SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Thank you.

I'll keep my "trust" but verify method going, and watch what's happening here. She's showing me things along the way this week that seems like things are moving in the right direction, but again...we'll see what's happening.

Just wanted to share an update here:

She's still coming home after work, we've spent good time together the last week and she's coming with me to Milwaukee tomorrow for a show I'm playing. (the music I make is dark ambient essentially and the shows aren't for everyone, but she said she wants to be more supportive of my music since I travelled with her for her small business at expos and conventions when she's not working at the brewery) We're going to enjoy a day in Milwaukee the day after too.

Nice, Pete, knock ‘em dead!

👍🏻

I’ll be the little angel on your shoulder to remind you the question isn’t if you can have a good day with her. The question is if you can accept that she had a boyfriend, is he really out of the picture and if she’s no longer the woman who would fall on a sword before ever betraying you again.

Not trying to be the turd in the punch bowl :)

I appreciate you and your reminder. Quite a vivid image that being the turd and the Punchbowl!

😂

And I know, I’ve thought about that long and hard the last 2 1/2 months now and it does seem like she’s making the effort and it does seem like things can get better from here. I know I still will probably think about what happened and think about how much I can trust her at times but right now I am feeling at least encouraged and hopeful for our relationship.

Glad the show went well and genuinely glad she's showing up. I mean that.

Since you tolerated the turd in the punch bowl last time, let me offer one more distinction that took a lot of us here years to learn: there's a difference between her being NICE and her doing the WORK. Everything you listed - coming home on time, the Milwaukee trip, supporting your music - is niceness. It's real, it counts, and it's also the easy part. Any wayward can be pleasant for a few months, especially when they're relieved they didn't lose everything.

The work is the uncomfortable stuff that only a genuinely changed person volunteers for:

- Has she given you the full story, or are you still working off the version from D-day?
- Is no contact verified, or assumed? If the BF is anywhere in her orbit (work, mutual friends, socials), assumed isn't enough.
- Is she in counseling digging into WHY she gave herself permission? "It just happened" is not a why, and a wayward who doesn't know her why can't promise it won't happen again - she doesn't know what to guard against.
- Can you bring up the affair and get patience instead of "why are we still talking about this?"

If the answer to those is yes, then what you're seeing is probably the real deal and I'll happily retire the punch bowl imagery. If the answers are "not really, but things are good so I don't want to rock the boat" - that's rug-sweeping, and rug-swept affairs have a way of coming back up in year two or three, uglier.

You don't have to interrogate her tonight. Just don't let the good days convince you the questions no longer matter. Trust but verify means the verify part keeps going even when trusting feels good.

Rooting for you both.

Thank you Sharkman,

She is indeed doing nice things, but also has shown a sense of vulnerability that’s been new and pleasantly surprising. She still does sound a bit upset when I’ve brought up things, but she said she feels guilty and feels horrible for what she did. From what she’s shown me and from what I can tell no contact is indeed no contact. I’ve not seen or heard hide nor hair of him.

She’s working on finding a new therapist as the first counselor was quite coarse in their "care" and is making use of the therapy service I get through my job. For now, we’ll keep watch and be observant, but I’ll remain hopeful.

She knows that if there’s anything she needs to tell me, she’ll have to. Because she knows that if I find out anything else, however small down the line, that’s it.

But for now it seems like things are trending i. The right direction.

petecarparts, this update reads so much better than your first post. The new vulnerability you're describing is the marker I'd watch. Remorse that shows up as openness - ask me anything, here's my phone, here's what I remember - is a different animal from regret that just wants the topic to go away. It sounds like you're getting the first kind.

Two thoughts from the cheap seats:

One - you said if you find out anything else, however small down the line, that's it. I understand why that line exists and you have every right to it. But consider defining it more precisely with her now, while things are calm: what counts as anything else? New contact, a new lie, a changed timeline - versus a detail she suddenly remembers from the fog of that period and brings up herself. As written, however small means her honesty about a tiny recovered memory ends the marriage, which quietly teaches her that burying is safer. You want the incentive structure to reward disclosure, always.

