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I’m 40/F and two months-ish from d-day from my partner’s emotional affair. We’ve been together 5 years and were really happy before this happened. I’m devastated. Here’s a scramble of my thoughts and feelings right now:
-We just bought our first home together. The EA started a few weeks after we had our offer accepted on the house, and I discovered concrete evidence about 4 days after the sale completed (3-4 months later). I feel so angry he let me buy a house with him while lying to me. I feel like I’ve been defrauded and that the house now feels like a burden and a trap rather than the celebration and security it should have been.
-I found out about 36hrs before my birthday. I’m worried all future birthdays are going to be triggers.
-I’m pretty sure the EA was essentially one-sided. The other woman was single but didn’t seem interested in him in that way. He had a huge infatuation with her and spent those four months building an ever-closer friendship and working collaboration with her. He found her attractive before building those things. I’ve had crushes in the past and that side doesn’t bother me, they’re natural. But I’ve never tried to build closer relationships with my crushes out of respect for our relationship. He insists he wanted his crush to go away and to just be friends and collaborators with her and part of me believes him. But his actions just kept fuelling the crush; he kept chasing her time and attention and building an ever-stronger bond.
-All this time, he was distant and neglectful with me and checked out of our relationship but used being busy as an excuse. He was snippy, sensitive, defensive, absent minded. He wasn’t pulling his weight in our shared life. I kept telling him things like I feel bottom of your priorities, I feel like I might as well be single at the moment, I’m unhappy, I’m lonely, I miss you etc. He kept promising to do better but didn’t. We slipped more into parent-child dynamics too and I hated that, but I needed him to do his share of the house purchase paperwork and the only way seemed to be to nag/manage him, but that’s not who I want to be.
-He insists he really wanted to buy the house with me and even now doesn’t regret it. I regret it, in light of all this.
-I challenged him on his relationship to this woman about a month in and asked him if he was attracted to her and he lied to me. He gaslit me so many times. I listed all his female friends once and said I don’t understand why I feel so different about this one and why my stomach wrenches at the thought of you two spending time together. But he carried on insisting it was all innocent. I only got confirmation through reading his diary – something I would never normally do, but my gut feeling that something was up was so strong.
-I hate that he could lie to me so many times. I find it scary too. What else has he lied to me about?
-She was 14 years younger than me and that kills me. It feels so tacky for a middle-aged man to get infatuated with a 20-something. I know that’s judgemental of me, but I feel it really strongly. He was also in an informal mentoring role to her, so it feels like poor ethics too.
-He insists he would have never done anything physical with her and I mostly believe that in the short term, but if he’d carried on building their relationship while ours was crumbling and I was becoming more unhappy, I can see something more potentially happening between them in that context.
-He took three and a half weeks to agree to absolutely and finally cut contact with her after d-day. After me being utterly devastated. Crying all through my birthday and holiday. He fought to keep working with her (this was self-directed and unpaid work, so there were no ties to stop him dropping it, other than his emotional ones) and to keep her in his life. Said he needed time to let go, that it was too painful
-In five years together, I’ve never seen him cry. And yet when I told him he couldn’t have her and have me, he sobbed and wailed and howled. He said ‘I know I can rebuild what I have with you, but I’ll never be able to have what I had with her ever again’. It makes me sick thinking about that moment. He’s never been that emotional about me and it felt so overblown and ridiculous in a way, but still intensely painful. And the way he assumed it would be easy to rebuild our relationship too, makes me feel cheapened and unseen.
-I feel a lot of disgust. And then I feel bad about feeling disgusted at him.
-When I ask him how he could do all this, he keeps saying that he was taking me for granted, but it’s such an unsatisfying response. An understatement.
-He was planning to propose to me on our holiday and would have done had I not read his diary. I find that deeply confusing. I think it speaks to lack of integrity and levels of self denial about what was really going on.
-He gave me access to their whatsapp chat and it really wasn’t that deep. Even what he’d written in his journal about her didn’t really feel about her. It reads like a teenage crush, like limerence, like fantasy, like projection. Like wanting attention and to be noticed by someone he was putting on a pedestal.
-We are working on reconciliation, but I am spinning. I want our old relationship back but I know I can’t have it. I want the new relationship that we might be able to have if reconciliation goes well, but I know I can’t bank on it. The relationship we have right now is intensely painful and confusing.
-He’s really struggling to empathise with me and says really hurtful things without realising it. We’re in couples therapy and the therapist has told him he’s careless with words. When I explain why something hurts, he does get it, but he can never get there himself before saying it. So I feel like I’m constantly having to explain the impact of his behaviour and how he needs to correct it but again, that’s not what I want to be in a relationship.
-He’s now started individual counselling too but I have a feeling change will be slow.
-He’s always had slight traits of autism but it feels like they’ve been really amped up in the aftermath of all this. Not to say autism is an excuse or that any autistic person would do this. But I think his undiagnosed neurodivergence has played a role.
-I’m not sure I know who he is anymore. I’m sure he used to be more empathetic, but then I doubt myself. I do remember wishing he was more emotionally attuned to me, but it seemed a minor disappointment. Not like now where he clumsily hurts me all the time and seems oblivious to my feelings.
