SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I think Gemmy is grieving the death of specialness.

Hell yeah, 100%.

Gemmy, you very recently found out an awful lot that you wish you did not want to find out about your wife and your last 20 years.

BUT, your integrity and kindness, your kids and how you've been treating your family....THOSE are still yours.

I am just suffering these past few days.

((Gemmy)) is there anything we can do to help?

Y'know surviving infidelity requires a certain rawness. The kind that strips you down to whatever is actually real in the moment. You are trying to make sense of something that refuses to make sense. It's all a mind fuck. The kind of hurt that doesn’t stay in one place but keeps shifting, keeps ambushing you, keeps rewriting itself every time you think you’ve finally pinned it down. You're just trying to it survive, man.

And when I look at what you’ve been through, not just the betrayal, but the cruelty wrapped around it, that kind of pain doesn’t sit quietly. I can almost feel that burning in your chest.

And I’ll be honest, your honesty, your openness, your willingness to speak from the wound it pulls on all of our heartstrings. It’s pulling on mine. Reading your pain has stirred a level of remorse in me I haven’t felt in years. The kind that makes you sit with the weight of what betrayal actually does to a human being. I haven't talked to or seen my exBH in ages, and I have this wild want to reach out to him and tell him how deeply sorry I am all over again.

But this isn’t about me, it’s about you, and the fact that you’re still standing in the middle of something that would break a lot of people. I want kindness for you. I want healing for you, with or without your WW. I want you to have a life where this isn’t the thing that defines your days anymore. And until you get there, we’re here.

The higher the BS's self respect, the lower the damage.

So all the hurt the betrayed feel is their own issue with self esteem. Got it.

Mine snickered, laughed, insulted, and joked about how clueless I was, and unfortunately not just to AP but her friends as well.

Sorry Gemmy - Sisoon says you are wrong. You must have simply misunderstood your wife.

[This message edited by gr8ful at 3:34 AM, Thursday, July 2nd]

Gemmy,

Did Your WW say she didn't orgasm with OM, or she faked it with him?

That would also make it more like prostitution.

Was she dry for OM and needed lubrication, I've never been with a prostitute, but a friend who frequented them complained about that.

I wonder if some of you ever think, "Is this question going too far? Am I going to further this BS's pain by asking this?"

Also, "lubrication" is not a reliable indicator of arousal, and if you think a person is lying about whether they enjoyed A sex or not, do you think they're going to answer you honestly about their vaginal secretions at the time?

Mine snickered, laughed, insulted, and joked about how clueless I was, and unfortunately not just to AP but her friends as well.

I'm very sorry about that. Just remember that it's another way of shifting blame from herself, where she knows it belongs. IMO, it's about her, not about you.

*****

A WS's insults, if any, are part of one's life. They need to be factored into decision-making. Insults may be the tipping point, but they don't have to be.

I believe WSes in As tend to be in lala land, and their words are therefore meaningless, so I write off what they said. But I did check carefully for snickering and insults and found very few.

Besides, I saw the clues but misinterpreted them. I've certainly snickered at people when I'm putting something over on them. I think snickering is hard to avoid and, therefore, easy to excuse. But that's JMO.

Here's the thing:

@Gemmy,

You get to evaluate all you know about your W's A. You have to make your own decision. Your posts say R may be possible. D is certainly possible. You'll get a lot of support from SIers either way, as long as you choose what you think will give you the better life, as long as you don't let fear drive your decision.

I urge you to throw out all your presuppositions about M, fidelity, relationships and replace them with the knowledge you've gained from your experience and from the self-knowledge you gain by figuring out what you want.

At some point, you'll sense that ____ is right for you. My reco is to share that decision here. If you get support, you'll know you've come down right for you. If people point out internal contradictions when you share your decision, you'll probably want to think about it more.

Alas, the burden of making the decision is on you. It will affect decades of your life, I hope. Don't let fear make the decision. Don't let a kid who is still maturing (the teenager or early 20s person whose squeeze took up with someone else) make the decision. Use all your resources.

*****

Clearly, two of your resources are the ability to think outside boxes and to get your thoughts into words.

Both as a member and as a staffer, let me echo Unhinged. SI exists so you can say what you want to say (within guidelines!).

