SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I’m currently sitting at just over 5 years since my (still) wife cheated on me with her HS boyfriend (her Achilles - the One.)
We were 50 years old w3 kids and a 24 year, 281 day marriage at the time. I caught her red handed thru 4129 emails+ texts but decided to try to work things out because I love(d) her & because of the kids. Two are out of the house now and the third will be leaving for college after next school year. They do not know.
Since D-day, our journey towoard recovery has been riddled w her hesitation & utter reluctance to help me. We eventually did counselling for a while but I stopped it since things were going well and I was in a good place. She won’t go back now and doesn’t even want to discuss our relationship unless I force the issue. I’ve been told basically to figure out what works for best me when I’m in crisis and use whatever it is to get through it.
Does anyone know of self-help books or other resources specifically for someone staying in a broken marriage even though the wayward is unwilling to continue to work toward reconciliation?
Thank you,
-BrokenBewildered

Since you used the "love(d)" in the possible past tense, the question is, do you WANT to stay married to her? If you are staying for the kids, it looks like the window of opportunity of choice is opening.

The comment of "figure out what works for you when in crisis and use whatever it is to get through it" seems shockingly cold. Was this from your wife?

If so, I'm a giant believer in disrupting things I don't accept, why not disrupt the status quo of her comfortable place in your marriage indicating that you are not interesting in continuing this "relationship" especially if she has "the one" who is not you in her mind.

You seem to think you are trapped and unhappy, none of us are trapped or ever have been. Everything is a choice.

I agree with hardy fool. With your youngest in their last year of high school, this is a good time to reevaluate your decision to stay in the marriage. You don’t have to make any fast moves, but maybe it’s time to emotionally turn away from your wife, focus on yourself, and think about what the next steps are.

Your kids might be traumatized no matter when you split, but I don't see how you can be happy for the next 3.5 decades living with a partner who pines for someone other than you. When your kids leave home, all the time and energy they took up becomes free. It's a great time for a good M, but I imagine it's a terrible time for a bad one.

Why stifle yourself?

What do you expect from the books your seek?

I'm very sorry for your pain. IMO, every day you continue in this M in which you (may) love your W but she loves someone else probably increases your pain. At least staying with my W during her A - knowing there was a problem show would not address - increased mine.

You can stop adding pain, and you can heal from the pain you've absorbed already - but you have to change what you've been doing.

Are you in IC? If not, is IC something you'd go for?

Does anyone know of self-help books or other resources specifically for someone staying in a broken marriage even though the wayward is unwilling to continue to work toward reconciliation?

You are getting into the "what does it all mean" years, so it’s worth stepping back from the affair specifically and asking, what does it all mean?

Books that I’ve found useful include

F*ck Feelings

Book by Michael Bennet and Sarah Bennett

The author is a psychologist. It’s a funny and insightful book.

He has a manifesto on an associated web page, here’s some of it…

Most things that make you feel bad aren’t within your control, so sharing your feelings won’t make you feel better for long. If you expect to feel good when you can’t, you’ll feel worse, not just because you’ll be disappointed, but because you’ll feel personally responsible for your pain. You feel like a failure, a loser, someone who’s lost his groove and can’t get it back.

And focusing on your bad feelings makes them more important, so you’ll forget other important things in your life that might make you feel better in the long run, like doing your best, making a living, being a good friend, and, in a general way, living up to your values. Then there’s all the research showing that feelings of pain and disappointment cause you to think and act negatively, which causes more pain and disappointment. So spending too much time with your feelings is dangerous for your health. My advice is, fuck ‘em.

Instead, consider your goals, which is what you want to do after accepting what you can’t change. I know, you’ve got lots of feelings about what you can’t change and you’d prefer to ask why rather than accept what you consider as defeat. But here’s the advice that I think can be most helpful: fuck that shit. You’re never defeated if what’s stopping you is reality. Defeat is wasting your time complaining about what you can’t change or trying to control it when you know you can’t. Defeat is being an idiot about not giving up on your wishes. Victory is putting up with the pain and humiliation of reality and trying to make things better anyway.

So goals are not just wishes or feelings– they’re what you want to do after you eat the shit of reality, because the alternative of pretending that it will go away is even worse. I can’t tell you why you should accept a terrible deal, only that we’re living in a harsh, unfair world and that’s the way it is. If you want to make the best of it and the messy, sad unfairness of life, I want to help. Otherwise, you’re whining. You’ve got good reason to whine, but it’s not helpful, so don’t do it. That’s what my advice is about.

Can you change your wife? Not sounding like it. Sounds like at least right now, you live with her as she is or you make a change that you can control.

I love the Eckhard Tolle stuff, books, audio books, and YouTube video.

Peter Ralston’s The Book of Not-Knowing has some deep truths.

Again, it’s about effecting a change with you. None of these things need to be affair-specific. They are about seeing the truth in things.

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 4:42 PM, Monday, November 4th]

I’ve been told basically to figure out what works for best me when I’m in crisis and use whatever it is to get through it.

This sounds weird to me. Almost like permission to have your own affair or some similar sorta garbage.

So, the way I look at it, you got two or three different things to address here, and finding a book isn't really gonna be as helpful as you might want it to be... mostly because of how personal this shit is.

First thing first - taking care of yourself. You are a living example to your kids for how to properly deal with it when shit hits the fan. It's five years past dday, but it doesn't make it any less important... and depression can be one of those recurring bastards that hit yearly like taxes.

Depression is all to common for these things, and finding ways to keep yourself afloat is important. Exercise, medication, journaling, meditation, etc... you know yourself best for what is going to help address that piece of the shitfest.

You are strong and you've been through the worst part of the pain already, yeah?

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Secondly, you've got to protect yourself. While you have posted in the reconciliation, which shows you believe yourself or want yourself to be reconciling... I personally can't help but notice two important details you mentioned. That your oldest is close to graduating and that she is reluctant and hesitant.

These two things lead me to suspect that she might be dragging the marriage out until the oldest graduates and plans to initiate a divorce once that happens.

My advice in response is to watch out for clues of this, and safeguard yourself if you find them. I doubt you want to be blindsided by yet another surprise if she is planning on on divorce.

This includes finding hobbies or stuff that you enjoy doing and would continue to enjoy if you two separate. Fav foods? TV shows? Etc. Etc.

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Lastly, it sounds an awful lot like you're unwilling to entirely commit to reconciliation because she hasn't shown she's willing to put in the effort... which is more than fair on your part.

I don't know what either you are her are looking for with regards to signs that your relationship is on the mend, but if you haven't even considered what those signs would be, then I'd suggest putting some thought into it.

Course, the reverse of the optimist is the pessimist and you could also put in thought to what the signs are that the marriage is doomed to fail... if you do this, though, then don't forget to also consider what you will do when you find those signs.

Wishing you strength!

Sounds like she's totally unrepentant and doesn't even feel like she did anything wrong.

When she just says "Well, work something out for yourself" what I hear is "I don't really care about what you're going through and I have no desire to help you through it at all. In fact, I can't even be bothered to listen to you or think about it."

Sounds like any time you've tried to broach the subject, she bristles and you back down.

So, yeah, you have not, in fact, recovered at all. You've swept it all under the rug.

Whenever you rug-sweep, the problems that still need to be dealt with just kind of fester there and grow worse. They can even create physical health problems. You can tell that time doesn't heal anything, because this still bothers you so much after 5 years of what you describe as relative peace. (It's not peace at all, it's just a lack of surface turbulence.)

So now you have to decide if you can live with the status quo or if you would like to change yourself and your environment for the better. I can tell you which one I would choose, but no one can or should make that call for you.

-Mindjob