I can't get over the affair

[SailboatSundays]

I hope people can please tell me what to do.

In the early years of our relationship my DP had an affair and although he is the perfect partner now, or at least the one I always hoped I would have, I was never able to get over it.

I still feel astonishing pain and trauma surrounding it, and it impacted me in many ways. Physically, financially, mentally. I am not the same person and it genuinely haunts me.

I reached a point after five years that I think maybe I am just not capable of "getting over it", or finding a way to understand it. Maybe some people can, but maybe not me.

There isn't a day where I don't picture some of what happened, and it is as fresh as the day it occurred in my mind. I just can't understand, still, why he did it or how he could do it.

While he was there for the first couple of years for all the tears and anger, there comes a point where you can't keep on like that. So he got busy building the life he knew I had wanted, the life we'd planned before the affair, and he did everything he could to make us happy.

Meanwhile I just started crying in the toilet or when he was at work. I stopped looking after myself. I got fat. I stopped wearing pretty clothes. We don't have sex anymore when we used to be at it like rabbits.

He has been asking me if I still love him and why he doesn't make me happy. He says he can't be happy if I am not happy and keeps asking what I need to be so, but I feel like his affair killed that ability in me and for some weird reason I feel guilty for that like I am overreacting and someone else would be able to move on and upwards.

I am not trying to punish him. I just cannot fix my broken heart. I don't know how to fix it. I am aware I probably sound pathetic right now, but I am being honest.

I have tried many times to give him an out. I said today that maybe he would be better off leaving because I wasn't going to feel better and I thought I would be better on my own because he was a reminder of the pain. And he got into a panic and had to leave work when his job is not the kind of job you can just leave, and now I just feel guilty for bringing it up because he is in a real state.

He says he can't be happy without me, and that there is no life where he could ever be happy that didn't include me but all I keep thinking when he says that, is that he didn't feel that way before when he risked everything to get sex and affection off someone else.

I love him very much still. He's the love of my life is such a thing exists. I am not like this 24/7 and in the good times he makes me laugh so much, he is so kind, he is my best friend, he is brilliant really. So why can't I let this go?

I feel like leaving would be the kindest thing to us both. For me, because I could just go off and grieve without needing to pretend to be all right. Or to see myself unravel in front of him and feel even smaller than I do already. And for him so he could go off and have a nice life instead of paying penance forever.

He says that there is no possible version of life where he could be happy without me or grow old without me, and that we just have to fix it, and he wants me to speak to the GP or sort out some counselling. He said he would never give up and never stop trying because he loves me and can't do life without me.

I am really not sure what to think or do.

When I break it down, and remember some of the terrible things he did to me, it isn't about being unable to forgive; it's about being completely unable to live with it. I just don't know how to accept it or make peace with it.

I don't want to be sad and in pain for the rest of my life. What is wrong with me?

Thanks everyone, I am going to go to bed soon. I am really grateful for people listening and responding.

Maybe a few months apart would be a good thing so I can see how I feel.

What I am certain of is that I would never, ever, ever be in another relationship again. No way. I'd never put myself in a position again where another person could do something like this to me.

Aside from that, he was it. No one else would ever make me laugh the same way or be him, and I wouldn't want to replace him.

I would have to figure out a life that didn't include a partner anymore, and that would be fine. I was never really someone who needed one.

All this, this incredible betrayal, an absolute disregard for your feelings, and yet you say this...

he is so kind, he is my best friend, he is brilliant really

I absolutely believe he is a good man, yes. The best man.

Bullshit. You made these accolades for you, so it's easier for you to deal with the fact that you've let five years slip through your fingers over a sham of a relationship. I can't blame you, you have to cling into some sort of fantasy to swallow the bitter pills you have all these years.

A good man wouldn't do this to the woman he loves. He is not your best friend, not even close. He's kind alright, very kind to the woman he cheated on you with. He put her above you, right under your nose and you allowed it, for ages.

He. Is. Not. A. Good. Man.

Op, you're not weak.

You were in a tailspin. Shocked. Deeply hurt.

