How do I deal with a DDay anniversary

[p12241342]

I’m a man and I’m looking for a bit of advice.

Just under 12 months ago my wife of 19 years cheated on me having a 2 and a half month affair. Shortly we will be coming up to the point of the “this time last year”

There will be many points where “this time last year” will be relevant.

This time last year, we started texting
This time last year, we first met up
This time last year, we first kissed
This time last year, we had sex and so on
This time last year DDay

There are so many milestones and it feels like and just going to have to relive them and the trauma all over again.

I have spoken to my wife and she said she doesn’t think that. I shouldn’t think that way. I have said to her, how will you not be thinking that way? She said she won’t be thinking that, but we all know she will.

I feel the anxiety building and don’t know what to do as my head feels like it’s going to explode. I feel the same kind of feelings creeping in that I felt on and around the months after DDay. When I found out about the affair, I kept telling myself it was a fling, it wasn’t a long affair. But I’m going to have to live it all over again and that’s going to be a long couple of months and will show me just how long 2 months really is.

Has anyone got any advice on how I can overcome this or deal with it, or even just a few words from someone that’s been there or living it right now. I have seen that people say that the build-up to the milestones are worse than the days themselves. But I don’t know how I’m going to sit here on the day and the exact time that they had sex this time last year.

My wife and I have decided to make another go of things. We have moved city’s, changed telephone numbers, closed social media accounts in order to limit contact with the AP. Things are hard and I relive and talk about the trauma every single day and there are times where my wife does get frustrated, she will answer the same questions and witness my pain over and over again every single day.

If I’m 100% honest, I’m not sure if my wife is over her AP. She says he means nothing and it was all a horrible mistake. She says she sees the hurt she has caused and just how wrong it was. Are these just words. Is she just telling me what I need to hear. Because how can she have a 2 month affair and state he made her happy and then on the other hand, say he meant nothing to her and means nothing to her and just wants to put her family back together.

Surely if he made her so happy, she can’t just forget him and loose feelings for him over night.

You need to split from your wife this isn’t working for either of you. I’m so sorry.

Why do you know the exact time she had sex?
Why do you think that she knows it?

After a year you haven't even begun the healing process so it's never going to happen. An affair is one of the worst betrayals and not many people really can forgive and trust again. You need to divorce. She cannot live with constant mistrust and neither can you

@ravenmum

She told me the exact time she had sex when she was being "transparent"

It sounds like you are struggling to move past it. That’s OK and it’s perfectly reasonable but you can’t keep going over and over the same ground again. That’s unfair and unhealthy for both of you.

If you want to make a go of things you need to get some counselling to help you work through your feelings without making your wife answer the same userions every single day.

If you can’t get past it you need to separate.

There's a website called surviving infidelity that you might find useful OP: www.survivinginfidelity.com/ They are a forum about every aspect of infidelity including DDay.

Did you write the time down? Did she?
It might be seared into your memory, but normally people don't remember that sort of thing. You say that you both know she'll be thinking about things when they happened, but her argument that she won't sounds very believable.
I understand that you can't forget, but your conviction that she is lying when she says she doesn't see it that way is a symptom of your hurt, not the objective or likely truth.

@RestingPandaFace

Thanks for making contact.

I agree that I'm not coping and I am struggling to move past it. I am currently having counselling to try and help with my struggles but i am finding it extremely hard. My wife is doing all she canto put things right and i do want to make things work. I don't want to loose her as I do love her thats one thing I no for sure.

Should i be coping better at this stage and should the questions have stopped. Im worried about how I'm going to handle the upcoming milestones.

I don't just want to separate as we have been together a long time and I do love her.

@username1987a

Thanks for the advice i will check that out

@SportsMother

You have got this all wrong, May have been the way i typed it.

But I didn't ask her what time she had sex. She revealed the date and the morning she had sex because of something else that happened on that day. She didn't give me the exact time that it happened. But i do know the date and it was the morning.

I haven't been attacking her. But I have bombarded with the same questions day after day because she is saying one thing and things don't add up. I don't want to attack her for anything i just want the truth

If i met her now, yeah i would want to be in a relationship with her minus the cheating and the lies.

May be the horse is dead but i really don't want to give up

Have you got the dates or other details written down or do you just remember them?

@ravenmum

She didn't give me the exact time but she knows the date and it was a morning.

She also remembers the date that they first met and also the date that they first kissed.

@ravenmum

I dont have anything written down its just all in my head from what she has told me

Shame, or you could have destroyed it :S
Could you symbolically write it down, then burn it?
A year on is going to be pretty raw whatever you do, and you certainly don't "have to" forget anything - there's no "should be over X by now" - but obsessing over the times will make you ill.

@ravenmum

I agree i am obsessing over it. Even though its a year it does feel extremely raw.

I just don't see how someone can have an affair and admit that they were happy and then say the affair meant nothing to them and neither day the affair partner. At the time she told the AP she missed him and even said she loved him.

She didn't end the affair. In fact she has been honest in saying that there was no plans at the time of ending the affair, but she says she would never have left me. The affair come out in rage when we were bickering. She says its the biggest mistake of her life, but how can it be if he made her happy?

@SportsMother

I also think you should split. The lives both of you have now sounds appalling and intolerable.

Why would you ask someone “what time did you have sex with him?” What relevance has it to anything; what difference does it make -other than you can use it ti sharpen how you can attack her about it.

If you met her now would you want to be in a relationship with her?
I just think you are punishing her and yourself at this stage.

The horse is dead, stop flogging.

