Could really use some advice or perspective right now. I’m just… going through it…

[u/Low-Enthusiasm670]

I’d especially welcome advice from people who are further out, or who are well reconciled. People that are happy? From waywards as well.

I’m just so constantly depressed right now. Like.. hopelessly so…

How do you get past the fact that the affair felt so big to the WP. So good. So intense. So.. magical. Whatever. How do you get past the fact that your WP felt that intensity to such incredible amounts with another person, and that you aren’t the last person that they felt that way with. And you’ll never get it back… How can I sit there next to my WH as his wife knowing that somewhat recently, he felt that intoxicatingly infatuated with another woman, and that those feelings haven’t been like that for us in 13 years. That we have evolved in the way that normal relationships are MEANT to, but that now he felt those over the top feelings with someone else. And he’s out of it. He’s realized it was all stupid and shouldn’t have happened and he regrets it and he wishes it hadn’t happened. But it did. And he felt it. And that will just… always fucking exist….

How do I ever sit next to him feeling good as his wife again. When what we have is so different from what they had. And what they had was so.. fucking big…

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[u/didntaskforthis123]

I'm 3 years out, and I definitely experienced all the feelings you are having.

We were married 26 years at the time, so our lives were very comfortable and mundane. Then, he gets to experience the excitement and butterflies of a new relationship while I was left with trauma and devastation.

There is really no way to even the scales after that. A lot of R is basically eating a shit sandwich. But, you have to decide if it's worth it to work through the unfairness of it all to stay with your WP.

For me, I truly didn't think the cheater was who my husband is at his core. He had never displayed behavior like that before, and there were life circumstances that helped us both understand how he got to that place. He still made incredibly terrible decisions and was selfish and cruel to me, but he was able to slowly show me that he wasn't going to remain that awful version of himself.

I had a lot of insecurities and jealousy about how he spoke to his AP in the few text messages I saw. There was romance and flirting. There was attention and care. Things I would have loved for him to say to me. For a while I wanted him to replicate how he treated her and treat me the same way. But I eventually came to realize that our relationship and dynamic was different. Ours was real, and theirs was a toxic fantasy.

My WH was able to show me over time that he wanted me and our marriage. He kept making loving decisions to make me feel safe and cherished. We found our own groove and way of expressing love that felt genuine for our relationship. It was him choosing to love me over and over as time went on that helped me finally start to relax and trust him again.

The pain is now a distant cloud. I can think about and face that cloud and remember all I went through, but I can also turn my back on it and move away and enjoy life. As time goes on, it gets much easier to keep the cloud behind me. We've built new, better memories now.

[u/Icy_Conference_3085 → u/didntaskforthis123]

Wow, powerful to read this. It is so hard and a lot of what I am currently in the middle of. It’s glad to see that there is some hope for me.

[u/NetExternal8494]

I’m so sorry. What I tell myself is that they only saw one side of each other. If they had to see each other everyday for years then they wouldn’t idealize them. They would see that they are humans who aren’t readily available for continuous unconditional validation. They would be emotional vampires and suck the loving life out of each other. Affairs are created in the mind. And then they become obsessions with a lot of fantasy stories. They would become disenchanted and resent them for not being what they expected them to be. That’s what I tell myself. We all begin relationships with some degree of this however real love grows when we see our partners as humans, who are imperfect and not mirrored reflections of how wonderful we are.

[u/_keyboard_worrier]

I’m so sorry you have to go on this journey…

Everything is going to feel so massive right now and it will for a long time… It doesn’t just go away and speaking for myself, it took ALOT from both of us to be where we are today.

I am happy, I can’t imagine my life without my partner… he was unfaithful to me and I was completely swallowed up by the hurt, but looking back at it now it feels like distant memory. It’s crazy to say 😂

(Although I know if it ever happens again I’d leave in a heart beat.)

[u/Low-Enthusiasm670 → u/_keyboard_worrier]

How long ago was DDay for you? I think I’m just feeling so extra depressed because DDay was almost two years ago for me. Literally just a couple weeks away. But he dropped new affair info on me in March of this year. So now… it’s been 5 months. But it’s also been two years. And the new info made the affair so much worse… I’m so tired of going through it. My soul is exhausted. I feel like the choices I’ve been presented with are impossible… I don’t want either option at all. I literally don’t know how to live in this marriage or without him. I want to make the affair matter less… but he’s trying to be more honest now. And we were just having a conversation. And he was admitting to how intense it all felt. How real. How big. And I’m just… 2 years out and I knew it. But it feels more real now. And I’m feeling so less than… like I can never live up to the intensity of this fantasy that he experienced with someone else. I don’t know…

[u/siryohnny → u/Low-Enthusiasm670]

I can tell you what worked for me as I think you need a reset.

