Good Wednesday once again!
Last week we received a notification via email that a subscriber to our mailing list had decided to unsubscribe. No big deal, as each week people choose to do so for various reasons.
In this instance the ex-subscriber also chose to leave a parting message. I immediately thought that his message would be a good topic for discussion and/or debate.
Here is the message:
“Thank you but everyone needs to get a life, forgive completely and live the rest of your lives like it never happened. That is the healing process plain and simple. This for some has become an obsession, and I appreciate your efforts.”
OK, have at it.
What do you feel about this statement, and why?
Can healing after an affair really be this plain and simple?
Have you become obsessed with the affair?
Remember to respond to each other in the comment section.
Take care!
Linda & Doug
23 replies to "Discussion: Can Healing After an Affair Be This Simple?"
Really? The only bad part about responding to this comment is that the writer won’t be reading this since he has moved on. I can first say good for him if he has truly healed. That said…well:
First of all, I had a life before some bitch decided to come in and try to destroy it with her conniving ways. Yes, I had problems but not enough to have reduced me to lying in the middle of the floor crying at odd times of the day. Did it ever occur to Mr. Get-A-Life that this is exactly what each and every one of us is trying to do? Otherwise it would be a heck of lot easier to file papers, get out of the marriage and move on. THAT is what we chose not to do. I am curious as to whether he was the Betrayed Spouse or the Cheater. That also makes a difference since the Cheater usually wants to move on and act like it never happened. It’s hard having a mirror held up to you where you have to see exactly the mistakes you made. If he’s the betrayed spouse then maybe he has reached the point where he no longer wonders WHY? The rest of us need to understand and need to know how to deal with this mess. So, in answer to Mr. Get-a-life, that is what each of us is trying to do in our own way.
Second, just as the post said Monday, forgiveness is not that easy. I hope for his sake that he is either accepting and forgiving or he has truly reached the point where he and his spouse have both done the necessary work to forget the affair, forgive and move on. Everyone does this at a different rate of time, not just because you decided it must happen RIGHT NOW.
Third, if you choose to bury your head in the sand and “live your life like (the affair) never happened” then you are idiot. I guess his mother never told him to learn from his mistakes so that next time you won’t make them. Prior to the EA I was ignoring the things that were wrong with my marriage – that’s what got me into this mess. Ignoring a problem or pretending it doesn’t exist does not make it go away. Facing it head-on, understanding, assessing and then moving on is the way to deal with it. The next time you might see the warning signs before they get too bad. I would like to forget the bitch and the EA but she’s there and so is the affair, plain and simple. How I decide to deal with this is what I am doing now. We all need support to move through this stage. I will never forget it but I hope it won’t, in the future, be the open wound it is now. Yeah, so good luck with that, Mr. Get-a-life.
I keep thinking of Diane Lane in “Under the Tuscan Sun” when she is defending the other divorced people in her apartment building. These are “my people.” Since we are all suffering from the same trauma, whether PA or EA, we are all looking for answers together. It’s good to have someone to share this with who knows how it feels. Obviously he came looking to this site for some type of help. I hope for his sake he found it. Some how, with that attitude, I doubt it.
And as for obsessing, perhaps we all do it to some degree but we are all trying to move on, just evidently not at Warp Speed like him. So, to all “MY PEOPLE” thanks for being there and trying to help. We will eventually get a life, hopefully a better one than before.
Notoverit, You wrote: “I am curious as to whether he was the Betrayed Spouse or the Cheater.” Unfortunately I do not know the answer to that for sure. Linda asked the same thing, btw. I suspect he might be a cheater, but then you never know. He was only subscribed for about 2 weeks and never left any comments. If we’re lucky, he will read this and offer more of his thoughts on the subject. Thanks for your great comment!
Thanks, Notoverit! You are one of “my people” and I appreciate it!
I’ll have to comment more fully later. I do have a life and I’m off to live it at the moment, but I’ll be back. 🙂
Sure its that simple if you never want to face what happened and put blind faith in the fact that he/she will never do it again. I’ve stopped blogging, obbsessing over it for a while now.
Has my life improved? NO.
Has my wife changed into a better and more loving wife? No.
Has it hurt as bad, as often as before? No.
Have I found the answers to my so many questions about why she did this to herself? NO.
Have I forgiven her fully? No.
Have I found the answer to my question “Am I a good husband”? No.
Is the loneliness gone? No.
Are we a better team now? No
Does it help to ignore the behavior and ignore the pain? Yes. For a while it helps.
According to the list of stages I would put myself at stage 3. Anger, pain, depression has hit again, although not as bad. And in solitude I deal with it.
I was obsessed with this and many other sites. Hoping for help, hoping for reasoning, Hoping for Hope. But everyone is different.
Acceptance is hard to do. But it is what has to be in order to continue on in my marriage.