Two - you're around two and a half months in. The hard window for most couples is months four through nine, when the repair behaviors stop feeling novel and the first big trigger hits - a song, a place, the anniversary of D-day. Worth having a loose script for trigger moments: what you'll say, what she'll do, whether you talk right then or later that night. Couples who improvise that moment tend to fight; couples who scripted it tend to get closer.

Glad she's hunting for a better therapist too. Keep posting - this thread is a good record of how it actually went.

@mendingpath

thank you. i'll respond to your two thoughts in turn.

One - you said if you find out anything else, however small down the line, that's it. I understand why that line exists and you have every right to it. But consider defining it more precisely with her now, while things are calm: what counts as anything else? New contact, a new lie, a changed timeline - versus a detail she suddenly remembers from the fog of that period and brings up herself. As written, however small means her honesty about a tiny recovered memory ends the marriage, which quietly teaches her that burying is safer. You want the incentive structure to reward disclosure, always.

I should clarify, if she remembers other details and wants to share them, that's fine. If i feel triggered by something and ask her for an honest answer and she complies, that'd be OK I think. If I were to find out that she's still talking to them somehow, or if she's seen him/seeing him and I catch her well that'd be the end right there. I don't think that that's the case given her recent behavior, but I've at least set my boundary and will stick to it.

Two - you're around two and a half months in. The hard window for most couples is months four through nine, when the repair behaviors stop feeling novel and the first big trigger hits - a song, a place, the anniversary of D-day. Worth having a loose script for trigger moments: what you'll say, what she'll do, whether you talk right then or later that night. Couples who improvise that moment tend to fight; couples who scripted it tend to get closer.

I do actually have a written plan for such an event/occurrence. I don't know if a song, or a place would trigger something but she could definitely tell that I was very uncomfortable last week when we were watching a show and the episode had a significant plot point of characters in infidelity. She asked if I wanted to continue watching or not and that gesture was at least somewhat comforting.

With that said though, and to all of you who've replied here for me (thank you again and again, as always) I have a question though. Is it normal to feel/combat feelings of resentment at times for your wayward spouse/partner? Things have been going OK here, but I wonder if I'll ever get to a point where I can really, fully feel OK and safe here.

I do actually have a written plan for such an event/occurrence. I don't know if a song, or a place would trigger something but she could definitely tell that I was very uncomfortable last week when we were watching a show and the episode had a significant plot point of characters in infidelity. She asked if I wanted to continue watching or not and that gesture was at least somewhat comforting.

Her being cognitive of your discomfort and offering to switch programming is a good sign. It means she's being sensitive to your triggers and thinking about your well being. She might really be "getting it."

With that said though, and to all of you who've replied here for me (thank you again and again, as always) I have a question though. Is it normal to feel/combat feelings of resentment at times for your wayward spouse/partner? Things have been going OK here, but I wonder if I'll ever get to a point where I can really, fully feel OK and safe here.

Yes, it's normal. 16 months later and I'm still occasionally dealing with those feelings. Betrayal trauma is real trauma. As your nervous system calms and the adrenaline wears off you might even begin experience some stronger emotions as you've had more time to contemplate the gravity of what happened and it really starts to sink in. Thos is part of that dreaded roller coaster we often talk about here. It's a pretty bumpy ride for the first year, and year 2 can even be more intense for some folks as an anger stage can set in. Everyone's different, so maybe that won't be the case for you, but just so you're aware it is pretty normal.

I agree with mendingpath26 and even mentioned earlier in this thread about having a rigid line of "that's it, I'm done" for any infraction. I think your no contact boundary is a fair line, depending on who initiates it and whether or not she's transparent about it, but there might be some things she hasn't mentioned or forgotten about, or you even didn't think to ask.

As an example, I knew my wife went to a hotel twice with her AP, but later on I realized I didn't know which one, and she never told me. Not because she was intentionally withholding the info, I just never thought to ask.

At around the 1 year mark I finally thought to ask and found out it was a local hotel I drive by often. It hit me pretty hard. It felt like a trickle truth, but it really wasn't. I had to deal with the emotions and new trigger, but didn't really blame her for not telling me. I know it wasn't maliciously withheld. It just didn't seem like a significant detail to either of us with everything else she'd told me about it. So while I had another layer of BS to deal with I didn't consider it a breach of trust or transparency.