All of us are works in progress, all the time. Please continue to write and post freely.

*****

** Member to Member **

@DRS, Maybe I misinterpret what you say, but maybe you you don't write as clearly as you think you do.

In any case, I ordinarily do not respond to your posts, but sometimes I can't help myself ... usually when I think they contain too many examples of fallacious thinking to respond to.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:32 PM, Thursday, July 2nd]

Mine snickered, laughed, insulted, and joked about how clueless I was, and unfortunately not just to AP but her friends as well.

Gemmy, I assume yes, but have those ‘friends’ been punted to the moon, metaphorically or otherwise? If they’re married, have their spouses been informed of their attitudes towards cheating?

Hope today’s going a little better for you.

Thank you everyone. I have read all of this, even the parts that were hard to read.

@WontBeFooledAgai and @InkHulk, "the death of specialness" is probably the closest wording to what I am actually grieving. That hit me hard. It is not just the sex. It is the collapse of the belief that what we had was protected, sacred, different, ours. My integrity is still mine. My children are still mine. How I have tried to carry my family through this is still mine. I needed that reminder.

@foreverlabeled, thank you. I do not really know what anyone can do other than what you already did, which is sit with it without trying to polish it into something easier to look at. Your post meant a lot to me. Especially coming from a wayward perspective, because you did not defend it, soften it, or make me feel crazy for seeing the transaction in it.

@Unhinged, I hear you. I am not trying to turn my wife into a cartoon villain or reduce her entire humanity to one ugly comparison. I am trying to name the shape of what happened from inside my own pain. Maybe this is rage. Maybe it is my amygdala flipping out. Probably. But it is also my mind trying to make sense of something that feels morally and sexually degrading in a way I cannot just reason myself out of yet.

@hikingout, I appreciate your perspective too. I do understand that people can be conditioned to use sexuality for attention, approval, safety, validation, whatever word fits. I am not saying that makes someone literally a prostitute. I am saying that from this side, when sex was exchanged for validation and fantasy, it feels like something sacred was reduced to currency. I am struggling to balance the humanity of that with the brutality of the harm. I try to empathize with her and I know when I call her a prostitue or whore I am hurting her healing and I feel disgusted with myself after, but I just cannot seem to pull back when I get to a point.

@Pogre and @NoThanks, thank you for reminding me I do not always have to write in service of helping someone else. Sometimes I am just bleeding onto the page because I do not know where else to put it. You all have helped me see that I was doing this self consciously, perpetuating my protector\helper role I kept in the marriage even if detrimental to myself.

@GotTheMorbs, you were right to call out that some questions go too far. I am not going into body mechanics, orgasms, lubrication, or any of that. There is enough pain in the facts. I do not need to put my face closer to the fire just to prove it burns. Some people really do not get the point of help vs hurt. Thank you for the defense.

@sisoon, thank you. The snickering, laughing, insults, and joking about my cluelessness are not the whole picture, but they are absolutely part of the picture. They have to be factored in. I am trying very hard not to let fear make this decision. Fear of divorce, fear of staying, fear of hurting the kids, fear of being wrong, fear of losing the life I thought I had. None of those can be the driver, I do not fear being alone, at this point I almost crave it.

@Letmebefrank, as for the friends, I do not consider anyone who helped normalize, laugh at, hide, or minimize this as safe for me or the marriage. I am not interested in carrying anyone’s comfort anymore. I am also trying not to turn every piece of this into another battlefield while I am still trying to stand upright. This one is very hard as it is her family mostly. I cannot say cut your family out, yet they constantly undermine us, tell her literally it is my fault she strayed, and have told my children to choose sides. What the actual fuck. She did cut ties with the toxic friends and due to her two faced talking about me for years, very few are untouched.

I am not sure where I land yet. Some days R feels possible in theory and impossible in my body. Some days D feels inevitable, but still devastating. What I do know is that I cannot unknow what I know now. I cannot pretend sex meant the same thing to both of us. I cannot pretend the mocking did not happen. I cannot pretend the wedding was untouched. I cannot pretend the last 15 years feel the same from this side of discovery.