-I feel a bit dehumanised at times. And he becomes robotic when I’m upset. It’s so emotionally lonely.
-I’m confused because I really don’t think he intends to do it and yet I can’t grasp how he can’t understand the impact of all this on me.
-I feel a bit crazy. My emotions go all over the place. I’ve never felt rage like this. Sometimes he walks into a room and I start sobbing like a toddler. Sometimes I feel absolute hopelessness and helplessness. Depression, despair. Sometimes I find my strength and focus on myself and feel good and determined. And then I crash into grief again. I can’t keep up with myself.
-I have lots of abandonment and betrayal trauma from my upbringing so I know all my feelings are amplified by those experiences. In many ways this feels worse; I didn’t choose my family, and they didn’t choose me. But my partner and I chose each other. At least until he stopped choosing me for those four months. But I guess I feel responsible, like why didn’t I choose better. Why didn’t I choose someone who wouldn’t do this?
-He has done some good things in the last few weeks and is trying hard but he keeps slipping up and upsetting me too. I find it difficult to believe and trust the good and not just think it’s compliance cos he’s scared of losing me.
-I read somewhere that real love is being scared to hurt someone, not just scared to lose someone. And I know he’s scared to lose me, but it doesn’t feel like he’s scared to hurt me.
-I work in mental health and I can’t help but empathise and feel compassion and want to take care of him, and it would almost be easier if I didn’t have the skills and knowledge I have, cos then I could more easily stay in my perspective and feelings.
-I’ve felt so let down and unsupported by friends. One apologised to me for being a bad friend; recognised that she’d been feeling really triggered by my situation and had been avoiding me. Which was good of her to ‘fess up, and made me more confident that I’m not imagining it; I feel like people are scared to talk to me about my situation and are backing off and away. Which is really painful, like being abandoned by my support network in the aftermath of being abandoned by my partner.
-And people who are willing to talk to me about it a bit clearly don’t really get it, not the depths of the pain. The comparisons they make are ludicrous.
-I have a therapist who is amazing, and another professional colleague who has been amazing, but the time I can have with them is limited.
-I’m estranged from my own family and all I want is a nice and safe and loving family home to go to and to be looked after. But my family is too toxic so I feel really alone.
-I worry my family fucked me up too much and I don’t know how to make good decisions and pick good people and have good relationships. I know that’s a self-pitying place to go to though and not helpful.
-I’m really scared of being single right now. I loved dating 5-6 years ago, before this relationship. But I can’t imagine the same enthusiasm for it now. I hear too many bad stories. I reckon all the good guys must be taken. I guess I don’t trust my judgement on people after this too. I feel less confident in my body with the death of the body positivity movement, and after feeling snubbed for a 20-something. I feel more wary and judgemental of men. And also, the world is going to shit, the government are telling us to stock up on supplies. If I’m going to be holed up with only tinned food and bottled water while whateverthefuck we’re prepping for is going on outside, I’d rather be with someone than alone. I hate knowing that these things are impacting my decision whether to stay or go as I want my decision to be about me and him.
-I really liked our relationship before. It wasn’t perfect. I wished he could be more attuned and emotionally mature and prioritise me more. But no relationship is perfect and I was broadly happy. I was always scared to buy a house with someone but I wasn’t with him, when we got our offer accepted. It just all imploded after that.
-I would love for it to work out but I’m worried about his capacity to turn things around.
-I also struggle to feel confident that my feelings can change and that I can let myself trust him again. I feel so profoundly wounded. And I’ve been as wounded by things since d-day as before. This didn’t need to happen. How could he be so selfish and cruel and heartless and uncaring towards me? It’s not like it was a momentary slip; it was four months of bad and hurful choices.
-I really miss sex but I can’t even sleep in the same bed as him at the moment. We can snuggle on the sofa, but anything more intimate and I go into a fight/flight response and my body shuts down and locks up and fills with anger.
-I keep wanting to download dating apps and see what’s out there, or even have a hook up, but I know this would not help the situation in any way at all. The fantasy is part revenge, part self-esteem boost, part feeling more in control. But I know it wouldn’t help. But I question what it means that I keep thinking about it. Do I still love him?
-He’ll never not be the man who hurt me this much.
-What he actually did with the other woman isn’t really the hurt, their relationship seems mostly innocent in reality, just his feelings weren’t. But the lying to me and the neglecting me and prioritising someone else and just generally recklessly risking everything we’d built together. The disrespect. All the times I told him I was unhappy and he didn’t change his behaviour. All the times he gaslit me and let me feel crazy. It hurts so so much.
-It feels like sabotage. I’d just finished a professional qualification, we were buying a house, he was planning a proposal (I’ve never been that fussed about marriage but I would have said yes if not for this) – it was like life was all coming together. And then he blew it up. And I don’t know why. And he doesn’t know why. And now it’s like he’s frozen and confused and fumbling and sad and ashamed. But he did this to us.
-Can I ever respect him again?
-I know that at some point I’ll be okay, but when? I keep reading it takes 2-5 years to recover from affairs and that’s depressing. I’ve had a rough five years and everything was gearing up for life to calm down and be a little simpler and then this hit.
-I feel like I should have a question, but really I just feel a bit of a mess and want to feel less alone with that.

