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We are coming up on being married for 20 years and I am struggling so hard with it. Since D day we have acknowledged our anniversary publicly because no one else knows but our celebration has been different and I have fully decided what I honestly what it to be. We have a trip planned this year and I thought I would be at a place of forgiveness but I’m not there and he knows that, we are in a good place with trust, being completely transparent and talk freely about where I am at anytime I want to. I have told him I am not sure what I want this trip to be or our anniversary to be, if anything and he is open for it to be whatever I am comfortable with. I ha e considered celebrating a different day? I don’t want to renew our vows because I didn’t break mine but I am very happy with our marriage now and would like to acknowledge that but not sure on the date that we made the vows he broke. I would love to know how other couples that have successfully reconciled handled their anniversary.

I didn’t reconcile so I do celebrate e every single occurrence except anniversaries.

I do poke fun "celebrations " for the dates of her betrayals, those are the anniversary ones if you want to stretch it. But the kind of gift for those is a night out for me with closing my phone or a condom for her with a card "don’t bring stds home", tops.

However the simple reason is this: celebrate what is meaningful for You.

If you feel your wayward changed and made up for his sexual and emotional abuse of You, and you are still thankful that you met and married this person, by all means celebrate.

If he means something positive for you, if you rebuilt a new relationship and are happy no matter the wounds, by all means.

That calls for a celebration.

Follow your feelings, that’s always the best compass.

We were married 25 years during my H’s affair. He made a big deal out of celebrating it and then saw the OW a few days later. And talked to her often during the time of our anniversary. 😡😡😡

For years I barely wanted to acknowledge our anniversary because of the triggers it caused me.

Now I just keep it simple. I never did celebrate in a big way with fancy dinners or big trips — I always preferred it to be something simple.

It took me years to be excited for it again — but now I am and it’s all good.

I found during the first years of R I would be more anxious in the days leading up to the anniversary. On the day of the anniversary I was usually in a much better mood than I expected.

We didn’t celebrate them that much really to begin with before the affair. My husband traveled a lot for many years of our marriage and there were many times we were not even together on our anniversary. We would get each other cards and go to dinner if he was in town.

He rarely buys cards for me anymore, I can’t remember the last time for any holiday. I am unclear of why, but I have pretty much stopped that as well. It’s hard to explain but I don’t feel there is any animosity about it. Like I don’t feel like I lost a privelqge for bad behavior. I think it was a practice that he didn’t enjoy in the first place and after the affairs we both kind of stopped doing anything we didn’t really feel like doing.

We do acknowledge it- we wake up and kiss and hug and tell each other happy anniversary and that’s about the extent of it.

That sounds bleak, but we have a very loving relationship and say words of appreciation pretty much every day. We are affectionate and love being together. We both make efforts all the time to take good care of ourselves and each other.

So I would say for us holidays for the most part are not of high importance. This coming anniversary is a milestone and we do have a major trip planned. We are thankful that we have stayed married and all we have accomplished together as husband and wife, business partner, co-parents, and we both agree our union made our lives better even with the bad years mixed in.

What I am trying to say is don’t force anything. These rituals may be more important to the two of you than for us, and if that’s the case make your way back even if it’s not this year. However it ends up through the course of time just make sure to do what feels right and works for the two of you. Your relationship doesn’t have to be the way everyone else’s is for it to be fulfilling. Don’t feel pressure towards any direction, because the most authentic each of you can be will help guide the path for appreciating the uniqueness of your relationship. And in time I think you might find an exhale.

I feel like the post A marriage has been about building something new and authentic, and I sort of like that gives both of us permission to never feel pressure to do things we don’t feel like doing, and it leaves room for so many things we do feel like doing. It’s relaxed, and not so full of unnecessary expectations that society says are important.

Our 43rd was in the middle of the A. The next year, my W arranged something and invited me to join her for our 1st post-A anniversary, and that was meaningful to me. IDR what we did on the 2nd post-A anniversary. On the 3rd, we put on pleasant faces, because we were with family, and we hadn't told them about the A (we didn't see each other often). After that, we celebrated. We had a really nice 50th with family and friends.

R worked for us, so the desire to celebrate our relationship came back.

The 'L' sound is pretty difficult to learn. Our GS was almost 3 at the 3rd post-A celebration. He pronounced 'l' in 3 incorrect ways is a single sentence at dinner - 'yeddow' for 'yellow', 'cadiyac' for 'cadillac', and I've forgotten the 3rd. Man! 13 years ago....

The first anniversary after my wife's confession was rough -- I remember I wasn't sure what to do. But we love the mountains, and we just kind of jumped in and went for a really long drive and stopped randomly along the way. We talked and really had a good, quiet week around that anniversary.

I always tell people to do whatever makes them feel comfortable.

At this point, we look at the big picture, like a big picture.

Great stuff and horrible stuff -- all shared, the literal for better and for way worse than anticipated.

Sometimes cards, sometimes not, sometimes we go out, sometimes we chill at home, but we do appreciate all the work we have done to have a better M.

That said, we do have some plans we are working on for our 40th next year. Big plans, as we never really had a Honeymoon (we got hitched when I was in the military and I flew in and flew out for a wedding weekend).

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 10:28 PM, Friday, May 8th]

A bit of off topic but I find a bit odd that I never cared much for dates and anniversaries, she is the first for whom I started caring.

And she wasn’t too much into it.

Now I don’t, and she is picking every possible excuse to celebrate us.
Not her betrayals though.

I wonder what’s going on in her mind.