A discussion last night sparked feeling in me that I had hoped to be gone by now. She brought up money and it started me on a tangent about how she doesn’t watch what she spends and only wants to talk about it when she is inconvenienced. I mentioned I have been asking her to sit down and talk about our budget for a year and a half and she is always too busy.
So I remembered her telling a friend that sense we bought the house, 4 months prior to affair, that I had become worried about what she spent. And that led to distance between us. Needless to say, that was a hard thing to sleep on.
Its been to long now to even bring up the affair. I should be over it by now ,almost 2 years, but I never got closure on it. I’ve never felt I knew the truth.
It has been 2.5 years for me. I doubt if I ever will get closure, but things are better. Until the CS gets their head out of the clouds, it if hard for things to get better, since they are neither here nor there. Limbo.
Jackie are you still with your husband, where is he at today? Is this why you have no closure, yet?
I think that that’s pretty much what we’re all trying to work at. Forgive, forget, and live a happy life. But for a lot of us, it’s a constant process. It doesn’t matter if the person who wrote that statement is the cheater, or the betrayed. If he/she is now completely healed, then that’s great. But no one can tell anyone else to “get over it”. Not even the person you loved who betrayed you.
It was certainly an interesting persepctive from the emailer and as the above poster said if they have healed then good luck to them. If someone has the ability to quickly recover and “get a life”, well then they are truly a unique person because this takes serious time to recover from. Time, pain, suffering, anxiety, depression, anger, love, remorse, etc., etc. These are all emotions that cycle through us as we try to reconnect. It is one year to the day that my wife met the OM. after lunches, an out of town trip, 1000’s of texts, phone calls, and emails I still don’t know where we stand. So like the above poster I go through a checklist periodically:
Is my wife making an attempt to reconcile: YES
Are we communicating more: YES
Does she seem to be recapturing her feelings for me: YES
Do I think she has cut off all contact with the OM: NO
Do I believe she has told me the truth about the affair: NO
Am I scared it isn’t over: YES
Do I trust her: NO
Do I think she is playing both sides: YES
Is she interested in talking about it to find out why it happened or is happening: NO
It is very possible for a CS to still be cheating and improve the quality of their life at home, it is what allows them to continue this behavior. So it just isn’t as simple as going out and getting a life. It becomes an obsession when you genuinely love the one who is killing you inside. I firmly believe that you do not move forward until BOTH of you are willing to tear it down, be honest, and move forward together. Getting a life is easy, getting back the life you lost is a lot harder.
Some great posts…but you’re right about the closure. NOT having it makes everything superficial. I never got the ‘respect’ (ha, respect?) of my H telling me about his EA/PA…had to find out thru our daughter…my kids met the OP first. NOTHING was offered up without it being dragged out of him, or worse, my ‘tripping’ over it…& running into it. Remember that old adage “…if it doesn’t come out in the wash, it’ll come out in the rinse…?” We’ve been running the ‘rinse cycle’ (& me thru the wringer,) for almost 12 months now. So as far as ‘getting a life’ is concerned, I did have one… but that’s over now. Finding & making my way thru this new life I’ve been thrust into is … I believe… what my next 12 months will be all about. And finding my new identity…not really sure WHO I am anymore … hopefully that will happen in the next year as well. So much for our silver wedding anniversary year…
“…gimme five, I’m still alive, ain’t no luck, I’ve learned to duck…wave that flag, wave it wide & high… cause summertime’s done, come & gone, my oh my.”
B, you are so right. As Doug and Linda can verify, I actually e-mailed them Sunday to say I thought I would take a break and not visit or subscribe to posts for awhile. I felt so much better, and thought we were working on our marriage. We had done many things including counseling together and separately, book studies, had another couple mentor us, had day trips and weekends away…
but despite all this ‘effort’ I discovered Sunday afternoon that H re-established contact and has been off to the races again since mid-July. So…my healing is going to take place without him now. I told him in April following a decision 3 wks. post D-Day #1 that I would do this once.
Of course he is scrambling all over the map trying to do and say things to change my mind. I have moved out and never intend to look back. My four children have told me they would be extremely disappointed in me if I didn’t divorce him.
So there you go.
Well said, RCR, I agree with your children, stick to your guns. I think we all know that the emailer isn’t healed, just hiding. I believe it could be a BS, and they are just hiding from the pain (for now) by blocking their ears and eyes, and singing, “la-la-la-la-la-la, I-can-talk-louder-than-you-can.” Go on, sweep it under the rug, it’ll get nice and dirty under there, wait til you find it again in a few years, it won’t be any prettier then than it is now! As Notoverit says, you have to face this, and deal with it now, it doesn’t ever go away because you ignore it. You don’t forgive and forget, you forgive and remember not to continue with behaviours that will allow you to be duped again.
was this the CS who wrote the email?
@RCR,
so glad to hear an update from you, I wish you nothing but the best, I wonder all the time how you are doing.
