It's the nature of the beast that people project their own break-ups or flourishing relationships on to the advice that they give, but as someone who forgave her husband's affair many years ago now (and have often posted on threads like this), I do take issue with some of these observations.
I suppressed no feelings, made no compromises and neither my husband nor I ever believed that my actions were a contributory factor. I've seen other posters say much the same, so I do wonder where these observations come from.
After the first year or so, our relationship stopped being 'self conscious' but I acknowledge that it was in the months after D day. I think that's natural.
The things that made the world of difference to our success in building a new relationship were the following:
- He didn't lie about the major details. He minimised his culpability for it, but soon stopped when I was having none of it.
- He recognised himself that this had come about because he had always been quite selfish and lazy. We'd had a very good relationship on the whole in the 20 or so years prevously, but his lack of matched contribution had been a source of conflict many times.
- He took total responsibility for his actions.
- He set about a programme of transformation and the changes he made got embedded quickly and remain, all these years later.
- We both had great individual therapists.
- He read everything there was to read on the subject of infidelity.
- He was willing to talk about what happened and eventually got into the habit of starting those conversations too.
My interpretation of your situation is that because you've uncovered a major lie only 6 weeks ago, you are not 4 months on from this at all. I summise you'll be constantly fearful that fresh shocks and discoveries await.
It's impossible to forgive when you don't know what there is to forgive. If there is any hope of getting past this, your husband needs to tell the whole truth. You then need to take your own time processing all that information.
I post very infrequently and wasn't on Mumsnet when this happened to me. Often I'm very grateful for that when I see some of these posts! I know I wouldn't have had the objectivity to work out that posters project their own stories on to threads and unusually for someone with very high self-esteem, I might have felt very small and belittled.
When I come on to Mumsnet now, it doesn't personally affect me that there are these posts, because I know my situation is so different to what is described. I worry about others though and it saddens me that ever time I come here, there is a new thread like this. Infidelity isn't a rare occurrence and I'm always sorry to see another person going through it.