It is traumatic. And he dragged out the trauma a by insisting on meeting her? Bloody hell, that's cruel.

I'm not surprised you're struggling to get over. Why on earth should you get over it?

You have been badly betrayed and you are the one who has to go to therapy? When it is he who has behaved appallingly and doesn't need to investigate how he can hurt someone so very badly?

Have you felt much anger? Outrage as part of your pain?

I really think your h has behaved horrendously. And I think you're not moving on because your mind knows he is someone who can, has and will hurt you again and your instincts are trying to keep you safe.

All the while she was begging and pleading and persuading him she loved him and I didn't and what they had was special and I was nothing, and he basically just let that happen. I think on some level he enjoyed it.

And I just kept saying "why are you doing this? you are causing me so much damage, please stop or I will leave you". But it took months for him to stop.

That's the part I really can't cope with, because he was too weak to protect me and do the right thing. And I was too weak to protect me either.

That sounds like an extremely traumatising experience 😣 Personally I’d carry a lot of disgust & resentment if someone treated me like that.

You’ve tried your best for five years, if you tell him how you feel and that it’s over, he can’t say you didn’t try (and you’d have been within your rights to walk away 5 years ago anyway )

If he really loves you sure he will be sad and heartbroken, but he can’t insist you stay knowing how you feel. And if he does do that
that’s further proof of how he lacks empathy to some extent and is more focused on his own feelings. You must do the same and put yourself first.

@Aquamarine1029 Ahh, if I believed that it would be easy. What I believe is that he is a very good man. The best man I know. Who was very fucked up a long time ago, and who fucked himself up further by doing something terrible. But he pulled himself back because he didn't want to be that. Which is what has made it so hard to go.

Of course, you can say "if you love a woman you would never do that", and personally I agree with that.

But simultaneously, I know that if you don't love a woman you don't sit through two years of tears and intermittent rage with the patience of a saint, repeating over and over "I love you, I am sorry, I am not going anywhere" You don't show up every single day when someone is struggling and ask "what can I do?". You don't run home from work to check they're all right if they're having a bad day. You don't tell them they look pretty every time they walk into a room, even when they are fat and have mascara round their eyes. You don't do the hardest things, or choose them every single day.

Which he does.

So I know he loves me, and I know he's a good man.

Not that I will ever understand truly why he did what he did or how he could do it. It is just not as binary as that. I wish it were, and then maybe I would have not broken myself into bits for it.

Yes, it was truly fucking awful in a way I can't describe. It was incredibly cruel, but at the time he wasn't able to see that (he does now).

Yes, there was a lot of anger, but it fizzled out after a couple of years of burning like a ball inside me. I don't feel much now because he worked through it with me.

Once it was over and he snapped out of the headspace of thinking that stuff was okay, then everything changed.

It took time, but he went away and thought, really thought, about how he behaved and how I must have felt, and said that he felt sick. I am not sure why, but in the moment of it, he just couldn't see it (or didn't care).

People are real pricks when they are having affairs, but then if they weren't they wouldn't do it in the first place.

That is the part no one really tells you about affairs, is that when people are having them their head is right up their arse one way or another and it takes time for them to pull it out.

Sometimes love isn't enough.

He betrayed you regardless of living you.

Personally I don't believe someone who has an affair really loves their partner. I just don't.

That love is meaningless if they can conduct themselves in such a deliberately hurtful, destructive way.

I think it's too much to get over. And I think you might be finding this out and are protecting yourself.

There is no right way to respond upon the discovery of an affair. Of course we all cheer when someone on here kicks a cheating H out, but my experience is how people respond in real life is not comparable to MN. It shouldn't be a source of shame if you do the 'pick me' dance or didnt kick i hi m out immediately. We all think we know how we will respond but when you're shocked and have had the rug pulled out from underneath - I bet you many will behave differently.

I honestly don't remember what made me stay. I think it was because he seemed so earnestly and desperately sorry.