30 years ago my husband had a three year long physical affair that destroyed our marriage. We were both in our 30’s. I took him back after he assured me he had made a mistake and everything about the affair was wrong. I forgave him completely, we remarried and went on with our lives and raised our children. We had some counseling and experienced the usual ups and downs in our marriage for the next 39 years. Things seemed fine until I found out he was having an emotional affair through FaceBook messaging WITH THE SAME WOMAN this past summer. I just had a feeling something wasn’t right and checked his messages. What a punch to the gut! This recent indiscretion almost ended our marriage …. our kids are grown and we are grandparents so I wasn’t too concerned with breaking up just he and I. I am still not entirely sure our marriage will survive, but he doesn’t want a divorce and seems to be remorseful about the whole thing. I am just not sure if I can ever fully trust him.
I answer the original post with forgiving and forgetting may not be the answer to the problem in your marriage. Burying your head in the sand may very well come back to bite you some day. I certainly hope not, but I am proof that it can and an emotional affair seems to be just as devastating to a marriage. Since I do not know what the future holds, I am at least working on discovering what my part is in this crippled marriage. If it can be salvaged, and I HOPE it can by working on myself, maybe we can be a success story.
Sherri,
I and my H are also proof that not dealing with an affair can cause future problems. His first affair was 36 years ago. I, too, forgave completely and we went on with our lives. I have come to the conclusion that I might not ever fully trust him either, but I have decided that that is his problem – not mine. I gave him my trust twice. He now realizes it was a precious gift that he abused. Again, that is his problem, not mine.
Bless you on your journey of self-discovery. Be kind to yourself. If I can make a suggestion then I would like to encourage you to find ways to empower yourself. It will benefit you, and quite possibly your marriage, far more than anything else you do.
Good luck RCR, I wish you nothing but the best. I don’t know where I am going because my wife says she isn’t doing anything and she loves me, but it is obvious that contact still exists. As sad as it may seem, I only hope I can find the same courage you have to leave.
You cannot just FORGIVE and MOVE ON. There has to be UNDERSTANDING and HEALING in order for those two things to even take place and those can only take place with time and communication.
If this is the CS that explains a lot, if it’s the BS then they’re in for a rude awakening one day. Unresolved buried issues rear their ugly heads when you least expect it.
my first response is, what an ass. this “move on like it never happened” is easier for some people. i agree that if they have moved on and don’t feel the need to “obssess” about it anymore, then congrats!!
i think if you really love each other, then its not that simple. you have to understand why it happened so you can grow and mend things to prevent something happeneing again.
i, myself come to this website every other day, or when i have time. i’m only one week post d-day and i feel i have a lot of people who understand what i’m going through, and that’s nice. my family and friends all think i shouldn’t waste my time…and so coming here is really good for me.
i still have a lot of triggers, of course, its only been ONE week!! but i hope in time, i can learn to forget, forgive and move on…….i hope…
oops….i should say my H had an EA that lasted a year….that i know of…
RCR’s and Sherri’s experiences with their CS reconnecting with the OW is my biggest fear and the one that I haven’t been able to overcome. If it can happen 39 years later, WTF? How can we ever feel safe?
Happened to me two weeks ago….and somewhere inbetween dday and now a second time. I really will never know cause the promise he made to tell me didnt matter and he once again lied. So I agree with your statement that just jumped out at me….How can we ever feel safe? I dont think we can……we can live with it or move on.
To respond to the issue in this thread good for the person for moving one. I think that they are fooling themselves to believe that it is completely gone. It never will be. I was at a similiar place 2 weeks ago. Wasn’t thinking about the affair, no searching for clues nothing…I didnt even want to talk about it anymore….then she called. Square one.
Well all I can say is if your spouse does something this tragic in your marriage and you just says oh well let’s pretend it never happened, then what lesson is there to learn? Oh well it doesn’t bother me do it again if you want to? oh HELL no. Walk the line or walk out the door. I have come to terms of my spouse broke our vows, if it is that easy, then i can break them too….all the way to court and divorce.
When it comes to an affair, if it happens once, get help. If it happens twice get out.
My biggest fear is also them re-connecting.
10-15 years from now, when this is just a passing memory, I can see DW re-connecting with her ex-fiance. We are 8 months out from a 1 year EA she had with this ex. He has a power over her that boggles my mind. Possessive is how she described it. Never mind that he dropped DW months away from the alter for her roommate (who he was sleeping with while engaged to DW). Never mind that he was filling DW’s head with thoughts of a PA during the recent EA.
If she becomes bored, starts to feel bad about herself or just wants a spark in her life, why not re-live those good moments and return to this man for some playful fun ? I can see this happening down the road. No doubt. Their history together is too big for her to just let go completely. She still has hidden feelings for this man, even though he has manipulated her, used her and has bad intentions. I have asked her at different times, if we were apart would you pursue this man ? I have yet to get a yes or no answer. It always, “I don’t know”.
Like Sherri states, forgiving and forgetting is like burying your head in the sand – it will come back and bite you. For me, it’s One Bitten, Twice Shy.