@SportsMother Different people try to get over betrayal in different ways. Many times, recommended by therapists, the betrayed partner recaptures a sense of control and belief in their partner's transparency by hearing lots of details and having all their questions answered so there are no 'I acknowledged/unmentionable secrets left for them to wonder and worry about. Some partners of course decide they don't want to know, but it's not unnatural that the OP will have talked through these details with his wife.

OP, what does sound hard is that your emotional process feels stuck in obsessing/questioning the details. There is no right or wrong here. What you feel is what you feel. I left my cheating spouse so can't talk to the process of reconciling... but it does sound like if you are to move on successfully, some kind of emotional movement needs to come about within you. And that is not going to come from asking the same thing hundreds of times. That may be in ultimately accepting the reality of the betrayal and that it will never be the same again. It may be in validating/ expressing emotions about what happened which are still trapped inside you. Perhaps there is something you can do around the anniversaries which will help you constructively express your feelings and move to the future. It may be about you focussing more on your self and your own needs, desires and growth.

A year is still not that long, but you do want to find the ways within yourself to grow beyond where you are currently stuck - whether that ultimately is with your spouse at your side or not.



Even the obsessing is pretty normal, I'm afraid. I didn't stay with my exh but still obsessed over the details for ages! But you can still try to do some things to curb the obsessive behaviour, rather than encouraging it.

I just don't see how someone can have an affair and admit that they were happy and then say the affair meant nothing to them and neither day the affair partner. At the time she told the AP she missed him and even said she loved him.
I don't know your wife, so I can't speak for her, but I have absolutely had that experience, so it can happen. After my exh, my rebound was with a lovebomber - all hearts and flowers, very exciting, lots of declarations of love on both sides. But even when I was doing it, I knew it was all like a game. A very fun game, but I still didn't take it any more seriously than him. I ended it after a while and remember it fondly as it was such fun, but I have absolutely no feelings for the guy at all. When I see a photo now I wonder what I saw in him at all tbh.

Is the counsellor any good; do you find them helpful?

She says its the biggest mistake of her life, but how can it be if he made her happy?

Drugs make you happy (short term) and are also a big mistake. All kinds of things are like that. We humans are constantly doing self destructive things that are in conflict with our own ultimate values and best judgement.

Also people have different parts within them, almost like characters. (In the basic sense, you will have parts that are 'male pal parts' that are made very happy by having a laugh with your mates. Those will be different to the parts that love to be sexually intimate with a partner, again different to the parts that care for an aging person. You also have angry parts, vulnerable parts that battle for attention. etc.

When your wife says the affair in some ways made her happy, she may not even realise it but she means that a part of her was made happy. There was a part that was angry at you, that maybe felt deprived of excitement, or craved to be rebellious etc. there will have been other parts - including her deep centred self that loves you, that were always in conflict with the affair- but at that time were not strong enough to resist.

They should have been . None of this excuses it. But perhaps this is helpful to reconcile what seems irreconcilable. We are multiplicities., with conflicting needs and desires within us.

@ravenmum

Thank you for giving me an insight into the fact that it is possible. I have never had an affair and I just don't see how its possible to love some one and then go and allow another person to make you happy. How can you fall for another when your in a relationship with someone else?

I just don't see how any of it is possible.

The counsellor is ok. I have tried two now. One I only did 6 sessions and she spoke mostly about herself. The second just lets me talk. I don't know if its doing any good but I'm only on my 4th session with the new one.

Some times I wonder if I'm going crazy. Because I will go over the same questions and when they have been answered, I will have another set of questions and then when they have been answered I will go back to the start and do it all again.

I really loved my wife and I still do. I never thought she would ever do this to me or our family and now I'm just going around in circles. I think if I can curb the questions, we can move on but I'm stuck.

Im just stuck not knowing how she could have loved me and cheated on me at the same time. How she can just say he meant nothing to her and she doesn't miss him or even want him. But at the time she told him she missed him, she admitted to me she missed him and she even told him she loved him.

Even though she is reluctant she will always say she hates the affair, but I know how it made her feel, as in happy. I just keep thinking if she was happy, how can she not miss that and want to be with him.

How can it be the horrible mistake she is trying to make me believe it was

@BraveGoldie

Thank you for your insight. Thats makes sense.

But I really think my wife had a real attraction to the AP. She found him attractive, he made her laugh, she had fun, they talked. It was going on for 2 months. She believed she loved him. But since has gone back on that and said she didn't love him.

I asked if she thought about me when she was crossing the lines, such as the first kiss, when she slept with him.

She said she cant remember exactly if she thought about me when she crossed the lines but she did feel guilty. She says when she looks back on it now, its like looking at some one else life. It doesn't seem real. I don't know if thats a good thing or a bad thing.

But I think he is everything she wanted and if it wasn't for me and our kids who knows may be she would have left.

There are two ways to be fooled.

One is to believe what isn't true: the other is to refuse what is true!

You're hanging onto a love that isn't true!

I know nothing about affairs and infidelity. I know about anniversaries though- DM remembers everything, every date, every occasion. Her life is full of anniversaries.

Mine is not. I remember birthdays with a lot of effort. Everything else is immediately forgotten. Not the event, but the date/time of the event.

I have traumas in my history, but I can't tell you the year let alone the date or month or time.

Don't assume she's reliving all these 'this time last year's. She may very well not be. It's you who is commemorating the events, not her.

@Mysticguru

Would you say that because she cheated on me in the first place and wouldn't have done that if she loved me. Or you saying that because I'm not accepting whats being said and cant move on?

Thanks for your input anyway