I was relentless. My mornings began with questions: Where did you go? What did she wear? My day was filled with questions: How much did you spend on her? How long did it go on? My nights stretched late with questions: What positions did she like? Did you hang out with her friends?
When I wasn't asking questions, I was poring over cell phone bills, VISA bills, rifling through drawers looking for receipts and cross-referencing dates. I was the Carrie Mathison of Homeland: Infidelity. And sure, I was good at it. But I was making myself crazy.
I was close to making my husband crazy too when I decided upon my 24-hour rule: I would make myself wait 24 hours before I asked the question that I absolutely believed I needed the answer to. Most times, by the time 24 hours had elapsed, the question was gone. I couldn't remember it. Which told me something: The details really didn't matter. They didn't change anything.
My husband had cheated on me. For years. With many people.
That is, really, all I needed to know.
That, and what I was going to do about it.
That doesn't stop me from insisting that cheaters need to answer our questions. Rebuilding trust is a painstaking exercise that involves a delicate dance in which the betrayer is always where he says he is, always with who he says he's with, always doing what he says he's doing. There can be no untruth. There can be no stretching of truth. There can be no minimizing of the truth.
There is only the truth, offered without compromise.
There will be glitches. There will be the guy who forgot, genuinely forgot, that he also stopped for a coffee on his way to a meeting because this stopping for coffee was a non-event. Honestly. There will be the guy who says he stopped for a "couple of beers" with his friends because he, honestly, thinks a "couple" can sometimes mean "three". That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the guy who "forgets" to mention that he bumped into the OW at the coffee shop he didn't tell us he stopped at. We're talking about the guy who isn't supposed to be at the bar with his buddies at all so by saying he had "only a couple" of beers, he's really saying "why are you so bent out of shape? Jeesh. I can't do anything."
So, sure, I think that we betrayeds need to be able to ask any question and expect an honest response.
But, as a discussion is taking place on another site, it has prompted me to consider, again, just how much truth we really need. And why.
Because sometimes our need to know extends into pain shopping. Pain shopping, for those who haven't heard the term before, is about refusing to shift focus from the affair, instead keeping ourselves locked into it. Pain shopping is about deliberately driving by her house even though another route is shorter. Pain shopping is about stalking her social media. Pain shopping is about playing a song that reminds us of the affair, on a loop. Pain shopping is asking questions about details of the affair that don't change a damn thing but ensure that we're talking about the affair, thinking about the affair, and adding highly flammable fuel to the ever-present fire of fury that's burning in our guts.
Do you really need to know, as I was sure I did, what type of underwear she wore? Do you really need to know what her favorite drink was? Or whether she wore her hair up or down?
Some details change the nature of the affair. Introducing an affair partner to children, for instance. Bringing her into your bed. But, for the most part, does it matter whether they met at your favorite coffee shop? Wouldn't it be better to not know that? To continue to enjoy your latte without trigger?
And finally, the poster here makes a point about how, eventually, a cheater will agree with our versions of "truth" just to get us to shut the hell up about it. Is that what we want? Isn't that exactly what we're trying to avoid? Lying to keep the peace? Lying to avoid conflict? Lying for any reason at all? If we say we want the absolute truth, then we need to be ready to hear it.
And that's something that a whole lot of us aren't ready for. In the early days post D-Day and sometimes ever.
Our spouses will have secrets. So will we. There are things that my husband will never know about me. There are things I'm still discovering about myself. I have secrets I may or may not share – about aging, about envy, about disappointment.
Coming to a point where I can accept that there are things about my husband's infidelity that I will never know was quite amazing. I never imagined I would ever get there. Now? I honestly don't care about so much about it. It feels almost like a different life.
I know that's hard for a lot of you to imagine. You feel cemented into the life you have right now – one in which you're desperate to understand why he did this and you think that understanding will come from details. You think that knowledge is power. You think that by constantly pulling these details into the light, you will come to understand.
What she wore and where they met and who said what to whom likely won't give you the answers you really need. Those are details. The real truth, the one we truly need, is why he cheated, what he believed about his marriage and the affair, what he's doing to ensure he never cheats again, and whether he deserves a second chance. And that truth gets unburied with a whole lot of digging.
