Infidelity Fallout

I remember sitting on my porch at 3 am in the morning waiting for my spouse to come home many a time at the end of my marriage, I look back and I shake my head, not fully recognizing that “shell” of a woman. We all have our reasons for sticking it out, then something says enough! You gain yourself back during the grueling process, or as one friend said, “you got your spark back”, but you are never quite the same. Baby steps are about right, that chain link fence does well. Eventually , someone will come along and be able to break those boundaries down, with time. There are no guarantees, you’ll jump, but there will be always those bouts of insecurities and distrust here and there, they don’t ever fully go away, it’s how much you let them have control over you and how you treat your life and future relationships.

Standing in front of the wall with the hammer is a major accomplishment. I’m not divorced or have children, but I am coming out of a four year relationship that seemed to pin me to the wall.
It’s such a survivalist drive to fight for someone and take lumps you would never recommend anyone else take. For me I was fighting so hard for it to work, that it WAS work. It’s hard to look into your own eyes in the mirror and ask - ‘WHY the Fuck are you fighting for… THIS?’.
Baby Steps are necessary for me otherwise I stumble at a pace that pulls me off the path I want to be on.

I remember standing there getting ready to walk down the aisle thinking that if my maid of honor would just suggest we get a drink, I’d be soooo out of there. And yet, like you, I walked down the aisle anyway. It was like walking the long walk to death row. And, in the end, maybe more devastating.

My ex didn’t cheat but he did manage to royally help screw me up and lose trust in others, myself, and relationships. That wall went up faster than the Great Wall and was just as impossible to penetrate.

The truth is that the only way to bring the wall down is through baby steps. And sometimes you will takes 3 baby steps forward and 2 back. That’s okay. It’s a journey, but every step and every day that you look in the mirror and marvel at how far you’ve come, will bring you that much closer to traversing the wall.

His final words, “don’t ever let me cheat on you again.”

I didn’t!

I’ve said it before…cheating is the ultimate betrayal and something I don’t think we ever fully recover from. But, we can learn lessons, become stronger and yes find ourselves! Count your blessings my love!

I haven’t ever cheated on The Hawaiian, and she doesn’t cheat on me. It did take one hell of a long time after my son’s mother cheated on me to get back in the saddle again. Unfortunately, people who don’t believe in monogamy sometimes marry those who do. What they really need is to find someone like themselves. The best advice I can offer is take a step back from anyone you are considering having a long term relationship with and figuring out if they seem to be committed to the relationship, or the idea of a relationship. I know I flirt a lot, and hell, if the right person came along (Trista), I might flirt even more than I normally do. It isn’t going any farther, and it won’t unless something happens between The Hawaiian and me (unless Karri propositions me!).

I had ended my 4 1/2 year relationship. I never married him, but we have a daughter together. Out of those years he may have seen her 5 times… MAY have… We have always had the long distance relationship, since he was in the military. We would fight, I ended up crying, saying sorry for everything that happened, even when I had nothing to do with it. I said I was sorry for when he told me he had sex w/ an old friend in HS. Some how it always ended up that it was my fault. I did everything in the world for him. After I left him, I cried maybe an hour. I think I had cried all during the relationship that I didnt have the tears for him anymore.
I now have a man that loves me, and my kids. He wants to be their father, and I couldnt want any other man to be that for them. He loves them, he asks about them all the time. He wants to spend more time with em too. He wrote me an email and I cried when he said “I love you and the girls” “I want you and the girls. When the other guy would write it was always, “I want you” or “I love you” He never would include the girls. Where as I never said anything about that to my new love, he has put all 3 of us as part of his priority #1. I loved him more when I read that email. I am scared of marriage, but I am willing to take the leap w/ him.

I guess you could say I survived muliple affairs…albeit through my parents. My mother rejected my father. He found others to occupy his time. She bitched, but didn’t want to change. He did what he could to escape her “mental defects”…her “obsessions.” When they divorced, she went through man after man, leaving me to be raised by my grandparents and, on the weekends, my dad. The men she turned to cheated on her, she cheated on them, but no matter what she did, she obsessed over my dad..still does. Through her, I learned what NOT to do. I learned NOT to trust. There are no babysteps for me. If my husband EVER…FUCKING EVER…cheats on me, he’d better be honest about it and just leave. I have zero tolerance for faithlessness. His honesty would be the only thing to save him from the biggest ass whooping in history and to save me from going to jail.