Maybe this model is imperfect. Maybe all models are. But it helped me name something ugly I was feeling and could not articulate.

I am not trying to offend anyone. I am trying to survive the realization that what I thought was sacred was negotiable to the person I trusted most. That I was negotiable.

I have handled this all to the best of my abilities most days, but this last week has been ten steps back into despair.

I am not sure where I land yet. Some days R feels possible in theory and impossible in my body. Some days D feels inevitable, but still devastating.

And that is ok, in the sense that you should not judge yourself for this back and forth. It’s very common. You aren’t ready to make a life altering decision yet, so don’t. Your clarity will come in time, just trust yourself.

Maybe this model is imperfect. Maybe all models are. But it helped me name something ugly I was feeling and could not articulate.

Sounds useful

As stated before, there are no demerit points for imperfect posts. Just keep doing what is best for you here, the rest will take care of itself.

I am not trying to offend anyone.

Aw hell, Gemmy, we all know that. Sending mojo your way man.

My previous post was short. The "death of specialness" is a great phrase. I might steal it.

Gemmy, I've read all your posts.

They all circle around the deep injustice of the affair. They often come down to whether or not you can accept something you clearly abhor.

I try to be as neutral on R or D as I can be (obviously I have some preference for R since that's what I picked). I recommend D most often when I see someone that is just not that attached to their partner. In your case, you have a pretty long marriage.

The reality though is your betrayal starts at the beginning of your marriage and essentially invalidates the whole thing.

She is a repeat offender, which is another tough pill to swallow.

You have a pretty clear sense of principles that have been taken advantage of and that you are clearly not wanting to change or be flexible on.

I waffled as much as anyone here, back and forth. I knew I should D but didn't. I planned a D but didn't. I asked for a D but didn't. Eventually my wife's behavior actually turned a corner.

I can't say with any certainty what level of affair, what specific insult would be too much, because if you were to tell be before my wife's A what she did, I would have said it was too much.

What I don't see, and it's not a personal failing at all, is any desire on your part to be flexible. To change your mind on what may be acceptable. I see no willingness to start a new foundation with baked in uncertainty.

You simply want a deep, complete commitment. You want faithfulness and loyalty without question and in the face of adversity.

You know your wife can't give you that. She can (though I'm not saying she is going to) give you her best effort to be better. So is that acceptable or not? What kind of marriage can you accept? What kind of marriage do you want? Can you get that from someone that has betrayed you?

@this0is0fine

What I don't see, and it's not a personal failing at all, is any desire on your part to be flexible. To change your mind on what may be acceptable. I see no willingness to start a new foundation with baked in uncertainty.

I guess I am trying to fathom if the following is flexible at all.

I was betrayed before the marriage even began, which stripped me of the ability to give informed consent to the life I was entering.

My wedding was contaminated by the presence of an affair partner, turning what should have been a sacred and safe memory into one of humiliation and deception.

I was lied to for 15 years, allowing me to build a marriage, family, identity, and future on a reality that was never true.

I was made to believe I was insecure, controlling, unreasonable, or paranoid when my instincts were actually responding to real threats.

While one affair was being disclosed, the current affair partner was allowed to know where we were and effectively watch my devastation unfold in real time.

My second betrayal was broadcast to friends and family without my knowledge, allowing others to witness my raw pain while I was completely unaware I was being exposed.

My reaction was shown to people without the full truth or context, allowing my pain to be weaponized against me while the betrayal that caused it stayed hidden or minimized.

The truth was not voluntarily given to me; I had to drag it out one painful question at a time while being given only narrow, partial answers.

I was repeatedly denied the dignity of full honesty, even after discovery, boundaries, and supposed transparency had already begun.

I was forced into the role of investigator in my own life, carrying the burden of discovering facts that should have been offered freely.

My body and health were put at risk without my consent through unprotected sex outside the marriage.

My property was violated and turned into part of the betrayal, adding another layer of humiliation and disgust.

Another person was given secrecy, affection, emotional intimacy, time, and words that belonged inside the marriage, while
I was at home carrying the responsibilities of husband, father, and partner.

I was left responsible for the children, the home, and the family while time, energy, and attention were being poured into betrayal.

