SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My affair was two decades ago, but recently disclosed. My wife and I have spent many hours discussing it and many of her questions are about my thinking during the affair. I continually wish I would have journaled so I had contemporary thoughts as I know see the thinking through the lens of what I know now.

For example, my AP and I met working in a job that routinely requires 80+ hours week. I left to work in a different field, but she stayed and was pretty miserable. In retrospect, I think we were trauma bonded somewhat by the work and high pressure environment we were both in. She was pretty isolated (hard to have friends when work dominates your life that much) and many of our interactions were spent with her visible depressed about work.

When the affair began, I started drinking heavily when we were together and eventually abusing substances. This was definitely a numbing mechanism, but also in retrospect seems like a way to improve the time we were together.

What really perplexes my wife is why I stayed involved as long as I did. I remember several times lying to the AP about having to work late so I did not have to tell her I just did not want to come over so why not just end the affair. If I had kept a journal, I think AP and I would have been together mostly when one of us was hitting a low point.

I think my wife has been influenced by media portrayals of infidelity that often portray an affair as non stop illicit steamy interactions. I often describe the time as a grind and the dissonance is hard to reconcile.

Am I applying revisionist history? Do other Waywards remember seeing the affair differently in the moment than they view it retrospectively? So hard this many years later to remember what I thought / felt at the timd and I am a very different person now.

Nine years out.

It could be a little of both. But I think my affair, like most was built on trying to prop each other up, but the affair has a way of having this undercurrent of making things worse.

To me, the part of the affair that keeps it going has nothing to do with who the AP is. It has a lot of elements of being someone you are not. It’s escapism. And for every small high there were way bigger lows. Sometimes I felt disgust for him, an emotion I do not ever think I had for my husband.

It was like you get high off of it, then you crash but you want to feel that high again. The highs are not as good and then the lows get worse.

I can see it that way in hindsight.

When it was actually happening I don’t think I looked at anything too hard. It would have messed up the escapism for me, I was at my most avoidant during that time. A lot of it for me was chasing his attention and trying to impress him. It was all self- adulating. It soon became if I couldn’t get him to do that it was almost like fetishized abandonment issue. I would analyze my performance and adjust. I showed this man nothing but the worst version of myself and that only added to the insecurity.

I agree the way it’s portrayed on movies and TV’s make it look exciting. I felt excited some bit most of the time I was the most insecure version of myself and was highly inauthentic with him and in life in general. It was very damaging so it’s hard for me to see any good in it. I think at the time I was ignoring all the bad but there was a lot of it.

It was not as enjoyable as I imagined any of it would be, and I thought that sometimes at the time but I didn’t want to break it off because that next high or need would be waiting around the corner. I was so mentally unbalanced at that time that it’s hard to put myself back in it in the same way.

Helpful as always. My wife continues to have lots of questions and I want to be totally transparent, but we are both frustrated when I cannot recall enough details. Ironically she has often said she is glad that I did not disclose for so long as she does not think our marriage would have survived had the affair been discovered at the time. We had young kids and I could not have processed anything in a way that would have been conducive to reconciling.

Some of the hardest questions to answer are the progression of how it started from way too personal talks in the office we shared and often worked deep into the night to the night many of us went to celebrate after annual bonuses were paid and after everyone was pretty lit she invited me back to her house. Also how it continued for so long (sometimes intermittent with long stretches of no contact, but still lasted 4-5 years.

The escapism resonates with me. My wife asks how I could do what I did without thinking about the impact it would have on her, the kids, and many others. I have tried to explain that I so fully compartmentalized the two worlds that I did not think of the other when I was not in it. Hiding from the stress of my career, my insecurities as a husband and father, the shame I had been carrying since age 11 onward, etc were not present in the fantasy world. I also was drinking heavily when in that world and eventually abusing substances, which I did not do at home (my wife has never had a drink and other than during the affair I have been sober for 30+ years).

We often conclude these talks with the realization that someone who has a healthy upbringing and can safely attach will probably have difficulty understanding the thoughts and behavior of someone with shame, trauma, and who is broken. I have told her I wish I could do the Vulcan mind meld so she could understand my thoughts. I think we are getting through the initial questions and recently did a therapy session where I did a "full disclosure" going back to my childhood. We had already talked about everything at some point, but it was a chronological overview of all my sexual behavior and substance abuse. The therapist uses it with sex addicts, but thinks it is beneficial for us to ensure everything is out and the betrayed spouse can ask questions. Was definitely painful to relive my lowest moments and see the raw pain from my wife, but hopefully will help get us both to process all the info so we can move forward with our healing.

I've had some of the same issues. Although I disclosed my A a few weeks after it ended, I minimized it, and we rugswept. It was almost 30 years before I confessed the full truth, and it was both easier and more difficult to analyze my thought process at that distance. My memories had faded, but so had my attachment. Also, I was in my late 40s instead of my late teens, and I doubt any of us can reinhabit our younger selves with total accuracy.

I had thrown away the journal I kept during the affair, so I couldn't use it to document or evaluate my mental state. I'm sure i wrote limerent things that would have been very painful for my BH to read. I also believe the journal would have reinforced that the OM and I would never have worked out long term. I have a clear memory of thinking, when OM did something that annoyed me, "I would never put up with this shit in a real relationship." (The irony of that statement -- made while I was fundamentally betraying my real relationship -- was lost on me at the time.)

I had the A compartmentalized in a little pocket world that only belonged to me. If I looked the consequences in the face, I would have to end it. I didn't want to end it, so I didn't look. I surmise that not everyone can do that. To me, it came naturally to lie, including to myself.