I guess my point is to get out while the getting is good. Never give them a chance to hurt you again…especially if there are kids involved. I think it is better to end the marriage than to let the kids see the unhappiness and the bitterness that comes with being cheated on. Having been that child, I’ve become cynical and untrusting and very critical of men in general. It is not how I want to be, but it is what I learned.

You know how you said that 99% of you knew it was a mistake? When you meet someone worthwhile, 100% of you will “just know.” I feel bad for some of these women above who said that they almost didn’t walk down the aisle. I practically ran down the aisle. I turned down getting married to a couple of old boyfriends, but as soon as I met my husband, it was a different story. Depends on the guy, I think. Once you meet the right person, the baby steps you’ve been taking suddenly get much bigger.

Thanks for sharing this Trista. Here you have given a much broader perspective of the person you are.
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Trust and faith have never been a particularly difficult issue for me. I don’t know why, perhaps it is easy for me to extend trust because I come from a tight family and my parents have been married 38 years and I’ve seen them weather good and bad times. Also, I choose to respect friends who are faithful–and make relationships work. The lesson is in the seeing. A person cannot give what they don’t have, and if somebody has not seen and been taught love…how can they give it?
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To be quite honest it baffles me how people can cheat and I think it comes down to this: they are love-impaired. They have never learned how to extend love to another person and selfishly want to hoard it all for themselves.
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…you know (and this is tragically ironic) in the last relationship I was in I had never reveled more of myself…I had never been as insanely honest and straightforward about everything that was going on in my inner (and outer) world. I have never, nor would I ever cheat on anybody emotionally, physically, or otherwise. Yet, in the end, the girl broke up with me because she felt she could not trust me. And it’s taken me a long time to wrestle with that concept because it’s bullshit, Trista! Total fucking BS. I’m the most honest man any woman will ever meet and the real problem was that this woman came from a fucked up family where her dad cheated on her mother, broke her mothers heart, divorced her and so she has trained herself to see lies in everything. Even when they are not there.
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It sucks that you have been exposed to this type of pain and that it has hardened you. It sucks that the same things happened to her. How do you break that? It’s awesome that you have your hammer at the wall (and that you recognize where you are). It’s an iconic image of determination. I truly hope it works out for you.

My mom was a single parent after my brother was born. I don’t know all the details because she has never really talked about that part of her life, but she managed to survive for years after her first marriage. I guess her first husband wasn’t ready to settle down and would continue to go out and not bother to pay attention to my mom and brother.

Anyway, a few years later she met my dad and I was born a short time after that. They’re still together, so I guess everything worked out. It just took a few years of hardship.

So familiar. My ex was “travelling for business” on night… forgetting his passport was in for renual. The tool.

I’m a little better than I was with the paranoid shit, what helped? A man who phsyically feels ill from the thought of infidelity. Jackpot.

1. Your ex-husband is a dumbass.

2. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I’m Baaaaaaaaack!

Love this. Really do. Mostly because you could have been writing it about me. You know how that goes.

I think I stayed so long because I didn’t have proof. And because I was young And because I loved him.

Once one of those falls away, the truth always comes out.

I don’t trust anyone as far as I can throw them. I trust Vic. But not totally. That isn’t is fault. And that took time.

We who are broken can’t unbreak…

It used to make me sad. But now, I see it like scotch guard for the heart. Something gets on it and slides right off.

Well maybe not that easy, but we toughen with these situations. I think I am a better person for it. I finally found MYSELF when WE died.

And I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

I’m realizing that I never gained trust again. It’s been replaced with a notion that “If she fucks up, it’s her loss!” I get to leave knowing that the world would see her as the bad guy. That’s a strong position to take, and it’s even fair, but it has nothing to do with faith or trust. I don’t think I’ll ever fall whole- heartedly for a woman again.

I dunno Trista. I tend to historically respond to affairs with gratuitous doses of anger and spite with a healthy dollop of venomous commentary to along with it. I guess I’ve never really made any effort to persevere through these things.

Now I’m pretty sure this isn’t the best way to do things as I’ve become pretty darn jaded when it comes to relationships. Essentially, I approach them with the thought that they will be a finite experience.

I dunno how one goes about learning to trust again.

Thankfully, there’s always russian mail-order brides.

Ask… and you shall recieve.

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