SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My wife had and exit affair back in 2010. Came home one late January day from an out of town trip to a note on the bed and an empty closet. Three+ months later in late May we were divorced and she moved out of state. Through all of that, I never knew there was an affair. A couple months after the divorce, we finally started talking and decided to reconcile. Three months later we remarried in August on our wedding anniversary.

Nothing was genuinely fixed. We just committed to working on fixing it. It took another year of counseling before she genuinely started to acknowledge her part in what went wrong. She acknowledged pieces along the way but it took real time for her to really start to work on her and us.

My story is abnormal, but the part that I think is probably pretty normal for reconciliation, is that both parties need to truly want to reconcile. I knew I did. We decided to reconcile, I thought she did. It took time from me thinking it and hoping for it before it was real on her end.

What I did from the day I found that note on the bed was take an inventory of my life. I'm a fairly self confident person and am comfortable acknowledging my faults. I decided I was going to work on them to be the best version of myself for my sons, my family, my friends and my wife if there was any future. The important part is I wasn't doing it to win her back. I was doing it because it was a healthy thing to do to work at being a better person for all the important people in my life.

Both of us contributed to making the reconciliation work, but I know for certain that I had to carry more of that weight in the beginning because it was clear she wasn't as capable of doing the work early on.

We were lucky. She got there. If she didn't ultimately own her actions and work on her stuff we never would have made it. 16 years later, I'm glad she found her way there.

Sort through what weight you can carry. Is it worth it. Can your spouse get to a place ready to do the work. There isn't a tried and true path on this topic. It is how much energy can both folks muster to rebuild a relationship. Only you can know how much work is worth it and only you can speculate whether your spouse is capable of meeting the moment.

If any of us in reconciliation want it to work, both parties have to be committed to making it work. You'll need to sort out whether your spouse can get there. I hoped mine could and knew that I could survive carrying an unfair share of the load for ahwile. That isn't how it is supposed to be and no BS should be expected to do it. That's just how ours played out and 16 years later I'm glad that it did.

[This message edited by WarpSpeed at 12:24 AM, Wednesday, October 14th]