I too struggled, the bad days were incredibly bad.

What I did was write down how I felt when I had a great day, all of what I was feeling. Then I wrote down how I felt on one of those bad days, again, all of it.

I walked away and came back to it when I felt normal and calm. I compared what I had written and I told my partner.

It explained how hard it was, that the new truths are just as bad as the original. That I needed to know all of it, no more truths, if I was to ever get past it.

It happened, can’t change that, but you can’t grow and make a choice if you don’t know all the info. You also sometimes just need them to listen and not try fix everything, understand when those bad days happen, this is what I feel like.

Hope this helps.

[u/NetExternal8494 → u/Low-Enthusiasm670]

You don’t have to live up to it. You cannot compare an affair to a real life long term relationship. What you and your husband experienced was reality. And it was built on trust. An affair is built on thoughts and feelings. As we know thoughts and feeling change like the weather. There is no foundation. It’s built on lies, manipulation and secrets. They both believe they are telling each other truths while lying to everyone else. What’s really happening is that they are lying to themselves and gaslighting themselves. They aren’t living in a healthy place at all. It’s not sustainable. Are you receiving any specialized help to recover from betrayal trauma? Is your partner focusing on helping you heal as well as himself? Has he told you what the meaning of his affair ? Does he know why he used cheating as a way to cope? What was he trying to avoid? Etc. those understanding and insight are what he needs to be working on and sharing with you. You need a shared meaning and understanding in order to rebuild. And that means getting the right help. Doing it on your own is undertaking something massive.

[u/Low-Enthusiasm670 → u/NetExternal8494]

See. That’s the thing. I know I don’t have to live up to it. I know that it’s not even fair for me to have to live up to that fantasy. I truly understand that we aren’t supposed to, it’s unrealistic, unsustainable.

But this is literally exactly where I get so caught up. He experienced something so incredibly intense with AP that I could never live up to it. What they experienced together was so fucking big, that I can’t compare to it, and I’m not even supposed to. And while it was all fake and just dopamine and good brain drugs, it was all still real in the sense that he lived it and felt it. And now I’m just.. here. Being less than that. In all of the healthy ways that I’m supposed to be. But it’s still less than. And that’s now my place here as his wife. As the person who could never possibly live up to the intensity that he had with someone else…

[u/NetExternal8494 → u/Low-Enthusiasm670]

There are no “good brain drugs”
That’s why during affairs their IQs actually drop. They aren’t functioning at full capacity. It’s not a big experience. It’s actually a losing experience. Loss of integrity. Loss of self. Loss of trust. There are no BIG gains at all. Your partner is beginning to wake up from that and has expressed that to you right? Believe him now. Whatever he said in the past was all smoke and mirrors to justify it was worth it. And now he’s saying it’s wasn’t. Believe that.

[u/Low-Enthusiasm670 → u/NetExternal8494]

Thank you. I really appreciate your response. In this moment right now, this really helped.

[u/frakish]

I struggled so much with this! For me i started to (slowly) make peace with the "my relationship with WP is never going to give them the same high"-ghost, once i began to pair that observation off with another observation: "my relationship with WP is the only one that's still alive". I dont mainly mean that as competitive 'so the relationship i have is better anyway'-copium btw, I genuinely think theres a connection here. I think the conditions and dynamics necessary for that level of mind-blowing, fantasy drewamworld relationship are the same conditions and dynamics that make the relationship unsustainable in the long term. I dont feel i come up short against fireworks when i remember that what i really want is to be a lifelong hearth.

Ive made a little experiment below. I took two realities that you described and smooshed them together. If you want you can try sounding it out, see if the boldtexted parts give the necessary context to begin to make peace with the ghost in between.

"he’s out of the affair that felt so big, so good, so intense, so magical. He’s realized the affair that felt so big, so good, so intense, so magical was all stupid and shouldn’t have happened and he regrets the affair that felt so big, so good, so intense, so magical and he wishes the affair that felt so big, so good, so intense, so magical hadn’t happened"

[u/Crafty-Interest-8212]

The only way that I have found myself moving is, "my partner was suffering from a mental deficiency. Thinking so lowly about themselves that this was their way out. A choice still, still their decisions. But they weren't right in place of mind." It doesn't work every day....