Well staying has made you feel really bad so if he loved you he'd let you go instead of still making you feel bad for him and like you must stay because he wants that. Seems to me like you've really given staying a good go and it's destroying you. This isn't your failure. The relationship is not working and you need to break the pattern and focus on getting yourself stronger on your own.

I hear you OP. I have only just found this thread. I am five years out, too and still married. Please feel free to send me a personal message if you wish to ask any questions. So much of what you have written so eloquently has been me at one stage or another. Please don’t blame yourself for anything you did or said, you were in terrible shock and did what you needed to do to survive and keep your head above water. With hindsight you might have done things differently but when totally blindsided with the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, we have no rational plan. We simply react rather than act in a calm, considered way. Many betrayed people have choreographed their own “pick me dance” and shuddered later that we even put on our dancing shoes, let alone gave the performance including the sequel.
Please take care of yourself, you are clearly still drowning in it all and although it’s counter-intuitive, you need to stop swimming. Float to survive, allow yourself to just ‘be’ and breathe slowly and gently. I’m on the other end of a message if you need to ask anything. I’m not pro reconciliation or pro leaving. I’m pro the right choice for each individual, whatever that might be.

How long were you together when it happened? and how long since?

It seems very simple to me. You have to leave him, but he’s putting inordinate pressure on you not to. So you feel stuck and question everything. But really you need to leave. Don’t feel any guilt. He did this.

Good luck 🌸

How long ago did it happen? How long had you been together?any dc?
It really doesnt sound like you will ever get over it. For your mental health and happiness maybe moving on without him is for the best.
It sounds like you have tried for a long time to forgive and forget . But obviously that's just not working.
And although what he did is awful i don't think he should stay in a relationship that is not working. You both deserve to be happy .

He's a drama queen and thrives in big emotional scenes which he painstakingly creates himself
Ask yourself this:

Why did he confess the affair at all? Most men would hide it and hope not to get found out.

Why did he have you hear the OW being told it was over , emphasising that he loved you?Well done,sir, two women tormented in one scene.

Why, since he had the urge to 'fess up, did he do it piecemeal over six months,dripfeeding it detail by detail? Bet you were a captive audience being slowly tortured.by this creep while he swore undying love and watched you suffer. He doesn't love you, or her, or anyone. He lives for epic dramas and manipulates you into them.
Get away from the heat of the confusion he causes in you and then think. You're better off without him.

Sorry, but this isn't PTSD. Not every upsetting occurrence is at the threshold of causing such damage that it results in mental illness.

You need to leave him. You don't trust him. The lack of trust is causing the upsetting feelings because you are faking a relationship. You are both glued together by regret and sadness, not love. It isn't fixable. Leave.

One last thing -.find your anger

@SailboatSundays amazingly you said in one of your posts the exact thought that I felt I would have with my ex husband and that is the deathbed scenario ie that it would be something I would always remember and never forgive. I felt his affair would taint everything forever. As I said he is my ex and I am now remarried and in a wonderful genuine and honest relationship. Some things for some people just don't work.

OP you said up thread that he does love you and it isn’t binary and that’s what has been so difficult and confusing.

This seems to be the crux of it I think, because honestly I don’t think you can love someone and do this, not the kind of love I believe in and not the love you believe in either. Which is why you can’t force yourself to be ‘over it’ because it’s forcing you to kind of exist with this huge cognitive dissonance. I really believe that staying with a cheater involves either huge amounts of denial or acceptance that the relationship is for practical reasons only and genuine love has no place in it, because it simply can’t where there is such disrespect and cruelty.

if you love someone you don’t deliberately hurt them, and you protect them. You love him. Would you have done this? I would bet not.

even if he says he does, and he may believe it, and clearly part of you does too, is it really the love you want and the love you want to believe in?

My husband had an affair 7 years ago. I tried to put it behind me but loyalty and honesty are the most important qualities I value in friends never mind in my bloody husband.

But I tried as we had young kids and we had been together for 20 years . Like you, I stopped taking care of myself because I felt worthless. Binge eating for comfort, piling the weight on, having to lose it and so the cycle continued.