Pretty timely post, my first anniversary post D Day is coming up in a few weeks. We're early on the path for R and we still have a long road ahead of us but I do not plan on celebrating. A nice weekend with the kids and no mentions of the AP or the details is what I want. We've started having date nights every other week which we hardly did before; so we'll be maintaining that, but "celebrating" an anniversary a few months after my life fell apart seems forced to me. Maybe next year. My D-Day is also on Valentines day...can't imagine I'll be "celebrating" that one ever again.

I'd say do whatever makes you feel comfortable. Like an earlier poster said, I feel as if the anxiousness leading up to the anniversary may be the worst of it and the actual anniversary won't be as triggering as we may think.

Seems to me if you decide to stay married you should ACT that way! UNO, celebrations for all the birthdays/anniversaries/special holidays.

Wife and I always splurge and do dinner at a fancy place we would not go to otherwise. Sometimes a bit extravagant but Hey! You only live once so make the best of it.

Most expensive one was "The Homestead" in Bath County, VA. We told each other the $$$ was to keep out riff-raff! By some folks standards we qualify. A days stay with meals was pricey but the experience was worth it. The Dining room and layout was/is AWESOME.

We are batting around going to Richmond, VA and spend a day at The Jefferson. For those who don't know, Gone With The Wind has scenes filmed in the hotel. Maybe next year -

I’ve never been one to make a big deal over anniversaries, but we do acknowledge them and exchange a card, etc. It took awhile after D day, but they do hold meaning again. I am mostly proud of me. I weathered the storm, I stayed faithful, and I am proud of the work I’ve put in to this marriage. The two of us have been through a lot together and it wasn’t all centered around the fact that he was a cheater. I choose to celebrate and give reverence to the blessings of a very long marriage. My marriage was and is more than the lack of fidelity and that is worth acknowledging.

Well, we've only had 1 anniversary since d day, with another coming up again soon. We did go out for dinner last year, but it was nothing fancy. I wasn't in a very celebratory mood and she knew it. Now, we do have somewhat of another sort of special date that was post d day and it marks a return to true intimacy after a years long dry spell, and we celebrated that.

I don't know wtf were going to do for our 28th this year. I'm in the same boat as you. 28 years is quite an accomplishment, but it's been tainted by her affair for me. I know she's going to want to do something, but she'll respect my wishes if I don't. That's next month, and it's ironically THE actual d day for WWII. June 6th. Maybe by our 30th I'll be feeling it more. I dunno.

I don't know wtf were going to do for our 28th this year.

5 minutes in a sound insulated, sealed back room with the AP and a toothpick?

After the "oh shit oh shit oh shit" civil discussion you are sure to work up an appetite.

The toothpick is not for picking up the pieces obviously 🙄

I don’t know if this is the healthiest way to look at it, but it’s the only framing that feels honest to me right now.

Our 15th anniversary is coming up in August, and I’ve realized I don’t think I’ll ever truly believe we made it to 15 years of marriage. Legally, technically, publicly, sure technically. But emotionally? In the way anniversaries are actually meant to be understood? No.

Because to me, an anniversary marks the continuous existence of something. It represents an unbroken line from the vows you made to the life you built together. And betrayal shattered that continuity.

The day I found out was the day the marriage I believed I was living in ceased to exist. Not because every memory before it became fake, and not because there weren’t real moments of love, loyalty, friendship, family, or connection woven throughout those years. Those things were real to me at least. But the foundation underneath them was not what I believed it was. The relationship I thought I had and the relationship I was actually in turned out to be two very different things.

That creates a kind of fracture in time that I don’t think people outside of betrayal fully understand.

Before DDay, I was operating inside a reality where I believed our vows were still mutually protected. I believed we were carrying the same understanding of marriage, sacrifice, exclusivity, honesty, and commitment. After DDay, I learned that reality had already been broken long before I knew it. So even though my timeline feels linear, emotionally it isn’t. There is a very distinct "before" and "after," and they do not feel connected in the same way anymore.

That’s why I struggle with the idea of celebrating "15 years." Because from my perspective, the marriage did not survive uninterrupted for 15 years, it did not even survive one day in my case. It ended when secrecy, deception, and betrayal entered it. Whatever exists now may eventually become something healthy and meaningful again, but it is not untouched by what happened. It is not the same marriage. I am no longer proud of our sacrifices and hardships faced together.

In a strange way, reconciliation has felt less like repairing an old house and more like standing in the ashes deciding whether we even want to build another one together. Some materials from the old life can be reused. Some memories still matter (very few and far between). Some parts of us survived. But the structure itself collapsed.

So when I say DDay feels like day one, I don’t mean that the previous years are erased or meaningless. I mean that reconciliation feels like the beginning of an entirely different relationship, one built with full knowledge instead of partial truth. The first marriage was built on lies and deception I now know were incomplete. This one, if it succeeds, will at least be built with both people fully visible.

I know some people see anniversaries after infidelity as proof that the marriage survived something terrible. I respect that perspective. I honestly wish I could feel it that way. But for me, forcing myself to celebrate uninterrupted years feels like asking me to emotionally validate a version of reality that no longer exists in my mind.

Maybe over time I’ll soften toward the original date, more like a first fifteen year extended dating period. Maybe eventually I’ll see it as honoring everything, both the beautiful and the broken. But right now, the only thing that feels emotionally truthful is acknowledging that the clock reset on DDay.

Not because I want revenge.
Not because I want to punish her forever.
But because betrayal fundamentally altered the meaning of the vows we (only I) originally made, and reconciliation feels like the beginning of deciding whether entirely new vows, fully informed this time, can someday replace them.