SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

5 years ago today was dday1. 5 years ago my BS found my blog and asked me "who is AP?". 5 years ago I lied and went underground continuing my affair for several more months until dday2. A little over 2 years ago was dday3 when I stopped carrying the last few lies.

But 5 years ago was the first time I shattered BS's heart. And it was the first time I lied to her about something of huge significance. Dday1 is always the hardest.

They say healing takes 2-5 years. We have officially hit that point in all respects. Are we healed? No. But we are healing. We are moving forward together making huge life decisions that will bind us together forever even if our marriage fails. For the first time in 5 years I feel confident that it won't fail. Now I feel like we can do anything we put our hearts and minds to.

I have undergone a mass transformation over the past 5 years. I am not the person I used to be. I am a better person. I have begun to stop carrying around the deep hatred for myself that grew exponentially with my affair. I have a handle on my mental health. I have support outside of BS. I can hear and receive BS's feelings even when she hates me. I am authentic and dependable. I can finally look at myself in the mirror.

We have been through so much. The past 5 years have been a special kind of hell journey I wish for nobody. If you need to take the journey of reevaluating your entire life and sense of personhood, pick a different jumping point than having an affair.

Because I would give all of my self growth up if it meant I could take away the damage I caused BS. She is also a different person now. She is healing in her own way, but she will never be the person she was 5 years and 1 day ago. I killed that person.

We talk sometimes about how life would have been had I not cheated. I wasn't a great person. I was lying about little things and was building a sexual basement while icing her out. I was stagnate and aloof as a partner. I didn't carry my share of the weight in our everyday lives. I was undiagnosed and had scary fits of rage and long bouts of depression. Our marriage would have fallen apart eventually without her knowing anything of who I was underneath. She says she is glad that at least now she knows and can make an informed decision.

After my affair I had to face all of my shit head on and change it if I wanted any chance of staying married. And I did that. I'm still learning and healing too, I don't think that will ever stop.

But there are a million ways I could have recognized all of this and made these same changes without cheating. I could have spent the past 5 years doing the same things without having destroyed the woman I love. I feel guilty that over the past 5 years I have been able to grow and evolve into something better at the expense of her. She's spent the past 5 years putting herself and her sense of everything back together in a way that doesn't fit like it used to. She's a resilient human being, to say the least.

Today she called me a "recovered wayward". It was the first time she's said that. I felt like I had won a prize. Everyday I wake up next to her I feel like I've won a prize. I am so lucky she has chosen to stay and try with me.

So yeah. 5 years later and we are healing. We aren't there yet, but we keep marching forward together hand in hand. We are stubborn as hell and refuse to give up.

Thanks so much for posting. It is SO very important for people to hear and see that R is possible, and from a WS perspective, to see that things can and do change for the better.

Today she called me a "recovered wayward". It was the first time she's said that. I felt like I had won a prize. Everyday I wake up next to her I feel like I've won a prize. I am so lucky she has chosen to stay and try with me.

5 years ago, your choices and actions defined who you were, and at the time, you were a full-blown wayward. It brought you nothing but pain, and shame, and the burden of carrying your own disappointment around. Now, also through your choices and actions, you have crossed over into a new definition, a new way of thinking about yourself and who you are. Your choices and action now define you as someone who knows better and does better, and who loves themselves enough to be someone they respect and are proud to be.

This is the greatest lesson we can share to other WS's in my opinion. Thank you for sharing, and congrats on all the hard work you've put in to change. Never stop working at it.

Thank you for posting this. It gives me hope that my WW will one day come to terms with her actions and show true remorse and personal growth. It's one thing to come clean but it's another to stand in the fire and look inside yourself at the cause. GL to y'all moving forward.

As a BS I have to applaud you for saying this,

Because I would give all of my self growth up if it meant I could take away the damage I caused BS. She is also a different person now. She is healing in her own way, but she will never be the person she was 5 years and 1 day ago. I killed that person.

It is true that we are not the same after infidelity and that recognition means a lot.

I wish you two much luck. Hopefully the growth continues and it gets better and better. I hope you like yourself much more now and you are able to be a better partner to her and can attune to her while maintaining yourself holistically.

Thank you for doing the work and posting. I think for new waywards it is important to identify the work and what it takes to be a safe partner. Looking at it as a BS from the outside it is quite a journey for a WS. The damage done to you by you is more profound than I think gets recognized because so much focus goes to the BS (rightly so as the victim). The self-imposed damage and suffering is very hard to overcome in my opinion.

Thank you for sharing and for doing the work.