The kickass survival site for anyone who's ever been lied to, cheated on and left for dead.
Ha ha, I was totally Carrie from Homeland. And I was really good at it! At that point in time it was like nothing could stop me. I was a dog with a bone, a private detective all rolled into one.
ReplyDeleteThanks to you Elle I did realize over time none of these answers would ever make it okay or even satisfy me. I do agree with you some questions are critical. I asked about if the ow had met my kids, been in my house, if either had a kid from the affair (he thought I was crazy for asking this one but who knows), asking about aspects of the physical relationship so I knew what to tell the Dr. when I was tested. I could go on and on. Also I loved the 24 hour rule. And I took it one step further and would journal daily. We spoke once a week about the affair. This allowed me to see what was really something I needed to bring up vs a daily thought or annoyance. I mean I could have talked or asked questions about it all day every day. But that was going to get us no where.
For me getting to this point took time. It was part of the process for me. Thanks for being there Elle. And in the end I am glad that my husband did not answer every question and tell me every little detail. Whether he was protecting himself, me or suppressed it in the end it probably benefits me.
This was so timely for me. Thank you for getting my head back where it should be. Serenity
ReplyDeleteElle this is so so good and so so true. I am intrigued as to why we do this, myself included.
ReplyDeleteI've had to tell myself exactly this, how much detail do I really need? I had all the info I needed from the get go but something inside would gnaw away and it was like putting a puzzle together. It seemed if I just had one more piece of that puzzle something would finally make sense. I honestly think our brains do this to us. I believe we are so traumatized that we are driven to find the answer. Intuitively we know the answer to that question, whatever that question is makes no difference, it will make sense and we will have clarity. Heck maybe even an epiphany. When neither phenomena happens we construct another question in our drive for understanding what happened in our lives.
I think it's normal but you also get to a point where it isn't normal anymore and you are actually doing more harm than good to both your psyche and your relationships. I too an glad there are things I don't know and glad I took that 24 hours as well to wait to see if I really needed that question answered.
These days I only have one question that I would give anything to find an answer to. I have resigned myself the the fact that I will most certainly really never get the answer from him or anyone else. He knows the answer and I've asked it a million times and a million different ways and I'm still not satisfied with the answer because I think I truly do know down deep what the answer is.
As usual thanks Elle for this post.
Trying hard, if you don’t mind me asking and you don’t need to answer if you don’t want to. What is that question that you would like answered and you know deep down the answer? Just wondering if it’s one of my questions..
DeleteI may be an outlier here, but I will say that my healing absolutely depended on getting a granular level of detail about my H's affairs. During the early months, it became clear to me that it was too easy for him to just characterize his actions as "fooling around" without having to confront the extent and depth of the betrayal. We finally agreed to a series of sessions with our marriage counselor during which he went through a detailed timeline and I was able to ask every question I had. I took notes, and even transcribed them after the sessions. I did this so I wouldn't have to ask them ever again, since I had a tendency to be so overwhelmed by the answers to earlier questions that I had trouble taking the information in. I have to say that after these sessions, it has been as if a fever broke. I got to see my H contend with saying out loud exactly what he had done, and he was confronted with my reactions and emotions in a controlled setting. This work was for me a true turning point. I get the point about pain shopping, and I understand that for others what we did would not be productive. But boy I needed the process we went through. My questions have been answered, and I finally feel as if I have been seen and heard.