We separated two months ago at my instigation as I couldn't do it anymore. I turned 40 and thought I don't want to spend the next 40 years thinking about the affair every day of it.

The relief is immense, I've lost weight. I dance and sing in my kitchen again. I am not interested in finding someone else, I want to find who I am again. For a long time, he made me a wife, mother and a victim. Now I can just be me and it has made me so much lighter both figuratively and literally.

Don't waste your life. You can't fix what you didn't break.

I think 5 year is a long enough to be unhappy in your relationship. I think that's enough time to forgive and move on or not. Clearly it's not happened in your case.

I agree with others....

I would advice you to have a trial separation and couples counselling. Its a half way house, where you can evaluate being on your own and also discussing your issues in front of a neutral. It will help you make your choices without bring emotional manipulated constantly.

You sounds so much like a friend of mine. Her DH had and affair. Devastated and decided to save their marriage but she just couldn't get over it. There wasn't a day she didn't think about it (she didn't say at the time to me). It was a combination of the loss of trust, the life they had and that it had irrevocably changed and couldn't go back.
He became a model husband and father but after several years she made the decision to separate and divorce. She was really calm and collected about it and said she just couldn't continue living like it for the rest of her life. He was utterly devastated and couldn't understand. She went ahead and became happily single and had no regrets.

As a side issue, she didn't do online dating or go looking for a man! However she did go on to meet someone at a mutual friends BBq gathering (both her and him were invited and in hindsight was convenient) and got chatting. They are now married very happily.

Please get yourself on surviving infidelity. This is NOT the place for reconciliation advice as so many of the posts show.

Many MANY posters have simply NO idea of what would have been needed around Dday or how broken individuals are who have affairs (and often those who involve themselves). It is also recognised widely that trauma from infidelity does cause PTSD.

I am reconciled @SailboatSundays my husband sounds similar to yours. He is a good, kind man and extraordinarily funny. But he went through a very dark time and lost his way. That’s on him. I was collateral damage to this. And I was damaged for a very long time. He worked very hard to do and be better, just like your partner, and genuinely I feel loved and I trust him.

What have I learnt.

You don’t need to forgive or move on, but you do aim for what I call acceptance. Just a state of being where you both know and understand that this awful thing happened but you’re through the other side. I will not forgive the unforgiveable and he does not want or need my forgiveness.

We can get stuck in the shame spiral. Posting and reading on sites like this can just exacerbate this. Reading comments around raising bars, LTB, you’ll never trust him, he’ll do it again etc can just add to the overwhelming feeling we can have for letting strong women down or being seen as weak. STOP. Find a site that empathises and will offer wise, considered advice, Surviving Infidelity (reconciliation forum) is incredible.

Start to prioritise what makes you happy and let the world and yourself know you don’t give a s* what it thinks as your choice brings you joy, whatever that choice may be. My husband makes me happy, my family together laughing, in jokes, memories being built makes me happy with my choice. My core knows this was the right thing for us.

Learn to trust yourself. No one is your hero or saviour. That was my biggest mistake prior to the affair, I had him on a pedestal. I’m up there now. I know he’s fallible, I know we all are. But I know I can trust my judgements and my choices.

I also learnt that you can leave at anytime. You’re not tied to this. Not everyone is cut out for reconciliation and that’s just fine. You’ll work out your path.

I’m so sorry you went through this, it truly was one of the most painful periods of my life and it changed me but on reflection for the better. I don’t hold much for the stronger marriage after reconciliation it’s just different and the dynamic has shifted.

I think you'll find many many painters have indeed suffered the infidelity and faced the trauma and the trying to reconcile.

Posters not painters

I’m not talking about those that did @BlastedPimples but I’m very bored of people who have no lived experience making sweeping statements and judgements which just shame women who do stay.

And also the absolutes from those who tried and it didn’t work for.

People are complex. ‘Your’ relationship is not their relationship. Surviving infidelity is a site that gets that nuance. This site does not. Some of these comments are just out to shame women who stay it’s mindnumbingly painful to read when you’re trying to support women in making emotionally safer choices.