SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi everyone, I’ve been trying to read through as many of the posts in this thread as possible.
I found out back in November that my H (together for almost 30 years, married for 24 years, 2 adult sons in their 20’s) has had another woman for 21 years.
15 years PA then she moved away - EA via phonecalls and texts the last 6 years.
He’s taken full ownership, said it’s all on him.
Has cut her out of his life.
Doesn’t love the OW but loves me and our sons.
Doesn’t want to be with the OW and will do anything to save our marriage.
Said it was just sex on a plate but that they did "get on".
He’s never taken her anywhere, never bought her anything. Just met for sex and chat.
Said he has completely compartmentalised me and her. Never felt guilty or thought about ending it with her though (which is another concern).
We are currently still living in the same house and talking. He answers any question I put to him (and I’ve asked him absolutely everything).
Anyone else here with an LTA of this length?
It’s the length of time that really bothers me and makes me think that this is too big to recover from.
Even if he is doing everything that’s suggested he do.
Thanks in advance.

Hello Numb, Sorry this thread is a bit slow at times. We have chatted on other threads and after re-reading a few of my posts I’m not sure what to offer beyond support and understanding. I don’t really think there is a destination called healed or a marriage that feels repaired or reconciled in any literal sense, not for me. I am not really seeking much beyond good enough for now.

I wish I could tell you it hurts less, and it does, but my heart still aches for what was lost, and what never was real. I understand that my WH never wanted to leave me, intended to stay married to me, and wants to be with me now. He loves me as best as he is able, but the hurt runs so deep that his version of love allows for so much betrayal and disrespect. He is also capable of terrible mental gymnastics to evade reality or consequences, he is stubborn and selfish and has mangled what we had so badly it may be beyond my scope to heal or move forward with him. I am stuck in a perpetual if/then loop. If he loved me, then he would have done so many things differently since DDay1. He was pretty emotionally flat and checked out at first too, which I misinterpreted as his calm nature. I didn’t realize how much shock he was in, or the depth of the issues I was going to drag up for him as I refused to let him control the outcome. I’m scared of the new layers I’ve peeled back, the roots of those feelings he keeps in those compartments where he kept his girlfriend and his wife separate. I miss believing we truly knew and cared for each other. I miss so much about the us I thought we were. And my brain is twisted into pretzels trying to figure out what is left, what we are now and trying not to think about what he and his nasty gf really were to each other. My WH talked a lot of trash about his mistress, but I saw enough chats and emails to know he cared for her and didn’t want to lose her. She is his second longest relationship, as I’m sure yours is as well. What a creepy reality to know she lurked in my life in a secret parallel, me the clueless fool in love.

Clearly I did not know my husband as well as I thought. He misjudged almost everything about me too. He has been absolutely surprised to know I had issues with loneliness or feeling unappreciated in our marriage. He has always assumed I was happy. He has not paid attention. He didn’t think I would be this hurt or take this long to get over his mistake. He is not happy with the way things have turned out, particularly my inability to be my old cheerful, hilarious loving self. I am so changed, and I am pissed about most of it.

I am not your best cheerleader for R&R with a LTA, because I don’t have a model WH doing the hard work and talking this through with me. I remind myself though, that he played that role very well when he was lying to my face to placate me and continue his life on his terms, end things when he decided, not me. I don’t think he could quit her or quit answering her messages until I made them stop. I am trying not to be negative, but I see so much of me in you - trying so hard to manage this, work the problem, take care of your family, and have way too much empathy for your WH, getting a graduate degree in affair recovery while he ponders his inability to feel the emotions he pretended to have. I just want you to proceed with caution, be sure you know what you are dealing with. If there are any details nagging at you, you need to address them all now. He has been playing a well choreographed role in his mind and your life for a very long time. Take your time thinking you understand all that you are dealing with. Our husbands don’t love like we do. They don’t honor vows, commitments, promises or values like we do. We thought they did, but they were fooling those closest to them. They are secret keepers, with a proven ability to lie with ease, and rationalize almost anything. I kept thinking I had a handle on his mindset, but it took me a while to recognize the chaos being caught brought to his world order. The healing process for us both has been slow and full of road bumps.