ReplyDeleteIt was part of the process for me too. I was grasping for a sense of control I think. If I could get an accurate timeline constructed, I could figure out my misstep. Except there wasn't one. They were all his missteps. One thing I did get out of all those questions was an understanding that my husband experienced pain when recalling the details. This surprised me at first. I assumed this was an exciting chapter in his life. Fabulous sex, tons of fun... why is it painful to relive it? Ahhhh. Because it felt gross and twisted Also, making him face that in front of me was appropriate. These details hurt him as he was forced (by me) to hurt me with them. Doing that is part of the beginning of the changes he needed to make in himself. I wish it didn't have to hurt either of us, but his choices required it. I do think there is a time when it's run it's course. He gets it. I get it. But I encourage newly betrayed wives to ask what they want when they want for the first weeks. Then establish a rule to weed out the truly important questions as Elle suggests (but keep asking the important ones!) For example, if you want to ask underwear color questions, you're REALLY wanting to know if your underwear is not sexy enough for him. So ask that instead, or decide that's stupid and tell him you wondered that and decided if he doesn't like something about your underwear he can take a hike! Totally up to you. But your detailed question will point you to a deeper insecurity you can address without gaining new mental pictures of the OW that will haunt you forever. One of the flight attendants wasn't wearing underwear at all. What a significant detail, huh? Ask the real questions once you've reached the point where you can think it through. Until then he needs to be ripped apart by your questions for a little while I say. If he resists telling you, he's resisting responsibility.
ReplyDeleteIn hindsight, I believe that requiring my husband to tell me some details despite the pain it caused me broke his bubble of fantasy or whatever. He said that "yes, at the moment of sex it might have been fun and exciting but leaving felt shameful and I felt disgusted with myself". I affirmed that he should have felt shame and disgust. It took over two years and probably close to three for me to stop smashing his face into the shit he did and I wanted him to know how disgusting I thought he was and how disgusted with his choices and behavior I felt. I'm finally emerging out of that need to really really hurt him like he did to me. Since the beginning I've kept a detailed journal of this experience including copies of phone records to his prostitutes. Last night I just deleted all of it into the "trash" and emptied the trash so it is gone forever. I do not want or need to relive that pain. Those details are gone. They are in his head and he is reminded of his past on a daily basis. I, on the other hand, do have triggers but I do not have the details he has that remind him how good he has it now and actually how good he always had it but lied to himself so he could do whatever he wanted to do to make himself feel good. I was fearful that my new heart issues that I believe are caused by the stress of this situation would kill me and my kids or someone would read what I wrote. I do not wish that kind of pain on anyone. Like ann said above, I feel like this pain has run its course and I am working hard to not allowing his bad life choices to affect me anymore. Over the past couple of weeks I have finally begun doing things I like to do. I'm meeting new women with similar interests and making plans to have lunch with them. On Monday I was gone all day painting "kindness" rocks to distribute and when I came home he was a mess. He spent the day reflecting on what his life might have been without me. Wow. He just cried for hours and told me how much he had screwed up his life and how close he came to losing it all. He tells me many times a day how much he loves me and how glad he is to have another chance.
ReplyDeleteBeach Girl, That is a lot of progress and moving in the right direction for you. Deleting all of those files is a huge step. I just came across some of my notes and did not quite throw it away. I need to revisit that. I agree it would be devastating for my kids or others to find.
DeleteI feel we parallel each other closely. I know we are on the same time line. I am feeling similar to you in all aspects. I agree with everything. My husband has to live with everything he did and I have moved to trying to live my best life. Not easy and there are lots of triggers. I just never thought on dday I would get to this point and also that my husband would be the one that feels all of this more than I do.
How funny. I have a notes file too. I collected pictures of them, dates they were together, wrote codes for exactly which sex acts were performed. For probably a year I would revisit my notes. Remind myself what happened in order. I think maybe trying to force myself to accept it? All of it seemed to big to take in. Then I kept the file so I would not forget... so I couldn't lie to myself about it. I wanted the facts written in stone so I could not dispute them and neither could he. It's in a kind of code so if someone finds it they would see pics, dates, and codes. I haven't looked at it in at least 10 months, but I can't imagine deleting it. Makes me sound crazy I know. Maybe I think if there's a divorce in the future I may need it. If there's gaslighting I will need it. No sign of either, but still the file sits. The day I delete it will be an important day I think. Maybe in 30 years. Lol.
DeleteAnn-Well if you are crazy so am I :) I still have all the spreadsheets and phone records and financials. They are in my closet upstairs. I never look at them but it gives me comfort to know should I need that info it's right there. If someone found it they wouldn't think anything of it. Maybe I'll pitch it when I move to a retirement home. For now it's not hurting anyone being there.
