SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

ForceOfWill,

I think your name choice speaks to the issue you are having.

There is the concept of "ego depletion" and there are two things that contribute to it.

The first is "discipline" this is doing what you *ought to do* despite not wanting to do it.

The second is "willpower" this is not doing something you *want to do* because you know you ought not do it.

I think you are currently really applying "discipline" more than "willpower". You are staying in your marriage because you feel that you ought to despite not wanting to.

As a result, you are fully and completely emotionally exhausted. You are weary, a bone-tired sort of weary that perhaps you never dealt with prior to infidelity. I know I hadn't. The toll it takes is so mentally exhausting you feel it physically.

If you still feel that way after 6 years. I think you really need to ask yourself if you want to keep living this way. Why are you exhausting yourself? Is it worth it?

I noticed that you said you are not good at communicating emotions.

And I see how your post went from "I don’t think I can reconcile" to "but I want to"

There are lots of reasons to want to and not want to. Maybe start a list. Hold the question for a while because some of the answers will sneak up on you.

And one thing I have noticed in my going in ten years here—-the healing doesn’t really come just with deciding and executing an outcome to the marriage.it comes from processing. I think some people can be disadvantaged in that way because their conditioning leaned towards "rub some dirt on it, you will be okay"

At six years out, do the two of you ever still talk about the affair? Has it become your burden to carry alone? After a whirl some bs feel like they don’t want to keep bringing it up because it feels like rubbing their spouses nose in it, but the. They can’t heal because they hold it all in. It’s very lonely when it be can’t share their internal world with the person they want to share intimacy with on all levels.

I agree with the other poster, you aren’t ruining the marriage, that shot was fired long ago by your wife. It feels like you feel responsible to maintain the marriage because she didn’t leave.

I would maybe take the focus off the outcome of the marriage for a short time and really dig into how you are feeling and what you are thinking. Go to a therapist or talk with a trusted friend. You sound more like you are seeking clarity rather than knowing for sure what you want to do.

I also would not hide from her that you aren’t healed and you don’t know if you can heal.

Keeping this to yourself doesn’t allow the ability to get it in the table and sort through it more clearly.

You have taken a good step to come here and post, but also get some real life support. It’s not unusual you don’t feel you can get over it, I don’t think anyone fully does—-healing is more about being able to feel a wider range of things again—including joy. You can heal, that doesn’t mean you keep the marriage either, to me that’s a separate question.

Every reason to stay sounds like an pathetic excuse,

I think it's critical to examine why you're having to provide yourself with "excuses" for staying. If you you already consider those excuses to be "pathetic," what does that say to you?

FoW, I was reading this today and it made me think of you…

Pain and suffering are not the same thing.

Pain is the sensation from the body. Lose a leg and it arrives on its own, like electricity in the nerves, and you cannot argue it away. Suffering is the interpretation you add on top: that you will never run again, that people will see you as broken, that you should have been more careful.

An animal feels the pain. It does not carry the rest. Those extra layers need a conceptual mind, because they are not about the body surviving. They are about you surviving as an idea of yourself.

That points to a more useful question than whether suffering is necessary. Ask what a particular suffering is actually useful for. Some of it does move you to act. But some does nothing for you: neutral at best, working against you at worst.

Suffering drifts toward useless as it becomes more conceptual. Say you have an exam in a month and you are already stressed about it. The exam is not happening now. It sits in a future you are constructing, and it stands for a diploma, which stands for status, a job, and on down. Each layer is an invention, and each invention brings its own share of suffering. You can plan for the exam without paying suffering on every layer of that story. The event itself is a non-dangerous thing, a month away.

This is easiest to catch where the concepts pile up, because there you can watch yourself building it: the life-story layer, the status layer, the career layer. You keep building because some part of you assumes it helps. Test that. You can prepare for something difficult without suffering about it now.

You already dislike wasting your resources. Point that same instinct at the most conceptual, least useful suffering you are carrying, and it gets easier to set down.

During the week:

Pick one thing you are suffering about that concerns a future event, a goal, or a desire. Name the layers between you and the plain event: the imagined future, what it says about you, and what you expect to follow.For each layer, ask two questions.

Is this happening now, in my body, as pain or real effort? Does suffering about it help me prepare or act? Then find the most conceptual layer, the one furthest from anything happening now, and let that one go first. Notice how your experience shifts.

This0is0Fine - Thank you for the post. I wish I could say my name was some great revelation, but in truth:

"Two blue, three colorless. You may pay 1 life and remove a blue card in your hand from the game instead of paying Force of Will's casting cost. Effects that prevent or redirect damage cannot be used to counter this loss of life. Counter target spell."

I played Magic the Gathering for years. Love Force Of Will. But maybe, just a little bit, it fits how I feel psychologically.