My therapist made me go through the exercise of what exactly would cause me to walk away from him forever, now that we have been through this and I have decided to stay and finish this journey together. It was a very good thought exercise. Clearly I have moved my boundaries of what is acceptable in order to stay with him after this charade of a soul mate relationship, so it was really good for me to stew on where my backbone would kick in, and make a commitment to myself to not lose sight of my core values and my conditions moving forward. I have moved from unconditional love to conditional marriage. I never thought I would have to be so explicit about the expectations of the arrangement.

Good luck to you moving forward. Try to detach a little and try not to steer your R, but watch and wait and see who your WH decides he is or was or wants to be. Do more work on yourself and reclaiming your life than you think possible. Radical self care and continued therapy to help rebuild the life you want, not the one you thought you had. Wishing you extreme patience and endurance for the journey ahead.

Whatisloveanyway, thank you so much. Your post has given me so much to think about and consider.

"What a creepy reality to know she lurked in my life in a secret parallel, me the clueless fool in love" …

I couldn’t agree more. My H has been able to completely compartmentalise his 2 lives so well that I have never seen a trace of it in his face. She has been there all these years yet I’ve never known. This is what I find so disturbing.

While I was a busy and devoted SAHM, thinking he was hard at work providing for his family, he was making time to see her.
I gave up my career to raise our children, while he kept his. And this is how he repaid me.

I will most definitely tread carefully and remember that he has lied to me for so many years.

I am so sorry that you find yourself here and totally admire your patience and loyalty to your marriage. If only our Husband’s had realised years ago what amazing women they have for wives and had made better choices. Thank you for your support and advice which I will keep reading in the coming weeks/months

NumbAndBroken

My wife's LTA went on for 15 years and I am convinced she would have taken it to her grave or till me or her lover died. I say this because she did not have the strength or the courage to end it on her own. She has told me that there were many times where it could have ended but because she had contact with him almost every day in her work environment she would always seem to give into him again. In my wife's LTA it started out being totally sexual and went on once a week for many years but it was in the last 5 years when her lover's wife passed away and he had some serious heart problems is when it got emotional and she fell in love with him. The length of this affair was a very tough pill to swallow for me for many reasons. God opened my eyes to this affair in only ways that he could and I put an end to it. My wife told me that she used to pray to God to get her out of it but little did she know that God would use me to do it. We are 3 years into recovery and still struggle to comfortably communicate about delicate subjects. Personally, I believe that after an affair of that length that they have become experts at deception and lying to cover their tracks. They have been living a second life and a separate marriage and you can bet that everything they did with you in your marriage, they did with them and probably more. My wife was a completly different woman with her lover and would do anything for him so she could keep getting the attention and validation she seemed to thrive off of. Secrets, deception and lies don't always stop when they get caught as habits like that are hard to break. I am sorry for ranting on about my wife's LTA and I can only say if you can have an open conversation about the past and get your concerns out in the open you can recover. We have been doing it without counseling and that is not recommended for LTA's of this length. Your old marriage and relationship is history and you are starting a new one with new rules and new boundaries and it won't be easy. Forgetting the past and knowing that she looked into my eyes and told me she loved me every day of all those affair years is very, very hard. Every affair has many similarities but is unique to the people involved. You will get lot's of opinions from this forum along with encouragement and bitterness. Take what is useful from each one as in some small part they have all walked in your shoes at some time. I pray that you find peace again in yourself and your marriage.

Lost1313

"Making It Right After a LTA"

I have heard this expression many times and even from my own wife. Because her affair went for 15 years and it went very emotional the last 5 years. I have to believe that over that length of time that some deep and somewhat permanent feelings were established. I was really hell bent on the physical aspect of her LTA but now realize that the emotional connection that happened over that much time is just as bad if not worse. Things can never be 'right again' when deep down she has given a piece of her heart to this man. A new reality and something I live with now because I decided to stay with her and work this out. I wondered how all those who have walked in my shoes deal with the loss of exclusivity in their marriage.