I was laughed at, joked about, and humiliated in conversations connected to the cheating, turning my pain into something disposable.

I was spoken about as abusive, angry, robotic, or monstrous while the full truth of what had been done to me was hidden from the people judging me.

The children were pulled into adult chaos, exposed to distorted narratives, and placed in emotionally damaging situations because the truth was not protected.

I comforted, stabilized, and protected the person who hurt me while life-altering truths were still being withheld from me.

My reputation was sacrificed to protect someone else’s image, while family and others were allowed to believe incomplete or false versions of what happened.

The deepest harm is that my entire reality was stolen: my memories, my marriage, my choices, my trust, my dignity, and my ability to know what my own life actually was.

This isn't even a complete list, or anywhere near it. I know I am dwelling on it, and that everyone feels the betrayal is the worst, but I have to think this is on the severe side of the scale. So yes I am unsure if the foundation, even newly formed, may hold this. I am unsure I can ever get past this regardless of her current status, or if she becomes the best wife in the world.

I have a deep attachment to her for sure, she was my first and only love, but I know there are others out there as well. I am a fit fairly good looking man that has a ton to offer, and I know I would have no problem finding another, though the risks are present there as well.

You simply want a deep, complete commitment. You want faithfulness and loyalty without question and in the face of adversity.
You know your wife can't give you that. She can (though I'm not saying she is going to) give you her best effort to be better. So is that acceptable or not? What kind of marriage can you accept? What kind of marriage do you want? Can you get that from someone that has betrayed you?

Yes I want a deep complete commitment, who doesn't, and if she cannot give that the decision is truly already made. What kind of marriage do I want? Committed to each other in a partnership of love, respect, and fidelity. What kind of marriage can I accept? Nothing less. Can I get that from her????? That is what I struggle with.

survrus ( member) posted at 6:54 AM on Thursday, July 2nd, 2026

Gemmy,

Did Your WW say <snip>

Jesus christ man. Have some compassion. Maybe some questions don't need to be asked when someone's lying on the floor hurting and bleeding out.

How is it going with your WW, Gemmy? She hasn't been back here, as far as I'm aware. Is she doing the right things?

I have no doubt she is trying, but bare minimum to try and keep me hanging I fear.

Gemmy

All I can say is that what you’ve been through is one of the most crushing, systematic experiences of betrayal I have ever read.

First, I want to say that I genuinely hope you find peace and get whatever you ultimately want out of this situation. I should be transparent about my own bias: I am generally against reconciliation, so I might be the toughest person to hear this from. But looking at your situation objectively, what you have experienced is on the absolute extreme end of the severity scale.

Reading your words, it is clear you are a deeply intelligent, self-aware person. Because of that, I think you already know, deep down, that you deserve so much better than what you have been subjected to. If you do choose to walk away, please know that there are loyal, loving partners out there who couldn't even conceive of doing a fraction of the things your wife did to you.

Personally, I don't see a single thing in your post that suggests you should maintain a relationship with your wife outside of convenience, fear or sunk cost fallacy. Nor that she is capable of giving you the unyielding commitment you require. The foundation wasn't just cracked; it was entirely fabricated.

Ultimately, the choice is yours, and if you choose to try and reconcile, that is your right. All I would strongly urge you to do is deeply interrogate why you choose whatever path you take. Ensure you aren’t acting out of fear, trauma bonding, or a perceived sense of duty to a history that wasn't real. Whatever you decide, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons—and reasons that prioritize your own dignity and healing.

Gemmy wrote:

I have handled this all to the best of my abilities most days, but this last week has been ten steps back into despair.

I feel you man, I really do. I have yet to write about all of the details of my d day here because it was pretty bad. My WW's words and actions were different from yours, but some of what she did and said was pretty drastic.

Tried to jump out of our moving vehicle while I was driving and trying to talk to her. Told me "No, I'm not coming home tonight. I'm going stay here and enjoy my evening," "He's a GREAT guy!" and "Don't you talk about him like that!"

And don't get me started on some of the text and messenger conversations I read between her and a couple of her now ex friends. I still have a couple of screenshots saved that I haven't had the stomach to look at for several months now.