My dad was a US Marine for 26 years, 5 years regulars, 21 reserves. He retired as a E9 Master Gunnery Sargent. I have a profound sense of duty inherited from him and grandfather who was in the Army in World War II and lost an eye on Okinawa.

I hate to say it, but I think that is probably part of the reason I am still in the marriage. And I know, at least on a intellectual level, that my wife violated the trust and the commitment of our marriage, but I just can't take commitment lightly. Even if she violated it, can I?

My wife and I still talk about the affair if I need to. That's the problem. She has done the stuff she should have. I have been to many of her counseling sessions, etc..., and it is obvious she has changed, even in the way she just approaches everyday life. My son is okay with me staying or going. I have talked with him about all of this from a point of view of how he would feel. He is 23 and living at home and working. I am trying to build up his investment portfolio so he can be on his own at thirty and not needing a partner.

hikingout - I will say that you are one of the key reasons I stayed reading on this forum for years. Period. You have great insight and really navigate things well and have given me a lot of insight. You are right. I want to be able to reconcile. I absolutely do. Most aspects of our marriage have been great, but the affair just keeps coming.

Unhinged - "I think it's critical to examine why you're having to provide yourself with "excuses" for staying. If you you already consider those excuses to be "pathetic," what does that say to you?"

Maybe the question is what does that say about me.

Ambivalence is a really hard place to be. I like HO’s advice to take notes/make a list and to focus on feelings over outcome. Another thing to tease out is what is normal midlife feelings/struggles and what is related to her affair. I’m about as far out as you, with a spouse who has also done the work. It’s been a slow process, but overall I am happy with how our reconciliation is going.

It hasn’t been a linear path, though, and for the past year or so, the thing I’ve been working on is how to discern when a bump in the relational road or feeling of malaise or flatness in the relationship is infidelity-related or just a natural part of a long term relationship (we’ve been married 26 years). Your feelings about your marriage and you noticing other women could be a sign that infidelity truly was a dealbreaker and you need to make your way out of the relationship, or they could be normal midlife feelings that many/most people in long term relationships experience even when infidelity hasn’t been part of the picture.

Finding the right path forward isn’t easy, but you will get there.

Can I ask a hypothetical question?

What do you think will be different for you - personally— if you D?

You will still be betrayed.

You may be dating others but that’s a lifestyle change, and may not meet your expectations (or could exceed expectations).

When I hold my H at dday2 of affair2 I was D him, it was because I needed to stop living w/ a liar & cheater. I had to save myself and my sanity and face reality.

So I wonder what you expect if you D? How go you see your life in the next 2-5 years.

If you genuinely feel a strong desire for your wife and want to stay in the marriage, I think you can make R work.

If the main reason you are staying is out of a sense of duty, you are in for a tough slog.

I was exactly where you were. My EX did anything and everything she could to try to make amends and keep the marriage intact. I still loved her, but I just couldn’t get over what she did. I would wake up every morning vowing that today would be the day I would let it go. Hearing her crying when she didn’t think I was around, or her jumping through hoops cooking me dinners or other acts of service, and me being so ambivalent was as crushing to me as it was to her. I felt awful all the time.

Yet I still couldn’t let it go. I have described it as like Muzak in an elevator. When it was full of people or I was engaged, I didn’t hear it. But when I was alone that was all I could hear. The thoughts like Muzak were 24/7 and I could bring them up and get angry at will. I used to pray she would cheat again so I could have a mulligan and walk away that day. Not a good mindset for reconciliation.

There seems to be a marriage that can survive here. It took me a long time to believe that there could be, but too many people here who have gone on have proved me wrong.

Yet there are people like me who no matter what my spouse did, I was never going to feel the same about her. My ego was just too bruised and my need for retribution which morphed into just being polite to her but without real emotion was never going to change. I don’t know where you stand on that, but it’s something that needs a deep dive. You need to ask yourself if you can ever love her the same way.

My biggest regret is after a few years I just shut down and didn’t communicate my thoughts. I knew where I was heading, but she didn’t. She kept banging her head against the wall. I would urge you to make your feelings known. I didn’t as I didn’t want to intentionally hurt her, but the result of me holding it in, then springing it on her that I was done, was far more devastating. I should have at least laid track that I couldn’t go on before I blew up her world.

How was the marriage before the affair. I ask this as believe, without much evidence, that sometimes the better the marriage was, the worse the chances of reconciliation. We had a great marriage, and I knew that after her affair it could never be as good. When you see the success stories here, often the affair takes place in a bad marriage and the affair becomes the catalyst for getting it back on track and marriage 2.0 is better.

It’s a crappy situation, but in the end if you leave it was the affair that set the ball rolling. No affair, probably no divorce.

If you leave it will be hard. Be firm in telling her why, but be humane about it. No easy way out.