SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I suffer with PMDD so roughly 10 days a month I suffer with thought distortion, depression, anxiety and extreme low mood. Since discovering my WH infidelity during PMDD I tend to catastrophize and feel the urge need to make a permanent decision on my marriage. I tend to discount everything positive about my WH and his behaviour in reconciliation and focus completely on the negatives. It does help that I have so many unanswered questions that I can never truly answer or prove as his infidelity happened 13 years ago.

The pressing question I have this month has been caused by a post I read in here where someone confessed to a 14 year affair.

My WH had sex with AP back in 2001 when he was in the army and he was with his ex girlfriend. He then had sex and sexting with her again in 2003 when he was away for 4 months on a training course.

The AP then got pregnant with her BH, my WH became godfather and they reverted to being friends (although they never actually discussed this). A while later she moved to Germany.

Me and WH get together in 2005, marry 2009 and mid 2010 while I'm pregnant with our 3rd (that my husband admits he didn't want) he starts sexting her again and this turns physical end of 2010 -summer 2011 (during and after her pregnancy with her BH). They then continue sexting sporadically for another year (basically her telling him her extra marital sexual exploits and tit pics). She then ends it to renew her vows. Her WH then finds backed up texts in 2013, my WH texts him to apologise. No one tells me. AP randomly texts me and WH every few years with life updates until January this year when her marriage blows up due to another affair and she decides to tell me about her affair with my WH as she blames her marriage breakdown on her husband's failure to get over this and his 'lack of balls' (her words not mine) to confront my WH. She also states my husband took advantage of a situation (she states she was an alcoholic on her Facebook).

My WH insists there was no love, no presents, no dates etc (this i believe is true as we were piss poor and he only saw her in early hours of morning after work). He states it fulfilled a physical need and he did it with her because she was 'dirty' (he was also heavily into porn and she basically fulfilled his amature porn fantasties).

However, my question is following on from the waywards confession on here of a 14 year affair, does this count as a 11 year affair as he went back to the same AP he cheated on his ex girlfriend with? I don't think he would ever have had the confidence to pursue anyone else for an affair but the AP offered it on a plate so it was easy. I know he is a serial cheater as he cheated on his ex and me but he swears he hasn't cheated since then and is incredibly remorseful but the idea that it might 'count' as an 11 year affair and that emotions may have been involved is too much for me to bear 😞

Any thoughts welcome

For R purposes, it is way more about the work the person has done since three A to be a better, safer partner. Simply 'not cheating anymore' doesn't count or mean anything to me.

My wife figured out why she needed that validation, why she felt so bad about herself -- she learned from being treated poorly during and after the A for sure, but I needed more than that.

These days her boundaries are solid and she got some counseling about the childhood pain she didn't really deal with, which contributed to her selfish spiral down.

Do I count the time she held on to her confession or the years she kept her A a secret as part of her A?

I don't.

However, it was still time lost to our M, the secret caused a divide. A WS can't fully invest into an M when they have secrets that could blow up the relationship.

Four years of an LTA, a couple years of an EA after the physical part was over and a decade plus of keeping the secret is....a lot.

Nearly 10-years into R, seeing how strong our M is now, my wife still apologizes for the time lost -- just randomly here and there. She clearly has some regret going on.

It doesn't fix anything, but I do appreciate her understanding the damage she caused.

Thank you oldwounds...I feel your story resonated with mine a lot.

I agree although my WH has changed for the better in the years following the affair. I guess he couldn't fully change until he addressed the skeletons in his cupboard. He is now. He is in IC. Facing his whys, his mother's betrayal, his first girlfriend's betrayal and his poor coping mechanisms and porn addiction.

I think he's changing, I think we know more about each other now than ever before but it still stops me in my tracks when I think about the kind of man he was, one capable of so much lying. It also hurts to know my love could never fully reach him until now as he never let it and his secrets created an invisible barrier. Now those barriers are down he realises how deep my love is and always has been but it might be too late.