I am so happy for you and your wife and relieved to assess (could be wrong) that you don’t have any kids while these five years were going on. Special credit to her for sticking around if you did not share kids and she did not walk away.
Two things - pls consider it a desperate person’s plea.
1) what eventually happened that was the catalyst for DD2 and DD3 and turned out to be mass transformation? Some of us are stuck in weekly purgatories of DD events and have numbed our hearts (yet it feels like death every time) but can’t find our way out of this hell that someone put us to get their jollies/kicks/whatever their whys are
2) what about the kids who are caught in the middle? My kids finally admitted to me that they are broken (teenagers) and have lost any faith or trust in the world. My 13 yr old said today why did you marry him? I wish I never existed. I don’t want to exist anymore. Can you imagine the pain and tears I feel? How do we rebuild them. Some of us are old and over our lives but how do we help these innocent kids whose entire lives and value systems have collapsed. Of course, I am going to take them to therapy but they refuse to talk.

I am looking for any ray of hope/prayer/chance for my kids to be ok. Any advice?

I really cried reading this. Thank you for sharing it.

Thank you for the acknowledgements you made.

I'm moved by your growth. I'm moved by your marriage. I wish you both the next 5, 19, 50 years to be beautiful.

Thank you for these replies. This is a wonderful community and I am grateful for it. It has kept me in line and informed over the years.

I'd like to drive home the point that life is still hard. Even with all the work and healing we've done, there are still really hard days. There are still triggers. There are hurt feelings. Sometimes I forget a conversation and don't follow through. I am by no means close to being the best version of myself. I am simply better than I was. The work never stops, we never get to an end point. I will always strive to be better.

Lostindenial - I wish I could say the catalyst for DD2 was that I had an epiphany of conscience. But the truth is AP let me down in a big way. I felt rejected and unimportant. The veil was lifted and I saw AP for what they were. I realized that BS would never treat me that way, would never let me down to such an extent and legitimately cared for me. I let the wave of guilt wash over me for what I had been doing, how horribly I had been treating BS. But I didn't come clean of my own volition, BS had to ask me if I had been talking to AP again. I just decided not to lie. It took a several months for any sliver of change to start.

The catalyst for DD3 was that I had done enough work to understand that I couldn't live with myself anymore holding on to the last few lies of my A. BS deserved to know everything. My disclosure didn't happen in an eloquent way. I had intended to sit her down and have an intentional and vulnerable conversation. What happened is we were fighting and I was giving up and flung it at her in an act of desperation. Not my finest moment.

As for your children, I am so sorry to hear they are hurting so badly. I can't imagine the kind of trauma that would inflict on a kid. Being a teenager is hard enough as it is. You are correct in your assessment that BS and I do not have kids. As such I don't really have any advice for you. Just love them extra hard, let them have all the feelings that come up, and keep offering therapy if you are able to. Even if they don't want to talk I would imagine having the option of someplace neutral to go would be helpful. I wish you all the luck in your healing journey, as well as theirs.

I am by no means close to being the best version of myself. I am simply better than I was. The work never stops, we never get to an end point. I will always strive to be better.

My user name – Bigger – was chosen because I have been on a journey to be a better person for nearly 20 years now. Bigger sounded slightly less self-promoting that Better 😊

It’s not a linear project. Definitely not logarithmic either! It’s more a series of steps and grades where at best you can carry on up a gradual but long incline followed by a plateau where you can rest for the next steps. There are backwards slides but also giant steps forwards. I’m OK with being on an ongoing journey as long as there is progress.

I can mention three steps that turned out to be major milestones for me:
Financial accountability. This has led me to the stage where I’m financially well off. Not rich, but I know exactly what my finances are, what we can do, where we are saving, what we are paying. I have no debt and owe nobody. The freedom this has given me and the pressure this has taken out of my marriage is tremendous. This took some time but had so many side-benefits. For example, my wife and I sat down and did a budget meeting every month and then discussed the budget as things went along. This changed what had been a problem (different spending patterns) into a joint task, improving our relationship and communications.

Learning to say no. If I cant do something or don’t want to do something I say no. Like if a friend asks me to help him move house next Saturday and I can’t I just say no, but I might offer help on the Friday or Sunday. At work if I can’t meet a deadline I say no right away. If you are consistent on this it get’s appreciated: the friend knows that there is a reason I can’t come and knows I will help him on the other days, my boss will know that the deadline is unrealistic.

Never lie. If I don’t want to answer a question I will divert or simply refuse to answer. I won’t lie. It’s not totally 100% - "white lies" are allowed. I won’t tell my wife what her Christmas present will be, nor will I tell someone that their hairdo makes them look stoopid. But if someone asks me an honest question, I will tell the truth. This has alleviated so much pressure from me and my marriage too.