You already know I was manipulated and deceived into giving her a ride once so she could sleep with the guy.

What I dealt with was different, and maybe or maybe not as objectively bad, but I think I know your pain and humiliation brother. I'm well over a year out from that and it's gotten a lot better. We're still together. I have no idea how this is going to pan out for you, or if you're going to be able to work it out with her, but I promise, either way this will get better. You will get your feet back on the ground. Just hang in there and know that this will pass. You're going to be okay.

Gemmy,

im gobsmacked by the overlap between our situations. I guess I shouldn't be.

You are a talented writer with a truly beautiful and sensitive soul. You think deep and you care hard. And Ive seen you be nothing but kind to others.

Try to be kind to yourself. Ive seen you not do so good on that. Im bad at it too. Actually, Im cruel.

When Im on the ropes, sometimes i make myself say something kind to myself in a mirror, make myself listen to something good I did, and tell 5bd that I like and appreciate 5bd.

I think its goofy, and stupid, and I dont believe it. Or particularly like the self indulgence.
But sometimes it really moves the needle.

It helps and you might already do something like that. But maybe give it a shot if you dont.

Gemmy, I agree with the DRSOOLERS post just above.

I've been reading widely (here and other forums) for 3.5 years, and very few stories are as severe as yours - serial cheating, premarital cheating, contempt, gaslighting. Your entire reality has been shattered for the past 18 YEARS, and putting that back together is going to take immense effort and a very long time.

Omar Minwalla wrote "The Secret Sexual Basement" paper for women married to cheating men, but I think his analysis of the betrayed applies equally will to any type of marriage. You are likely to go through C-PTSD. He states:

This process represents a specific psychological injury that is referred to as reality-ego fragmentation (REF). More specifically, the [Betrayed spouse] loses their sense of reality about the world in general, their understanding of their partner, the nature of their relationship, and the authenticity of their attachment. It is during this phase when [they] and their family members begin to experience PTSD-related symptoms.

The symptom progression phase is defined as both the short-term and long-term impacts and symptoms that occur in the aftermath of the covert and exposure phases that may negatively impact all aspects of the [Betrayed spouse]'s life. This phase focuses on core wounds related to identity, sexuality, gender, attachment, and relationships as well as the post fragmentation reconstruction processes of ego, self, and reality.

He coins the term "Integrity Abuse": an environment of ongoing psychological, emotional, and relational
abuse and harmful patterns and events. It took me some time to grapple with the idea that I was a victim of abuse. Not all cases of infidelity warrant the term, but in your case (and mine and many others'), I think it's appropriate.

I don't recall if you're in therapy, but I highly recommend that you find a trauma-informed therapist to help you process and heal from this.

Accept that it's usually very difficult to choose one's course of action when R looks possible. That means there's no quick solution, and there's no easy solution. It's best to get intellect, emotion, and intuition to align on a resolution, and that's difficult, especially since emotion and intuition don't communicate with words.

Give yourself time. Really, taking some months to figure out what you want and what is possible costs little, in the context of most lifetimes. The more you force yourself to decide, the longer you probably will have to spend deciding.

Give yourself a break. Have faith in yourslef to make a good decision. And really, have faith in yourself to know when you know.

Remind yourself that the period of not knowing what one will do is very difficult. Know that it will end, although not as quickly as anyone wants. You WILL decide, when you're ready.

IMO, Gemmy, you're doing what you need to do. Resolving this just takes more time than anyone wants it to take. You're probably at the toughest point in recovery. You not only have the tools you need, you're making use of them. You've got this.

*****

So all the hurt the betrayed feel is their own issue with self esteem. Got it.

Alas, your comment says you haven't got it yet. The time a BS feels an emotion - anger, fear, grief, despair - or physical pain due to being betrayed is relatively brief and very real for most BSes.

IMO and IME,thinking about the pain, which is probably impossible to avoid whne one has been betrayed, takes up a lot of the BS's time, probably unproductively, and is due to the BS's self-talk, not self-image.

Check out the humanist psychologists - say, Fritz Perls and his followers.

I'm not saying it's quick or easy to change one's self-talk. It's difficult and takes time. Hence the 2-5 year rule of thumb for recovery.