Deleteann and TryingHard, you are perfect just the way you are and nobody should make you feel crazy for any choices you make around this. I never thought I would get to this point in my life but my truth is that having all this secret stuff on my computer which I kept to prove him out to be the "bad guy" if necessary weighted me down too much emotionally. I still feel an incredible lightness in my body. I have no secrets. I have knowledge in my head but I no longer have any secret anything waiting for me to die to be discovered. If he chooses to go back to his old ways I do not need "proof" of his betrayal. He knows and I know. He will always know what he did down to the last detail and I no longer wish to mine the depths of his hell because it is not my hell. It is his. My joy is returning and I support everyone who takes charge of their own lives and does what they need to do to feel safe. Love you ladies.
ReplyDeleteBeach girl— you are so sweet to address my comment. I hope you know i was in no way dissing your comment to get rid of what you have.
ReplyDeleteLol i just may be a little crazy and that’s beside the point right? I know you understand what i was trying to say. I believe our discards and memories and info we keep is our way of processing this stuff. And who knows i just may pitch it all tomorrow. I have been doing the whole Marie Kondo thing around my home and that stuff certainly doesn’t “bring me joy” 😊
9 months past d-day and really trying to focus on the future but I struggle everyday. I know most details but one.. who is the OW?? My husbands says there is no value in my knowing. He met her on the train to work and they became friends, then confided in each other about their unhappiness. She then offered intimacy... they were physical for a month before I found out. He ended it and came home to our family/work on our marriage. He promises they have had not contact since. We had become so busy with work, kids, life that we forgot about us... I blame myself. We have made many great changes in our marriage and survived the horrible first few months but I feel stuck on the last answer -I know it really doesn't matter...
ReplyDeleteWanting to move on with happiness.
Anonymous
ReplyDeleteI understand how not knowing her name/identity leaves you feeling stuck. I think you have every right to require that information. I would encourage you to consider whether you want that information for now. On the one hand, it will open doors for more pain. You will likely feel compelled to look up all her social media accounts and drive by her house. But on the other hand, you will have a more complete picture of what happened so you can process and move through it. I'm concerned that, for your husband, your not knowing is protecting him from something (an embarrassing confrontation? Some further knowledge about the truth of what he did?) His asking you to "just trust him" about the details is inappropriate. Part of his process is to come clean about all of it. There is one of my husband's other women that he claims not to know the name of. (Very drunk, one night, only knew her name started with M) I felt stuck about it for a long time. Literally every woman on the street "could be her" in my mind. Finally I found a woman on social media with the right build, hair color, and group of friends to concentrate my hatred on. Her name starts with M. I just made it her. She's the representation of this woman to me. Of course I'm not seeking revenge at all or harassing this stranger (or any of the other women for that matter). As for the 4 women I do know the identity of, I can say 3 helped and 1 hurt. Sadly, it is all about how I size myself up to them. For 3 of them, I was able to find huge, glaring flaws. I can say if he picked them over me, he's got a screw loose (which of course he did). But one seems fantastic on the surface: yoga instructor perfect body, tons of friends and talents, piller of the community, voted actual mother of the year in our town last year, great cook... seems like a great catch. Seems like a great match for my husband. I'd be better off not knowing her identity because I constantly have to remind myself that she has at least one huge flaw even if no one else knows it and that I have worth and don't need to compare my true self with her fake self, etc. So I'd say there's a 75% chance the knowledge might put your mind at ease (you're probably imagining a super model) and a 25% chance it will make you feel worse (what if she is?) So consider your motives and what you will do and not do with this information. If you decide to require it, I feel you have that right and you should not be expected to take your husband's word for anything at this point. If you want to try a hybrid plan of choosing an innocent person to be mad at (a representation), ask your husband for a few physical and personality characteristics and find a face to hate. If you get to pick, don't make her a yoga instructor or mother of the year... make her what she likely is: a chick with many issues, mediocre intelligence, not physically stunning at all. Just easy and there. A chick looking for power and control outside herself because her internal life is chaos. As for those of us who have an other woman who we've sized up as "better than us" we're wrong of course. It just means more work reminding ourselves why we matter and have worth... none of it is immediately obvious on our social media accounts. It's in our hearts and souls, and our husbands would still be fools to pick them over us.
