without realizing it, leaning towards hardening my heart for it was simpler, faster, and most importantly, it felt safer.

Asterisk

Interesting and I empathise with the revulsion aspect.

I would once have snuggled into him, savouring his smell, and enjoying his hugs. I would have kissed him goodbye or just because. I’d have loved watching him walk towards me. I’d snuggle up behind him in bed. Or touched him as I walked by. Now I may kiss his cheek but it’s hard. Maybe I feel I am betraying myself. Maybe I feel repulsed. Maybe I am no longer attracted.

One of his (many) complaints about me is that in the morning on my way to work I wouldn’t embrace him ‘for more than a few seconds’. He wanted me not to pull away. To stand there I guess like a lovesick teenager. I would call him on my breaks (if I had chance to take one). I worked 30 - 90 minutes drive away and we had four kids (three under 5). It made him feel unloved and was part of the ‘why it was okay to cheat’ catalogue . I paid all the bills. I had to work. I couldnt get stuck in traffic and I got up before him!

I am hardening. I am not sure how to navigate this any other way and I think my history. My beliefs. Ironically my ‘needs’ mean I may only ever be able to harden. I’m taking my time. Sadly, as time is so limited.

Good luck with the healing (not hardening).

I wish it were an asterisk or footnote. It's a whole chapter for me. The thing is: for several years, it seemed like a chapter that would dominate my life; after healing and as I healed, it became less and less dominant.

What do you mean by 'hardening'? I run it through my mind and can't help associating it with rug-sweeping or stuffing feelings. If that's what you mean, I guess - though I can't remember - I put some 'things' aside because I didn't feel capable of dealing with them at the moment, but I knew I had to deal with them sometime.

Also, I know my heart hardened without my having any intention to harden. I just figured it was part of the roller coaster, of which I was certainly aware, and the hardness would either last, and thereby form the basis of my solution, or go away before I thought it was permanent.

When I was a kid, I learned from reading magazines that girls liked to be reminded they're loved, so I told my W I loved her frequently. After d-day, that's very rare. It didn't work, as far as I'm concerned, so I stopped. If committing to R wasn't enough for my W, so be it. She didn't need any help finding the door. Fortunately, she did take R as proof that I loved her.

*****

Asterisk,

I think the unspoken subtext of my responding to your posts is that I think you'd benefit from reframing a lot of your thinking about your healing process and yourself.

For example, you made mistakes in your healing path. Maybe, maybe not. If you did, you persisted and found pathways that got you where you wanted to go. That's something to celebrate. Think about how great it is to set a goal and achieve it! To whom the credit? To you and your W. Who else?

The mistakes ... did you not do what you thought was best? You didn't get the results you wanted, so you changed what you did. That's cause for celebration.

An so on. There are no guarantees in life. You could have done everything right for R and not completed R for any number of reasons. The thing is: IMO, R is helped by seeing ourself as a hero, celebrating victories and reminding ourselves that we never trained for this, so wrong turns are to be expected. Wrong turns are not necessarily character faults.

It's by all means important to be aware of mistakes, as long as one remains aware that perfection is largely unattainable. I just believe it's also important to take credit for the good stuff we do in among the mistakes.

*****

Having said the above, remember that I respond also - and perhaps more importantly - because you raise very interesting questions.