Welcome to the club that no one ever thought they would be a member of

He insists he wanted his crush to go away and to just be friends and collaborators with her - I'm going to call BS on that one as well as calling BS on him saying he never wanted anything physical with her. A WS will typically say that in hopes of placating the BS. When I confronted my wife she said "it would have never gone past what you read, there would have never been anything physical, it was just harmless flirting"

There is little doubt in my mind that once school was out for the summer and the school was down to a skeleton crew there would have been a time or multiple times when the two of them would have "accidentally" wound up in a vacant room. Hell, her AP moved on to the social worker at the school and they ended up having sex not only in his car but on her desk in her office in the school

My wife's AP was 9 years younger than her and 13 years younger than me, so I understand what it feels like to think you were being replaced with someone younger

You do have a couple of things to be thankful for though. You are not married and you do not have children. When a relationship has both of those the path to R is much more complicated. You bought a house but that is a material item that can easily be sold

So now it's up to you what happens with the relationship. Do you think he is willing to do everything and anything to try and repair the damage he has caused? Is he willing to spend years trying to fix this? On average it's two to three years to just process through the trauma of discovering infidelity and many years beyond that slowly trying to rebuild the trust. Do you want to invest all of this time?

A truly remorseful WS will drag his / her naked butt through miles of broken glass if it would help repair the damage caused. Do you think your boyfriend is that dedicated to repairing the relationship?

One reality I eventually accepted is that an affair is a possibility in every relationship from day one forward. They happen in relationships that are great, average, poor, happy, sad, Etc. No relationship is immune

Please do not try to repair the relationship, that's his responsibility, and he has to prove to you that he is willing to do anything to try and do so

You have found a great place for support and advice. Everybody here understands all too well what you are feeling

Wow! I don't know how you captured all that, but you sure made me remember what went on in MY mind when I was 4 months out.

That is to say: the horrible mix of thoughts and feelings you describe seem pretty normal for 4 months out. Which means you're on a path to healing that a lot of have trod. Not that it's easy. Not that it's pleasant in any way. Just ... you're taking steps toward healing.

A few of thoughts....

My reco is to focus on your healing, not on R. It looks like R is possible, but R is not necessary for your well-being. The house makes splitting messy, but you can always split if you decide to. You have a free choice.

You're probably in shock and unable to distinguish between reality-based and catastrophizing and polly-anna-ish thoughts and feelings right now. Have faith in yourself - your ability to recognize realism, over-optimism, and over-pessimism will return - never as fast as a BS wants it to, but it will return.

Healing, IMO, requires processing the thoughts and feelings about being betrayed out of one's body. The problem is that one often has to resolve old issues in order to get to the new ones. That slows healing down, but it can really add to your joy once you're through it. You mention abandonment. That was a big one for me. Once I resolved my fear of being abandoned, though, my life got much easier. You can do that, too.

Our Family of Origins (FOOs) always cause problems in life. Some people do get se effed up to heal themselves (think narcissists), but your post says that's not you. You are not too messed up to heal. You're probably less messed up than you think you are. Yeah, I don't know you, but I know a lot of people, and very, very few are beyond hope.

Being betrayed is traumatic. Be kind to yourself. If you feel awful, you're in touch with reality - but reality gets better as you heal.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:54 PM, Friday, November 6th]

You sure captured a lot of familiar feelings for me. I don't have a whole lot to add to what's already been said aside from that I don't see anything that makes you sound unreasonable or over the top about how you're feeling. Betrayal trauma is real trauma. For most of us it's the worst experience of our lives. So your discombobulation and confusion are pretty normal if there's anything that could be considered "normal" about this.

You mentioned feeling like you've lost your support system. Hang in there and keep posting here. We know what you're going through and we know just how bad this really, really sucks. Ask any questions youmhave or just use us to vent to if you need it.

I'm sorry you've found yourself here, but you will find support if you want it.

I’m so sorry that you’re here. You described a lot of the feelings that I have had/am still having post D-day. For reference, mine was only about a month ago (Oct. 1), and was an emotional affair - but not for lack of trying on my WH’s part.

Let me just say, you feel defrauded because you were defrauded. You were robbed of information you needed to make the next best decision for yourself.

I feel a bit (a lot) crazy, too. For me, part of it was that I had been voicing my concerns all summer to my WH while he assured me that everything was fine - but it wasn’t. Now, sorting through reality-based vs. catastrophic emotions is hard. My therapist and I are working on trusting myself again.

It’s very difficult to reconcile the reality of the person you’re with today with the illusion of the person you thought you were with. But you know the truth now, and even if it sucks (which is does), it is yours and you get to decide what to do with it - not you’re WP.

Please keep coming back here and venting. It’s helped me tremendously to know that i’m not alone in this and I want you to have that support, too.