Ann - thank you for a great advice. I am so torn... I know I will obsess over social media etc. He says she was not a supermodel and I am all that. So hard to keep believing. How do we ever really know they have told us the actual truth? I love him and want a future with him. Life is short.
ReplyDeleteWanting Happiness
Anonymous, if you're like me, you may never "know" anything again about your husband. I feel confident about a few things now (years later) because of his actions, but I live with the not REALLY knowing every day. One day at a time. It was hard at first, but gets easier with practice. It's a surrender. I have to do what I feel is right and release the outcome. I can report that I am very happy at this point. I feel close to my husband (closer than before) eventhough I face every day with the full knowledge that I can be lied to and betrayed... that I might be wrong...that anything can happen... that I'm not in control. I wouldn't have guessed a person could be happy in the midst of uncertainty, but a person certainly can. I think that's what I was scrambling to regain at the beginning... I just wanted to know I had the truth. I wanted to be certain. My time spent sitting with the bad feelings without fighting them was better spent, because that certainty never came. Instead it was building the muscle that allowed me to let go of the outcome that has lead to my current happiness. I don't do this blindly... I do take in info about my husband and relationship as it is today. I do ask the hard questions and take care of me. If I am unsatisfied with my treatment I will release my husband and myself at that point. (I don't view marriage as permanent as I did before). So far it works.
DeleteHi Ann - How many years out are you...so wishing for some relief soon. I think I am a pain shopper because we are happy a lot of the time and then I feel like I can't/shouldn't forget or let my guard down. Sometimes I look at my husband and feel so sad - I never thought he was capable of hurting me this much. We feel in love at 20 years old and have a wonderful family 25 years later. My heart is broken....Living one day at a time seem daunting...
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,I am almost 3 years out. I could have written just exactly what you said 2 and a half years ago. You seem right where you should be. At 1 year out, I started to feel more at ease and joy crept back in. I still feel shocked that my husband did this sometimes, and I can still get sad about all this. I've learned to live a happy life right next to all that pain. It's not that it's gone away, it's just not in the driver's seat anymore. There are a few things I've learned here from these ladies that has helped me move along. First, marriage counseling and individual counseling. A lot of it. From a real counselor. Second, radical self care (you have to love yourself through this). Being patient with yourself. You're not "supposed" to be anywhere other than where you are right now. Put some thought into how you want to spend the anniversary date of when you found out (D day). I didn't want to dread that calendar date, so I have myself my own national holiday that day. I take the day off work. I do exactly what brings me joy. I have taken that day back, and so can you. For me, finding a way to help others is part of that day and also stuff I just find personally pleasant (art house movies, tasty food...) I look forward to it. While you're working through this, be assured that you can survive this and find happiness. Lots of us are waiving you into our side of the shore (using elle's words). Whether you stay or go can be a daily decision. (I worried I'd made the wrong decision sometimes. People here helped me see that I faced that decision every day, and could change my mind at any point. Pressure off.) I feel very close to my husband and I love our marriage now. He is truly my best friend. But even if he wasn't and if I decided to leave my marriage (or if I decide to tomorrow), there is happiness on the other side of this pain. And peace. And love. Relief is coming. Take care of you, ask for help, keep saying the hard stuff, plan for things that scare you. (Scared of dday? Plan an awesome day. Scared of financial implications if you leave? Meet with an accountant or divorce attorney to just ask questions. Scared of finding out your husband did this again? Plan for that with an account and credit card in your name and a good attorney... a "getaway" plan... face fears head on and address them with a good plan (try not to numb out the fear with drinking, shopping, etc) That makes space for all the joy to come back in. Anonymous, you've got this. Even on days when you're not sure of anything. You can live an amazing, wonderful life right next to all this pain, and without that "certainty" you had about your husband before. One. Day. At. A. Time. Hugs!!!