Lost1313

For me, I had to reframe my marriage, what it was and what it is now. I never bought into the "my marriage was a sham" etc narrative which helped. My marriage had a huge lie going on behind my back, but that doesn’t mean the entire marriage was a lie. To this day I have to focus on making my memories real, as they were my reality, his reality looks different than mine and that’s his burden to bear. I had a therapist tell me once as I was battling this "if you remember a beautiful family Xmas and 10 years later you find out your teenager was secretly pissed off and resentful she couldn’t be with her boyfriend would that change your memory?" I instantly said "no, that would make me laugh". And he went on to tell me that we never truly know every thought and feeling another has so we might as well believe in and keep our own. My husband swears he was always present when home and that she was just an escape. Whether that’s all true or not doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s his memory and I had to make peace with it. My marriage today is in some ways stronger, but in other ways scarred to a point that makes it never work the same. It’s kind of like arthritis after an injury. It’s functional, you’re happy to still have a working part, but it aches a little and isn’t as strong as it once was or could’ve been had you not been injured . I am okay with that. What I get from my marriage works for me. I wish you healing and finding what works for you, with or without your marriage.

This will be my last post on SI. I chose to post it under this forum because this is where I spent most of my time licking my wounds. I realize that this may sound very harsh to those of you that have just arrived at this site looking for support, advise and comfort. Believe me, I hope you find it here. But I also know that the time will come that as my Great Grandfather use to say: "Fish or Cut Bait". He also said that You can't row the boat with one foot in the water. Allow me to explain.

I arrived on this site after being informed by husband's former mistress of their 6+ year affair. You can look up my profile to see more of the details. I left for a while but returned because as I told myself I wanted to work on our marriage. I did not know it then but the reason I came back was two fold: He was the love of my life AND I wanted him to feel the same depths of devistation that I felt. Because I still loved him so deeply I could not bring myself to leave but I also held tightly to the pain. Every minor disagreement that came up I flung the affair in his face. What did he do? He took it. He internalized it . He went to Therapy (individual and marriage), He moved me to another state of my choice to get me away from the daily reminders. He supported everything I wanted to do. He held me and took repeated responsibility for everything he had done. In short he became even a better man than the one I fell in love with.

What did I do: I refused to forgive. I held onto the pain. I withheld intimacy. I put all the blame on him. In short I had one foot in the water and I wasted nine years.

My husband died on Sept. 21st from a sudden unexpected cardiac event. The last words he had a chance to say to me were come get me when you get out of the shower.

I wasted nine years. I was unwilling to Fish or Cut Bait. If I were unwilling to forgive him and love the man he worked everyday to become then I should have left. The truth about my husband is that he was a flawed, imperfect, GOOD man that loved me with all of his heart. If I have looked at him that way long before the affair started there may have been another outcome. Or perhaps we both had to walk through fire to see each other more clearly. None of that matters now because I will never have another chance to tell him how much I loved him and that he deserved my forgiveness and grace.

This is not an eraser story. What he did was beyond hurtful. His choices were not my fault. I had ever right to leave him if I chose to. But when I chose to stay in the marriage I accepted a responsibility to meet him at least halfway.

I know that not every wayward spouse has the capacity or desire to do the work and make the changes. If that is your situation then I pray you have the strength and means to walk away. But is your spouse if like mine I pray you take the following to heart:

Please take what you will from this post but what I hope you hear is the following:

-You spouse can love you and still be unfaithful

-Some unfaithful spouses love you enough to take full responsibility for their choices and do the work to be different

-A good marriage requires the full commitment of both partners.

-Do not let you grief and anger rob you of what could be if your spouse is doing everything they can to be someone you can love and trust.

-And finally, time is limited. If you think the pain of an affair is the worst emotional pain you will ever experience, you are wrong. Kissing your spouse and telling them how much you love them as they take their last breath is the worst and will follow you every remaining day of your life.

I wish you all peace and time.

[This message edited by Hopeful76 at 4:25 PM, Sunday, October 26th]

Hopeful...I am in tears reading this. I am so, so sorry for your loss. Your husband must have known how much you loved him as you chose to stay.

Your words are profound. I fear my husband dying before I have had a chance to fully forgive him.

I hope you have support during this time. Sending you love 💓

Hopefull

What you have shared is truly heartbreaking, I am so sorry for your loss, and grateful for the wisdom and healing that is also contained in your words ❤️

Your words will stay with me as a reminder that choosing to stay is choosing to heal and thrive and not just survive! I hope you have family to support you and thank you for sharing something so personal ❤️