My xFWH cheated when we were engaged and at numerous times throughout our entire marriage until dday. I never really asked for specific time frames/length of the A’s. Some were so long ago, I don’t think I would have been able to recall accurately myself, so I didn’t expect him to be able to do so. There were long periods of time when he was not cheating also.

I have always just stated he cheated on/off/to varying degrees throughout our entire relationship and marriage.

Your H’s A also involved his x GF and definitely speaks to his character-so the entirety of the years is relevant to his history, but it is not all your history with him. He could have had an 11 year A with the AP, but xyz years directly impacted your life.

Is there a particular reason the number of years before you became a couple is causing your distress?

Thank you Annie...I think it bothers me as a)if I was an 11year affair it went in when we met, dated, fell in love etc (I don't think it did as we worked together, lived together, spent every moment together AND the AP was in another country for several years.

And b) my black and white all or nothing thinking wants to figure out if option 1. he is a good guy who did a bad thing by repeating his bad behaviour or option 2. he is just a bad guy through and through!

I know deep down it's option 1 but it's so hard to get my head around and it would almost be easier if it was option 2 as I'd no there was no hope and could walk away and maybe fall out if love with him.

As hard as this is, whether he was a jerk for 11 years or 11 seconds, it is still pain and trauma.

But if he’s no longer that cheating jerk he was, that is where you need to focus.

It’s hard not to live in the past. My H had 15 years between affair 1 and affair 2. I often wonder what went really happened in between those two affairs - were there others? Harmless flirtations? More EAs than I know about?

But in 12 years since dday2 of affair 2 he is not that guy. He has changed.

I think you have to make a conscious choice not to live in the past. Not saying it’s easy. But it’s not helpful to live with intrusive thoughts and ruminating on the past. You have to consciously stop yourself from that.

1st wife thank you again for your post. Do you have any tips on how not to ruminate and live in the past? I know even before DD I am often living in the past it the future instead of the present and would love to learn how to just live for the now

Evio. Good question.

It took me a full year but every time I started to let my mind wander I had to consciously say "he’s not that guy anymore". And I would force myself to think of one good thing he said or did recently.

In the beginning it was many many times per day. About 3 years into reconciliation it was down to 2X per day.

I also think what helped me was having an exit strategy ready to go. He could walk out tomorrow and I will be ok. $ in the bank, paid off car, my own social life and good group of friends.

As you can see I did a lot of work on myself and changed things for myself in a way that was positive. In some ways I am happier and more confident than pre-affair.

I hope this helps you.

Do you have any tips on how not to ruminate and live in the past? I know even before DD I am often living in the past it the future instead of the present and would love to learn how to just live for the now

There is the winning question right there — and for me, it isn’t just for healing from the infidelity horror show, but life’s troubles overall.

I found most of my getting stuck in the past was about what I could have done better or different. I think we do that circular thinking and get trapped there — part of it is traumatized brain trying to find a path without pain.

To get to a place where we get to focus on what is going on well in the now, I believe we have to process through all the horrible thoughts first. All the pain, the sadness, the anger, and that does take a while. For me, it was nearly three years before I found I had tackled enough of the issues (which included my wife showing me consistent, better personal behavior in that time) where my focus shifted more to the present.

First off, you have to be kind to yourself above all. A lot of the healing starts with knowing you did all you could with the information you had. The only thing you did was love your family — that’s a beautiful thing.

Realize how awesome you are, the good in you and not so much the stuff that happened to you. You had nothing to do with your husband’s shitty choices, so work on the idea that none of his worst days define you.

A big part of my healing and being able to focus on today is not letting any one thing from the past BE your life.

It is currently a massive emotional scar, and I will hate what happened, but I get to hang out with my family today and I am proud of the work, the really hard work we did to make it a relationship worthy of both of us.

I just know it took me a long time to remind and or convince my brain, bad stuff is NOT happening now, not today. And then I take a literal inventory of what is going well, and go over some of the new memories we are creating now.