DeleteThanks so much, Elle and all, for your insightful posts. Like others, I was trying to get my power back. That she and he had experiences I didn't know about felt like they still had their secret affair. He wasn't savoring any memories of her but he didn't want to share painful facts if he didn't have to. (Recently he said that when I bring her up, he thinks of rotten slimy lettuce, of all things.) I wanted every detail about her pathetic life & body so that I would have something over her. I don't know her personally but he confirmed many things I just "knew" including when I said, "She was a screamer, wasn't she?" Yep (and he said, "it was a disaster"). As for affair details, I needed him to look at what he'd done with me there bearing witness beside him - in a hotel room, in a shower, on an airplane... - and experience the devastation in its full context. No more compartmentalizing. His wall to the affair and parallel life needed complete destruction. He owed me that. It wasn't to punish him but to extinguish the gaslight and wrestle some power back from all the lies and manipulation. It's also part of PTSD to keep returning to and reliving the trauma. I wish he and I had known that at the beginning because it would have helped him be more understanding about the urgent questions in those early months and it would have helped me clarify what was Empowering vs what was PTSD. Similar to Elle's 24 hr rule, I learned that it was more healing if I didn't blurt out questions. I decided that if something kept coming up day after day or every couple of weeks, it was probably better to know one way or the other. If I was going to keep imagining them in a bath together, then it was better for some "peace" of mind to know yes, they fucking took a fucking bath together or no, I could delete that scene. There were a few times when the truth didn't come out right away because he feared that things like us taking a shower together would be ruined forever. He finally got it that trying to protect us in that way was still a form of lying and manipulation and way more traumatic for me than a painful fact. He was scared that some details would destroy all hope of repair, that there would be a point of no-return. No matter how well-intentioned the protection was, it was still an old, dangerous behavior of avoiding conflict and avoiding his own pain. We've both been getting better at pausing with a feeling and then letting it inform us rather than drive us. If I really need to know something, I try to ask in a way (and with a tone) that has empathy. It helped me to learn that questions were a knife in his heart , too. There are things I might not ever ask about even though they've been in my head since Dec 2017. I still have unverified scenes that churn my gut but...I don't know...Sometimes when I say that I'm feeling sad or sick from a trigger, all I really need is for him to be there for me and with me. It's taken a lot of mindfulness work to stay present while making love with all the information I DO have so do I need to add to that? The thing that keeps us connected is that he knows (expects) I have those battles with intrusive images and tries to be tender and present. I wasn't going to let that damaged, toxic woman take the powerful connection of love-making from me. Recently our therapist suggested we create a ritual to help me with painful intrusions when we are about to make love. Our simple version is to stand together at the doorway and shove her out (along with anyone else who is taking up bandwidth in a toxic way). It has definitely helped to shut the door on her vapory image stumbling to the ground - a pathetic, weak, ugly nothing. She owns nothing. It doesn't stop all battles but it reminds me that he and I are now a force of love to be reckoned with. It shows me that perhaps with creativity, I can let go of some of the unrelenting questions that I might not actually want detailed answers to.
ReplyDeleteStellina--I don't mind you asking or me answering. I was yanked back and forth during DDays and recovery. He wasn't talking to her, it was over, blah blah blah. After the final incident after he moved back home in that first week we were cleaning his car and I found a burner phone. I had hard evidence he WAS still talking to her. That's when she was fired and the phone was returned to her but in fact he did see her about 5 times during that month, would talk to her from our office on the fax line that I wasn't checking, and LOL pay phones (yes you read that right PAY PHONE. Who even knows where pay phones are? Cheaters that's who). Anyway we left on a two week trip and everything came out. Every thing! That's when he earnestly went to MC with the intent of saving the relationship. I don't know I guess he decided he DID want to be married to me. By that time I was over it and actually was ready to divorce him.
ReplyDeleteSo my big question is/was if he had every spoken to her since that trip and he claimed he'd made an earnest commitment to the relationship and wanted the marriage. I've asked and he's denied. I simple find it incredulous that after a 4 year affair there was not one single communication. He has reassured but in essence I believed him before and he lied. Liars don't just stop lying.
I really believe there was a communication but I'm stupid and need the hard evidence or admitting from him. At this point I don't think he will ever tell me if he had. His answer is always NO but you know that still small voice in your head that says the contrary? Well that's me. I simply don't believe him. I would give anything to know but the OW is dead so there's that but maybe she told someone but that someone hasn't come forward. If there is I wish they would tell me. I think I will probably go to my grave not knowing tho. :)